The breathtaking spectacle was recorded by passengers onboard Le Commandant Charcot, a state-of-the-art commercial icebreaker vessel, operated by French expedition cruise company Ponant. Captain Patrick Marchesseau was at the bridge of the vessel when the watchmen sighted the first polar bear. As he recounts, “suddenly it was not just one bear, it was ten, and then through the mist we could see there were bears everywhere. Soon we realised why – a bowhead whale carcass was providing a feast. There were 68 bears officially counted. The sight was absolutely superb — a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Captain Marchesseau remarks the unfamiliarity of such a large gathering even impressed two Inuit guides on board, who had never seen so many bears in one place at one time. “Like us they were astounded. To see so many polar bears in the one instance was deeply surprising even for them”.  

On-scene photographer’s account

Renowned photographer Nick Rains, a long-time collaborator with Australian Geographic, was on board during the incredible event. “Everywhere you looked there was a sleeping bear just passed out in the snow after like an orgy of eating as they were digesting their blubber”.

Over several hours of observation under the midnight sun, the bears’ behaviour provided endless fascination for those on board the ship, that remained stationary and silent to avoid disturbing the animals.

To witness such a chance encounter in the remote Arctic wilderness and capture it on film was truly humbling for the Australian photographer. “I was able to watch their interactions from the safe vantage point on the deck of Le Commandant Charcot and photograph bears swimming, playing. Mothers with two, even three cubs had turned up for the feast. So we had the whole bear experience all encapsulated in this period of time as we watched the scene unfold”. 

‘A rare bonanza’

The event is even more remarkable considering polar bears are known for their solitary nature. They traverse vast icy expanses, sometimes covering thousands of kilometres, in search of food. Polar bears can smell seals up to 32 kilometres away, so with a dead whale carcass, it’s likely to have drawn the carnivores from up to a hundred kilometres.

A whale carcass can provide a bounty of rich, fat-laden nutrition necessary for polar bears to sustain themselves in such an unforgiving environment. “An accessible whale carcass is a rare bonanza for bears and other wildlife” remarks Lisa LaPointe, a naturalist aboard the ship. “A single whale carcass can nourish multiple bears for weeks, months, or more depending on conditions. This intake can mean the difference between surviving and thriving during a lean summer. It can be the deciding factor in whether a female bear is able to produce cubs the following spring.” 

It’s not known how the bowhead whale died, but it’s believed an attack by a pod of orcas could be possible. Orcas are fond of killing bowhead whales to eat only their tongue, leaving the rest of the carcass, which, in this case, left an incredible buffet for the polar bears. 

“What was most striking was how little conflict we observed, even among bears actively feeding at the carcass. With appetites sated, each was largely accommodating the others. Even mothers with cubs were partaking in the abundance, the cubs feeding next to adults,” recalls Lisa.

The naturalist reflects, “To record and photograph such a happening across such a fleeting event in the expanse of the Arctic left passengers and crew with such gratitude for our unusual experience.”

Editor’s note: The Le Commandant Charcot crew and guests remained at a distance to ensure that the bears didn’t experience any stress or pressure and that their natural activities were not impacted throughout the encounter.

The post Exclusive photos: extraordinary polar bear ‘picnic’ captured by Australian photographer appeared first on Australian Geographic.

While much of the rest of Australia has dried out, the Wet Tropics have stayed wet. It’s here you find green-eyed treefrogs, wompoo fruit-doves and striped possums with elongated fourth digits, for digging out grubs. It’s a particular hotspot of endemic and unique plant species too, including the colourfully named idiotfruit tree (Idiospermum australiense).

Why is the region so distinctive? It has many different niches for species, from cool mountaintops down to hot and humid lowland rainforest. As a result of its unique evolutionary history, the Wet Tropics are a biodiversity hotspot, hosting an array of species found nowhere else on Earth.

Like many ecosystems, it is under serious threat from land clearing, invasive species and climate change. And these threats could be worse than we think due to the indirect, and often hidden ways they can affect the whole environment.

New research explores how species in these rainforests interact to forecast how rising temperatures and other environmental changes can lead not just to extinctions of individual species, but to the possibility of cascading extinctions as the loss of important species ripples through the web of life.

How does this ecosystem function?

These rainforests cover just 0.1 per cent of Australia’s landmass but harbour an exceptionally large share of the country’s biodiversity, where you can find about 45 per cent of the nation’s vertebrate species. It’s not just the largest tropical rainforest in Australia, but also one of the oldest in the world, holding immense indigenous cultural value.

