My Environment

Labels: extinction, Leadbeater's possum, Logging

Save the Leadbeater's possum from extinction petition
"Victoria's faunal emblem, the critically endangered Leadbeater's possum, is going extinct due to wildfires and pulp logging. Since 1998, the tiny possums population has declined by 80% from 5000 to a meagre 1000 left in the wild today. The Victorian government logs the habitat of the Leadbeater's possum and sells it to Nippon owned Australian Paper to make Reflex office papers."

We, the taxpayers, subsidise this logging here in Victoria. 1000 is an optimistic estimation for surviving Leadbeater's possum numbers - logging the remaining stands of living trees, along with "salvage logging" of burnt forest will ensure their extinction. This possum doesn't move successfully across open spaces and the remaining population is extremely fragmented. There are none currently in captivity. Some way to treat our State emblem!

Labels: extinction, Leadbeater's possum, Logging

The known world population of Javan rhinos is 50.

There's a vital project right now by the International Rhino Foundation, where donations until October 31st will be matched dollar for dollar by a sponsor. $10,000 is needed to purchase a new boat for the anti-poaching Rhino Protection Units, who live and work in the Ujung Kulon National Park in Indonesia, where the last viable population of Javan rhinos lives.

Please consider making a donation before the October 31st deadline! Your gift will be automatically doubled. To donate please visit Operation Javan Rhino. Definitely, money well spent!

If you're reading this after October 2010, you can still donate to the conservation of the Javan Rhino - click the picture above.

Labels: conservation, extinction

It has been reported that logging of over 33,600 ha of rainforest in a national park buffer zone in central Sumatra has been approved by the Indonesian Government. See Bukit Tigapulah National Park buffer zone threatened. This globally important ecosystem provides a safe haven for many species which are threatened by extinction or are extremely rare - including the critically endangered Sumatran orang-utan, tiger, elephant, sun bear and tapir.

Please sign the petition Stop Logging Indonesian Rainforest and Endangered Orangutan Habitat.

BOS (Borneo Orangutan Survival) Australia

Sumatran Tiger Trust

International Rhino Foundation

Labels: clear-felling, extinction, Logging

The tragic human costs of the recent (and continuing) fires here in the Victorian Ranges defy description. Understandably, the wildlife aspect of the fires appears to have been largely overlooked by the media (beyond that famous koala/firefighter picture taken during backburning). However, the consequences will have been dire for most species - for rare species like lyrebirds and tiger quolls, as well as formerly common locals, such as grey kangaroos and bobucks (mountain brushtail possums).

For one species in particular, this could well spell the end. Leadbeater's possum, faunal emblem for the state of Victoria, will have been severely impacted by the extent of the fires, given that the mapped distribution of the Leadbeater's possum exactly matches the area burnt in the Kilmore East Murrundindi Rubicon Media Map of the fires.

With apparently no current captive breeding population, overseas or locally (not at Melbourne/Healesville, Perth, Taronga or any other Zoo that I can tell), there's no answer there either. The small ray of hope is that a tiny population of this relict possum formerly survived once before - coming through the 1939 fires and being rediscovered in 1965.

Flagship species do go extinct (ie: the Baiji in China in 2006) - usually with a certain amount of warning, a long period of mismanagement and a number of setbacks. Let's hope we haven't just witnessed another one.

Labels: Australian wildlife, Bushfires, extinction, Leadbeater's possum, Marysville

The last Sunday in September is designated World Tiger Day. Here's a magnificent animal that really shouldn't need the publicity but, sadly, now needs it desperately.

These are Sumatran tigers, photographed by Jill when we went to Melbourne Zoo back in July. The population there now is five, with the birth of three cubs late last year. I had planned to put up J and L's drawings from the same day (and may yet put them here if they turn up).

