Big Cat Health Updates

Sassyfrass Cougar had REALLY bad kidneys. Yesterday it was reported that he was peeing on himself. His fur grows so long and shaggy that the morning dew doesn’t rinse him well enough, so he needs to be shaved again. The vet will come see him, but we don’t know if he can survive being sedated again.

TJ Tiger ate 12 lbs!

Jade Leopard is scheduled to end her Cephalexin on 10/3 – she started it on 8/15

Artemis Cougar is eating but her one eye is a little blood shot so the vet recommended neopolydex 2 times a day.

Nala Serval’s Surgery And Update

See how Nala serval’s surgery went to repair her broken bone, and check up on how she is doing now!

Jamie Reports from CITES

The CITES opening ceremony was led by a welcome speech by the president of South Africa (a last minute decision) so lots of security. Followed by speeches from the CITES Secretariat and others. At the end of the speeches was a wonderful musical play by locals with lion king styled props of animated birds, gazelle, and a rhino. They gave every attendee a bongo drum to play along. This is the biggest CITES in history with 3,000 attendees.

Photos of the event here: http://www.iisd.ca/cites/cop17/24sep.html

We were about 10 rows from stage at a table with our own mic and name sign.

Photo: Dr Justin Boorstein and President Jamie Veronica at CITES

Spent the rest of the day meeting people and manning the booth. The booth is labeled as Born Free so confusing to people that approach as we constantly have to explain that there are multiple organizations working out of the booth.

We are going to run out of gifts for the attendees. With 3,000 guests and only about 700 brochures and lanyards and 500 or so tote bags they are going quickly.

Judy has been good at introducing us to people. We have been introduced to a lot of people.

We saw some food trucks outside and decided to be brave in South Africa and hit the streets. We went down to where the food trucks were and it turned out to be a welcome party thrown by the government of SA for all CITES attendees. There were 35-40 food trucks, dancers, bars, and arts and crafts. All the food and drinks were free.

Other things that happened; met the 1 person sent from USDA. He only deals with plants and didn’t even know that the USDA governs collections of big cats in the US.

Met Masha with IFAW who was in charge of the project of rehab and releasing tigers back into the wild.

I was approached by a forestry minister from Cambodia that wanted to know about how to reintroduce wild tigers in his country. Most other NGOs who heard about this said it was a terrible idea as Cambodia has horrible poaching which has not been lessened in more than 5 years. I guess some organization has plans to reintroduce tigers there but has little support from other organizations as it seems to be a ploy to raise interest in donating to the project but may not be sustainable unless major improvements are made legislatively as well as with on the ground enforcement. There are other countries that have much improved their infrastructure and more continuous land such as Malaysia but no one is interested in funding reintroduction there.

We met the founder of Born Free, Will Travers, and co-founder of SSN.

Also met several other people that thought our knowledge base would be useful to Lao should they accept assistance with auditing their current tiger population and phasing out the farms.

Justin and I will make sure we do not miss important meetings and gatherings. Working with ADI and others to stop Canada from trying to remove protections for the Florida Panther. What are they thinking?

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