Big Cat News: September 2007

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Savannah Cat Rescue- Serval/ Domestic Hybrid

Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Fl. provides a permanent home to over 140 exotic cats.
We have limited space and try to rescue what we can as well as try to get tougher legislation passed to lessen the amount of unwanted big cats.
Sometimes people will get a smaller exotic feline like a serval or bobcat and hope that due to its size it will make a better “pet.” They soon learn that we speak the truth when we say exotic cats don’t make good pets.
And other times people will buy from breeders a hybrid variation like a bengal cat or a savannah cat with often the same results. This video takes you along with us on a rescue of a savannah cat.
We ask animal lovers to take in unwanted domestics and not to buy into this big cat crisis we have here in America.
Thanks for watching, and for more info please log onto:
www.bigcatrescue.org

Tale of lion rescue made for movies

Gail Hearne

Special for The Republic

Sept. 30, 2007 12:00 AM

PAYSON - You can bring the lion to the mountain, but that doesn't make him a mountain lion.

At least not for Leo, the famed MGM lion who once spent an uncomfortable week in the mountains near Payson after a celebrated mishap that's been largely lost to history.

Our story begins 80 years ago this month when aviation was in its infancy and all eyes were agog over Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight just a few months earlier.

As fliers made frenzied attempts to set aviation records, MGM studio execs decided to cash in on the craze and cooked up a publicity stunt to fly their storied mascot non-stop from Southern California to New York.

The event drew nationwide press coverage as a Ryan B-1 Brougham, similar to Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, was outfitted with a steel-barred cage, complete with milk and water dispensers, in the passenger section. Plate glass was installed along the sides to provide Leo with a window seat and give movie fans the opportunity to view the famed African lion.

Martin Jensen, a well-known pioneer aviator and barnstormer, agreed to serve as Leo's pilot on the history-making transcontinental jaunt. The previous month, Jensen had gained fame and $10,000 for placing second in the Dole Derby, a non-stop air race from Oakland to Honolulu that was sponsored by the pineapple industry.

At 10 a.m. on Sept. 16, 1927, a flurry of reporters with flashing cameras recorded the MGM lion's successful takeoff from Kearny Mesa, a military parade ground near San Diego.

But contact with the pilot was soon lost, and the plane's plight was shrouded in mystery. Newspapers across the country carried stories. A New York Times headline shouted: "NO WORD FROM PLANE CARRYING MOVIE LION; Jensen Long Overdue at Mitchel Field - Other Planes Search Western Desert for Him."

Unknown to the rest of the world, Jensen - and Leo - had made a forced crash landing in Arizona, shortly after flying over the town of Gisela. Apparently, Jensen was flying low and couldn't gain enough altitude to clear the Mogollon Rim.

He came down in a Tonto National Forest canyon full of scrub oak about 15 miles east of Payson. The canyon, then known as Hell's Canyon, was later renamed Leo Canyon.

The plane hit the treetops and rolled to a stop on its side, and Jensen escaped with only a cut on his face.

"I crawled out and looked to see what had happened to Leo," Jensen said in a 1927 newspaper article. "The cage had held tight, and he wasn't scratched, although he did look disgusted, and I figured his opinion of me as a flier is pretty low."

After providing Leo with sandwiches and milk, Jensen gave him water from a nearby stream before heading to Gisela to find help.

He endured the treacherous lower Tonto Creek terrain for three exhausting days, encountering coyotes and rattlesnakes along the way.

For a while, he followed some cows hoping they would lead him to help.

But then he realized they were range cattle without a home and continued his journey along the creek.

Late on the afternoon of Sept. 19, Jensen reached the H-Bar ranch near Gisela, and the cowboys there cleaned his wounds and fed him as they listened to his incredible story. They gave him a ride to Roosevelt so he could telephone his bosses in California. The first thing they asked was, "How's the lion?" and said to spare no expense to rescue Leo.

Jensen traveled to Payson where initial plans were made for Leo's rescue.

According to a Sept. 21, Associated Press report from Kohl's Ranch, a posse, including a lion trainer from Los Angeles, was formed to help with the rescue.

Six days after the crash, Jensen led the search party on horseback starting from a ranch near the Mogollon Rim. About four hours passed before the rescuers discovered the wreckage.

