SAVE THEM ALL: If only the Common Seahorse were actually common! In fact, this All-Star is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, coveted by practitioners of Chinese medicine, aquarium enthusiasts, and tourists who buy them as souvenirs. In 2001, an estimated 24 million seahorses were removed from the sea, an unsustainable take. Since 2004, the trade has been regulated by CITES, but illegal fishing still occurs, as well as accidental by-catch in shrimp-trawling. Moreover, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, and Norway have refused to sign on to the CITES listing. Habitat loss is also a problem, since many species live in shallow waters that may be disturbed by development and fishing.
Biologically, seahorses are among the most fascinating and unusual creatures on the planet. The Common seahorse is found in Hawaii, Southeast Asia, Japan, and Australia, but seahorses were once common in most of the world’s oceans. They are the only species in which the male experiences a “true” pregnancy, developing a brood pouch in which the female deposits her eggs, which then develop in a placental fluid. After nearly a month, the male then gives birth, during the full moon. Seahorse couples are also unusual in forming permanent monogamous bonds.
Since the mid-1990s, Dr. Amanda Vincent, a Canadian specialist in seahorses and related pipefishes and seadragons, has spearheaded Project Seahorse, a marine conservation organization dedicated to improving conservation. After Vincent exposed the enormity of the seahorse industry, Project Seahorse, headquartered at the Fisheries Center of the University of British Columbia, has helped set up marine sanctuaries, relocated confiscated live animals, and helped governments around the world set up responsible policies and law enforcement programs. In the Phillipines, the organization helped set up an alliance of independent fishermen to enforce fishing laws and paid school fees for children of fishing families who completed marine conservation apprenticeships.
To help seahorses around the world, buy only fish and seafood that have been caught in a sustainable manner: Check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch pocket guide, available online, as purse-sized brochures, and as apps for the iPhone and other devices. Never buy shells, dried seahorses, or other curios and souvenirs from the sea. Project Seahorse accepts donations for research and for its high school apprenticeship program, as well as donations of used dive equipment, field guides, and other educational supplies.
Photo: © Dan Burton / naturepl.com
SAVE THEM ALL: The Hyacinth Macaw, largest of all parrot species and today’s Endangered All-Star, retains a stronghold in Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands with a population of a few thousand. But this tantalizingly gorgeous bird is considered endangered overall, due to burning of forests and the pet-trade. Three other blue macaws have virtually disappeared: Arara azul pequena (Anodorhyncus glaucus) and Ararinha azul (Cyanopsitta spixii) are extinct or extinct in the wild; the Lear’s macaw, Anodorhynchus laeri, one of the rarest birds in the world, holds on with a population of a few dozen in the wild.
WWF and Conservation International support programs to save the Hyacinth Macaw. One scientist, Neiva Guedes, who created the Hyacinth Macaw Project in 1990, has carefully developed artificial nesting boxes for the birds: Specialists have recently discovered that the macaw relies on nest holes made by toucans, who are also the chief predator of their eggs. To support the hyacinth macaw and other endangered birds worldwide, never buy birds, feathers, or other wildlife products.
SAVE THEM ALL: While rafting on the Karnali River in Nepal, I was thrilled to come across this Gharial crocodile basking on a sandbank. Shy, retiring, and critically endangered, it is less mobile on land than the Nile crocodile of Africa and the saltwater crocs of Australia, and it is harmless to humans, its long, narrow snout incapable of taking large prey. It sups instead on fish, insects, and amphibians.
During the 1970s, conservation groups made concerted efforts to save the species, establishing hatcheries, incubating eggs, and releasing the young into major river systems in the subcontinent, but the efforts met with failure as overfishing, pollution, dam construction, and loss of habitat took their toll. A 2008 survey found only 81 crocs in Nepal’s great rivers. In February, 2009, the Gharial Crocodile Alliance reported that the WWF had attached radio-transmitters to the scutes (or tail appendages) of 14 gharials in order to diagnose the causes of their decline. Meanwhile, the Bergen Aquarium of Norway has donated $10,000 to faciliatate the GCA’s field projects.
