Campers Gene and Marie Marsden took pride in being good citizens when in the wild. While driving miles to the Green River Lakes area, they taught their children what they had learned in the bear safety handbook put out by the Bridger-Teton Forest Service.

Mr. and Mrs. Marsden did their best to keep a tidy camp. As the handbook had said to hang all food at least ten feet off the ground and four feet out from the trees, they did that and locked their food in their trailer (拖车) at night. It was already dark when they went to bed, but they perused the campsite with flashlights, making sure nothing was left out. Following the bear book’s advice, they slept a hundred yards from where they cooked their food, and kept the car near their tents, separated from the trailer, which they left up at the other camp.

The Marsdens liked having their dog Spike on guard. But on the first night, Spike would not stop barking. When Marie Marsden pulled the tent open and shone her flashlight, she saw a young bear.

They all piled into the car and drove quickly down the path, calling out of the window to Spike and abandoning the trailer. They drove to a pay phone and called a Fish and Game Department guard, who identified the bear by the white ring of the fur the Marsdens had seen around his neck. The authorities informed the Marsdens that the bear was a young male that they’d been keeping an eye on.

The next morning, the Marsdens heard helicopters circling over the mountain and wondered if it might have something to do with the bear.

After spending the night in the public campground, they drove back to their site. Wandering the area in search of clues, Marie came to a stop below a tall tree. She slapped her head and shouted, “Oh no!”

“What is it?” Gene asked.

Marie pointed at the ground where Spike’s dog food bowl lay upside down.

A week after their return home, the Marsdens read the headline in their local paper. “Bear Killed in Wind Rivers.” According to the article, the Fish and Game Department had shot the young bear because, having been rewarded for invading (侵入) a human campsite, it would likely do so again.

The Marsdens knew they had been lucky in the encounter, yet much to their shame and sadness, they also knew that the bear had not.

When the European Commission’s LIFE program first brought together more than 20 organizations in 2002 to rescue the lynx ( 山 猫), the species had all but disappeared. Widespread hunting and a virus had wiped out ( 彻底消灭) most of the Iberian Peninsula’s European rabbits, the lynx’s main prey (猎物).

Lynx breed in captivity ( 圈 养) easily, however. Near one main release location, Iberian lynx have even learned to live in neighborhoods, in olive groves (橄榄树丛), and around highways.

“Thanks to the work carried out over the last 20 years, the number of lynx has increased greatly,” says Francisco Javier Salcedo Ortiz, regional coordinator of the Iberian lynx recovery plan.

But the cat’s not out of danger just yet. Its thousand-square-mile territory is a collection of five — soon to be seven — isolated ( 孤   立   的) groups. For Iberian lynx to fully recover, they must be able to travel from one group to another, ensuring the species’s long-term health by diversifying gene pools. That’s why the next stage of the LIFE project will focus on creating at least 10 6-square-mile areas of rabbit-rich habitat, which act as passageways among the existing lynx groups. Scientists selected these habitats based on predictions of where lynx are most likely to travel. For instance, lynx prefer to take the shortest paths through undeveloped habitats, and avoid broken-up areas of farmland.

The cat is popular, even among farmers and landowners, but a few view lynx as pests and occasionally will poison them for supposedly harming domestic animals. Illegal killings make up nearly 25 percent of annual lynx deaths on the peninsula, the second highest cause of non-natural death, after vehicle strikes. That’s why education is the “best tool to improve the lynx population,” says Maribel García Tardío, lead technician for Andalusia’s Iberian lynx recovery plan. She and her colleagues regularly meet with landowners and hunters, explaining how lynx rarely kill larger domestic animals.

The Iberian lynx is one of 33 small-cat species, many of which are endangered or threatened. These animals have long been eclipsed by their bigger cousins such as lions and tigers, but lately people have begun to recognize the world’s little-known cats.

Tolstoy, one of east Africa’s few remaining Super Tusker elephants, wandered the grasslands around Mount Kilimanjaro for more than five decades. That was until last year, when he died after being speared by a farmer seeking to protect his crops.

“This is happening more and more,” said ranger Daudi Ninaai from Kenya’s Amboseli ecosystem reserve. The ranger fears other elephants will meet the same fate, as the increasingly frequent conflicts between humans and wildlife are worsened by the increase of new commercial farms. Incidents of elephants’ crop robbing more than doubled from 156 in 2020 to 363 last year.

“It’s skyrocketing because the space is shrinking,” said Samuel Tokore, a senior official at Kenya Wildlife Service. The fenced farms have considerably reduced elephants’ ability to travel. Tall barriers have been thrown up across their ancient migration routes.

The problem begins partly from a state-led move to divide 1.35mn acres in Amboseli used by generations of native Maasai people into private lands. After the public land was divided up, some chose to sell them on to commercial farmers.

“The destruction of wildlife buffer zones (缓冲区) and corridors for industrial farming is at a tipping poinit,” WildlifeDirect’s Kahumbu said. Michael Kairu set up his farming business in Amboseli five years ago only to find out later about the threat it posed to wildlife. His 500-acre farm is located in what was once an elephant breeding ground. “Government agencies and communities should make it clear where you can farm,” said Kairu, whose customers include leading UK supermarkets. “I don’t want to be in the wrong place,” he said.