iWILD: biodiversity / wildlife / activism

POOR DEVIL

Powerful and intimidating though it is, today’s Endangered All-Star, the Giant Devilray, needs a helping hand.  While the species is not targeted by fishermen, it ends up caught on longlines or swordfish driftnets, an innocent victim of bycatch.  And this ray is very slow to reproduce, giving birth to only a single pup—albeit a whopper, at over five feet and 35 pounds—at intervals.  Part of the conservation challenge lies in how little is known about this extraordinary creature:  Everything from its precise range to its current population remains a mystery.  But its decline is so evident that the IUCN has listed it as Endangered.

This week, the IUCN has released a new regional Mediterranean Red List section on the Giant Devilray’s ecosystem, and a helpful article, The Mediterranean:  A Biodiversity Hotspot Under Threat.  The press announcement reads:  “From time immemorial, nature has fed us, cured us, and protected us.  But today the roles have switched.  We need to feed nature, we need to cure it and protect it if we want to secure a healthy and prosperous future for our children.”

To help this poor devil, support the world’s oceans through groups like Oceana.  Don’t eat bluefin tuna or swordfish.  And whenever you’re shopping for fish or dining out, consult the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s pocket or iPhone Seafood Watch guide.

Photo:  © Carlos Minguell

Clouded Leopard on the Menu

According to the Smithsonian, today’s Endangered All-Star, the Clouded Leopard, has been seen on restaurant menus catering to the wealthy in China and Thailand.  Skins are for sale in markets throughout southeast Asia, and teeth and bones are used in traditional Chinese medicine, a replacement for tiger parts as that species grows ever more scarce.  But with its population of 10,000 already in decline, this cat can hardly afford to feed Asia’s so-called “Big Bucks” businessmen.

In addition to poaching, rapid deforestation—exceeding ten percent over the past decade—endangers this forest-dependent species.  Thought to provide a unique link between small and large felines, the clouded leopard has the largest canine teeth proportionately of any cat, prompting comparison to extinct sabre-toothed cats.  Recently, motion-sensitive cameras captured evidence of seven species of cat, including Clouded Leopard, in the northeastern Indian state of Assam.  Ravi Chellam, representing the Wildlife Conservation Society, told the BBC:  “The entire forest here should be protected as a single conservation landscape, free of disturbance and connected by wildlife corridors.”  But with a Maoist insurgency active in a number of India’s tiger reserves, adding to poaching pressure, this seems unlikely to happen.

Meanwhile, the Clouded Leopard Project, organized by the  Association of Zoos & Aquariums’ Clouded Leopard Species Survival Plan, supports research and better management throughout the species’ range:  Learn how to adopt a Clouded Leopard here.

Photo:  © Andy Rouse / www.nhpa.co.uk for ARKive

“The Most Melodious Wild Musick I Have Ever Heard”

That was Sir Joseph Bank’s description of New Zealand’s dawn chorus of birds, which he heard on a January morning off the coast of New Zealand, on Captain Cook’s first circumnavigation of the south seas.  Over the course of its evolutionary history, New Zealand had become an extraordinary center of bird endemism, with birds filling evolutionary niches occupied in other places by mammals.  Ten species of moa, huge wingless birds, were hunted into oblivion by the Maori, and as Tim Flannery explains in The Future Eaters:  An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People, the arrival of Europeans was likewise devastating.  His description of the silencing of the dawn chorus is one of the most haunting ever written about extinction:

“I would gladly remain ignorant of the joy of the Haka, or even the heart-stopping beauty of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa singing Songs of the Auvergne, for the privilege of waking to a symphony of ‘the most tuneable silver sound imaginable’.  [New Zealand’s] multitudes of birds performed that symphony each dawn for over 60 million years.  It was a glorious riot of sound with its own special meaning, for it was a confirmation of the health of a wondrous and unique ecosystem.  To my great regret, I arrived in New Zealand in the late twentieth century only to find most of the orchestra seats empty.  Walking through the ancient forest, whose still-living trees were once browsed by moa, I heard nothing but the whisper of leaves blowing in the wind.  It was like the rustle of the last curtain fall on an orchestra that will be no more.”

