MEET THE TITI
New Titi Monkey discovered in Brazil’s Amazon: Find photos and an excellent write-up at Mongabay. This species could be one of 8.7 million on earth, according to a new study in PloS Biology.
Photo © Júlio Dalponte at Mongabay.
Another fantastic photo by Rhett A. Butler at Mongabay.
Mongabay reports that today’s Endangered All-Star, the Palila, is facing extinction. Since 2003, the population has declined from 4,400 to 1,200, a loss of almost 75%, thanks to introduced sheep and goats consuming their food plants and feral cats consuming them. The USFWS is now erecting fencing to save remaining critical habitat for the species.
Turtle Daze
Freshwater turtles are in peril, according to a recent assessment by Conservation International, covered by the BBC (see link below) and Mongabay. The saddest news of all concerns today’s Endangered All-Star: There are only four of these gentle giants left, and they’re getting on in years.
“Are Lizards Toast?”
That’s the title of a commentary in Science—and a terrifying study that accompanies it—about the wave of extinctions decimating lizards, like today’s Endangered All-Star, on five continents. Forty percent of lizard species could vanish by 2080, and it’s entirely down to global warming, not habitat loss. Although lizards are clever at evading heat—retiring to the shade—they can’t get enough active hunting in to keep their strength up. They then fail to reproduce. Grim news.
There are good assessments on Mongabay, the BBC and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Wars & Hornbills
No one ever forgets their first hornbill. I once got to know a persistent young Von Der Decken’s Hornbill north of Mt. Kenya who was attracted to the morning fruit plate: Bold, curious, possessed of a brilliant thieving intelligence, the hornbills are as thrilling and colorful as parrots in both plumage and personality. For hornbill-lovers, there’s a wonderful new interview on Mongabay: As part of the website’s run-up to the 5th Frugivore and Seed Dispersal International Symposium in June, Jeremy Hance talks with Shumpei Kitamura, plant ecologist and seed dispersal specialist on the importance of hornbills in Asian forests. They act, Kitamura says, as “mobile links,” carrying seeds between fragmented or logged areas, helping to re-seed, diversify, and restore forests.
That’s why the decline of the Sulu Hornbill, today’s Endangered All-Star, is especially distressing. With a population limited to perhaps 40 on the mountain range of a single island, Tawitawi, in the Philippines, the Sulu Hornbill is holding out against logging, deforestation of nearby islands where it might once have found refuge, and a disruptive insurgency that prevents conservationists from protecting its last home. If you or your institution can help, the Sulu Hornbill needs a BirdLife Species Champion who can raise funds to turn things around: BirdLife International estimates that it costs 20,000 pounds a year to save each critically endangered species.
Photo: Desmond Allen, Wild Bird Club of the Philippines
“This Is a Crisis Situation of the Highest Magnitude”
That’s how Rick Hudson, president of Turtle Survival Alliance, described the plight of the Radiated Tortoise, today’s Endangered All-Star, in an article at Mongabay. Critically endangered, the species may become extinct within 20 years. The Radiated Tortoise once strode Madagascar in the millions but has been poached out of parks and its native spiny forests due to the recent political coup and a severe drought. These twin disasters have plunged the island’s people and wildlife into chaos as parks are stripped of endemic flora and fauna and agriculture fails.
Read Rick Hudson’s report on what his team has discovered and donate or become a member of Turtle Survival Alliance, which works to help demoralized and underpaid park staff.
Photo: Chris Shepard for TRAFFIC
There Ought to be a Horror Movie…
…about Today’s Endangered All-Star, Rajah Brooke’s Pitcher Plant. Described in 1859 by Joseph Dalton Hooker, one of the great botanists of the 19th century and a close friend of Charles Darwin, the species was named after James Brooke, the first White Rajah of Sarawak. Found on the island of Borneo, this enormous pitcher plant grows only on high slopes of 13,435-foot Mount Kinabalu and neighboring Mount Tambuyukon, in Kinabalu National Park in Malaysia. The plant is found only on so-called “serpentine” soils, high in heavy metals (nickel, chromium) and lacking in essential nutrients like nitrogen. Such soils generally are too toxic for plant life, so this pitcher plant clearly evolved to fill a very special niche indeed.
One of the most fascinating of the carnivorous plants, Nepenthes rajah, a vining plant like many of these species, develops enormous, lidded pitcher-like traps that fill with water and digestive fluid, attracting insects, lizards, and possibly even mice and birds. They fall in, drown, and are slowly digested. Evidence suggests that these plants may have evolved in tandem with other species, a mutually-beneficial relationship known as “mutualism.” New research has just revealed that Nepenthes rajah may have evolved its large pitchers in just such a relationship with tree shrews: The pitchers perfectly accommodate the shrews, which feed on the plant’s nectar, leaving feces behind; the plant then absorbs the shrews’ leavings. For more on this extraordinary discovery, see the BBC’s “Giant meat-eating plants prefer to eat tree shrew poo.”
Check out the wonderful gallery of photographs of Nepenthes species at Mongabay, or visit a great collection of pitcher plants in person at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers at Golden Gate Park. National Geographic also features carnivorous plants in its April, 2010 issue.
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
Malagasy Giant Jumping Rat
It’s Rodent Week: The largest rodent in Madagascar, the Malagasy giant jumping rat might be mistaken for a rabbit, hopping around the dry tropical forest floor on its hind legs and living in burrows underground. But like so many of this island nation’s unique, endemic creatures, the giant jumping rat, or Votsovotsa, is threatened. The rat is described as endangered on the IUCN Red List, and its remaining habitat along the island’s west coast has been split into two dwindling and isolated patches by deforestation and development. Its total range now covers a mere 77 square miles, and a related species went extinct several thousand years ago. The population has been driven to historic lows, probably below 8,000, by feral dogs, and a recent study predicted that the species would be extinct in the wild within 24 years unless measures were taken to stop it.
In 1990, however, Gerald Durrell began a captive-breeding program with five individuals. The giant jumping rats are monogamous, staying with their mates for life, or until a mate is lost to a predator, often a fossa (a cat-like member of the civet family, also endemic to Madagascar) or a Madagascar ground boa: The rats routinely block up the entrances to their burrows with dirt and leaves to discourage entrance by snakes or other predators. In captivity, however, they have done well. In addition to the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, there are now a dozen institutions with successful captive-breeding programs. An excellent place to see the species in Madagascar is Kirindy, a protected area and research center on the western coast. For more on this distinctive rat, see “The Giant Jumping Rat, Another Peculiarity from Madagascar,” by Rhett Butler of Mongabay.
Photo: Piotr Lukasik, WildMadagascar.org