Australia’s heaviest bird, the southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius johnsoni), plays an essential role in Queensland’s ancient tropical rainforests. It gobbles down the large, bright blue and toxic fruit of the cassowary plum tree, whose seeds can only start to grow when they have passed through the bird’s digestive system.

This symbiotic relationship is essential for the regeneration of these trees, which in turn support countless other lifeforms. Without the cassowary, the cassowary plum would struggle to survive, and the forest structure would change.

This region is also home to the giant petaltail, one of the world’s largest dragonflies, flourishing along the pristine streams of the rainforest. It also boasts Boyd’s forest dragon (Gonocephalus liogaster), a tree-climbing master of camouflage, and the Victoria’s riflebird (Ptiloris victoriae) from the Bird of Paradise family, whose dazzling courtship dances captivate onlookers. The white-lipped tree frog also contributes to the rainforest’s nocturnal chorus. The Lumholtz tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus lumholtzi), an elusive arboreal marsupial, navigates the high canopies.

These tropical rainforests form a complex web. When one species suffers, it can affect other species. This can start a chain reaction that might harm more species or even lead to their extinction. This phenomenon is known as co-extinction, a domino effect that can decimate entire communities of species.

For smaller scale ecosystems on land such as the Wet Tropics, co-extinction is a largely overlooked threat. As a result, we’ve probably underestimated how vulnerable these communities are to threats such as climate change in the future.

Tackling threats

The Wet Tropics is World Heritage Listed. It’s one of the most effectively regulated and managed protected areas in the world, ranking in the top 0.1 per cent of the most important protected areas globally. Even so, it still faces many threats, including habitat loss and fragmentation as well as ongoing residential development, invasive species, and even changes in fire and water regimes, to name a few.

Only in the last few years, introduced virulent pathogens have been implicated in the extinction of the sharp snouted day frog and the mountain mist frog in this region.

Climate change is the region’s biggest threat. Extinction rates are forecast to soar if temperatures rise above 2°C.

Recent research suggests co-extinctions will cause up to 34 per cent more biodiversity loss by 2100 than that predicted from the direct effects of threats such as climate change.

The Wet Tropics are a landscape of ancient beauty, threatened by contemporary dangers. Protecting this primeval region is about maintaining the ecological processes sustaining life itself.

Queensland’s Wet Tropics are recognised as one of the most irreplaceable natural World Heritage Areas in the world, considered by the UN as a region of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ – the same status given to other iconic biodiversity hotspots such as Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands and India’s Western Ghats.

To safeguard the future of the Wet Tropics and other regions like it, we must deepen our understanding of the ecological challenges it faces and develop strategies to address them.

Seamus Doherty is a PhD Candidate of the Global Ecology Laboratory at Flinders University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Idiotfruit and tree kangaroos: what makes Queensland’s Wet Tropics so unique appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Invasive alien species become much harder and more expensive to manage as they establish and spread through the landscape. So preventing their arrival is vital.

But which species will arrive next?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

To help manage the invasive species threat, national authorities compile official warning lists that identify species not yet within a country’s borders, but which may become a big problem if they do arrive.

The most important criteria for adding a species to the list is whether they have already invaded other parts of the world.

Authorities also consider if a species could feasibly be brought into the country by humans either deliberately, such as on the case of exotic pets, or accidentally, for example if they hitchhike on fresh produce, luggage or vehicles.

Authorities also consider if a species can survive and reproduce in the country (which precludes, say, a polar bear being added to the warning list in a tropical area).

Related: Australia’s least wanted – 8 alien species and diseases we must keep out of our island home

These warning lists can be effective. For example, the United Kingdom’s list was published in 2013; within two years, seven of their top-listed alien species had arrived in the country, including the notoriously invasive quagga mussel.

However, the lists are not foolproof. Most crucially, the emphasis on whether a species has invaded other parts of the world will not identify species that have not yet become invasive anywhere, but might in future.

In fact, a study in 2020 predicted the number of new alien species globally will increase by 36 per cent by 2050.

New research set out to address this blind spot in warning list systems.

Who’s arriving next?

The tool developed assesses a species’ invasion risk based on whether humans are likely to accidentally bring the species to a certain country, and if the species will become invasive beyond their natural range.

First, researchers collected data on attributes of species worldwide, such as their size, number of offspring, lifestyle, diet, preferred habitats, natural range, how often they are encountered, and their tolerance to humans.