One of five kiwi species, the Great Spotted Kiwi survives thanks to intensive conservation efforts that include trapping of invasive species (chiefly stoats, but also dogs and cats) and monitoring.  But it is still in decline, listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List.  In 2008, the BNZ Save the Kiwi Trust estimated the population at 16,000, found in three main populations on New Zealand’s South Island, but the group emphasizes that more research is needed to identify all causes of the decline.  Meanwhile, the group’s Operation Nest Egg has brought together researchers, volunteers, and communities in an effort to remove kiwi eggs from the wild, raise the chicks until they are big and hearty enough to defend themselves against stoats, and then return them to the wild:  The project has raised survival rates from 5% to 65%.

While New Zealand’s spectacular dawn chorus may never be heard again, the Great Spotted is still making its distinctive calls.  You can hear them here.  You can also make a donation to fund kiwi protection and restoration.

Photo:  © Robin Bush / www.osfimages.com for ARKive

CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS TALLEST TREES ON EARTH

An important new study has demonstrated that the coastal fog providing today’s Endangered All-Star, the Coast Redwoods, with crucial cool temperatures and moisture has declined over the past century by around three hours per day, potentially endangering the entire coastal ecosystem surrounding and supporting these great trees.  There are excellent summaries of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, on Mongabay and on Science Daily, which quoted coauthor Todd E. Dawson, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management:  “Fog prevents water loss from redwoods in summer, and is really important for both the tree and the forest. If the fog is gone, we might not have the redwood forests we do now.”

Utilizing data from 114 weather stations along the Pacific coast, the study shows that the 33% reduction in fog affects not only the region of northern California and southern Oregon where the redwoods grow but the entire coastline, from Seattle to San Diego.  This may presage great changes in coastal ecosystems, as Dawson suggested to Science Daily:  “As fog decreases, the mature redwoods along the coast are not likely to die outright, but there may be less recruitment of new trees; they will look elsewhere for water, high humidity and cooler temperatures.  What does that mean for the current redwood range and that of the plants and animals with them?”

Those interested in learning more about the redwood ecosystem need look no further than Richard Preston’s wonderful The Wild Trees:  A Story of Passion and Daring which introduces the daring exploits of naturalists and botanists who explore these giants and the extraordinary communities of organisms—mosses, lichens, salamanders, ferns— that flourish in their canopies.  Preston opens his book with a line from Rachel Carson:  “Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.”

If you can, join or donate to the organization that supported the redwood research described above:  Save the Redwoods League.

Photo:  Scott Catron, for Wikimedia Commons

UNTIMELY RIPPED FROM ITS MOTHER’S POUCH

Alien abduction is as nothing compared to the complex conservation effort underway to beef up numbers of today’s Endangered All-Star:  the Brush-Tailed Rock Wallaby.  Considered endangered in Australia and “Near Threatened” by the IUCN, this mid-sized rock climber—which once roamed southeastern Australia in the millions— has gone into a serious decline, reduced to small, fragmented pockets of its former habitat, imperilled by alteration to land, introduced predators (red foxes and cats) and goats that are consuming native shrubs and grasses.  In the 19th century, farmers considered them pests and killed hundreds of thousands, drawn by a government bounty program.  To make matters worse, the brush-tailed reproduces so slowly that it has been unable to regain ground in recent years.

Enter the Adelaide Zoo.  Determined to help the brush-tailed back from the brink, the Zoo launched a captive-breeding program in 1996, successfully raising 69 animals to date.  Next, with the aid of researchers at the University of Adelaide, the Zoo developed  a cross-species fostering technique that involves flying into remote rock wallaby territory, tranquilizing an unsuspecting mum, kidnapping her brush-tailed infant from the pouch and swapping the baby into that of a surrogate yellow-foot rock wallaby.  Described recently on “Discovery,” a BBC nature program, the removal of a brush-tailed baby immediately triggers the development of a replacement embryo—held in reserve in the mother’s body—thus speeding up the reproductive process, yielding eight or nine “pouch young” per mother each year, instead of only one.

