UK animals back from the brink of extinction

Clockwise from left to right: red kite, pine martens, ladybird spider, water vole, corncrake, large blue butterflies. Photographs: Press Association

While the red squirrel, common toad and European eel may face the same grim future as Britain's once-native wolves, bears, lynx, wild boar and beaver, other species have shown there is hope amid the gloom.

As two animal and plant species are lost every year in England, conservationists say urban sprawl, hunting and pollution are to blame for the massive biodiversity declines.

However, habitat protection, hunting controls and captive breeding have led to significant successes for Britain's wildlife. Water quality in UK rivers has also improved so much in some places that a number of species, including otters and water voles, are returning to waterways from which they had vanished as habitats improve. The Thames, the Mersey and the Tyne, rivers which 50 years ago were classified as "biologically dead", are now home to thriving wildlife populations.

The following is a selection of species that have bucked the trend for dwindling populations. All have returned from the brink of extinction in the UK, with some even once declared extinct in the wild.

Birds

The UK's birds have seen a dramatic reversal of fortune over the past decade. Almost 60% of Britain's rarest birds, including once near-extinct species such as the red kite, bittern, avocet and osprey, have seen numbers increase over the past decade. Five birds of prey which became extinct in the UK have returned. Ospreys, white tailed eagles, honey buzzards, marsh harriers and goshawks all successfully managed to re-establish themselves in this country. Other birds including the corncrake, eagle owl, grey partridge and cirl bunting have also seen a population resurgence. The great bustard – the heaviest flying bird and one of Europe's most threatened species – in 2009 bred in the wild the first time in almost 200 years in the UK.

Insects and spiders

A decade ago there were only 56 ladybird spiders in Britain, when a breeding and reintroduction programme began. The number of ladybird spiders in the wild is now thought to be more than 1,000. Among the UK's rapidly declinging butterfly species, the heath fritillary – Britain's fastest disappearing species – has seen a comeback, while conservation efforts have seen five more species starting to recover. The other butterflies are the high brown fritillary, the wood white, the silver-spotted skipper, the adonis blue and the large blue - which 25 years ago was extinct.

Mammals

Pine marten sightings have been reported in England and Wales almost 15 years after the animal was declared extinct in both places. The widespread return of the otter, which had undergone a huge population decline because of pesticide pollution, is evidence of improving river water quality. There is also good news for the water vole, which 20 years ago had the fastest declining mammal population in the UK. The water vole was once common across the UK but after a dramatic decline 90% had disappeared. An Environment Agency survey last year found 30 "vole hotspots". The polecat, once extinct from England, has recolonised naturally from a few sites in Wales.

Amphibians and reptiles

Researchers at the University of Sussex helped with the reintroduction of the northern pool frog, a long-lost species native to England. The natterjack toad has also been making a successful comeback to the Lincolnshire coast, thanks to a project by Natural England and the University of Sussex. The sand lizard narrowly avoided extinction in England but has recovered thanks to natural reintroduction.

Green shoots: Send us your pictures of birds in gardens

A coal tit feeding in a garden Photograph: David Jones/PA

Birds are everywhere in November and it's fairly easy to entice them into your garden (or onto a balcony) with a little bribery. Unfortunately, getting good photos of them can be a challenge. But with a little bit of knowledge and preparation, you can boost your chances of success.

Garden birds tend to be small and fast-moving. It's well worth spending some time watching them before you start trying to take photos. Let's assume you have a bird table or a feeder hanging up. Work out where the birds are coming from, where they perch on their way in and where they head afterwards. Then you can work out where to position your camera and how to get closer.
It's also useful to know which birds are using your garden. Different species eat different food and behave in different ways. For example, greenfinches like to eat sunflower seeds or peanuts and will happily perch for minutes at a time, filling their faces. Nuthatches, blue, great and coal tits also like sunflower seeds and nuts but tend to stage speedy raids on a feeder - dashing in, grabbing a beakful of food, and flying off.
Other birds like robins, dunnocks and blackbirds are less likely to use a hanging feeder, but will come to a bird table. Starlings and jackdaws will eat anything, anywhere. Different tactics are required from the would-be photographer.

Try the RSPB's interactive bird identifier if you're not too confident with your bird ID, and find out which foods attract particular species.