There, they found Leo - alive but hungry and thirsty. The news report stated: "It was decided to bring the lion on a sled to the Boy Haught ranch, 7 miles from the crash site, and from there to ship it by truck to Los Angeles."

The cowboys chained the still-caged Leo to a handmade sled and hitched it to a team of mules and guided the lion out of the canyon.

During a recent interview, Boy Haught's son, 83-year-old Junior Haught of Payson, said he still remembers the lion "like yesterday."

When the rescue crew brought Leo by the family's ranch, Junior recalls his mother was awful mad when she found out Leo had devoured some of her chickens. "It didn't take him but just a swallow to get rid of one of them chickens," Junior said.

Leo journeyed by truck to Payson with a member of the rescue team for a stay at Grady Harrison's garage and freight depot on Main Street. Townsfolk, especially the kids, scurried to see the star attraction before he was chauffeured to Hollywood.

Jensen continued flying and won several awards recognizing his contributions to aviation. He died in 1992 at age 91. Leo recovered and eventually retired from show business, leaving fame behind for another lion that would take his place.

The wreckage of the plane remained in Arizona's rugged wilderness for many years.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0930mgmlion0930.html

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Bobcat licenses issued in PA

About one in six applicants for a bobcat hunting and trapping license received one during last week's drawing. The Game Commission awarded 1,010 licenses from among more than 6,000 applications. Of the 1,010 permits awarded, 44 were awarded to females and 65 to applicants under the age of 17.

Endeavor News

29 E. Fourth Street

Emporium, PA 15834

-OR-

PO Box 87

Coudersport, PA 16915

Ph: 814-486-1400

Fx: 814-486-3201

endeavour_media@zitomedia.net

news@zitomedia.net

endeavorsales@zitomedia.net

http://www.endeavornews.com/news/2007/0929/outdoors/050.html

Friday, September 28, 2007

How China is Trying to Justify Farming Tigers

Siberian tigers move south to make some money

By Wu Yong (China Daily)

Updated: 2007-09-28 07:51

Fifteen Siberian tigers are traveling a long way from Harbin in Northeast China to Xiamen in the south - to help their families and relatives live a better life back home.

The Harbin-based Siberian Tiger Park signed a five-year contract with Xiamen Huzhilin Company earlier this year for an undisclosed amount; and the tigers will be on view in the coastal city from October 1, the first day of the week-long National Day holidays.

To take care of the tigers, two zookeepers from Harbin will be with them throughout the five years, said Bian Shifeng, a park employee.

It is not the first time the Harbin park has leased out tigers to ease its financial strain - more than 100 tigers can be found in Dalian, Shenyang and Taiyuan zoos, and generate about 1 million yuan ($133,000) each year, a source close to the park said.

The park, founded in 1996, is one of the major Siberian tiger breeding bases in the country. In the past decade, their number has jumped from eight to more than 800.

While preservation of the precious species is ensured, the increasing number of big cats has led to another conundrum: How to feed them.

Wang Ligang, the park's general manger, said the financial deficit is rising despite local government support.

A tiger eats 5 kg of meat every day and its annual expense covering food and medical care is about 30,000 yuan ($3,993).

Which means the park has to fork out more than 20 million yuan ($2.67 million) each year, according to Liu Dan, chief engineer of the park.

Wang said the park has three sources of income: ticket sales, leasing out the tigers and government funding. "But it is far from enough."

The price of pork and other meat rose more than 80 percent in the first eight months of this year, driven mostly by increases in animal feed prices, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Sources familiar with the conditions in the park said tigers are now fed chicken instead of beef to cut costs.

Cao Liang, director of the China Wildlife Conservation Association, said tiger leasing is justified as long as approval is secured from the local governments. "The best protection for many tigers (in Harbin) is to provide enough food for them," Cao said.

"The only solution is to lift the ban on tiger trade. The trade of bones from tigers that are bred in captivity and die of natural causes will not affect the conservation of wild tigers. This can help raise funds for living tigers and also give relief to patients," Wang said.

In Chinese medicine, tiger parts are used as cures for illnesses ranging from colds to rheumatism.