In 2008, the Zoo began reintroducing the captive-bred brush-taileds into the wilds of Grampians National Park, a spectacular habitat of sandstone ridges and rock formations in the state of Victoria, where the species has nearly been extirpated.  Seven of the ten released are still alive, and five more of their kind joined them in 2009.

Photo:  ABC:  Australian Broadcasting Corporation

A BIG BATTLE OVER A TINY MAMMAL

In the bitter war being waged over climate change in this country, two creatures have been drafted as poster children:  the Polar Bear and the American Pika, today’s Endangered All-Star.  The pika is a diminutive creature often compared to the chinchilla because of its size and its superbly warm fur coat which keeps this high-altitude mammal alive in the crevices of rocky slopes throughout the winter.  A lagomorph, and thus a relative of the rabbit, the pika has become the focus of conservation groups determined to force state agencies and the US Fish and Wildlife Service to acknowledge the threat posed by global warming.  While listing the species as of “Least Concern,” the IUCN Red List also notes that eight of 36 subspecies are “Vulnerable,” threatened by overgrazing and, yes, global warming.

The Center for Biological Diversity has sued repeatedly to gain protection for the species under the California Endangered Species Act and the federal ESA, pointing out that more than a third of Oregon and Nevada’s Great Basin populations have already been extirpated.  The Center also cites two studies finding that climate change would inevitably push the species to extinction.  A 2010 BioScience article, “Silence of the Pikas, by Wendee Holtcamp, quoted specialists agreeing with that assessment:  “There’s enough evidence to say that pikas are going to be among the first mammals to be adversely affected by climate change…The problem with global warming is that if [pikas] lose snowpack, which provides insulation in winter, they freeze to death, and if the ambient air temperature heats up too much in summer, then they fry. That’s the challenge… . They’re already at the top of the mountain. If you heat it up substantially, there’s no place for them to go.”  But in February 2010, the USFWS declared that additional protection for the pika “is not warranted at this time.”  In defense of the finding, the agency suggested that the pika may exhibit “physiological flexibility.” To put it in words that New York’s infamous Daily News might use:  USFWS To Pikas:  GET USED TO IT.

Will they?  Some scientists are doubtful.  For a study of Great Basin pikas published in the Journal of Biogeography in 2005, Donald K. Grayson, of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington, examined the prehistoric record.  It revealed how ancient pikas were driven farther and farther uphill, as it were, until they ran out of room. Prehistoric extinctions, he found, were “driven by climate change” and its effects on vegetation, and today’s pikas “may be on the brink of extinction.”

The Decline of Ponds and Primordial Soup

In 1872, Charles Darwin, in a letter to his friend Joseph Hooker, theorized that life on earth began in a “warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present.”  If so—and his theory still has supporters—life may have a hard time of it today, given the news that eighty percent of British ponds are in “a terrible state,” according to a national survey conducted by the group Pond Conservation.  The Great Crested Newt, today’s Endangered All-Star, is likewise in a state, the focus of much concern in Britain, where it is considered threatened and has been declared a priority species under the UK Biodiversity Action Plan.  The plan aims to restore populations to at least a hundred sites around the country and will require the creation of new ponds and the restoration of old ones damaged by agricultural pesticides, fertilizers, and good old neglect.  The lost ponds carry with them severe costs, not only to newts, but to carbon sequestration:  A recent estimate suggests that the world’s ponds absorb even more carbon than the oceans.

Thus, Pond Conservation’s ambitious solution:  The Million Ponds Project.  Since it costs far less to dig a new pond than to restore a damaged one—and since Britain is reckoned to have lost about half its ponds to infill—the group has already carved out some 40 new ponds at Pinkhill, near Oxford.  According to a recent article in The Guardian, these little waterways are already thriving, filled with 85 species of native plants and 165 invertebrates.  Jeremy Biggs, the group’s director of policy and research told the newspaper: “They are wonderful, full of life. They are a place you can get close to nature. They are mysteries because you don’t know what you are going to find. A lot are aesthetically pleasing as well: the view over water, there’s something deep about that.”  Surely, the newts feel that as well.