Early morning sees the peak of feeding activity. Birds, especially small ones at this time of year, use up considerable energy overnight just keeping warm. So there's a rush to feed first thing to replenish those reserves. Of course, for you there's the added bonus of soft morning light, but it might involve an early start. Still, if you're only going out to the garden, at least you don't have to travel far.
Getting close to garden birds is hard work, unless you can get them used to your presence. But the good thing about your backyard is that you can treat it as your personal studio. You can do things that would be frowned upon in a public location. You could consider hiding in your shed or even getting a small portable hide, but if that seems a bit over the top, commandeering a wendy house could work, too.
As well as putting out food and water, think about what the birds are going to be sitting on and what's in the background. Feeders and tables are great for attracting birds but aren't necessarily that pretty. Strategic positioning of pretty, lichen-covered branches nearby can be a good option. If you have goldfinches visiting your garden, find some teasel heads for them to perch on - a much nicer, natural perch than a bird feeder.

Taking a more holistic view of your "studio" can pay dividends. You don't need to stop mowing the lawn or plant trees everywhere, but choose shrubs and flowers that are good for wildlife - for example, plants that have berries or attract insects. Think about digging a wildlife pond - birds need to drink and bathe every day (even in winter) and you'll probably enjoy the sights and sounds of dragonflies and frogs in spring and summer.

Carol Ann Duffy – the newest of the bee poets

Bees – miraculous insects that have moved many a poet into action. Photograph: Uwe Anspach/AFP/Getty Images

When Carol Ann Duffy's first collection of new poems as poet laureate was published this month, she joined a long list of acclaimed scribes dating back to Roman poet Virgil who have eulogised the honeybee in verse for their social organisation, honey-making abilities or pollination services, or employed them as a potent metaphor and symbol.

In The Bees, Duffy's "winged saviours" – to borrow a phrase from another famous bee poet, Sylvia Plath – are woven throughout the collection to symbolise all that is good in the world and necessary to protect. In many of the poems she draws attention to the seriousness of their plight. In Virgil's Bees, for example, the poem she wrote in the Guardian for the 10:10 campaign to reduce carbon emissions, her clarion call to save the planet is to "guard them" [the bees] "the batteries of orchards, gardens".

People understand that bees are a barometer of the environment, that their demise is a warning system that our ecosystem is in jeopardy. Albert Einstein may never have actually said that if the bees disappear of the face of the earth man only has four years left to live, but its message resonates.

I'm no poetry critic and I find many poems inaccessible, but Duffy's bee collection is a heartfelt lyrical wake-up call to the dangers facing these miraculous insects and, by extension, humankind.

In Telling the Bees, she tries to impart the full horror of what dying bees means for humanity with the ending, "No honey for tea," which evokes those final haunting words, "Is there honey still for tea?" from Rupert Brooke's famous First World War poem The Old Vicarage, Grantchester, a paean to the safety and civility of England.
Ariel is Duffy's fierce attack on intensive agriculture's pesticides and monoculture that are threatening bees. "Where the bee sucks, neonicotinoid insecticides in a cowslip's bell lie," she warns, describing its systemic nature as "sheathing the seed" and "seething in the orchards", while the land is "monotonous with cereals and grain".
I never thought when I became a beekeeper that it would widen my appreciation of poetry, and open up a new world of celestial creatures bearing honey as a gift of heaven, (to paraphrase the Virgil in his beekeeping thesis, Georgics IV).

Neither did I expect when I was researching my book A World Without Bees that poetry would come to mind as I witnessed 40,000 white hives lying empty and silent in what looked like a mass grave in the Californian desert. But it was Sylvia Plath's 1962 poem, The Arrival of the Bee Box, where she compares a new beehive to the coffin of a baby, that lingered.

Award-winning poet Jo Shapcott told me that A World Without Bees had inspired some of the poems she wrote for last year's Poetry of Bees, an event commissioned by the City of London Festival and Poet in the City 2010 One of the poems was specifically on the mysterious bee killer, colony collapse disorder.
Now that poets have joined the bee rescue party, we would do well to head their warnings. In Duff's cautionary poem, The Human Bee, of people pollinating orchards by hand when all the bees have been killed – as happened in the southern Sichuan province of China following pesticide poisoning – her protagonist, The Human Bee, laments: "But I could not fly, and I made no honey." It perfectly illustrates how we can never replace nature's master pollinator.

