iWILD: biodiversity / wildlife / activism

One Left You can’t get more endangered than Today’s...

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:59:18 -0700

One Left

You can’t get more endangered than Today’s All-Star. A modest shrub of the coffee family, Café Marron was reduced to a single wild individual on the island of Rodrigues, part of the Mascarene Islands and a dependency of the nation of Mauritius. In 1980, a student sent out on an assignment to gather interesting foliage brought back a specimen: His teacher recognized it as a plant first discovered in 1877 and assumed to be extinct shortly thereafter. Botanists who rushed to find the shrub found it in a sad state, gnawed by goats or cattle and suffering from disease. Kew Gardens swung into action, trying to nurse cuttings to bear fruit. Many frustrating years passed, until horticultural specialists at Kew’s micropropagation unit managed to coax one to reproduce, a story well-told in The Guardian.

Meanwhile, back on Rodrigues, the last survivor has been surrounded with several layers of fencing: Locals covet its leaves and branches, hoping that it might yield miraculous cures. But it is no longer alone. Inside the multiple corrugated fences, eleven little Café Marron plants, transplanted from Kew, have taken root.

Photo: Wolfgang Stuppy

Not Gone Yet! From Australia comes the great news that...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:40:04 -0700

Not Gone Yet!

From Australia comes the great news that Today’s Endangered All-Star, the Yellow-Spotted Bell Frog—while not really yellow and purportedly sounding more like a motorcycle than a bell—is still with us. While specialists had feared that the species, not seen since 1973, may have succumbed to a fungus that wreaked havoc on Aussie frogs, it has in fact made the great leap from Extinct to Critically Endangered.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that government researcher Luke Pearce, while searching for a native species of fish in 2008, stumbled instead across the missing frogs: ‘We heard this bell frog call,” Pearce told the Herald. ”[We] went down looking for it and actually nearly stepped on it. It was quite amazing. This frog was just waiting there to be found.” Pearce recently returned to the area in New South Wales to confirm the find, and he was able to count around 100 in the area. He also brought back six tadpoles to start a breeding program at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo. While the species is not out of the woods yet, this surviving population may exhibit resistance to the fungus, a characteristic that might allow successful reintroduction throughout its habitat.

Photo: AP

OBAMA TO SAGE GROUSE: DROP DEAD “Warranted but...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:21:00 -0700

OBAMA TO SAGE GROUSE: DROP DEAD

“Warranted but precluded”: That was the word this week from Ken Salazar on Today’s Endangered All-Star, the Greater Sage Grouse, a species that the US Fish and Wildlife Service now says deserves listing on the ESA but is going to have to take a back seat to all the other endangered species that Salazar’s agency has failed to list. (The grouse joins some 270 species on the ESA backlog). Prompted by a lawsuit filed in 2006 by the Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project, the government acknowledged that listing was “warranted” but argued that voluntary measures taken by western states have stabilized the species decline.

The problem with that argument is that the decline has been so drastic and precipitous—the birds’ numbers have fallen by over ninety percent in recent decades and the size of their habitat cut in half—that these spectacular birds, which return over and over again to the same lekking grounds to engage in their elaborate mating dance, need more than the tolerance of a few drilling companies. Jon Marvel, of WWP, claims that pressure from oil and natural gas interests, as well as from the wind energy industry influenced this decision. Katie Fite, the group’s biodiversity director, said in a press release: “The only way sage-grouse will survive is if large areas of the sagebrush sea are left undeveloped, and chronic disturbances like livestock grazing are removed from those areas. This sad delay will make it much more difficult to effectively conserve this magnificent bird.” The group is now reviewing the decision to determine if the Interior Department is breaking the law.

After adding only two species to the ESA list in 2009, the USFWS announced a flurry of new listings at the beginning of 2010, but—interestingly—the listings seem designed to avoid controversy within the U.S.: All of them concern foreign species, including a number of South American birds, such as the Galapagos Petrol. During an election year, apparently, American birds will just have to get in line. Some politicians begrudge them even that. Utah congressman, Republican Jason Chaffetz, was quoted in the New York Times, saying: “The only good place for a sage grouse to be listed is on the menu of a French bistro. It does not deserve federal protection, period.”

For those who feel otherwise, there is a beautiful video of the sage grouse dance at the WWP website. And Trevor Herriot’s Grass Notes blog offers some brilliant photographs of the lekking grounds at Canada’s Grasslands National Park, as well as information about this naturalist’s new book, Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds.