The Sumatran tiger subspecies is well on the way to diverging into a full species, but with a surviving population estimated at 400, it is critically endangered. The usual pathetic reasons - habitat destruction, deforestation and fragmentation of populations, hunting/poaching for the production of (ineffective) medicines - are the main threats.

The risk of extinction is very real, given the recent extinctions of the Bali tiger (1937), the Javan tiger (1980s) and the Caspian tiger (late 1960s), with the South China tiger soon to follow (allegedly 50-60 still exist in captivity only). All currently existing tiger subspecies are Critically Endangered.

There are many tiger conservation organisations out there. If you want to help and can't decide where to donate, the World Wildlife Fund is always a good place to start (we're members).
See: WWF Tigers

Labels: extinction, Melbourne Zoo, Tigers, World Wildlife Fund

As previously mentioned here, Australian endangered species appear to present little obstacle to logging companies (see below for links). If they do, apparently even a Federal Court ruling might not present too much of a problem.

From yesterday's The Age newspaper - Failing our Wildlife:

"Australian governments are not working to save the country's natural heritage but to destroy it. The Minister for Forestry and Conservation, Eric Abetz, has flagged changing Australian law to let loggers cut the forest habitat of rare and endangered wildlife with impunity.

This follows last month's Federal Court ruling that logging in Tasmania's 10,000 hectare Wielangta Forest must stop because it is threatening three endangered species - the giant Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle (wingspan 2.2 metres), the swift parrot (which flies across Bass Strait in three hours) and the ancient Wielangta stag beetle."

This picture is of one of a pair of swift (sometimes called Swift's) parrots that visited a pond in Wantirna, back in August 2002. It was apparently an annual stopover, but they haven't been back for a while.

The article also mentions the threats from logging to the giant freshwater crayfish (at over a metre long, the world's largest), the embattled Tasmanian devil and the spot-tailed quoll. Anyone who's ever been to a site after logging would be shocked by the result - after clear-felling, the areas are burned off and poisoned with 1080 (to kill animals that might eat new shoots) - the results are wholesale devastation.

While clear-felling tends to be indiscriminate in its destruction of wildlife, it's interesting that areas specific to endangered species have often been targeted for logging. Previous "Logging to Extinction" posts (concerning proposed and "accidental" logging of endangered species' habitat):

1 - Superb parrot (Barmah State Forest) & Leadbeater's possum (Central Highlands)

2 - Long-footed potoroo (Errinundra National Park)

3 - Baw Baw frog

- Swift parrot pic by Andrew Barclay
- Wielganta stag beetle pic is from "At Risk" section of the Wielganta Forest site.

Labels: clear-felling, extinction, Logging, swift parrot, Wielganta

As I sometimes write here reporting the discovery of new species, it's only fair that I mention some significant extinctions as they occur. I may be jumping the gun on this one, but sadly, I don't think so - I'd love to be wrong...

In The Age on the weekend, I was surprised to find a full page article on the baiji a favourite animal of mine.


I'd been reading the Baiji Org site (the source of the above picture) for a while, so I knew a major search for survivors was about to begin.


From the Age article:
"A team of the world's leading marine biologists is making a last-gasp search for the baiji, a dolphin that was revered as the goddess of Asia's mightiest river but is now probably the planet's most endangered mammal. In the 1950s, there were thousands of baiji in the Yangtze. By 1994, the number fell below 100. This year, there has only been one, unconfirmed, sighting."


About a week ago on the Baiji blog, Doli wrote:
... the Last Baiji:
"A lot of people outside China have probably never heard of the Baiji dolphin before. This is a pity because even though it is one of the rarest animals on earth, it is also one of the most interesting and beautiful. First of all, unlike most other Cetacean species, (Cetaceans being whales, dolphins and porpoises), it lives exclusively in a freshwater ecosystem, namely the Yangtze River."