Defenders of wildlife

Renowned for its majesty and nicknamed "the king of the jungle," the lion possesses both beauty and strength. Lions vary in color but typically sport light yellow-brown coats. Mature male lions are unique among big cats due the thick brown or black manes that encircle their necks and protect them while fighting.

Fast Facts

Height: 4 feet (1.2m) (males).
Length: 5-8 feet (1.5-2.4m) (males).
Weight 330-500 lbs (150-227 kg) (males).
In general, female lions are smaller than males.
Lifespan: 10-14 years.
Top speed: 50 mph (81 km/hr), for short distances

Diet

Lions consume a wide variety of prey, from wildebeest, impala, zebra, giraffe, buffalo and wild hogs to sometimes rhinos and hippos. They will also feed on smaller animals such as hares, birds and reptiles. Lions are also known to attack elephants when food is scarce.
Population
The lion population in Africa has been reduced by half since the early 1950s. Today, fewer than 21,000 remain in all of Africa.
Range
Though lions used to live in most parts of Africa, they are now found only in the south Sahara desert and in parts of southern and eastern Africa. Historically, in addition to Africa, lions were found from Greece through the Middle East to northern India. See a lion range map >>

Did You Know?

Both male and female lions roar, and that roar can be heard over five miles away!

The only social member of the cat (Felidae) family, lions live in large groups called "prides," consisting of about 15 lions. Related females and their young make up the majority of the pride. A single male, or sometimes a small group of 2-3 males, will join a pride for an indefinite period, usually about 3 years or until another group of males takes over.
Lions within a pride are often affectionate and, when resting, seem to enjoy good fellowship with lots of touching, head rubbing, licking and purring. The males are territorial, and will roar and use scent markings to establish their domains.
Females do almost all of the hunting. They are mainly nocturnal and work in teams to stalk and ambush prey. Lions inhabit grassy plains, savannahs, open woodlands and scrub country. These landscapes allow the hunters to creep stealthily through vegetation and leap upon their unsuspecting prey.

The Fall Season for Florida Hunting

Florida hunting seasons are a little hard to keep track of for visitors who aren't familiar with the territory. The Wildlife Management Areas offer their own dates, but seasons on private property and other locations tend to run fairly consistent from year to year. They do, however, vary depending on the region of the state a hunter happens to be in.

• In general, the fall archery season starts between September and October, depending on the zone. The southern part of the state tends to kick of the season the earliest with the north coming online the latest. The next season to open is deer-dog training in October throughout the state. Crossbow comes next between October and November, followed by muzzleloader and general gun.

• The famous Florida Osceola turkey comes up for grabs in a very brief period throughout the state. Typically, the season runs only a few days, right near Thanksgiving. Holmes County, however, offers no fall gobbler season at all. This turkey was named after the famous Seminole Chief Osceola.

• An alligator harvest also runs in the fall. The rules and regulations for this particular draw are a bit different than those that apply to other game. Several months of advanced preparation is generally needed to take part.

EASTERN COUGAR DECLARED EXTINCT

The Eastern Cougar Walks The Earth No More. Photo (of a Western cougar):USF&WS

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Concludes That The Last Eastern Cougar Was Killed Sometime During The Twentieth Century

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service today announced its conclusion that the Eastern cougar, or mountain lion, no longer exists. The negative conclusion of a five-year USFWS survey of the issue is certain to be controversial: During recent decades, many people have reported sightings of cougars east of the Mississippi, and some environmental activists have claimed that wildlife agencies have ignored or even concealed evidence of the Eastern mountain lion’s continued existence.
Today’s finding will likely result in the removal of the Eastern cougar from listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA)—an outcome that seems destined to trigger further charges of government conspiracy. According to cougar-conspiracy theorists, official acknowledgement of a breeding population of Eastern cougars would cause inconvenience to governments and industries because of the measures that would have to be taken to protect them under the ESA.
The five-year review of the Eastern cougar’s status was headed by USFWS biologist Mark McCollough, who is based in Maine. According to McCollough, 90 percent of alleged cougar sightings in the East—and with the exception of a tiny remnant population of Florida “panthers”— are the result of misidentifications of other types of animals. The few authentic sightings of cougars in the eastern U.S. have involved animals that either escaped or were released from captivity, McCollough says.
In a 2007 interview with the editor of AllAboutWildlife.com, McCollough said there may be as many as 1,000 cougars living in captivity east of the Misssissippi.
However, according to the McCollough, individual cougars from the species’ Western populations occasionally stray into the East. In fact, one cougar, originally from the Black Hills of South Dakota, was shot and killed in downtown Chicago several years ago. It is possible that Western mountain lions could eventually recolonize parts of the East.
Although Eastern mountain lions have been treated as a separate subspecies of cougar, many wildlife biologists doubt that there were ever enough genetic differences between Eastern and Western cougar populations to warrant a subspecies designation. 