Photo:  © John Cancalosi / naturepl.com for ARKive

Does This Shark Look Vulnerable?

It may not look it, but the Sand Tiger Shark, also known as the Grey Nurse Shark or Ragged Tooth Shark, is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.  It’s a fate that sadly awaits many of its fellow sharks as well:  One in four species is being exploited commercially and unsustainably.  The Sand Tiger Shark, for example, is slow to reproduce, producing only 1-2 pups over the course of a year or two.  It tends to congregate in large numbers at certain times of the year, exposing it to overfishing.  Its fins cut off for shark fin soup and its flesh savored in Japan, the Sand Tiger has been driven close to extinction in previous centuries, when it was prized for its oil; it is now at risk again.

Fortunately, several excellent conservation organizations are working on the problem.  Oceana is pushing for effective shark-finning bans, better management of all species, and a reduction in the number of sharks damaged or killed as “bycatch” of fishing operations.  They have enlisted January Jones, otherwise known as Mrs. Don Draper, of AMC’s Mad Men, as a spokesperson:  Watch her Oceana video here.  In the U.K., the Shark Trust is also campaigning against finning and offers an opportunity to Adopt a Shark (Basking or Great White).

And in Argentina, the Sand Tiger Shark has found a true friend.  Gustavo Chiaramonte, the head of the Ichthyological Division and curator of the Ichthyology National Collection of the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences, leads a research team, supported by the Whitley Fund for Nature that is identifying and surveying shark and ray nurseries.  While the Sand Tiger and others continue to be heavily fished in Argentine waters, Chiaramonte hopes to use the data to work with local fishermen and national agencies.  Already, Argentina’s National Fisheries Authority has agreed to include shark nurseries in the Natural Protected Areas Law and to prohibit fishing at one sensitive coastal area.

Photo:  © Andy Murch / Elasmodiver.com for ARKive

The Golden Fleece

Today’s Endangered All-Star:  The Takin, a goat-antelope of the Himalayas.  There are four subspecies, including the Golden Takin, rumored to bear the precious fleece sought by Jason and the Argonauts.  But in the real world, all four subspecies are considered Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, with a probable decline of some 30% over the past several generations.  A heavily built alpine specialist, the Golden Takin is the national animal of Bhutan; this and the other subspecies occupy ranges that include western China, Tibet, northern Myanmar, and India.  Accurate population figures are hard to come by because the Himalayan habitat favored by these creatures is remote and inaccessible.  The IUCN suggests perhaps 5,000 Golden Takin (Budorcas taxicolor bedfordi) survive in China, along with several thousand of the related subspecies across its range.

Despite enjoying protected status in China, India, and Bhutan, the takin faces severe pressure from hunting:  Local people or poachers lie in wait at salt licks where the animals congregate.  Over a dozen nature reserves have been established to protect the Takin, and ten of those within Sichuan—intended to secure giant panda habitat—have also helped provide a safe haven for Takin.  Captive-breeding programs are also underway:  The Czech Republic’s oldest zoo, in the city of Liberec, recently welcomed another calf in January 2010, its sixth.  Two more are expected soon.

Photo:  © Xi Zhinong / naturepl.com for ARKive

The Rabbit Ecosystem

SAVE THEM ALL:  As a bookend to yesterday’s Endangered All-Star, the Iberian Lynx,  we focus today on its missing prey, the European Rabbit, whose drastic decline throughout Spain and Portugal has endangered not only the lynx but other predators as well.  The rabbit—not a rodent as popularly believed, but a lagomorph—evolved several million years ago on the Iberian Peninsula, then isolated by successive ice ages.  Rabbits played an important role in developing and maintaining what has been called “the rabbit ecosystem.”  Considered a keystone species for its “landscape modelling” capabilities, the rabbit’s digging and construction of elaborate warrens has a profound effect on plant communities, lizards, and a variety of invertebrates.  Indeed, the word “Spain” is thought to be derived from an early Phoenician phrase for “Land of the Rabbits.”

