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Conservation areas in tropical forests protect the most diverse and threatened ecosystems on the planet. In the Amazon, ungulates are important determinants of forest structure and plant diversity, as well as being a resource for rural communities. Using occupancy-based methods, we estimated the occurrence of white-lipped peccary Tayassu pecari, collared peccary Pecari tajacu, lowland tapir Tapirus terrestris and red brocket deer Mazama americana in and around protected areas reserve in Tambopata, Peru, to evaluate how different management designation, anthropogenic influences and habitat type influenced the occurrence of each species. We used a combination of track surveys ( n=258) and camera surveys ( n=256) to estimate ungulate presence at 55 sites in a national reserve, a native community and adjacent buffer areas from May 2008 to March 2009. We found that prediction of the occurrence of white-lipped peccary, lowland tapir and red brocket deer was best accomplished using travel time from the nearest city (a measure of an area's accessibility). The occurrence of ungulates differed little between buffer and reserves, but community lands managed by indigenous peoples showed reduced probabilities of ungulate occurrence. Our results indicate that passive protection afforded by inaccessibility might be an effective management strategy for this region; however, we doubt that this is tenable as a long-term solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hand-rearing is a common practice for the propagation of captive psittacines, however, research on their nutrition is limited and the requirements of growing chicks are not well understood. The nutrition of 15 commercially available parrot hand-feeding formulas was compared with the average content of the crops of free living Scarlet Macaw (Ara macao) chicks, as well as with the requirements of 6- to 12-week-old leghorn chickens. When the formulas were prepared for a 1-week-old chick, all except three maintained >90% of solids in suspension after 15 min and >60 after 30 min. On average the formulas had a similar metabolizable energy density as wild macaw crop samples. The concentration of crude protein in the formulas was higher than that of the crop sample average, while the crude fat was lower than the average crop samples. More than 50% of the formulas had concentrations of K, Mg, and Mn less than the crop sample average, and Ca and Na concentrations below the requirements established for 6- to 12-week-old leghorn chickens. For >45% of the formulas the concentrations of arginine, leucine, and methionine + cystine were below the requirements of 6- to 12-week leghorns. When commercial formulas were prepared according to the manufacturer's instructions, the different dilutions greatly magnified the nutritional differences among them. Overall, the inconsistency in the nutrient concentrations among the formulas suggests that there is no consensus among manufacturers of the correct nutrition for growing psittacines and the industry could benefit from continued research in this area., (© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)