Welcome

n this sec­tion I will try and give rel­e­vant and detailed infor­ma­tion on endan­gered species which deserve my spe­cial atten­tion. First, this involves species that are (crit­i­cally) endan­gered accord­ing to the IUCN Red list. Sec­ondly, it con­cerns preda­tors, those species that are occu­py­ing the top layer of the food chain pyra­mid. When avail­able, infor­ma­tion will be pro­vided on the role of zoos in con­ser­va­tion activ­i­ties to pre­vent those species from extinc­tion. These might be projects car­ried out in orig­i­nal habi­tats and ecosys­tems (in situ), or research and breed­ing pro­grammes in the zoo envi­ron­ment (ex situ). Most infor­ma­tion is derived or copied from ARKIVE and Ani­malsInfo and Wikipedia of course, and is pre­sented in such a way that it pro­vides suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion on the endan­gered species and inspires the reader to fol­low the links for more infor­ma­tion, I hope. Addi­tion­ally, this might help the reader to reflect on Mother Nature’s “suf­fer­ing” and the need for sup­port and resources to pro­vide some relief. Vol­un­teers and/​or dona­tions will be wel­comed by all the organ­i­sa­tions run­ning nature con­ser­va­tion programmes.