Photo: John Carlson

A Gentle Giant The gentle Baird’s Tapir, Today’s...

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:59:45 -0700

A Gentle Giant

The gentle Baird’s Tapir, Today’s Endangered All-Star, inhabits the murky semi-darkness of Central American jungles, snoozing in muddy wallows during the stiflingly hot days, browsing along well-trodden trails by night, eating fruits, seeds, twigs, and foliage. Too large for most predators—only a jaguar, mountain lion, or a full-size American crocodile could attack an adult—the Tapir harms no one, except when people build homes and gardens in the species’ remaining habitat, luring the animals to raid their produce. Yet the Tapir Specialist Group estimates that there are probably fewer than 5,500 left in the wild. Extinct in El Salvador, there are perhaps a thousand each in Guatemala, Panama, and Costa Rica; 1,500 in Mexico; a few hundred in Honduras and Colombia.

Every year, as more of the forest is lost and poachers shoot these long-lived and slow-to-reproduce animals, the population declines. The IUCN reports that in Costa Rica, there are hunting clubs devoted solely to shooting tapir. While such hunting is illegal, the reserves and protected areas where tapir survive are remote and poorly patrolled. In Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park, the last major rainforest preserve on Central America’s Pacific Coast, the country has often run out of funds to pay its few park rangers, allowing poachers to decimate the peccary population, which, in turn, severely affected the park’s jaguars.

When I was there in 2007, a local guide, Luis Angulo Angulo, told me that his father-in-law, in a village near the park, had killed a tapir that ate his potato crop. While he was fined ($575, an enormous sum), these kinds of management and law enforcement issues (discussed further in my book, Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution) plague conservation throughout Central America. Unless governments and organizations like The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International find consistent, practical, permanent solutions to these problems, the Baird’s Tapir will likely disappear.

Photo: © Granada Wild / www.osfimages.com

Too Tasty For Its Own Good Sought after for centuries, described...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:53:29 -0700

Too Tasty For Its Own Good

Sought after for centuries, described as “the most delicious mushroom” of Sicily, the White Ferula or Funcia di Basiliscu grows only in mountain pastures among Cachrys ferulacea, a plant of the celery family known as Basiliscu. The Sicilian taste for this fungus has rendered it critically endangered: It survives only in small, fragmented patches at an altitude of around 4,000 to 6,500 feet.

Fetching an enormous price—50 to 70 Euros per kilo (around $70 and up)—the mushroom has also attracted the attention of conservationists. Although technically not a plant, the White Ferula appears in The Top 50 Mediterranean Island Plants, a book-length profile of endangered plant species of the region. Dr. Giuseppe Venturella at the University of Palermo is coordinating conservation efforts: better antipoaching efforts to keep wild specimens from being picked in Madonie National Park, inoculation of the host plant in the wild to increase the population, and commercial cultivation to ensure that Sicilians may continue to enjoy its flavor at local restaurants.

Photo: Creative Commons, IUCN

Everybody Loves Abalone Human, fishes, otters: Everybody loves...

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:56:40 -0700

Everybody Loves Abalone

Human, fishes, otters: Everybody loves abalone. But Today’s Endangered All-Star, the Black Abalone, has experienced a horrific decline, due to overharvesting and Withering Syndrome, caused by a bacteria that obstructs the animal’s digestion, leading to wasting away and eventual death. The Syndrome has wiped out some 90% of Black Abalone populations along the Pacific Coast, with all of California’s remaining healthy populations—including some that seem resistant to Withering Syndrome—lying within the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Other threats include global warming (higher ocean temperatures cause mortality in abalone), coastal development, and poaching.

In response, the IUCN has listed the species as Critically Endangered, the National Marine Fisheries Service has declared it a “Species of Special Concern,” and the California Department of Fish and Game has developed an Abalone Recovery and Management Plan. The Plan calls for research on resistance to the disease and, eventually, the culturing abalone for “out-planting.” Meanwhile, SCAN, the Sonoma County Abalone Network, keeps an eagle eye out for abalone poachers, encouraging their arrest on felony charges, the confiscation of their fishing gear, and the levying of heavy fines for even one abalone over the limit.

Photo: © Steve Murray / MARINe

You Beauty!—A Tale of Tiny Rewilding Today’s...

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:22:10 -0700

You Beauty!—A Tale of Tiny Rewilding

Today’s Endangered All-Star, the Dark Bordered Beauty Moth presents a fascinating opportunity for rewilding in the U.K. The Beauty is limited to a few tiny patches of habitat in northern England and Scotland, largely because of the decline of aspen. A priority species listed in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan, this is one of several invertebrates destined for a captive-breeding and reintroduction program. According to a recent article in The Guardian, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Butterfly Conservation are behind the plan: Few things are as important to the perpetuation of birds as a biodiverse landscape.