In China, about 50 tigers live in the wilderness and around 5,000 in captivity. Some 1,000 are born each year in farms and about the same number have died of natural causes in recent years.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-09/28/content_6141247.htm

Sign our petition asking the Chinese Government to stop the farming of tigers for their parts here:

http://capwiz.com/bigcatrescue/issues/alert/?alertid=9952801&type=CU

Lion killer's life sentence overturned

Fri, 28 Sep 2007

Three appeal court judges on Friday set aside the life imprisonment sentence of Mark Scott-Crossley, the man earlier convicted in the Phalaborwa circuit court of murder for throwing Nelson Oupa Chisale to lions in January 2004.

The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), in a unanimous judgment, upheld an appeal by Scott-Crossley against his conviction for murdering Chisale.

The Bloemfontein court found the prosecution had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Chisale was alive when he was thrown into the enclosure at the Mokwalo white lion project.

The judges found the panga wounds inflicted on Chisale by Scott-Crossley's co-accused (Doctor Mathebula and Simon Mathebula), when he was not present, could reasonably have caused the deceased's death before he was transported to the lion park.

The judges turned around Scott-Crossley's conviction of murder and convicted him on the lesser offence of being an accessory after the fact to murder.

"There can be no question, however, that the appellant (Scott-Crossley) participated in the concealment of the crime of murder and thus made himself guilty of being an accessory after the fact to that crime," the judgment read.

"He transported the body of the deceased in his vehicle and assisted in disposing of it at the lion camp so as to enable accused 1 (Doctor Mathebula) and 2 (Simon Mathebula) to evade the consequences of their crime," the judges said.

The SCA sentenced Scott-Crossley to five years imprisonment for being an accessory after the fact to murder and backdated it to 30 September 2005.

The judges held that the trial court had misdirected itself on the facts and the law.

It also held that the evidence led by the prosecution was unreliable as the eyewitnesses were accomplices and they had contradicted themselves and each other.

http://iafrica.com/news/sa/595760.htm

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Ask NPR to fund spaying and neutering

The City Of New Port Richey On Tuesday held a Work session which included using city funds ($16k) a year to help fund a low-cost spay/Neuter Clinic at the SPCA of west Pasco In NPR. It appears only 2 council members are on board with this Idea.

So we need your help, no matter where you live, Please contact the NPR city council and tell them how imperative it is that they provide city money for this cause. There needs to be a more convenient and affordable place for city residents to have their animals spayed and neutered. The homeless animal situation will only get worse with time, These animals need help now!

Below is a link to an article relating to this topic that appeared in the St Pete Times, and also contact information for all the council members and the city Manager.

Thank you!
Deano

Article:
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/09/27/Pasco/Plan_for_city_funded_.shtml

Mayor Dan Tipton
(727) 853-1016 ext. 2029
tiptonD@cityofnewportrichey.org

Deputy Mayor Ginny Miller
(727) 853-1016 ext. 2031
millerv@cityofnewportrichey.org

Councilwoman Marilynn deChant
(727) 853-1016 ext. 2033
dechantm@cityofnewportrichey.org

Councilman Bob Consalvo
(727) 853-1016 ext. 2032
consalvor@cityofnewportrichey.org

Councilman Rob Marlowe
(727) 853-1016 ext.2030
marlower@cityofnewportrichey.org

City Manager, J. Scott Miller
(727) 853-1021
millerjs@cityofnewportrichey.org

Panther cub

Dear Leonora,

I am sorry to hear that the FWC chose to send the Florida panther cub to a zoo where she will live out a life of confinement and deprivation. We have been rehabilitating bobcats for more than twenty years, and have 15 years experience with captive cougars, and would have been overjoyed to work with this cub to get her ready for release back into the wild where she belongs. The FWC is pro captivity and is annoyed by our efforts to end the pet trade in exotic cats in Florida, so I am guessing that is why they did not send the cub to the state’s most qualified rehab and release facility. This is the same governing body that drags a stressed out cougar to the fairgrounds every year as a prop for their display. Video here: http://capwiz.com/bigcatrescue/issues/alert/?alertid=6811326

More on our rehab work: http://www.bigcatrescue.org/rehabbobcats2007.htm

The FWC was given constitutional authority over all wildlife, in the form of a constitutional amendment, making it nearly impossible for the citizens of Florida to have any say in the matter. The FWC allows 200 lb mountain lions to be kept as pets, which means they can be walked in public on leashes, let out into back yards, hauled into schools, etc. While the FWC says you can’t have a tiger as a pet, if you call yourself a business, you can now have your tiger as a business asset. The ex-Tarzan, Steve Sipek, in Loxahatchee is a perfect example of this sort of circumvention of the law. Even when USDA won’t license him, the FWC will.

