And this is what success looks like.

The addra gazelle (aka dama gazelle or mhorr gazelle) is critically endangered. But those words are used a lot. What do they really mean?

The last assessment was in 2008. This is what they had to say:

“The sustained decline due to uncontrolled hunting and habitat loss has continued and is now estimated to have exceeded 80% over 10 years. Extensive field surveys have been made since 2001, but all subpopulations encountered are very small, with all at risk from unmanaged large-scale hunting, and the total population certainly numbers well less than 500 individuals. Decline is expected to continue based on ongoing hunting and unpredictable arrival of large hunting parties with high destructive potential from the Gulf states. The Dama Gazelle is following the same trail into extinction in the wild as the Scimitar-horned Oryx.”

In the early 1970’s, the species assessment presumed 10,000-12,000 … so that’s not only a drop of 80% in ten years … that’s a loss of over 95% over less than four decades.

So where is this happening (Facebookers, go here: http://maps.iucnredlist.org/map.html?id=8968 ) ?

So, at under 500 individuals in the wild, each of those orange blobs likely represents less than 100 individuals. If drought or hunting happens to hit in one of those areas, the population can drop by 25% alone. If the 80% loss rate continues, it could happen anyway.

This is why it is important that places like San Diego Safari Park do the breeding work they do. It’s not great that a species accustomed to roaming hundreds of miles be constrained to a handful of acres. But it’s much worse to let them die out completely.

One thing about about having so much space is that animals are free to engage in more natural behaviors … such as a male deer doing his “chase after the female until she’s ready to mate” approach. I’d seem similar techniques used in high school but, frankly, it seems to work better for the deer.

At the park, you get to drive out with a group (or on your own if you pay enough) and actually be out where the animals are. What’s interesting is that groups of animals stay together just like they were in a smaller enclosure. So, while the giraffes were free to roam wherever they like, they all seem to roam together.

Up in the back, you can see the big balloon ride and the lodges, neither of which I’ve used personally.

Lemur suddenly realizing that life is a series of unlikely events, each effected by that which preceded it, and that there is no way to know if one has free will or if one is merely responding to billions of years of physical, chemical, and biological dependencies.

Sometimes you just have to scamper with all the joy of being a rhinoceros.

Sometimes you suddenly find yourself where you don’t expect and try to nonchalantly, but quickly, relocate before anyone else notices.

It doesn’t matter how smooth you act. Believe me, they noticed.

This is what you get when you want to be a giraffe but do not fully commit to your vision.

Addax are not usually considered to be ambush predators.

Usually.

I’ve always wondered how herbivores decide which specific blades of grass they want to eat.

This lemur was no help at all because they are opportunistic omnivores.

In the wild, animals that destroy their environments tend to be nomads. Hooved animals like these will move as a herd so the land can recover. Elephants move through the forests knocking over trees, but it takes long enough that more trees grow back.

Humans just run out of space and then start being meaner to one another.

You can tell it’s a Southern rhino because it’s going downhill.

In addition to their bird breeding, the San Diego Safari Park breeds mammals. Anecdotally, it appears as though we have an easier time breeding hooved mammals than other types of mammals. There are, for example, less than 500 wild addaxes (addaxen?) but over three times as many being bred in captivity.

This means that sights like this one may be on the rise.

“Hurumph. When I was boy, leaves was green.”