Photo: Caroline Fraser
SAVE THEM ALL: This is the Year of the Tiger, in the Chinese zodiac and in conservation. This Endangered All Star is waiting on us to make a commitment but cannot wait any longer: Perhaps as few as 1500 survive in the wild. The World Bank and the Global Environment Facility have launched a global initiative to save the species, and WWF is making the tiger a top priority this year. That’s a good start, but we need to see a long term and consistent program for tiger protection.
Hopefully, the governments of India and China will wake up to this urgent need. In recent years, India has failed to support its once-great system of tiger reserves with appropriate funding for rangers and law enforcement; China has failed to stem the illegal trade in tiger parts. Belinda Wright, head of Wildlife Protection Society of India and a tireless campaigner against the poaching trade, recently issued a direct plea: “If China continues to ignore this growing international pressure, then I believe we will have lost the battle to save the tiger.” We cannot lose the tiger: Ecologically, aesthetically, morally, the tiger is essential to the world and the wild.
Photo: Save the Tiger Fund
SAVE THEM ALL: Today’s Endangered All-Star deserves a break from the sushi scene: The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Wildlife Fund, and a host of conservation organizations agree that there should be an immediate trade ban on bluefin tuna. This critically endangered ocean carnivore is so overfished that populations have declined by over 90% since the 1970s. The good news? CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, is now poised to suspend the trade.
Photograph by Brian J. Skerry
SAVE THEM ALL: Topping our Endangered Species All-Stars list in the plant realm is the Wollemi pine. Long thought extinct, the Wollemi pine—not a true pine but a member of the Araucariaceae family, related to the Monkey Puzzle and Norfolk Island pines—was rediscovered by keen-eyed parks officer David Noble in 1994 in a remote rainforest gorge in the Blue Mountains, only 125 miles from Sydney. Fewer than 100 mature trees exist in the wild.
An evergreen tree with pendulous branches and knobby bark, the Wollemi pine is now listed as critically endangered on the IUCN’s Red List and is the focus of a unique propagation program designed to save the species through commercial and ornamental plantings. If you would like to grow one of these rare, beautiful, and ancient trees, learn more or order a seedling at the Wollemi Pine North America website. We also recommend a wonderful book, The Wollemi Pine: The Incredible Discovery of a Living Fossil from the Age of the Dinosaurs, by James Woodford.
SAVE THEM ALL: Today’s Endangered All-Star is the Tasmanian Devil, desperately in need of saving, the largest living marsupial carnivore since the extinction of the “Tassie Tiger,” or thylacine, in 1935. Over the past decade, populations on the island of Tasmania have plummeted by 60% as a virulent and transmissible cancer—passed from animal to animal by biting—has spread.
Hope may be on the way: on 1 January 2010, news broke that researchers had completed gene sequencing of the cancer, identifying a unique type of gene marker which may allow scientists to develop a vaccine or other treatments.
Pressure on the population has been so severe that a study conducted by Dr. Menna Jones, wildlife management officer with the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program, found that female devils are breeding within a year of birth; normally, they breed at the age of two. “The devils are under intense selection for early breeding,” Jones says, “because the disease is 100 per cent fatal. Any devil that’s successful in breeding more than once is putting out more of its genes into the pool of survivors.” Early breeding may be facilitated by the devils’ having greater access to preferred foods—kangaroo and wombat carrion, as well as birds, frogs, and insects—as a result of the population crash.
Want to help? Visit Save the Tasmanian Devil and donate to support further research.
SAVE THEM ALL: Announcing the Endangered Species All-Stars, a collectible series of trading cards & blog entries highlighting the world’s rarest and most endangered species. Each day in 2010, iWild will focus on another species of plant or animal in celebration of the International Year of Biodiversity. Up today: The Maui parrotbill.