What Florida needs is a constitutional amendment that returns the FWC to their previous status as a government agency and puts the power back into the hands of the people. Of the more than 6,000 people polled, 76% say they would support a ban on the private possession of all exotic animals. That tells me, and the FWC Commissioners have admitted to the same belief, that the people of Florida would vote favorably for such an amendment. On Oct. 8 and 9^th the FWC will conduct public workshops on whether or not the neighbors should be notified in the event of an escape of a tiger, black mamba, chimp, etc. Of course, the only people getting notified in any meaningful way are the people who own these animals and who spoke out in St. Pete recently, saying they don’t want to let their neighbors know. We think that the 16+ million people in Florida who don’t own dangerous exotic pets have a right to know and bet that most of your readers would speak up if they did.

The following is a partial listing (653) of incidents in the U.S. involving captive exotic cats since 1990. The U.S. incidents have resulted in the deaths of 19 humans, 15 adults and 4 children, the additional mauling of 171 more adults and children, 134 escapes, the killing of 79 big cats, and 105 confiscations. These figures only represent the headlines that Big Cat Rescue has been able to track. Because there is no reporting agency that keeps such records the actual numbers are certainly much higher. http://www.bigcatrescue.org/big_cat_news.htm

To see a video of the mauling of a zoo keeper in 2006 go to http://www.bigcatrescue.org/animal_contact.htm

The Journal of Internal Medicine in 2006 estimated that 50 million people worldwide have been infected with zoonotic diseases since 2000 and as many as 78,000 have died. Read more about zoonotic diseases here: http://www.bigcatrescue.org/zoonosis.htm

To see the number of exotic cats abandoned each year go to http://www.bigcatrescue.org/animal_abuse.htm

To view a trend chart that shows the alarming escalation of big cat incidents here: http://www.bigcatrescue.org/Flash/BigCatBans/BigCatBanCharts.htm

The U.S. represents less than 5% of the entire global population, but up through 2006 79% of ALL captive cat incidents occurred in the U.S. (Now that the US is clamping down on the exotic pet trade, the reports in 2007 show a decline in U.S. incidents compared to the rest of the world) Likewise, Florida represents less than 6% of the U.S. population while 11% of all U.S. incidents occur in Florida. Florida boasts the most comprehensive sets of regulations allowing private ownership of exotic cats while ranking #1 in the highest numbers of big cat killings, maulings and escapes. To view photos of fatal injuries from cases reported in the American Journal of Forensic Medicine click http://www.bigcatrescue.org/laws/AMJForensicFeline.pdf

This video shows facilities that are currently licensed and approved by the USDA and the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission that have been operating at this level or worse for more than 10 years and yet are still open to the public. These images are typical of those who allow cameras in but there are many worse ones who do not. This shows precisely why we need to ban private possession of exotic cats. http://www.veoh.com/videos/v2570412PGPYhmr

I hope you will help save cats, like the baby Florida Panther in your story, from being doomed to lives in cages. If you have never been to Big Cat Rescue, please call me at the cell number below, and I will be happy to introduce you to these remarkably intelligent creatures so that you can better understand why they shouldn’t be bred for captivity.

For the cats,

Carole Baskin, CEO of Big Cat Rescue

an Educational Sanctuary home

to more than 100 big cats

12802 Easy Street Tampa, FL 33625

813.493.4564 fax 885.4457

http://www.BigCatRescue.org MakeADifference@BigCatRescue.org

Sign our petition to protect tigers here:

http://capwiz.com/bigcatrescue/issues/alert/?alertid=9952801&type=CU

Get 7 Free Lessons from the Teachers of "The Secret" here: http://www.bigcatrescue.org/TheSecret.htm

This message contains information from Big Cat Rescue that may be confidential or privileged. The information contained herein is intended only for the eyes of the individual or entity named above. You are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, disclosure, and/or copying of the information contained in this communication is strictly prohibited. The recipient should check this e-mail and any attachments for the presence of viruses. Big Cat Rescue accepts no liability for any damage or loss caused by any virus transmitted by this e-mail.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Asiatic Lions: New reserve on the anvil

NDTV.com By Jay Mazoomdaar

Gujarat the only home of the Asiatic lion had until now not agreed to give

any of them for a proposed sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh, even though the

lions in Gir were under threat from poachers, epidemics and natural

disasters.

