Survival rates of captive-bred Asian Houbara Chlamydotis macqueenii in a hunted migratory population

Asian Houbara Chlamydotis macqueenii numbers are declining owing to unsustainable levels of hunting and poaching, with the main conservation response being population reinforcement through the release of captive-bred birds. We assessed the contribution of captive breeding to the species’ conservation by examining the fates of 65 captive-bred birds fitted with satellite transmitters and released during spring (March–May) and autumn (August) into breeding habitat in Uzbekistan. Of the released birds, 58.5% survived to October, the month favoured by Emirati hunters in Uzbekistan, but only 10.8% of those released survived the winter to return as sub-adults next spring. To mitigate and compensate the loss of wild adults to hunting, the number of released birds needs to be an order of magnitude higher than hunting quotas (with a release of between 1640-1920 required for a hypothetical quota of 200), indicating that releases may be costly and do not remove the need for a biologically determined sustainable hunting quota

Insights into the feeding ecology of and threats to Sand Cat Felis margarita Loche, 1858 (Mammalia: Carnivora: Felidae) in the Kyzylkum Desert, Uzbekistan

Funding: The Ahmed bin Zayed Charitable Foundation. Acknowledgements: The authors are funded by the Ahmed bin Zayed Charitable Foundation. We are grateful to Angie Appel for her insightful knowledge and valuable feedback, to Erasil Khaitov for his tracking expertise and extensive knowledge of the desert, and to the Emirates Bird Breeding Center for Conservation (EBBCC) for their support. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments that helped improve the manuscript. Field research into Asian Houbara ecology is conducted under permissions from Gosbiokontrol, Uzbekistan.Peer reviewe

Judicial Reform in West Virginia: The Magistrate Court System

With the passage, on November 5, 1974, of the Judicial Reorganization Amendment to the West Virginia Constitution, a new era of judicial administration began for West Virginia. Central to this new judicial article was the unification of the lower state courts under the general supervision of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. The Amendment mandated the establishment of a magistrate court system, replacing the system of justice of the peace (J.P.) courts used in the Virginias since 1661. This article will examine and evaluate the legislative implementation of the magistrate courts system, discuss differences between the J.P. system and the magistrate system, and offer some suggestions for effective advocacy in magistrate courts

Geology of the Late Paleozoic Horseshoe Atoll in West Texas

Regional geology.-The Horseshoe atoll is a subsurface accumulation of fossiliferous limestone which is as much as 3,000 feet thick and which was deposited during Pennsylvanian and early Permian time in the northern part of the Midland basin, in western Texas. It is a horseshoeshaped mass about 90 miles across in an east-west direction and about 70 miles from north to south. The crest of the atoll is a series of irregular hills and depressions, and the flanks slope gently away to merge with a broad limestone platform on which the atoll rests. Large quantities of petroleum have been produced from reservoirs in the eastern and southern parts of the atoll

Captive breeding cannot sustain migratory Asian houbara Chlamydotis macqueenii without hunting controls

To evaluate the potential contribution of captive breeding to the conservation of exploited migratory Asian houbara Chlamydotis macqueenii, we estimated release numbers required to stabilise a population in a hunting concession (14,300 km2), under scenarios of local licensed hunting and flyway-scale protection. We developed a population model, initially 2350 adult females, re-sampling parameters measured through fieldwork and satellite telemetry, over 1000 iterations. With current flyway-scale unregulated harvest, and without any licensed hunting in the concession, populations declined at 9.4% year-1 (95% CI: –18.9 to 0% year-1); in this scenario a precautionary approach (85% probability λ≥ 1.0) to population stabilisation required releasing 3100 captive-bred females year-1 (131% x initial wild numbers). A precautionary approach to sustainable hunting of 100 females year-1 required releasing 3600 females year-1 (153% initial wild numbers); but if interventions reduced flyway-scale hunting/trapping mortality by 60% or 80%, sustaining this quota required releasing 900 or 400 females year-1, 38% and 17% of initial wild numbers, respectively. Parameter uncertainty increased precautionary numbers for release, but even with reduced precaution (50% probability λ≥ 1.0), sustainable hunting of 100 females year-1 required annual releases of 2200 females (94% wild) without other measures, but 300 (13%) or no (0%) females under scenarios of a 60% or 80% reduction in flyway-scale hunting/trapping. Captive breeding cannot alone sustain migrant populations of wild C. macqueenii because it risks replacement and domestication. Trade and exploitation must be restricted to avoid either extinction or domestication. For exploited populations, supplementation by captive breeding should be used with caution

Approximate methods in high speed flow

In many problems arising in the theory of compressible flow, the equations characterising the solution of the system are so intractable that recourse must be made to some approximate method which allows the essential features of the flow to be preserved, whilst to some degree, simplifying the mathematics. It is with certain methods of this type that this thesis is concerned. In the subsequent work, we shall assume that the effects due to viscosity and heat conduction are so small as to be negligible. These assumptions may be shown to be largely valid except in those domains of the flow-field where the modified system of equations predicts regions in which the solution is in general multivalued. In the modified system, however, such ‘regions’ are avoided by the introduction of mathematical discontinuities and, assuming that the jump conditions across them can be determines, are sufficient to provide single-valued solutions valid everywhere, except at the discontinuity. The methods to be presented are formulated in the plane consisting of one space variable and one time variable

Rainfall validates MODIS-derived NDVI as an index of spatio-temporal variation in green biomass across non-montane semi-arid and arid Central Asia

As satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is related to vegetation biomass, it may provide a proxy for habitat quality across extensive species ranges where ground-truth data are scarce. However, NDVI may have limited accuracy in sparsely-vegetated arid and semi-arid environments due to signal contamination by substrate reflectance. To validate NDVI as a vegetation proxy in the low-altitude deserts of Central Asia, we examine its response to precipitation across the migratory corridor of Asian Houbara. NDVI increases with precipitation, both spatially (adj. R2 = 0.58, p < 0.001) and temporally (mean adj. R2 across n=244, 1 degree cells = 0.44; GLMM across cells p < 0.001). More vegetated regions show a stronger temporal response of vegetation biomass for a given precipitation increment (slope of NDVI to precipitation in per cell temporal models increases with inter-annual mean NDVI; adj. R2 = 0.38, p < 0.001), reinforcing the conclusion that NDVI provides a proxy for vegetation abundance. The strong signature of rainfall shows MODIS NDVI offers a potentially powerful proxy for spatial and temporal variation in arid and semi-arid vegetation at a resolution of 1 degree and 1 year over the houbara's breeding and wintering range, and probably also at finer spatial resolutions