To expand viable habitat, the RSPB is undertaking to restore and replant core areas of aspen and to seek connectivity between aspen stands. Along with Butterfly Conservation, it hopes to release captive-bred Beauties on a reserve in Strathspey, in Scotland’s northern highlands, by next year. Other species slated for reintroduction include the Short-haired Bumblebee (extinct in the UK since 2000), reintroduced from a New Zealand population, and the Pine Hoverfly.

This is not the first case of invertebrate rewilding in the UK. The Large Blue Butterfly has already been resurrected: From extinction in 1979, the Large Blue was brought back by way of eggs from a colony in Sweden, after extraordinary pains taken by a British entomologist. Jeremy Thomas, professor of ecology at the University of Oxford, spent years deciphering the life cycle of the Large Blue, laying trails of Battenburg cake for wary insects. He eventually discovered that this strange species was dependent on a relationship with an ant: Deploying a special fluid and singing persuasively, the Large Blue grub hoodwinks its host, Myrmica sabuleti, masquerading as the grub of a queen ant. Once inside the nest, Large Blue caterpillars dine out on ant grubs all winter, emerging from the nest in June as butterflies. The ant, however, requires grass neatly trimmed by rabbits, cattle, or sheep. Long grass creates a microclimate too cool by 2-3 degrees Centigrade, and the decline of both rabbits and livestock had spelled doom for the ant and its flashy guest. Few stories illustrate so clearly the complex interrelationships and dependencies that have evolved between species. Few suggest more forcefully how complicated it can be to restore them.

Photo: © Roy Leverton

Hello Kitty It’s the largest natural predator left in the...

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:29:00 -0700

Hello Kitty

It’s the largest natural predator left in the UK, but it’s no tame tabby: It’s Felis silvestris grampia, the Scottish subspecies of the European wild cat, Wildkatze, El Gato Montés, Le Chat Sauvage. Still hanging on in pockets of wilderness in northern and western Scotland, today’s Endangered All-Star, the Scottish Wild Cat is considered Vulnerable by the IUCN, subject to hybridization with feral domestic cats throughout much of its remaining range, persecuted by farmers, snared by trappers, run over by cars. Last year, when an elderly retired art teacher in the town of Alness was scratched, possibly by a hybridized Wild Cat, a new charity arose to defend the species: The Scottish Wildcat Association, which supports captive-breeding programs throughout the U.K. and, along with other conservation groups, is working to ban snares in Scotland, set for rabbits and foxes but lethal to Wild Cats, badgers, otters, and other native wildlife. Learn more about the campaign to ban snares and how to identify a truly Wild Cat.

Owl Trouble Today’s Endangered All-Star, Blakiston’s...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:41:23 -0700

Owl Trouble

Today’s Endangered All-Star, Blakiston’s Fish Owl, highlights the costs of intensive—often illegal—logging across Siberia and northeast Asia. Like the spotted owl, infamous in the American west for sparking a reassessment of logging, the enormous fish owl prefers old growth forests for nesting; it is also dependent on wild riverine corridors for hunting. Its habitat has been hammered by logging, development, and the construction of dams, and the species now holds on in fragmented populations, with 30-35 pairs of the Hokkaido subspecies and perhaps 100-135 pairs of the subspecies in the Russian Far East. To make matters worse, owls are caught in snares set for furbearing mammals; hunters shoot them for food and out of a belief that the owls spoil the skins of trapped animals.

The Blakiston Fish Owl Project, in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society and other partners, is working hard to collect important information about the species and its needs. In 2007, the project began tagging birds with backpack VHF transmitters and is using the data collected to create a species conservation plan and to map potential protected areas in Primorsky Krai, the far eastern Maritime Province of Russia. The project is also dedicated to providing local people with accurate information about the owls and the wider ecosystem, collaborating with Russian NGOs such as Amur-Ussuri Center for Avian Biodiversity, the Phoenix Fund (active in Amur tiger and Amur leopard conservation), and the Uragus Ecological Club. To support this work, the Project sells unique fish owl ringtones as well as shirts, mugs, stickers, and postcards. And we have to say, they’re pretty cool.

Photo: Pete Morris for www.wildimages-phototours.com/about.cfm

“A bad earthquake at once destroys the oldest...