But now the Centre has prepared a fresh blueprint for a backup that won't

require Gujarat to release any of its lions.

The 11-year wait for a second home for the endangered Asiatic lion at

Kuno-Palpur in Madhya Pradesh will soon be over.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Central Zoo Authority have

a fresh plan ready.

''We will select pure bred Gir lions from different zoos and these first

generation lions will breed in a big natural enclosure which is already

there at Kuno-Palpur. We will release herbivores for the second generation

lions so that they can hunt and get naturalised. In this process, the third

generation lions should be fit to be released in the wild outside the

enclosure,'' said Dr Rajesh Gopal, Member Secretary, NTCA.

The blueprint will be discussed at the next meeting of the National Board

for Wildlife on October 8. Once approved, it will be about four years before

the third generation lions can be released in the wild.

But the initiative may raise eyebrows, considering India has opposed the

Chinese model of releasing captive-bred tigers into the wild.

''We are identifying pure gene lions and they will be kept off display and

bred in natural enclosures with prey species. And the tigers in Chinese

farms are victims of severe inbreeding and can hardly be called tigers,''

said Dr B R Sharma, Member Secretary, CZA.

Kuno-Palpur was selected in 1996 as a second home for the lions but the

Gujarat government refused to part with them. It was the threat to the lions

in Gir that finally got the authorities moving.

''Forget poaching, even an epidemic can wipe out an isolated population. So

the idea of a second reserve at Kuno but the Gujarat government never

agreed. Now we don't need to wait for them anymore,'' said Dr Rajesh Gopal,

Member Secretary, NTCA.

If all goes well, the Kuno-Palpur sanctuary will be the Asiatic lion's

second home by 2011, unless the Modi government now objects to the very idea

of having lions outside Gujarat.

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20070026916

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

'Oh, My!' Exotic pet owners needn't disclose

They need permits to keep wildlife, but don't have to inform their neighbors.

By CRAIG PITTMAN St. Petersburg Times

September 19, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - State wildlife commissioners agreed last week that owners of potentially dangerous wildlife do not have to inform their neighbors about what's lurking on the other side of the privacy fence.

"There are probably pit bulls out there that are more dangerous than what some of these people are keeping," commissioner Ron Bergeron said.

More than 370 people statewide hold permits for what the state calls Class I wildlife, also known as the "Oh My" list, a name derived from a line in The Wizard of Oz: "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"

The owners of such wildlife must get permits, submit to inspections, meet caging requirements and keep their animals on property that is 5 acres or more in an area not zoned residential.

But this summer, after hearing from an Okeechobee County rancher, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission contemplated making owners take out a legal notice in the nearest newspaper disclosing what they own and sending all immediate neighbors certified letters.

Rancher Susan Williams told wildlife commissioners at their June meeting that she was horrified to learn that one of her Okeechobee County neighbors was keeping a tiger and five bears on his Crazy 8 Ranch. She worried about what might happen if the animals got loose.

The Humane Society of the United States backed the wildlife disclosure rule, too.

"We do think that in a state as prone to hurricanes as this one, folks should be notified about what's in their community," Jennifer Hobgood of the Humane Society said Thursday. "They have the right to know."

When Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida in 1992, more than 3,000 exotic animals -- including boa constrictors, wallabies, iguanas and baboons -- escaped private menageries and fled into the wilds of Miami-Dade County.

Hobgood pointed out that in 2003, neighbors in the Countryside Village Mobile Home Park in Town 'n' Country were unnerved to learn that a resident was raising 26 deadly reptiles. They found out because his pet black mamba got loose and bit him.

But the wildlife commissioners were swayed by a parade of animal owners, such as Lisa Welch of Thonotosassa, who argued that requiring disclosure of her wildlife ownership "is such an infringement of my rights."

Palm Springs cougar owner Alan Rigerman said farmers ought to be required to disclose what livestock they own because cows are just as dangerous. "Bulls kill people. Horses and cattle kill people," he said.