LEONARDO DiCAPRIO, POACHERS, AND THE WORLD’S ENDANGERED TIGERS

A Critically Endangered Tiger Wades, Blissfully Unaware Of The Plight His Species Faces. Photo:Moni Sertel

It May Be Untrue That Poachers Are Still Killing A Tiger A Day. But That’s Only Because The Illegal Hunters Are Running Out Of Tigers.

BY PAUL GUERNSEY
How many Leonardo DiCaprios would it take to save the world’s remaining endangered tigers?
In November, DiCaprio, the Hollywood star, arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia, to attend an international conference on tiger conservation that was being hosted by Vladimir Putin, the most powerful Russian politician as well as a huge fan of endangered tigers, of which his country has a few hundred still living in the wild. Mr. DiCaprio expressed his deep concern as a dedicated conservationist, set a wonderful example by taking out his own checkbook, and—perhaps most importantly—helped direct a bright, if temporary, spotlight of public attention onto wild tigers, which are in grave peril of forever slipping off the face of the earth within the next decade.
At this desperate point, the cause of tiger conservation can certainly use all the attention it can get. However, the twenty-first century tide of factors rising against tigers has become so strong it is uncertain that anything—even the power of the stars—will be able to turn it. But, of course, we have to try.
All in all, perhaps somewhat more (or somewhat fewer) than 3,000 tigers remain at large in Asia’s dwindling wildernesses, down from an estimated 100,000 a century ago and falling fast, mostly to the snares and rifles of poachers who feed a lucrative illegal Asian market for their hides, bones and body parts. So devastating has the poaching been that loss of habitat, by far the main threat to most of the world’s other endangered species, is only second on the list of daunting problems facing tigers.
India, the country with the largest remaining tiger population, provides a good illustration of the species’ plight: In 2003, conservationists estimated the number of Indian tigers at 3,600. Today, a mere 8 years later, there are only around 1,300 Bengal tigers left in the country, with most of the loss caused by illegal hunting.
Nor is India an exception. Late last year, TRAFFIC, the international wildlife-trade monitoring network, reported that over the previous decade, law enforcement authorities in the 13 Asian “tiger range” countries—India included—had seized parts of 1,069 tigers that had been killed illegally. Because only a portion—and undoubtedly a small one—of poached tigers are ever recovered by law enforcement, the actual number taken by traffickers is presumed to be a shocking multiple of TRAFFIC’s figure.
The Amur, or Siberian, tiger subspecies native to Putin’s Russia has been the single bright spot in the otherwise dark picture of global tiger conservation. Down to fewer than 40 individuals in the 1920s, Siberian tigers have rebounded to a population of between 450 and 500 due to government protection. However—and in spite of the interest of Putin and other highly placed Russians—conservationists say that recently there has been a worrisome increase in the poaching of Russian tigers. The upsurge is doubtlessly due to the fact that the Chinese border lies close to the narrow strip of coastal Far Eastern Russia that is home to the remaining Amur tigers, and folk-medicine manufacturers, wine makers, and boutique restauranteurs in the increasingly affluent China are willing to pay top dollar for all kinds of tiger parts, including bones, eyes and penises. The skin, meat, bones and organs of one tiger can reportedly fetch from $25,000 to $50,000 at the end of the retail chain, and wild tigers are much more highly prized than the ones Chinese entrepreneurs are now raising in pens because they allegedly contain more “magic.”
According to the Environmental Investigation Agency, an international anti-poaching organization, by the mid- to late 1990s, illegal hunters were killing a wild tiger every day to supply the lucrative and growing Asian market. An EIA spokesperson told AllAboutWildlife.com that probably fewer tigers than that are currently being killed—but only because they’ve become so scarce that illegal hunters are having a harder time finding them. (More on the Chinese market for tiger parts here.)
In St. Petersburg, Leonardo DiCaprio posed for a photo with Vladimir Putin, and he generously pledged $1 million of his own money toward easing pressures on the world’s remaining, desperately beleaguered tiger populations, which are divided among five surviving subspecies. (Three subspecies have already been driven into extinction, and the extinction of one other, the South China tiger, is strongly suspected.) In addition, the actor, in conjunction with the World Wildlife Fund, has since launched a new public campaign to call attention to the threats faced by this critically endangered predator species.
