COLLECTION STORIES

Golden or Syrian hamster - Mesocricetus auratus

Most of the golden hamsters in captivity are descended from a single mother and her six pups. They were collected from a burrow near Aleppo, Syria, in 1930 and taken to Jerusalem for use in the study of the blood disease leishmaniasis. Twelve pups were originally taken from the den, but the mother killed one, and five others escaped when they gnawed their way through the wooden floor of their first cage. In 1931, two pairs of the subsequent generation of hamsters were taken from Jerusalem to England. Offspring from those first two English pairs were later given to the London Zoo. A female hamster can produce 150 pups a year, so the zoo was quickly overrun, and in 1937, some hamsters were transferred to private ownership. The wild golden hamsters still in Syria are listed as endangered by the IUCN.

Shawl, Tibetan antelope or chiru - Pantholops hodgsonii

Each strand of this antelope’s wool is one-fifth as thick as a human hair. When spun and woven into fabric it is called shahtoosh, which means “from nature and fit for a king” in Persian. The fabric is so light that an entire shahtoosh shawl will pass through a wedding ring. Unscrupulous dealers may claim that their shahtoosh is only gathered from clumps that are shed naturally. This is not physically possible, because only the finest inner hairs are used to make shahtoosh, not the coarser outer guard hairs. In truth, from three to five antelope must be killed to pluck sufficient wool for just one shawl. In fancy boutiques and over the Internet, a shahtoosh shawl sells for over $1,000, and $3,000 to $5,000 is not unusual if the shawl is embroidered. The Tibetan antelope population dropped from close to one million in 1950 to between 50,000 and 75,000 today. The chiru is now listed as an endangered species by the IUCN, and international trade in shahtoosh is banned by CITES.

Panther chameleon - Furcifer pardalis

This lizard from Madagascar was one of the first chameleons to be bred successfully in captivity. The panther chameleon is a miracle of bright color variation, exhibiting changes in response to mood and reproductive status. Between 1988 and 1994, about 5,500 panther chameleons were legally exported from Madagascar; three to five times that number were probably taken from the forests illegitimately. Up to 60 percent of smuggled animals die en route. It is still a matter of open debate whether the captive breeding and selling of exotic plants and animals outside their native habitat puts greater collection pressure on the remaining wild populations or not. In some cases, captive breeding popularizes a species to the point of cult status, which can increase market incentives for poaching. On the other hand, ready availability through terrarium or hothouse husbandry can ease poaching pressure. With the advent of e-commerce, the task of enforcing the laws designed to protect threatened species has grown exponentially.

Imperial amazon or sisserou - Amazona imperialis

Amazona imperialis is the national bird of the island nation of Dominica. Known locally as the sisserou, it is one of the most rare and beautiful parrots of this genus. The body feathers appear to change color depending on the direction of the light, shifting from a maroon-purple tinged with aqua to a pale pinkish brown tinged with green. Between 80 and 200 of these parrots remain in the wild, on the slopes of one volcano in Morne Diablotin National Park. When the population of any animal species falls below its critical threshold, genetic diversity within that population can be too limited to ensure survival of the species. With bird species in jeopardy, protective measures can include the collection and incubation of eggs, the captive rearing of chicks, and the re-introduction of fully fledged birds to the wild. These actions bypass such threats as predation, parental accident, and disease. Currently the endangered sisserou’s population is increasing, but one catastrophic storm or virulent disease could push this parrot into extinction.

Coelacanth - Latimeria chalumnae

Known only from fossil records and believed to have gone extinct 70 million years ago, a living coelacanth was caught in a fisherman’s net and brought to ichthyologist Marjorie Courtney-Latimer in 1938. Due to the intervention of World War II, it was not until 1952 that a small population of Latimeria chalumnae was found again in the Comoro archipelago, which lies in the western Indian Ocean, between Africa and Madagascar. Newspaper accounts of the discovery coined the nickname “fossil fish” for the coelacanth. Rumors circulated of ground coelacanth’s efficacy as an aphrodisiac, which led to disastrous over-fishing. By 1980, at least 200 coelacanths had been caught and sold. By 1994, the estimated population in the Comoros was thought to be down to a few hundred individuals. Science institutions feared that their own collecting might cause the eventual extinction of this last living member of the once plentiful family of fleshy-finned fishes. Fortunately, on July 30, 1998, a second species was discovered in the eastern Indian Ocean in northern Indonesia, and public awareness and educational campaigns have been undertaken to protect all coelacanths. There are thought to be about 1,000 coelacanths left.

Jaw, great white shark- Carcharodon carcharias

While they are free to cruise the temperate waters of the entire planet, it is thought that about 200 great white sharks frequent the California coast. One young male showed up on the north shore of Oahu only two and a half months after being seen near San Francisco. In 2003, a radio-tagged female went from South Africa to Western Australia and back in just nine months. Contrary to the bloodthirsty killer image promoted by the movie Jaws (1975), the great white is a vital part of the ocean ecosystem as its dominant predator. Depletion of a top predator can lead to a boom in second-level predators. This, in turn, can cause a “trophic cascade,” a whole string of imbalances in the food web. Much of the killing of great whites is for trophies: a large jaw with a full set of teeth can sell for $10,000 to $15,000, while individual large teeth sell for $400 on the Internet. Currently there is only voluntary localized protection for the great white shark in Australia, Namibia, Malta, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States. A worldwide management program is needed to keep them from being hunted into extinction.

Silversword or ’Ahinahina- Argyroxiphium sandwicense

The exquisite Hawaiian silversword grows for about 40 years before sending up its single six-foot stalk covered with crimson and ivory-colored flowers. Then it sets seed and dies. Young silverswords used to be brought back by people who hiked up Haleakala, Mauna Kea, and Mauna Loa as proof that they had reached the summit; this practice significantly reduced the silversword population. Today, there are only about 50 individuals of the Mauna Kea species left. The silverswords are further endangered by changes in the insect ecology that help sustain it: yellow-faced bees and moths of the Noctuidae family are the primary pollinators of the silversword, but Argentine ants and yellow jackets, introduced from mainland United States, prey on the yellow-faced bee. As a result, there are far fewer native bees to fly from one flowering silversword to another, and there are not enough pollinators for those plants that are flowering to set seed. In some years, not one plant—or sometimes only one—will flower, so the few surviving native pollinators are additionally stressed. A coalition of biologists has been manually pollinating the Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa populations in an effort to re-establish sustainable populations. In addition, plants are now propagated for the souvenir trade and for restoration.

Horn, black rhinoceros - Diceros bicornus

The black rhino suffered a staggering 96 percent decline between 1970 and 1992. Much of the rhino horn exported from Africa goes to Yemen, where it is carved into the handles of ritual jamba daggers. Although the daggers are expensive, the immense oil fields of the region have brought a sevenfold increase in the per capita wealth of Yemen’s six million people since 1970, bringing the coveted daggers within many more people’s economic reach. Rhinoceros horn is also used as an ingredient in traditional Asian medicines and aphrodisiacs, though that portion of the trade is minor in comparison. A recent IUCN survey suggested that one of the four subspecies of black rhino, Diceros bicornis longipes or West African rhino, is extinct in the wild, but about 3,500 of the three others still range the savannahs. The white rhino, having plummeted to only 20 individuals in the late 1800s, are nearly 11,000 strong now.