Gini Valbuena of Clearwater, who has owned chimpanzees for 22 years, predicted that disclosing what she owns would attract thieves and trespassers: "We're going to have children injured, and we're going to have people knocking on our doors saying, 'Let me see your monkey.' "

And longtime Gainesville reptile dealer Gene Bessette said that if the rule passed, the next step would be requiring firearm owners to notify their neighbors about what guns they possess.

"A gun doesn't get up and walk out of its gun case," Hobgood retorted.

The commissioners, meeting in St. Petersburg, voted 6-0 to reject the proposed rule.

They also voted to postpone until February implementing a liability law that requires owners of captive wildlife to put up a $10,000 bond or buy $2 million of insurance in case anyone gets hurt by their animals.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-locexotic19091907sep19,0,289937.story

Carole’s comments here: http://www.topix.net/forum/source/orlando-sentinel/TK0KGTKEJLBD5PB96

Using big cats in little cages is NOT education

Hernando Today Letters to the Editor

Published: Sep 14, 2007

Last year after more than 5,000 letters of protest about big cats on the Fairgrounds, we were told that big cats wouldn't be at the fairgrounds any more, and as a result you did not allow the tigers to be displayed, but then made an exception for the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission to exhibit an obviously stressed cougar. Small children were witnessed taunting the cat and sticking things in the cage.

This is NOT education. There is no reason to be displaying big cats in little cages at the Florida State Fairgrounds.

Seeing these magnificent animals in unnatural settings does nothing to educate the public. On the contrary, when people see big cats being led on leashes or kept like trophies it encourages them to want one of their own. Eighty-five percent of the big cats that are discarded are from the pet and entertainment/education industries.

Wild animals were never meant to be used as props. Please let me know that you are going to make the State Fairgrounds a place that I can go without being in danger and without being exposed to the inhumanity of displaying any exotic cats in cages. Thank you for your time in the matter.

Jacquelyn Mello 508-558-3494

http://www.hernandotoday.com/letters/MGB19BL7L6F.html

Monday, September 24, 2007

Minneapolis council to consider ban on circus wild animals

Associated Press - September 21, 2007 9:04 AM ET

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - The Minneapolis City Council today considers whether to ban wild animals from circuses in town.

Animal-rights activists object to what they consider inhumane treatment of tigers, lions and elephants.

But circus organizers say their animals are not abused.

If the ban is approved, Minneapolis would be the second major U.S. city after Albuquerque, New Mexico, to adopt such a measure.

The Minneapolis Shrine Circus is scheduled to perform at Target Center next month, but the proposed ban would not take effect until after this year's circus.

Information from: Star Tribune, http://www.startribune.com

http://wkbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=7109097

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Zoonotic Disease Discussion on National Geographic

By David Quammen 2007

When zoonotic diseases pass from animals to humans, pandemics can result. Scientists are tracking lethal new viruses.

"That's it," Reid said. "That's the bloody tree." That's where the bats gathered, he meant.

In September 1994, a violent disease erupted among racehorses in a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. The place, called Hendra, was a quiet old neighborhood filled with racecourses, stables, newsstands that sell tip sheets, corner cafés with names like The Feed Bin, and racing people. The first victim was a pregnant mare named Drama Series, who started showing symptoms in an outlying pasture and was brought back to her trainer's stable for doctoring, where she only got worse. Three people worked to save her—the trainer himself, his stable foreman, and a veterinarian. Within two days Drama Series died, leaving the cause of her trouble uncertain. Had she been bitten by a snake? Had she eaten some poisonous weeds out in that scrubby, derelict meadow? Those hypotheses were eliminated two weeks later, when most of her stablemates fell ill. This wasn't snakebite or toxic fodder. It was something contagious.

The other horses suffered fever, respiratory distress, facial swelling, and clumsiness; in some, bloody froth came from the nostrils and mouth. Despite heroic efforts by the veterinarian, 12 more animals died within days. Meanwhile the trainer himself got sick; so did the stable foreman. The vet, who was following cautionary procedures but working amid the same mad circumstances, stayed healthy. After a few days in a hospital, the trainer died. His kidneys had failed and he couldn't breathe. The stable foreman, a bighearted man named Ray Unwin, who had merely gone home to endure his fever in private, survived. He and the veterinarian told me their stories when I found them in Hendra last year. Ray Unwin is a middle-aged working bloke with a sandy red ponytail and a weary sadness in his eyes, who professed that he wasn't a "whinger" (complainer) but said his health has been "crook" (not right) since it happened.