Paradoxically deemed a pest, particularly in Australia, where an overpopulation has endangered native species, such as the bilby, the European rabbit is now listed as “Near Threatened” on the IUCN’s Red List, reduced to as little as 5% of its former numbers, largely due to two viruses, myxtomatosis and rabbit haemorrhagic disease (although excessive hunting, poisoning, and habitat loss are also harmful).  Biologists intent on restoring the Iberian Lynx have zeroed in on the rabbit as a key element to its recovery:  The lynx evolved to predate primarily on the rabbit, with adult males requiring at least one rabbit a day and breeding females four or five.

Dan Ward, spokesperson for SOS Lynx, explains in a 2005 report, Reversing Rabbit Decline, that the rabbit is essential not only to its specialist predators, the lynx and the Iberian Imperial Eagle, but also to wild boar, Egyptian mongoose, red fox, wild cat, golden eagle, Bonelli’s eagle, and to a variety of snakes and stoats.  In recent years, half a million rabbits have been reintroduced in Spain and France; unfortunately, due to the prevalence of the two fatal diseases, this has failed to boost the wild populations.  Ward has called for a host of conservation actions:  better monitoring and planning, a reduction in hunting and agricultural impacts, and an intensive focus on protecting and restoring rabbit habitat.  Andrew Smith, Chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Lagomorph Specialist Group has said in Lynx News, “Without the rabbit, this ecosystem is likely to collapse.”

Photo:  Stanford News

THE WORLD’S MOST ENDANGERED CAT

The Iberian Lynx, today’s Endangered All-Star, is the world’s most critically endangered cat, with an estimated 84-143 adults left in the wild, reduced from 4,000 in 1960.  Should the species be lost, it will be the first feline extinction (aside from subspecies of tigers and lions) since the sabre-toothed cat, 10,000 years ago.

Only two known breeding populations survive in Andalucia, on the Iberian Peninsula, one in Spain’s Doñana National Park, a famous wetland reserve on the delta of the Guadalquivir River, and the other near Andújar-Cardeña, in the Sierra Morena.  Unfortunately, the populations are physically (and thus genetically) isolated from each other, increasing the risk to survival.  The species is now thought to be extinct in Portugal.  Genetically distinct from the Eurasian Lynx, the Iberian Lynx feeds almost entirely on rabbits, and the most significant threat—aside from loss of habitat—lies in the sharp reduction in the number of European rabbits due to overhunting and disease.  Thus, conservation of the Iberian Lynx—and the Iberian Imperial Eagle—rests heavily on conservation of the rabbit, something that has proven difficult due to degraded habitat.  Road kill has also been a significant problem for both the rabbit and the lynx.

Whatever hope is left lies in captive breeding programs and increased protection—and linkage—of the two remaining populations.  Beginning in 2005, with the birth of three lynx cubs in the captive breeding program in Doñana, these programs have shown promise and may contribute to future reintroductions in the wild.  Meanwhile, Flora and Fauna International is supporting a program to restore a corridor of suitable habitat across southwestern Spain and into Portugal, potentially providing a home for reintroduced or expanding populations of Iberian Lynx. For the latest information, see Iberia Nature and Iberian Lynx News.

AP Photo

Chiru

Today’s Endangered All-Star, the Chiru or Tibetan Antelope, once roamed the Tibetan Plateau by the thousands:  Only 50 years ago, a million Chiru grazed across the steppe.  But then came the shatoosh shawl, or ring shawl, made of a fabric so fine that an entire length of cloth could be drawn through a ring.  Hugely popular in western countries, the shawls adorned the shoulders of the wealthy, but the fur could not be taken unless the animal was killed.  Poachers shot their way through herd after herd, reducing the number to perhaps 75,000.