As with so many areas of zoology, my introduction to the baiji was in Bernard Heuvelmans' cryptozoology book On the Track of Unknown Animals - he names the date of scientific discovery as 1918, but other sources state 1914 (though local Chinese fishermen were long familiar with them). Then I remember being amazed by photographs of this elusive and beautiful animal in a World of Wildlife encyclopaedia I collected week-by-week in my teens.


Many years later I was reminded about the baiji by the chapter, Blind Panic, in (the late) Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine's Last Chance to See.

Adams writes of the baiji's perils: "constantly being mangled in ship's propellers, snared in fishermen's nets full of hooks, blinded, poisoned and deafened." On putting a microphone into the ever busy river, he wrote: "Instead of hearing the roar of each individual ship's propeller, what we heard was a sustained shrieking blast of pure white noise, in which nothing could be distinguished at all."

The book includes some good pictures of Qi Qi, the male baiji resident at Wuhan Institute of Hydrobiology from 1980 to July 14, 2002 (he was apparently found in Dongting Lake - where the 1914 one was found - severely injured by a fishing hook and nursed back to health using Chinese traditional medicine). Qi Qi was exceptional in surviving well in captivity. While captive breeding presented the only hope, it is sadly familiar - remembering the thylacine - to have the last known specimen of an incredibly ancient species die in captivity.

For a good overall written account of what is known about the baiji, I recommend Lyall Watson's (author of Supernature) book, Whales of the World.

One resoundingly positive aspect of all the effort made to try to preserve the baiji is that the Yangtze finless porpoise - also critically endangered and down to a few hundred, may benefit.

It's highly likely that the baiji went extinct either this year or last year - with the Three Gorges Dam added to their woes, and all the former perils greatly increased, it does appear likely. Still, I really do hope to be wrong, though discovery of a remnant population is but a beginning in attempting to conserve this beautiful animal.

Recommended starting points:

Baiji Org

Baiji Blog (the current search)

Cetacean Society International Photo Gallery (lots of good pictures).

Labels: Baiji, extinction, freshwater dolphins

As previously mentioned here, Australian endangered species appear to present little obstacle to logging companies:
Logging to extinction 1 - Superb parrot & Leadbeater's possum
Logging to extinction 2 - Long-footed potoroo

The latest potential casualty was reported in The Age: Battle for Baw Baw frog: log it and see

"A leaked PaperlinX memo says VicForests has recommended the logging of the 10 Baw Baw frog environmental coupes on the plateau's southern escarpment."

"The frog, found only in Victoria, has all but disappeared, with the population falling to a few hundred from up to 15,000 in 1984. The proposal to log the 200 hectares is part of the habitat experimental harvesting program to determine if clearing would harm the frog, which is on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature red list, and is protected under state and national laws."

As previously noted, a cynic might think removal of critically endangered species from logging areas was a priority. This isn't a new or local phenomena - a famous U.S. example:
The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
In 1938, the last 20 were located in an old-growth forest called the Singer Tract in Louisiana. The logging rights were held by the Chicago Mill & Lumber Company, who brushed aside pleas from governors and the National Audubon Society, and clearcut the forest. The last known Ivory-billed Woodpecker, was gone by 1944.
Scott Weidensaul, "Ghost of a chance" Smithsonian MagazineAugust 2005 pp 97–102.

Picture from: Museum Victoria
See also: Frogs of Victoria

Labels: Baw Baw frog, extinction, Logging

Oops, those silly duffers in the Victorian logging industry. Look at that, they’ve gone and logged a major high conservation area and last refuge of an endangered species again! How could they be so unlucky?

The home of the long-footed potoroo, up to 400 square metres of Errinundra National Park has apparently been levelled by loggers. This small, rare member of the kangaroo family has a very limited range, and was only officially described in 1978, when the first live animals were captured. The 300 to 400 year old forest just logged was also home to other endangered wildlife, such as powerful owls and tiger quolls, similarly on their last legs, along with at least 30 other mammal species. The “error” was discovered by conservationists.