Second, the researchers programmed the tool to analyse patterns in the attributes of species that have become invasive in different parts of the world. This means the tool identifies species that haven’t yet invaded new areas globally, but share attributes with species that have become invasive.

Those attributes include:

• a tendency to climb as opposed to staying on the ground, which means they are more likely to hitchhike into a country on produce and in luggage and vehicles

• being commonly encountered in a wide range of habitats, especially where humans live.

The tool was tested on about 16,000 (or 76 per cent) of all known amphibians and reptiles worldwide, with no invasion history. Of these, we identified 160 species that might pose an invasion risk to Australia and other countries.

What Australia should watch out for

The species the tool identified as a possible invasion concern to Australia, and which border officials should be monitoring for, included:

• Common European viper (Vivipera berus), a venomous snake widespread in Europe and northern Asia. It grows to a maximum length of about 85 centimetres. Other venomous snake species are native to Australia, but no viper species are currently known to exist here. Viper venom affects blood clotting and destroys tissues.

• Graceful chameleon (Chamaeleo gracilis), a lizard common in sub-Saharan Africa. While the species is commonly exploited by the pet trade, our tool indicates it can also be accidentally brought to Australia by humans. Chameleons can change their colour to either camouflage themselves and evade predators, or to intimidate them.

• American toad (Anaxyrus americanus), from eastern North America. They have a wart-like gland behind each eye. The toad is poisonous like the cane toad, which is already a problem in northern Australia. However, the American toad can live in temperate climates and could threaten southern Australia’s wildlife.

Next steps

Around the time the tool finished development last year, one of the predicted invaders – the Caspian Bent-toed Gecko (Tenuidactylus caspius) – began invading the Eastern European nation of Georgia.

This demonstrates the tool’s potential to identify future invaders and improve current warning systems.

But further work is needed before including the species identified on national warning lists. For example, research is needed to determine where each species can survive and reproduce.

And so far, researchers have applied the tool only to amphibians and reptiles, particularly those that can be accidentally transported by humans. In future, the tool will hopefully be applied to other animal groups and plants to identify invaders looming on our horizons.

Arman Pili is a Research affiliate at Monash University.

David Chapple is a Professor in Evolutionary and Conservation Ecology at Monash University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Alien invasion: which foreign species might enter Australia next? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

That was when an intact carcass of a male of the species was found on a beach in Otago, New Zealand.

It was discovered by beachgoers who notified New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC), which didn’t realise the significance of the discovery until its staff arrived and saw the 5m-long beaked whale.

After closer inspection and consultation with marine mammal experts the team soon concluded the carcass was that of the extremely rare species.

To appreciate the magnitude of this find, let’s rewind the clock back to the early 1870s. At this time, no one knew the whale existed.

Then, in 1872, an unusual lower jawbone and two tusk teeth were collected from New Zealand’s Pitt Island by naturalist Henry Travers, explains DOC marine mammal expert Anton van Helden.

Two years later, Scottish geologist James Hector used these skeletal remains to describe the species as a strap-toothed whale (Mesoplodon layardii). But in 1874 British zoologist John Gray studied Hector’s description and “decided that it should be a new species and gave it the species name traversii, after Henry Travers,” says Anton.

It wasn’t until 1950 that any evidence of the species surfaced again, when a partial skull was found, again in New Zealand, on White Island. Decades passed until, in 1986, another partial skull was discovered, this time on Chile’s Robinson Crusoe Island. In 2002 a scientific paper was published, confirming “based on comparing the morphology of the skulls, and the DNA of all three known specimens, that they were all the same species,” Anton says.  

Still, no one had seen any more of the animal than a few skeletal remains, so nobody knew what it looked like and it might have already gone extinct. 

In 2010 not one but two of the animals were finally seen in the flesh – albeit dead with parts missing by the time they were found – when a mother and calf stranded in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty. 

At the time, however, the find was considered unremarkable. Whale strandings are common in New Zealand and it was assumed the whales were Gray’s beaked whales (Mesoplodon grayi), the most common strandees. 

As per national protocol, however, photographs, body measurements and tissue samples were taken before the carcasses were buried on the beach where they were found. DNA sequencing soon matched the mother and calf to the existing samples of spade-toothed whale skeleton in the database. 

Finally, the spade-toothed whale’s physical appearance could begin to be documented. 