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:28:27 -0700

“A bad earthquake at once destroys the oldest associations: the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, has moved beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid; one second of time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never have created.”

So wrote Charles Darwin on February 20, 1835, of the great Concepcion earthquake he experienced during the voyage of the Beagle. Resting in a wooded area near the shore, Darwin was unharmed but nonetheless greatly affected by what he saw in the nearby town of Valdivia: “There,” he wrote, “the scene was more awful.”

Just a few weeks before, on an island off the coast, Darwin had come upon a curious tame fox sitting on the rocks, “so intently absorbed” in watching the ship’s officers surveying the coast, “that I was able, by quietly walking up behind, to knock him on the head with my geological hammer.” That unfortunate creature became the first collected specimen of his species and was put on display in the museum of the Zoological Society.

Today, this Endangered All-Star—which prefers the old growth of the temperate rainforest—is running out of room and time. With a population of around 250, the majority of which lives on Chiloé Island, the species is critically endangered by feral dogs (which may spread zoonotic disease and attack the fox directly) and poaching. The Darwin’s Fox Research and Conservation Project is dedicated to addressing these threats and to securing larger and better-managed protected areas.

Here are several ways to contribute to earthquake relief efforts in Chile:

Text the word “Chile” to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross
Donate online to the American Red Cross
Donate online to AmeriCares

Are We Eating the Rainforest?

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:29:00 -0700

Andrew Mitchell, in his latest op-ed for the BBC’s Green Room, “Big Business Leaves Big Forest Footprints,” says yes. Everytime we indulge in a fast-food burger or pig out at home on bacon and eggs and bread made with “vegetable oil” or “soy lecithin” or any of the millions of processed foods made with these ubiquitous cheap ingredients, we’re eating the forests that were felled to plow monoculture fields or graze livestock. There are three problems with continuing down this road, Mitchell says:

“Firstly, evolution is being changed forever. Most of us, sadly, can live with that. Secondly, burning tropical forests drives global warming faster than the world’s entire transport sector; there will be no solution to climate change without stopping deforestation. Finally, losing forests may undermine food, energy and climate security.”

Well, I can’t live with it. I found Mitchell’s piece sobering—indeed, deeply distressing—but it sent me into my kitchen cupboards and refrigerator shelves looking for evidence of how I’m eating rainforests. I wasn’t happy with what I found.

Time to make some changes.

Sad News for Conservationists and Crocodilians The Wildlife...

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:48:37 -0700

Sad News for Conservationists and Crocodilians

The Wildlife Conservation Society has announced the death of senior conservation scientist Dr. John Thorbjarnarson, 52, who died of malaria on February 14, 2010 in India. Dr. Thorbjarnarson was an expert on crocodilians, snakes, turtles, and other reptiles and had worked throughout his career to save critically endangered species such as the Orinoco Crocodile in Venezuela, the Cuban Crocodile, and the Chinese Alligator. When a Yangtze River valley survey he organized revealed that the Chinese Alligator had dwindled to fewer than 150 individuals, he alerted the Chinese government, which responded with a dedicated effort that included support for captive-breeding and restoration of habitat.

A John Thorbjarnarson Memorial Fund has been set up by WCS, and donations can also be made to the IUCN Crocodile Specialist Group’s Chinese Alligator Fund to support today’s Endangered All-Star. Dr. Thorbjarnarson’s latest book, The Chinese Alligator: Ecology, Behavior, Conservation and Culture, will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press in April.

Photo: Fritz Geller-Grimm

Avoid the Curse of the Ancient Mariner Coleridge’s...

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:35:29 -0700

Avoid the Curse of the Ancient Mariner

Coleridge’s nightmarish poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” describes the havoc wreaked upon a ship and its crew after an old sailor shoots an albatross and is condemned to wander the earth, zombielike, haranguing hapless passersby with his endless tale. The moral? “loveth best / All things great and small.” In other words, leave the albatross alone!

Sadly, today’s mariners did not get the Coleridge memo: Their longlines and factory trawlers have steeply reduced numbers of today’s Endangered All-Star, the beautiful Black-browed Albatross. Based on current losses, an estimated 65% of the species will be wiped out over the next 65 years. To reduce needless bird mortality—one fishing boat can snag and drown dozens of seabirds on a single trip, and Namibia’s longline industry alone hauls in 30,000 birds a year—Birdlife International is funding an Albatross Task Force. In Brazil, Chile, South Africa, Namibia, Uruguay, and Argentina, Task Force personnel are spreading the word about how to reduce bird bycatch through the use of streamer lines to frighten off birds and weights to sink longlines. The industry could also clean up its act: Releasing longlines at night and reducing bait and other waste would save albatross lives.