As mentioned in my previous post (Logging to Extinction) this kind of “mistake” - the logging of major conservation value, old-growth forest - seems to happen with remarkable frequency, and probably far more often than it is reported. The list of extinct Australian animals is already distressingly long and great care is needed to prevent further extinctions, particularly in sensitive locations.

(On a positive sidenote another related animal, Gilbert’s potoroo, from Western Australia, was rediscovered in 1994, having not been seen since 1879.)

Picture from Department of the Environment and Heritage.

Labels: clear-felling, conservation, extinction, Logging, potoroo

In weekend news, there was a report on how loggers in the Barmah State Forest have devastated over half the nesting ground of the endangered superb parrot. There are now fewer than 150 superb parrots breeding in Victoria, and they already have problems with illegal capture by collectors. As this logging has destroyed 60 per cent of their nesting colonies it severely compromises their chance of survival as a species.

The felling of 6000 tonnes of river red gums has destroyed one of the best remaining stands of old growth red gums in the protected zone, with large numbers of the gums still lying on the ground. This "blunder" is being blamed on the Department forgetting to check maps (and the sick leave absence of a forestry officer) before approving a logging coupe.

There is something uncomfortably familiar about this. In 1994 the habitat of our State emblem, the critically endangered Leadbeater's possum - five hectares of prime habitat forest near Marysville - was also logged after a mapping error. As in the recent case this ecological disaster was discovered accidently, in Barmah by a botanical consultant, and in Marysville by the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria.

I'm not a cynic, but a cynic might say that the logging industry finds it necessary to log major conservation value areas whenever the opportunity presents itself and it may be possible to get away with it.

Pictures:

Superb Parrot from the Save the Murray page

Leadbeater's Possum from Museum Victoria's The Leadbeater's Possum page.

Labels: Australian wildlife, extinction, Leadbeater's possum, Logging

Most nights this week I've tried to work on Children of the Moon, Part 3, which is progressing nicely. My left eye is playing up today though (sore, burning, etc.) so I don’t know if I can keep up the necessary momentum to get this completed, scanned and sent in time.

I've also had a variety of incoming email regarding various of my pages: one from a guy who is a groomsman at the wedding of another "Ian Thomas" in England and is gathering messages from people with the same name, one from a girl wanting advice regarding acrylic painting (I'll do my best), and one from yet another poor person who has lost their cockatiel and found my page encouraging, which is pleasing.

J. and L. are on holidays. They built an imaginative and clever zoo for their toy animals (and the real rabbit and guineapig). Unfortunately, L.'s toy thylacine wanted to be included, but J. insisted they were extinct. This saddened L. a lot, as it was her first knowledge of the actual extinction of an animal, particularly such a recent and significant one (within living memory). They both made books about thylacines; L's being about how sweet they are and what good pets they'd make, and J's being about how they're really extinct, how clever they were and also about their predilection for eating sheep :).

I did try to explain that this was why we were members of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, and the importance of trying to save animals that still existed, but L. was still understandably upset about the thylacines.

The OzComics boards have been have been suffering from another Doug-centred controversy after Killeroo creator, Darren Close, posted Doug's hateful and derisive opinion piece about the book (from his Blog). I took issue with the fact that Doug actually quoted my praise of Killeroo, Book 2, which I wrote around the time I reviewed it for OzComics Magazine. The trouble with Doug, in my opinion, is that he has let the praise of his fans go to his head, which is a surefire way to finish your growth as an artist. He may indeed hate the comic, but this diatribe struck me as very personal in nature.

The latest issue of Inkspot, the Australian Cartoonists Association magazine, arrived yesterday and it has a colour cover! Very nice indeed! My reviews of Sporadic and The Crumpleton Experiments are both in there and it’s nicely laid out. It's good to promote these further, particularly as, like Killeroo, they're comics aimed at older readers (teens and up). Australian comics are looking good.

Labels: extinction