In 2002, a ban on the manufacturing of the fabric began to be enforced in India, and China, India, and Nepal have enacted laws protecting the species.  China, however, by opening a major new railway to Lhasa, the capitol of Tibet, may have dealt a severe blow:  By encouraging Han Chinese to settle throughout Tibet, and opening new routes of entry, the government has made it all to easy for poachers and traffickers to continue their trade.

To ensure that the Chiru could continue their migration across these new transportation corridors, a Chinese environmentalist, Xin Yang, formed a government-approved NGO—Greenriver—and planned a number of antelope-friendly underpasses passing beneath one of the new roads in the region. By 2005, 2,800 antelope were crossing the Qinghai-Tibetan road, a significant improvement from the year before.  Xin Yang is now working on a series of crossing structures for the accompanying railway.  In 2006 and again in 2008, Xin Yang received an award in support of his efforts from the UK-based Whitley Fund for Nature.  To donate to Whitley, to support Xin and other enterprising conservationists, visit their Donations Page.

Photo:  © Alain Dragesco-Joffe / Biosphoto

Dhole

The Asian Wild Dog, also known as the Dhole or Red Dog, is today’s Endangered All-Star, its population reduced to perhaps 2,500.  Like the African wild dog, the dhole is a spectacularly gifted hunter, capable of leaping high in the air to get a whiff of nearby prey.  A famous late-addition to Kipling’s Jungle Book, the dhole hunts cooperatively, driving fawns or spotted deer into a line of waiting pack members or even into the water; the dhole is reportedly a capable swimmer.  The species was once an important predator across Asia, common throughout India, China, Indonesia, southeast Asia, and the Russian far east.  Today, persecuted as vermin by villagers and farmers, poisoned in mass campaigns in Bhutan, the dhole survives only in greatly diminished and fragmented populations, listed as Endangered on the IUCN’s Red List.

Persecution and widespread habitat loss represent major threats:  There are reports from India of farmers clubbing pups to death at the den.  But the dhole also faces the loss of most of its prey base.  Coexisting with tiger, the dhole generally targets smaller prey, from hares to medium-sized deer, but many countries across the species’ former range have lost the full suite of ungulate species; those deer that remain may be present in greatly reduced numbers.  In India, the Project Tiger reserves have proven to be safe havens for dhole as well, but even those reserves have lately fallen on hard times as the government cut funding for ranger programs and poaching escalated.

Despite these growing threats and the sharply dwindling number of these fascinating social dogs, the dhole has never received the kind of concentrated conservation attention it clearly needs.  Even WWF, normally a trove of information on most endangered species, offers little concrete information about the dhole, but ARKive provides valuable photos, videos, and information.  According to one report, available at the Dhole Home Page, there is some hope that larger protected area networks being planned for Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam may provide more protection.

Photo:  © Nick Garbutt / www.nhpa.co.uk

Azores Bullfinch

Save Them All: The Azores Bullfinch is today’s Endangered All-Star, considered the most critically endangered passerine—or perching bird—in the world.  With a population estimated at 775 in 2008, the Azores Bullfinch is endemic to São Miguel Island in the Azores, an island archipelago in the North Atlantic and occupies little more than two square miles of one hillside.  The species was once common and considered a pest in fruit orchards, but after 1920, with widespread clearing of local laurel forest and the resultant takeover of much of the island by invasive species, the bird was driven at one point to as few as 30-40 pairs.

BirdLife International enlisted the Bullfinch in its Preventing Extinctions Program, which has sought “Species Champions” for all 189 critically endangered birds, to fund conservation work.  For the Azores Bullfinch, BirdWatch Magazine stepped in as sponsor and so far has raised nearly 52,000 pounds (approximately $81,000.)  The money is being spent on clearing invasive species, planting appropriate native food plants for the bird, and producing educational materials for local schools.  Ecotourism services are also being improved, for birders who want to visit the area. To donate to this effort, check out the BirdWatch JustGiving site.

Photo:  © Gonçalo M. Rosa for ARKive