Guest guest Posted January 25, 2005 Report Share Posted January 25, 2005 ***************************Advertisement*************************** TechCentral http://star-techcentral.com ***************************************************************** This message was forwarded to you by yitzeling. Comment from sender: This article is from The Star Online (http://thestar.com.my) URL: http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2005/1/25/features/9943904 & sec=f\ eatures ________________________ Tuesday January 25, 2005 Tracking the docile tarsier By Cecil Morella Only the size of a human fist, the furry, tree-living tarsier is docile and slow-moving, which makes it vulnerable to predation from both man and animals. StarTwo looks at the efforts of a tarsier hunter-turned-conservationist in saving the animal. The tiny, furry tree-climber with the outsize, owl-like eyes pricked its ears and swivelled its head as a rustle on the forest floor ended its midday slumber. Carlito Pizarras, son of a taxidermist, had sneaked up so close he could smell the tarsier on its shady perch. The midget mammal has been around since the Eocene Age (55-34 millions years ago), but that fact was hardly of any help against Bohol island’s most famous game hunter. Fortunately, Pizarras had given up his air gun, formaldehyde and the other awful tools of his trade some time in the 1970s and devoted the rest of his life to trying to save the exotic mascot of the Philippines’ receding tropical forests. “I began to notice that I had to hike deeper into the forest to find one, unlike in the 1960s when you could snatch them (off) tree branches by the side of the road,” the 50-year-old said at a tarsier reservation in Corella, Philippines. The tarsier is found only in four islands in the central and southern Philippines and on several islands of nearby Indonesia. Incorrectly regarded by Filipinos as the world’s smallest monkey, it is really a cousin of the lemur and the tree shrew. An adult male with grey or reddish fur grows to about 130g, about the size of a human fist, and with its long, naked tail for balance it jumps like a frog across low-hanging tree branches at night. It eats about a tenth of its weight in moths, dragonflies, grasshoppers, and beetles. Left in the wild, tarsiers can live up to 15 years. Although technically it is not yet a part of the country’s endangered species list, the government believes that without human intervention it could disappear in a few years. Hunting and trading in Tarsius syrichta, the species found in the Philippines, was banned in the mid-1990s, when Pizarras flew to Manila with two orphaned tarsier babies to meet Prince Charles, who was in the country, and enlisted the heir to the British throne’s support to help save the species. Scarce government funding, however, leaves the preservation effort primarily in the hands of the private sector. The Philippine Tarsier Foundation Inc, organised by local businessmen on Bohol, an island of 1.2 million people, runs an 8.4ha forest reservation, a sort of Noah’s ark where Pizarras and two other forest rangers live near about 100 tarsiers. Besides the human hunters, feral cats banished from nearby communities are the main predators, though some large birds are known to fancy them too. Pizarras said the wardens had shot about 20 stray cats which tried to climb over the wire mesh fence. The reservation is nestled within a larger protected forest where about a thousand other tarsiers are believed to live, temporarily reprieved with a permanent logging ban. But the tarsiers pretty much have to fend for themselves on the larger Mindanao, Samar and Leyte islands. Pizarras started hunting tarsiers when he was 12. He became so adept at the task that he hunted by scent. He says the animals gave off a musk through glands located on their breasts, though most visitors at the reservation were clueless. “We shot them out of the trees with air rifles,” Pizarras said. “My team easily caught about 100 a month.” Stuffed tarsiers went for as little as 300 pesos (RM20.80). For those who preferred live pets, catching them alive was a relatively straightforward undertaking. Like June beetles, “We shook the trees until they fell.” When tarsiers became scarce on Bohol, Pizarras began a captive breeding programme so he could raise animals he would stuff. He sent 10 live tarsiers bred this way to the Chicago Zoo in the United States in 1985. In the wild, the territorial males attract four or five females who mate only during the full moon after a week of courtship. Each gives birth to a single young after a six-month pregnancy. The young tarsiers are pretty much on their own after six months. Raising tarsiers as pets is a cruel sport, said Pizarras, who insists the stressed-out animals actually commit suicide or otherwise will themselves to die inside their cages. “They would smash their head on the bars in a bid to escape until they crack their skulls,” he said. He also insists the animal had the capacity to simply stop breathing, a more debatable proposition. At the reservation, researchers fitting temporary radio collars helped establish the animals’ breeding and eating habits as well as their territorial ranges. With the environment department playing an oversight role, the tarsier foundation has asked other Bohol towns with tarsier populations to donate 20ha of forest land for conservation. “We plan to expand the programme to Mindanao, Leyte and Samar,” Pizarras said. – AFP<p> ________________________ Your one-stop information portal: The Star Online http://thestar.com.my http://biz.thestar.com.my http://classifieds.thestar.com.my http://cards.thestar.com.my http://search.thestar.com.my http://star-motoring.com http://star-space.com http://star-jobs.com http://star-ecentral.com http://star-techcentral.com 1995-2004 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Star Publications is prohibited. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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