hot news!
November 28, 2008
A new, critically endangered, tarsier species, Tarsius tumpara, is described by Myron Shekelle, Colin Groves, Stefan Merker, and Jatna Supriatna. It’s range is restricted to the tiny, highly volcanic island of Siau, where human inhabitants eat tarsiers as a snack food they call, tola-tola. This tarsier is listed as one of the world’s Top 25 Most Endangered Primates.
-read the description of Tarsius tumpara.
-read about why it is one of the world’s Top 25 Most Endangered Primates.
-read more about the volcano on Siau Island.
November 26, 2008
News from the Philippines Tarsier Foundation, Inc., reported to global-tarsier: The Province of Bohol, thru the Provincial Environment Committee, will pass a resolution to conserve the Tarsier Species in Bohol and this will be the basis for the local DENR to cancel all Wildlife Farm Permit and Certificate of Wildlife Registrations. The committee with lots of deliberation, and a choice of conserving the tarsier or the interest of the businesses in and around Bohol... chooses TARSIER over business... Finally, after 11 years...
[If enacted, this will mean an end to all those roadside, daylight tarsier shows, photos and videos of which are so common on the internet.]
November 20, 2008
Tarsier Power Demonstrated by the rediscovery of Tarsius pumilus!!!
Sharon and Nanda’s story (see below) soared to #1 on Yahoo! News Most Popular and Most Recommended, ultimately generating 83 or more news articles around the world. Let’s hope that this demonstration of tarsier power does not go unnoticed, least of all by people like Sharon and Nanda’s Dean at Texas A&M College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Charles A. Johnson, or the Executive Associate Dean for Research Programs, Ben M. Couch . . .
November 18, 2008
Discovery of Tarsius pumilus in the wild is announced! Sharon Gursky-Doyen and Nanda Grow, of Texas A&M trapped three on Mount Rorekatimbu, near the site where the third specimen was trapped (see Maryanto and Yani, 2004). Despite what the news services wrote, there is no solid evidence that this species had ever been seen alive by a scientist. Unless someone comes forward with previously unreported evidence, these are the first photographs and scientific observations on living T. pumilus ever!
-read news stories on the discovery.
November 2-6, 2008
“Dreams Into Action: The International Tarsier Action Plan Workshop”, a global assessment of the present and future conservation needs of tarsiers, was conducted in Manado, North Sulawesi. Following the workshop, many participants made an overnight site visit to Tangkoko to see how tarsier-based ecotourism operates there. A public presentation was held on Wednesday, November 5, 2008, that attracted about 40-50 people from local universities, government agencies, and press. One immediate outcome was the creation global-tarsier, the global tarsier network of concerned individuals and organizations. This was a great beginning, but much more work remains to be done to produce an action plan.
-read about the workshop in the Manado Post, November 4, 2008
-and again on November 5, 2008. (Bahasa Indonesia only)
-the story was then picked up by Kompas . . .
October 12, 2008
Exactly one year after the debut of “Nick Baker’s Weird Creatures: The Real Gremlin”, a 50-minute documentary of tarsiers at Tangkoko on Channel Five, UK (later broadcast worldwide on Animal Planet), NHK Television, Japan, debuts a new, 30-minute documentary on tarsiers at Tangkoko, filmed with amazing low-light cameras and even more amazing high-speed cameras, all in Hi-Def. An email from Mikio Kuroda, at NHK Japan, informs us that approximately 12 million viewers tuned in for this prime-time, Sunday evening television show. Separately, an email from Nick Baker reveals that the potential worldwide audience for Animal Planet is somewhere north of 400 million!