Laboratory analysis revealed that the horses and the men were infected by a previously unknown virus. At first the lab people called it equine morbillivirus, meaning a horse virus closely related to measles. Later, as its uniqueness became better appreciated, it was renamed after the place itself: Hendra. The veterinarian, a tall, gentle fellow named Peter Reid, told me that "the speed with which it went through those horses was unbelievable." At the height of the crisis, seven animals had succumbed to ugly deaths or required euthanasia within just 12 hours. One of them died thrashing and gasping so desperately that Reid couldn't get close enough to give it the merciful needle. "I'd never seen a virus do anything like that before," he said. A man of understatement, he recalled it as "a pretty traumatic time."

Identifying the new virus was only step one in solving the immediate mystery of Hendra, let alone understanding the case in a wider context. Step two involved tracking that virus to its hiding place. Where did the thing exist when it wasn't killing horses and people? Step three entailed asking a further cluster of questions: How did it emerge from its secret refuge, and why here, and why now?

After our first conversation, Peter Reid drove me out to the site where Drama Series took sick. Tract houses on prim lanes have been built over the original pasture. Not much of the old landscape remains. But toward the end of one street is a circle, called Calliope Circuit, in the middle of which stands a single mature tree, a native fig, beneath which the mare would have found shelter from eastern Australia's fierce subtropical sun.

Infectious disease is all around us. Infectious disease is a kind of natural mortar binding one creature to another, one species to another, within the elaborate edifices we call ecosystems. It's one of the basic processes that ecologists study, including also predation, competition, and photosynthesis. Predators are relatively big beasts that eat their prey from outside. Pathogens (disease-causing agents, such as viruses) are relatively small beasts that eat their prey from within. Although infectious disease can seem grisly and dreadful, under ordinary conditions it's every bit as natural as what lions do to wildebeests, zebras, and gazelles.

But conditions aren't always ordinary.

Just as predators have their accustomed prey species, their favored targets, so do pathogens. And just as a lion might occasionally depart from its normal behavior—to kill a cow instead of a wildebeest, a human instead of a zebra—so can a pathogen shift to a new target. Accidents happen. Aberrations occur. Circumstances change and, with them, opportunities and exigencies also change. When a pathogen leaps from some nonhuman animal into a person, and succeeds there in making trouble, the result is what's known as a zoonosis.

The word zoonosis is unfamiliar to most people. But it helps clarify the biological reality behind the scary headlines about bird flu, SARS, other forms of nasty new disease, and the threat of a coming pandemic. It says something essential about the origin of HIV. It's a word of the future, destined for heavy use in the 21st century.

Ebola is a zoonosis. So is bubonic plague. So are yellow fever, monkeypox, bovine tuberculosis, Lyme disease, West Nile fever, Marburg, many strains of influenza, rabies, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, and a strange new affliction called Nipah, which kills pigs and pig farmers in Malaysia. Each of them reflects the action of a pathogen that can cross to people from other species. This form of interspecies leap is common, not rare; about 60 percent of all human infectious diseases currently known are shared between animals and humans. Some of those—notably rabies—are widespread and famously lethal, still killing humans by the thousands despite centuries of effort at coping with their effects, concerted international attempts to eradicate or control them, and a clear scientific understanding of how they work. Others are new and inexplicably sporadic, claiming a few victims (as Hendra did) or a few hundred in this place or that, and then disappearing for years.

Smallpox, to take one counterexample, is not a zoonosis. It's caused by a virus that infects Homo sapiens and, in very exceptional cases, certain nonhuman primates, but not horses or rats or other species. That helps explain why the World Health Organization's global campaign to eradicate the disease was, as of 1979, successful. Smallpox could be eradicated because its virus, lacking ability to reside virtually anywhere other than in humans, couldn't hide. Zoonotic pathogens can hide.

Monkeypox, though closely related to smallpox, differs in two crucial ways—its propensity to afflict monkeys as well as humans, and the ability of its virus to exist in still other species, some of which are so far unidentified. Yellow fever, also infectious to both monkeys and humans, and caused by a virus that hides in several species of mosquito, will probably never be eradicated. The Lyme disease perpetrator, a type of bacterium, hides effectively in white-footed mice and other small mammals. These pathogens aren't consciously hiding, of course. For their purposes, such behavior merely constitutes a strategy of indirect transmission or inconspicuous survival.