Nor were DiCaprio and Putin the only high-profile people to appear at the International Tiger Conservation Forum: Other attendees on hand to talk about tigers included Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, the prime ministers of Nepal and Bangladesh, supermodel Naomi Campbell, actor Dick van Dyke, and World Bank head Robert Zoellick. Although tiger forums have been held in other years and in other countries, Putin’s event was exceptionally high-profile and well-attended because of his sponsorship, as well as the fact that it was taking place at the close of the Chinese Year of the Tiger, which ended February 2.
Conservationists in attendance pointed out that never before have high-level world leaders—meaning the politicians who showed up, rather than DiCaprio and Campbell—met to discuss the fate of a single, non-human species. The same groups expressed approval over the forum’s resolution to double wild tiger populations by the next Year of the Tiger—2022—as well as at least a bit of optimism about the fact that various governments, conservation groups and individuals at the forum had pledged a total of $330 million in funding and loans for projects related to tiger conservation over the next five years, a figure that works out to somewhere around an astonishing $100,000 per wild tiger remaining in the world.
And, if wishes, good will, and the sincere concern of celebrities and world leaders could immediately be converted into concrete accomplishment, then the Putin event would have already succeeded in saving tigers from extinction. Unfortunately, few organizations involved with saving the tiger seem to think that the steps taken in St. Petersburg go far enough, or even necessarily herald a meaningful turn in the tiger’s plunging trend.
For example, while the sum of money “pledged” for the next five years sounds impressive, the World Wildlife Fund, one of the leading international conservation groups, says that “new” monies promised in Russia actually amount to around $127 million, including Mr. DiCaprio’s $1 million and at least $50 million that the WWF itself will be pitching in—with hopes of coming up with an additional $35 million.
That funding must be divided among 13 countries (though not necessarily evenly) and sustain effective tiger-conservation efforts for half a decade . . .
Other organizations assert that much of the money discussed in St. Petersburg, in addition to not being enough to get the job done, also is not targeted specifically at tiger protection or conservation, despite being earmarked for conservation projects in tiger habitat.
AllAboutWildlife.com asked two conservation leaders active in directly trying to prevent tiger poaching—one in India, and one based in London and working internationally—how they assessed the outcome of the St. Petersburg forum.
Debbie Banks, lead campaigner for the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency, told us the following during an exchange of e-mails:
“EIA is generally of the view that it is a good thing that the Global Tiger Recovery Program and Leaders Declaration has been signed and that there is some level of commitment to double the tiger population by 2022. We recognise that it is unprecedented for world leaders to convene over a single species, as 5 did during the high level segment of the Forum.
“However, we remain concerned that countries were promising to undertake actions that they have been promising since the last Year of the Tiger. We didn’t get any sense in the lead up to the Forum that there had been an honest appraisal of why so many of those earlier promises and commitments remain unimplemented, or that underlying factors had been identified and will be addressed.
“We captured our comments on the Forum itself on our blog . . . and we¹ve set out what we believe are short-term and long-term indicators of future progress in this report, Enforcement not Extinction: Zero Tolerance.
“Regarding the sum of money pledged in St Petersburg, for a start it comes nowhere close in generating enough to save wild tigers, but the other factor to bear in mind is that a lot of the funding pledged is tied up with forest and REDD [carbon emissions] projects, relating to some parts of the tiger’s range but not all of it. Other funding streams committed at the meeting were in loans.
“Big money and loans often get tied up in red tape and are slow to be released. Only a small portion of funds committed so far could potentially be channelled into rapid action funds to go straight to anti-poaching units or investigation teams to pay for things like informants, fuel, assistance with court cases, etc. Also, the chances of those funds trickling down to localised NGOs [Non-governmental organizations] or NGOs that are not embedded in the process of implementing the GTRP, is slim.
“Further, the amount of money that has been pledged for tigers is dwarfed by the anticipated investment of $4.7 trillion into infrastructure [development] projects that may well dice up the tiger’s habitat even further.
