January has seen the commencement of a five-month forest elephant survey in the Ebo Forest, Cameroon, by the San Diego Zoo's Central Africa Regional Program, funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's African Elephant Conservation Fund.
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Radio transmitters, along with more sophisticated GPS-satellite transmitters; attached to each wing, allow us to keep track of short and long distance movements. Trailing from each transmitter, vinyl tags display numbers large enough for the birds to be identified at some distance with binoculars whether the bird is sitting or flying. These " stud book" numbers are each bird's personal ID and are never repeated.
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A female juvenile California condor takes her first flight into the wilderness in Baja California's Sierra San Pedro de Martir release site.

Only a few hundred years ago, the California condor ranged from British Columbia to Baja California, Mexico. As European pioneers settled within its range, the species declined dramatically to near extinction in the mid-1980s. Working with Mexican partners, the San Diego Zoo's Applied Animal Ecology Division has embarked on a long-term program to restore the California condor to the mountains of northern Baja California, Mexico. Given their flight capabilities, it is anticipated that reintroduced condors will ultimately range from the Pacific Coast to the Gulf of California, as well as northward across the U.S. border, providing an important link to existing reintroduced populations in California.
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A team of animal care staff (Chris Hamlin, Jen Moll, Amy Alfrey) left their usual workplace at the San Diego Zoo's koala barn to help us with our koala conservation project in Australia on St. Bees Island (see Bill Ellis's blog Koala Team Sets New Mark on the Knoll). On this particular day, our goal was to catch Murray (pictured), an adult male, in order to remove his GPS collar and find out where he had been wandering over the last few months.
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Five years ago, four infant gorillas were smuggled out of Cameroon, and through a long and mostly unknown chain of events they eventually arrived in a zoo in Malaysia. Their new keepers were under the impression that the gorillas originated from a captive breeding program in Nigeria. Such a program does not exist, however, and suspicions were soon aroused that the gorillas were not acquired legally. Trafficking in wild-born gorillas is strictly forbidden by the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and genetic analyses quickly and decisively exposed the real origin of the gorillas as being Cameroonian.
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Ronit is the San Diego Zoo's 2007 Arctic Ambassador. She and other teens from around the world are in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, to partipate in Polar Bears International's Polar Bear Leadership Camp. Read her previous blog, Polar Bear Ambassadors in Helicopters!

Hello, for the last time, from the tundra,

Last night was our final night on the tundra, so we said goodbye with a bang. My group was once again in charge of dinner so, in our efforts to be conservationists, we raided the refrigerator and hosted a " Farewell to the Tundra" leftovers soirée. It was a pleasant evening: ambassadors and facilitators mulled around sipping orange juice and pop while munching on appetizer-sized bites of leftover hamburger, hot dog, lunch meats, veggies, burritos, and more. Then of course, for dessert we polished off three different flavors of ice cream, a plate of cookies, and leftover breakfast pastries. It was a sight to be seen! Meanwhile, a slideshow of everyone's pictures, collectively taken during the trip, played on the wall. As giggles and gales of laughter were issued at our captured antics and sighs of awe were emitted at the stunning photos of polar bears and northern lights, we spent the night together singing, laughing, and making memories.
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Ronit is the San Diego Zoo's 2007 Arctic Ambassador. She and other teens from around the world are in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, to partipate in Polar Bears International's Polar Bear Leadership Camp. Read her previous blog, Snow on the Tundra Temporarily Disconnects Arctic Ambassador.

Today we had the tremendous opportunity to explore a polar bear maternal den. Hudson Bay helicopters generously flew 24 of us in a fleet of 6 helicopters inland to a maternal den situated alongside Fletcher Lake. The flight was breathtaking and we even had the chance to see a herd of caribou, to which the pilot descended so we could fly just above them! I have never liked flying but this was an experience that was absolutely one of the most exhilarating in my life. We could see the crystalline ice covering the many lakes along the tundra surface and the abrupt change as the rocks of the coast became trees and streams. I was in a helicopter with four other ambassadors and we had a great time snapping pictures of ourselves wearing the headsets and talking into the microphones. But as soon as we took off, silence ensued, broken only by gasps of delight and awe as the enormity of the tundra appeared.
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Ronit is the San Diego Zoo's 2007 Arctic Ambassador. She and other teens from around the world are in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, to partipate in Polar Bears International's Polar Bear Leadership Camp. Read her previous blog, Connecting from the Tundra to School Kids.

It snowed!!! Okay, not enough to jump into or go sledding on with the polar bears, but Michael (a fellow ambassador from Australia) was so thrilled with seeing his first snow that he collected snow from the corners of the buggy patios and created a snow ball. But that was about it. It is beautiful, though, to see white, fluffy snowflakes drifting to the ground and catching them on my tongue is pure pleasure.
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Ronit is the San Diego Zoo's 2007 Arctic Ambassador. She and other teens from around the world are in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, to partipate in Polar Bears International's Polar Bear Leadership Camp. Read her previous blog, The Wildlife Can Be So Distracting Here!

Please excuse the delayed post; the storm mentioned in this blog knocked out our Internet.

The wind is blustering and howling at the windows. The Lodge is actually rocking and shaking, as I write, from the gusts. Walking from car to car of the lodge is an adrenaline rush with the incredible strength of the wind whipping my hair and forcing the door wide. If I don't grab the door and throw all my weight against it, it smashes me against the wall as the wind blows. It is incredibly frightening and exhilarating to watch the tundra completely bashed by the wind. The temperature has also dropped significantly. This morning, rain droplets were being hurtled at the windows by the wind, but now the precipitation has frozen into icy snow"”the ice hurts much more than the water when it is being driven into your cheeks at 60km/hr. The windows are actually sheeted with ice and the tundra is becoming covered in a thin whitish layer of icy snow.
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Ronit is the San Diego Zoo's 2007 Arctic Ambassador. She and other teens from around the world are in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, to partipate in Polar Bears International's Polar Bear Leadership Camp. Read her previous blog, Settling into Life on the Tundra

Today's weather stands in stark contrast to the rain from yesterday. The sun is high in the sky and the horizon is lined with clouds, framing the clear blue sky elegantly. We took advantage of the beautiful weather to take two gorgeous trips out in the tundra buggies.
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