Three-quarters of the world’s remaining Black-browed Albatross nest in the Falkland Islands off of Argentina, in spectacular nesting sites where they construct tall pillar-like nests, used year after year, of mud, guano, and seaweed among tussock grass on the islands’ spectacular cliffs. Falklands Conservation, which works for many threatened species on the islands, has published helpful pdf guides for landowners and the fishing industry.

You too can avoid the curse of the Ancient Mariner: Refuse to buy fish (especially Chilean seabass or Patagonian toothfish) caught on longlines: Consult the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch guide while shopping or eating out.

Photo: © Hanne & Jens Eriksen / naturepl.com

Can You Live for 9-10 Months Without Drinking? I didn’t...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:42:00 -0700

Can You Live for 9-10 Months Without Drinking?

I didn’t think so. But the Scimitar-horned Oryx, today’s Endangered All-Star, can. You can’t get more endangered: This species is considered Extinct in the Wild, the last stop on the IUCN’s Red List before total annihilation. With its wide desert-adapted hooves, perfect for trekking across sand dunes, this oryx once roamed sub-desert steppe grasslands in and around the Sahara in large migratory herds, from Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt in the north to Mauritius and Sudan in the south, feeding on fruits, leaves, and grasses. Heavy hunting by Europeans in the 19th century—for trophy horns, meat, and the animal’s heavy, valuable hide—took a severe toll. World War II and subsequent regional civil wars increased the hunting pressure, until the species was considered extinct across its range by 1999.

Happily, however, the oryx survives in captivity: There are captive herds held in fenced protected areas in Tunisia, Morocco, and Senegal. Reintroductions are planned in all of those countries, as well as in Niger. There are also privately owned herds, of up to several thousand, in the United Arab Emirates and in Texas. Israel has a small group as well, although it lies outside the species’ natural range. The Smithsonian’s National Zoo, which donated nine oryx to Tunisia, reported in 2008 that the captive herd would be kept in a 20,000 fenced area in Dghoumes National Park for about a decade, or until its numbers have recovered enough—and the herd has acclimated sufficiently—to return to the wild.

Photo: © Esao Hashimoto/AA / www.osfimages.com

LOVE YOUR UNCHARISMATIC MICROFAUNA OK, so a fly may not seem all...

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:56:53 -0700

LOVE YOUR UNCHARISMATIC MICROFAUNA

OK, so a fly may not seem all that loveable compared to ultra-furry pandas or cute baby elephants. But this stonefly is doubtless a critical part of its high-altitude glacial stream ecosystem. Little is known of its life cycle or role, but it may be almost too late to find out. Listed as critically imperiled on the NatureServe database (where it is also known as “Meltwater Lednian Stonefly”), the species is found only in minuscule populations within Glacier National Park in Montana, at Frying Pan Creek in Mt. Rainier National Park in Washington, and in one site along the Waterton River in Alberta, Canada. Entirely dependent on well-oxygenated glacial runoff, the species may be wiped out by rising temperatures and the melting of glaciers: Glacier National Park is expected to be glacier-free by 2030. One estimate reported recently by National Geographic has moved that date up, to 2020. The Mist Forestfly may have only a decade left.

Only organized global action on climate change can save glacier-dependent species like this one, so WildEarth Guardians is trying to force the government’s hand with its BioBlitz, 36 days of filing petitions and lawsuits to demand ESA listings for our most endangered species, regardless of whether they’re furry or huggable. “The uncharismatic microfauna deserve protection as much, and sometimes more, than the megafauna,” US Fish & Wildlife Service spokesperson Ann Carlson told the Missoulian. “They play a role in an ecosystem. Pull one away and sometimes the whole thing can collapse. So we don’t distinguish based on size, or how popular it is.” So far, the Obama Administration has been agonizingly slow to act on ESA listings. If they do nothing, it may be all over for this unique glacial insect.

Photo: Joe Gerisch

POOR DEVIL Powerful and intimidating though it is, today’s...

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:26:38 -0700

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.

Clouded Leopard on the Menu According to the Smithsonian,...

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:52:00 -0700

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.

“The Most Melodious Wild Musick I Have Ever...

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:32:00 -0700

“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.

CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS TALLEST TREES ON EARTH An important new...

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 14:14:00 -0700

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...

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:29:00 -0700

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