“EIA’s work focuses much more on the transnational criminal networks controlling the trade in tigers (and other Asian big cats), by looking more at the market end of the trade. Unless action is taken at that end of the chain, then tigers in the wild will always be under threat. Our report, Enforcement not Extinction, highlights the fact that effective enforcement to combat the trade is not rocket science; if we, as a small NGO, can find traders in China offering tiger skin, bone, teeth, claws, if we can get their names, telephone numbers, if we can get them to talk about the trade, their perceptions of enforcement, their connections across borders, well then surely the Chinese government can [do the same].
“Certainly there has been a decline in the volume of skins openly for sale in China since we began our intensive forays into the market places in 2005. The trade is much more under the counter than it used to be, so it’s not so easy to “count” what’s out there now. We’ve adapted our methodology and are more targeted in our approach to understand[ing] the dynamics of the trade, so that official enforcement agencies can develop more informed strategies. It is still relatively easy to encounter traders; ­ we just haven’t had the resources to cover all potential trade hubs, so its not possible to be scientific about it. It’s more of an indication that the problem definitely hasn¹t gone away; stock is still moving into the retail end of the chain, and evidence from seizures in India and Nepal show that it’s still fresh from the jungles (as opposed to captive bred).
“I would say that in looking forward, and reflecting on the promises made in St Petersburg, real indicators of change would include evidence of official investigations surrounding seizures, confirmation that actionable intelligence is being shared between relevant countries (preferably via INTERPOL), that trans-national operations are being set up to target the criminals that are controlling the trade, evidence of swift and meaningful convictions against poachers, traffickers and consumers.”
Banks concluded, “If we start to see these signs of increased investment in enforcement, and that it is becoming more sophisticated and strategic, then I think we can have hope.”
For the Indian perspective, AllAboutWildlife.com communicated with Belinda Wright, executive Director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), who told us:
“As you can see from the attached figures, poaching figures over the past four years have remained fairly constant. Considering the fact that tiger numbers have presumably reduced, this is not good news. Protection in the field is abysmal and the pressure on wild tigers remains severe. Prices for tiger parts have skyrocketed—due to the rarity of wild tigers and China’s growing economy— and there is more incentive than ever for tiger poachers. And even if a poacher is caught, the judicial system is so overburdened that it takes years for a case to reach a conclusion. In the last decade 882 people have been accused in tiger poaching and seizure cases, but only 18 people have been convicted in just six court cases. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to be optimistic that tiger poaching in India and elsewhere can be drastically reduced in the foreseeable future.
“Another very serious concern is the widespread poaching of [the tiger's] prey species for meat. In many areas tigers have no choice but to venture out into human habitation in search of food. This in turn leads to increased human-tiger conflict.
“The problems are: poaching, lack of protection and good enforcement, lack of convictions in the courts, low prey density and poaching of prey species, habitat encroachment, human-related disturbances, human-tiger conflict, no accountability for park managers, and lack of
political support to implement recommendations. Also, at least six tiger reserves are severely affected by [political] insurgents.
“The needs are: better intelligence-led, professional enforcement, improved infrastructure and training for field staff, the filling of field staff vacancies, better leadership, political support for tiger conservation measures, etc.
“Despite the gloomy overall picture, in the past couple of years the Government of India has made some important initiatives for tiger conservation. These include a huge increase in funding—funds for anti-poaching, infrastructure, tiger monitoring and the relocation of villages from inside tiger reserves. . . . Special Tiger Protection Forces are being established to police the tiger reserves. There is also a huge increase in both awareness and interest in tiger conservation issues in India’s civil society.”
A complicating factor in the so-far halting efforts to gear up against poachers operating in fragmented tiger habitats scattered across vast regions of Asia is that wildlife poaching itself recently has been evolving into a sophisticated international crime network. South African authorities report that rhinoceros poachers in that country have taken to using helicopters and night vision optics—equipment at least as good as that of the country’s wildlife law enforcers themselves.