She did it again! Marcella, our Bornean sun bear female, gave birth over the weekend to her second cub. The staff of the San Diego Zoo’s Sun Bear Forest and CRES researchers are thrilled with this new arrival. (Read Suzanne’s previous blog, Sun Bear Summary.)

The birth of this cub is significant for many reasons. First, the cub is only the second Bornean sun bear to ever be born in North America, and as far as we are aware, it is only the second born in all the Western Hemisphere. The first was Danum, the cub born to Marcella in 2004, who now resides at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas. (Marcella is pictured here with a young Danum.)
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Bill Toone, a conservation program specialist for CRES, helped implement a teacher training program in Kenya. In blogs, he shares his experience as he works with Dan Rubenstein, a Princeton University scientist, and Louise Bradshaw, the St. Louis Zoo’s education director, to inspire the next generation of Kenyans to work for wildlife conservation. Read Bill’s previous blog, Kenya: Erosion 101.

The challenges for people and wildlife in Kenya are complex and deeply intertwined. Rosie Woodruff from the University of California, Davis, gave a presentation to the teachers on her work with wild dogs. While quite rare, these dogs can be a significant problem””killing between 3 and 13 goats during one raid.
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The San Diego Zoo has committed to build a new state-of-the-art elephant exhibit, tentatively titled, “American Elephant.” This exhibit is meant to bring together the past, present, and future with information about extinct animals that once roamed our area in the Pleistocene era as well as elephants of today. For this reason, I thought it might be a good time to introduce everyone to the Zoo’s elephants. This week I would like to introduce you to Tembo.

Tembo is a 35-year-old African elephant that has been at the Zoo for 25 years. She stands almost 9 feet (2.7 meters) at the shoulder and weighs in at about 9,175 pounds (4,162 kilograms). Tembo is easy to pick out from the other elephants because she is our only African elephant. She has large tusks, big ears, and is usually the one that is eating. Eating is definitely her favorite pastime! This is also why it is so easy to train her for new behaviors. Tembo is a very vocal elephant and she can be heard throughout the day trumpeting or rumbling at the other elephants or her keepers.
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Regular visitors to the Children’s Zoo (CZ) at the San Diego Zoo might remember visiting with Bahati, the South African meerkat. Bahati is an important member of our collection because he is one of our valued animal ambassadors. Sadly, his brother and sister died last year. This left 9-year-old Bahati alone, which is unfortunate for an animal as social as a meerkat.

When two meerkats pups needed hand rearing, we were excited that we might be able to provide Bahati with new meerkat buddies. Early on, a plan was formed to introduce the young meerkats, sister Kala and brother Hari (pictured above), to Bahati. We learned, however, that meerkat introductions are far from simple. Since meerkats live in big families and are extremely discriminating, they can be tough when introduced to new kinfolk. These intelligent animals can be rather clannish and even aggressive when they encounter someone new. We listened nervously when stories were relayed about introductions attempted in the past that turned out badly, with unsuccessful outcomes.
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Thursday, September 21, was a milestone in the lives of our Lion Camp pride. For the past several weeks, we have been introducing Izu, the male, to his 4-month-old offspring. Dad and cubs have been able to interact through a mesh divider inside the bedroom area. He has shown much interest in his cubs, attempting to groom and play with them through the wire. No aggression has been seen, and Oshana, the cubs’ mother, has been glad to see her mate and interact with him. She has shown no concern when the cubs have visited Izu through the mesh.
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Doing behavioral research with a unique species like the shoebill stork has been an extremely rewarding experience. My summer internship began with simply observing a wild-born pair to compile a list of all their behaviors (see Sara’s blog, Understanding Shoebills). Using this information, I began a research project inside the Wild Animal Park with three hand-reared shoebills on social interactions between a male and two females. Initially, one female was isolated from the other two, but access throughout the enclosure was allowed once my observations began. This would permit the isolated female to leave her island, join the male and other female, and hopefully facilitate social interactions. The reason for looking at these possible interactions was prompted by the fact that no shoebill stork has reproduced in captivity. The Park’s Bird Department and CRES researchers have been baffled by this and hoped to gain more information on the breeding behavior of this species.
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Bill Toone, a conservation program specialist for CRES, helped implement a teacher training program in Kenya. In blogs, he shares his experience as he works with Dan Rubenstein, a Princeton University scientist, and Louise Bradshaw, the St. Louis Zoo’s education director, to inspire the next generation of Kenyans to work for wildlife conservation. Read Bill’s previous blog, Kenya: Camp Life.

Mpala Research Center, where our teacher training program is held, has lots of people doing ecology and conservation work. Most of them, it seems, are affiliated with Dan Rubenstein. Dan has been key in bringing this classroom session together. He is so keenly aware of the socio-political situation in Kenya. Dan is enthusiastic, high energy, and, in spite of his clear and focused interest in the endangered Grevy’s zebra, he and his students are working on everything from restoration ecology to wild dogs, social behavior of starlings, water, and tons of other things.
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Bill Toone, a conservation program specialist for CRES, helped implement a teacher training program in Kenya. In blogs, he shares his experience as he works with Dan Rubenstein, a Princeton University scientist, and Louise Bradshaw, the St. Louis Zoo’s education director, to inspire the next generation of Kenyans to work for wildlife conservation. Read Bill’s previous blog, Kenya: Giraffe Sighting.

It’s hard to keep up on these logs, sometimes. We keep a full day and go back to camp around 6 to 7 p.m., dinner is at 7:30 p.m., and then, quite honestly, I am ready for bed. I am up by about 5 a.m. and usually awake for a while before that, listening to the sounds of the camp. |inline

The Wild Animal Park’s newest elephant herd member is now one week old and continuing to grow and develop (see Fred and Jeff’s previous blog, Elephant Herd Welcomes New Baby). We watch her so closely that we even know when she pooped for the first time! You might think that we are a bit weird for writing this down, but it shows us that she is taking in enough nutrients to generate waste products. (Oh yeah”¦her first poop was taken when she was nearly 24 hours old.)
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After the busy days of summer, things have quieted down here at the San Diego Zoo’s Giant Panda Research Station, in a manner of speaking. While we have fewer visitors, it also means that it’s time for repairs and construction, and Panda Canyon is one of those areas ” in the works.” An employee access stairway across the road, long slated for repair, is being replaced. As you can imagine, this is not a quiet process, but our wonderful pandas appear to be doing just fine.
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