The least conspicuous strategy of all is to lurk within what's called a reservoir host, a species that carries the pathogen while suffering little or no symptomatic illness. When a disease seems to disappear between outbreaks (again, as Hendra did after the 1994 carnage), its causal pathogen may indeed have died out, at least from the region—but then again, maybe not. Maybe its still lingering nearby, all around, within some reservoir host. A rodent? A bird? A butterfly? Possibly a bat? To reside undetected within a reservoir host is probably easiest wherever biological diversity is high and the ecosystem is relatively undisturbed. The converse is also true: Ecological disturbance causes diseases to emerge. Shake a tree, and things fall out.

Some months after the deaths in Australia, a scientific sleuth named Hume Field started looking for Hendra's reservoir host. Field was a veterinarian who, having practiced privately for years, had decided to pursue a doctorate in veterinary epidemiology. The search for the reservoir became his dissertation project. He gathered blood samples from 16 different species, a whole menagerie of suspects, including marsupials, birds, rodents, amphibians, and insects. He sent the samples to a laboratory for screening, which yielded no evidence whatsoever of Hendra.

Then he took blood from Pteropus alecto, a species of fruit bat, big as a crow and commonly known as the black flying fox. Bingo: The lab team found molecular traces left by Hendra virus. Further sampling produced similar evidence from three other species of flying foxes, all native to the forests of Queensland (the state encompassing Brisbane) and other wooded regions of Australia. Field and his collaborators had established that bats were the reservoir. Detecting molecular traces is less definitive than finding particles of live virus, but within one female bat they did find that form of evidence also.

The lab work suggested that Hendra was an old virus, having probably existed within its reservoir host for thousands of years. Despite its age, it had never before—so far as historical records and human memory could say, anyway—caused disease in humans. What accounts for its emergence in 1994? Well, bad luck for Drama Series and those who knew her. Bats came to eat the figs in that solitary tree, and the poor mare, seeking shade, grazing too carelessly, evidently swallowed not just grass but also something of what they dropped, such as fruit pulp, feces, urine, afterbirth, and virus.

But there had to be a broader answer, too. Why did Hendra emerge in 1994, not decades or centuries earlier? Something was different. Some sort of change, or combination of changes, must have caused the virus to be transferred from its reservoir host into other species.

The fancy name for such transfer is spillover. Maybe the virus needed horses (which only reached Australia with European colonists), as distinct from kangaroos (which have been eating grass beneath Australian fig trees for millennia), to mediate its spillover from the reservoir. Maybe bats, figs, horses, and humans had simply never been brought so closely together. Hume Field is currently a research scientist at the Animal Research Institute of Queensland's Department of Primary Industries, in Brisbane. When I spoke with him at his office there, he raised the issue of "what might be happening now that hasn't happened before." Part of the answer is that human destruction of eucalyptus forests has disrupted the customary feeding and roosting habits of some flying foxes, forcing them toward shady suburbs, orchards, botanical gardens, city parks, and closer proximity to people.

But proximity is one thing; spilling virus into horses is another. "How does transmission occur?" Field wondered aloud, at the end of our long conversation. "Well, we still don't know."

Nearly all zoonotic diseases result from infection by one of six kinds of pathogen: viruses, bacteria, protozoans, prions, fungi, and worms. Mad cow disease is caused by a prion, a weirdly folded protein molecule that triggers weird folding in other molecules, like Kurt Vonnegut's infectious form of water, ice-nine, in his great early novel Cat's Cradle. Sleeping sickness is a protozoan infection, carried by tsetse flies between wild and domestic mammals and people on the landscapes of sub-Saharan Africa. Anthrax is a bacterium that can live dormant in soil for years and then, when scuffed out, infect humans by way of cattle. Toxocariasis is a mild zoonosis caused by roundworms; you can get it from your dog. But fortunately, like your dog, you can be wormed.

Viruses are the most problematic. They evolve quickly, they are unaffected by antibiotics, they can be elusive, they can be versatile, they can inflict extremely high rates of mortality, and they are fiendishly simple, at least relative to other living or quasi-living creatures. Hanta, SARS, monkeypox, rabies, Ebola, West Nile, Machupo, dengue, yellow fever, Junin, Nipah, Hendra, influenza, and HIV are all vir