Banteng Girl is a photograph by Miroslava Jurcik which was uploaded on October 16th, 2014.
Banteng Girl
This girl lives at Dubbo Zoo. The reason I know she is girl is because of her colour, the boys are dark brown. Bali, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos,... more
Title
Banteng Girl
Artist
Miroslava Jurcik
Medium
Photograph
Description
This girl lives at Dubbo Zoo. The reason I know she is girl is because of her colour, the boys are dark brown. Bali, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia (it is the national animal of Cambodia), almost all remaining banteng, about a million and a half, are domesticated work animals or livestock in their native regions. Only a few thousand live in wild herds in their native habitat. Of these, the Burma Banteng subspecies is classified as Critically Endangered. Several hundred bulls and cows representing all three subspecies are protected within wildlife sanctuaries around the world.
And then there is the Australian banteng. Twenty head of banteng livestock were brought to Australia in 1849 to provide meat for a newly established British military outpost in the Northern Territory. Just a year later the outpost was abandoned, and the banteng were released into the wild. Over the next hundred and seventy years, this feral population increased to perhaps as many as fifteen thousand on the Cobourg Peninsula, becoming a favored trophy of hunters from around the world as well as a food source for the local population.
Today much debate centers around the Australian banteng. Should they be eradicated to allow the environment to regress to its natural state? Should they be reintroduced to the Southeast Asian herds to augment the endangered native herds? Should they be left in place and accepted as a beneficial element of the current regional ecosystem? More study and monitoring are needed to determine the biological, ecological, and economic risks and benefits of the various proposals being considered.
Uploaded
October 16th, 2014