Wildlife Dying Near Parks, No Kill Areas Outside Parks Need Expansion
6/25/98
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Title: Wildlife Dying Near Parks, No Kill Areas Outside Parks Need Expansion
Source: United Press International
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 6/25/98
NEW YORK, June 25 (UPI) -- Hunting, accidents and disease are killing grizzlies,
tigers
and other large animals at alarming rates when they leave the confines of
national parks
worldwide.
In a survey by Cambridge University and the Wildlife Conservation Society,
published
today in the journal Science, researchers say expanded ``no-kill'' areas outside
national
parks are needed to protect the lives of animals.
Researchers with the Bronx Zoo-based WCS say national parks must conduct hunter
education
programs to prevent accidental animal deaths and expand park size to protect
animals that
roam widely, such as bears.
The director for WCS's Asia programs, Joshua Ginsberg, says, ``You can have the
best-run
park in the world, but unless you prevent people from killing carnivores that
wander
outside of park boundaries, they will be essentially useless for protecting
wildlife in
the long term.''
The survey found staggering death rates among predators along the borders of
protected
areas throughout the world. In Algonquin National Park in Canada, humans were
responsible
for more than half of all gray wolf deaths.
Researchers also found that humans contributed to an average of 61 percent of
African
wild dog deaths throughout central and southern Africa and nearly two-thirds of
all
Indian tiger deaths in Nepal's Royal Chitwan's National Park.
According to the researchers who conducted the study, animals that roam the
farthest from
their protected areas were the most likely to become extinct regardless of
population
density.