Wildlife

Lions Mysteriously Fall Ill in Northern Uganda

Wildlife officials in Uganda are stumped by a mysterious illness among the lions of Kidepo Valley National Park that has left the big cats emaciated and “docile”.

Kampala’s The Observer newspaper reports that within the past month, the sickness has affected almost all of the park’s lions, located in the north of the country near the borders of South Sudan and Kenya.

Charles Tumwesigye, the deputy director in charge of conservation at the Uganda Wildlife Authority, says experts will examine samples taken from some of the sick lions.

“We have a feeling that it could be partly starvation because we don’t seem to have very many prey animals for the lions in Kidepo,” Tumwesigye told the daily.

He adds that the larger animals currently roaming the park, like buffaloes, are not easy for a lion to take down.

A regal male lion photographed earlier this year in Uganda's remote Kidepo Valley National Park, where the bigcats have mysteriously fallen ill.

Bats facing extinction on Western Ghats, India

Wildlife experts and conservationists have warned that bats are facing extinction in India's Western Ghats due to increasing human activities and destruction of forests. Several species of bats residing in India are finding it increasingly difficult to adjust with varying landscape resulting due to deforestation. They cites reasons including increased use of agricultural land and growing human population for the impact on bats. A team of experts from University of Leeds in Britain, Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore and National Centre for Biological Sciences conducted a survey of different bats species in the southern Western Ghats in order to study the impact of plantation and rainforest fragmentation on them.

The study showed that some bat species can adjust with coffee plantations. Experts said that the reaming part of the forest and wildlife friendly agriculture can help save the bats from extinction. Western Ghats is among the most biodiverse regions in the world and it is also densely populated. The modern development and land-use transformation have left just 6 per cent of the natural habitat. The experts used Geographic Information System (GIS) computer modelling to study association between different bat species.