Raising Hawaii, a blog on Hawai’i’s science and environment, reports that the Maui parrotbill appears to be holding its own or perhaps even increasing. Reduced to a tiny fragment of its original wet forest habitat, the parrotbill’s numbers—around 500—appear to have remained stable for the past 30 years, thanks for the Nature Conservancy’s Waikamoi Preserve. The Conservancy removed feral pigs and other alien and invasive species from the 5,230 acre preserve, and Dr. Dusti Becker, an ornithologist, project coordinator for the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project, and leader of a team that recently conducted a survey of the population, credits those efforts as the deciding factor in stabilizing the species: “At Waikamoi, my sense is that it’s a growing population, fundamentally because of forest recovery.”
The Maui parrotbill offers hope for other projects dedicated to saving endangered species at a time when news is often grave. 2009 was full of extraordinary discoveries of nearly 300 new species of plants—including enormous rainforest trees, fungi, and seven new species of wild coffee—and animals, from a giant rat the size of a puppy in Papua New Guinea to new butterflies, snakes, and pygmy chameleons in a remote forest in Mozambique. May we dedicate this year—and every year—to saving the planet we all share: our natural, wild home.
“Enforcement does not exist.” That’s the damning conclusion of Endangered Species International’s year-long undercover investigation of bushmeat in the Republic of the Congo, also known as Congo-Brazzaville. The investigators found that as many as two western lowland gorillas—their bodies dismembered into hand-sized portions sold for around US$6—were being sold each week in Pointe Noire, the second largest city in the country. “We estimate that 4% of the population is being killed each month, or 50% in a year,” ESI’s president, Pierre Fidenci, told BBC Earth News. “It is a lot.” Should it continue, poaching in the Kouilou region could wipe out gorilla populations there within a decade. ESI plans to work with poachers to provide alternative sources of income while promoting the creation of a gorilla reserve.
Given that poaching—exacerbated by logging roads cut deep into remote areas— has posed a significant and well-known threat for years across western and central Africa, it might be time to ask why a more concerted, effective effort has not been made by governments and international NGOs to address it.
Photo: ESI
Macho B, the 16-year-old jaguar sighted in the American southwest several times over the past decade, has been euthanized by the Arizona Game and Fish Department after being caught in one of the department’s own traps. The animal had been captured and fitted with a radio collar by Game and Fish only last month. Conservation organizations working for protection of the jaguar and its transborder habitat had expressed concerns about the collaring, fearing that it might lead to the animal’s death. The cause is not yet known, but Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity declared that Macho B’s death is a blow to recovery of the species in the region and “a major setback for the jaguar, particularly given that the border wall is making it much harder for jaguars to reoccupy their ancestral homes in the southern United States,”
Photo: Arizona Game and Fish Department
Great news: The Obama Administration has suspended plans to remove protections for the gray wolf provided under the Endangered Species Act. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the delisting plan, part of a last-ditch effort by the Bush Administration, could have resulted in the shooting of hundreds of wolves in the Northern Rockies.
Sad news: A female Mexican gray wolf, one of the last of her kind, a critically endangered subspecies once found throughout the southwest, has been illegally shot and dumped alongside highway 260, near Pinetop, Arizona. The female was a member of the Moonshine Pack and a part of the controversial Mexican Wolf Reintroduction Project, run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Although the Project aimed to have 100 Mexican wolves in the wild by the tenth anniversary in 2008, there are currently only 50. So far, twenty-eight wolves have been shot illegally.
Above, a Mexican gray wolf in captivity at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson, Arizona. Photograph by Caroline Fraser
BBC News | “Rarest rhinoceros wrecks camera”
“The world’s rarest rhinoceros has been captured on film by a specially installed camera in the jungles of Java, Indonesia. But the female rhino, which was accompanied by a calf, promptly charged the camera, sending it flying. The animals are at severe risk of extinction, with only 60-70 animals left in the wild.”
Above: the Javan rhino mother charges the infrared camera, an attack that left researchers “baffled.”
In earlier camera-attack news: A tiger in central Sumatra recently went on a ten-day spree of destruction that left three of WWF’s jungle camera traps in pieces.