“This was the first time the species had been seen with flesh on,” says Anton, “and from which the first tentative description of the colour pattern and external morphology was done.”

After the DNA revealed the significance of the two whale bodies they were exhumed from the sand and are now preserved at Te Papa Tongarewa (Museum of New Zealand). 

In 2017 another partial body washed ashore, in New Zealand’s Gisborne. Again, it was at first mistaken for a Gray’s beaked whale, identified later as a spade-toothed whale using photographs. 

Anton says this specimen – also now in Te Papa Tongarewa’s collection – gave scientists the “first really good idea of what the colour pattern of the animal was and other key external features.”

Fast forward to two weeks ago – July 4 – when the latest spade-toothed whale was found – only the sixth recorded specimen, the third including body tissue, and the first fully intact.  

DOC Coastal Otago operations manager Gabe Davies summarises the magnitude of the find: “Spade-toothed whales are one of the most poorly known large mammalian species of modern times. Since the 1800s, only six samples have ever been documented worldwide, and all but one of these was from New Zealand.”

What do we know about spade-toothed whales?

Everything science currently knows about the spade-toothed whale (Mesoplodon traversii) comes from two partial skulls, a jawbone, a few teeth, and three specimens washed up dead on beaches. 

It’s one of 21 species of beaked whale (family Ziphiidae) and there are only subtle differences – in size, teeth, beaks, and colour – between them all.

It’s thought they spend most of their time at extreme ocean depths, explaining why they are so rarely seen by humans. Another possible reason why they are scantily seen is that there are simply so few of them.

New Zealand seems to be a hotspot for the family with 13 species of beaked whales recorded in waters surrounding the island nation.

Spade-toothed whales are classified as ‘data deficient’ in the New Zealand Threat Classification System.

Next steps

Genetic samples already taken from the body will be processed by the team at University of Auckland’s New Zealand Cetacean Tissue Archive. This DNA will provide official confirmation that the species is indeed a spade-toothed whale.

The whale’s body has since been removed from the beach where it was found and is being preserved in cold storage while the next steps are discussed. 

A body this fresh offers the first opportunity in history for a spade-toothed whale specimen to be dissected.

“From a scientific and conservation point of view, this is huge,” Gabe says. 

But there are many stakeholders to consider. 

DOC is working in partnership with Te Rūnanga ō Ōtākou (the organisation representing the local Mauri peoples of the land on which the whale was found) to make decisions involving the whale’s remains. 

“It is important to ensure appropriate respect for this taoka [sacred/treasured animal] is shown through the shared journey of learning, applying mātauraka Māori [Maori knowledge] as we discover more about this rare species,” says Te Rūnanga ō Ōtakou chair, Nadia Wesley-Smith.

The post The world’s rarest whale has captivated scientists since the 1800s appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The biobank is like a “frozen zoo” within the Melbourne Museum that is cryogenically freezing live animal cells in a bid to preserve the genetic diversity of Australia’s unique wildlife. Scientists hope to one day reintroduce this genetic material back into wild populations through cloned lab-grown cells, to help boost a population’s genetic diversity – or even bring a species back from extinction. 

“The idea behind this [the biobank] is being able to preserve cells from all of our endangered species in a living format,” says project lead Professor Andrew Pask, an epigeneticist from The University of Melbourne. “Far down the track…if we have a horrendous bushfire that wipes out a particular species, or so many animals from that population that they’re unhealthy, you could use these cells to bring back the [genetic] variation that occurred in that particular region and rewild those animals once the bush is regenerated.” 

The biobank began collecting genetic material in January 2024, following a $500,000 grant from the Australian Research Council Linkage in 2023. At the time of going to press, they had gathered DNA from upwards of 20 species, including the fat-tailed dunnart, brolga, smoky mouse, malleefowl and dusky antechinus. “We’re kind of opportunistically collecting everything we can,” Andrew says. The biobank aims to cryopreserve the genetic material of more than 100 species over the next three years.

Most of the cells collected are skin cells, which were scraped from an animal’s ear or foot during population surveys or donated from zoos and breeding programs. “At the moment we are doing things with people already out monitoring and catching animals,” Andrew says. “We supply them with tubes, so that when they’ve got the animal, they just do these little skin scrapings or clippings and then drop them into the vial that comes back to the museum.” 

Remarkably, the scientists at the living biobank can culture cells from animals up to a week after an animal has died. Cells extracted from a loggerhead turtle and common dolphin made their way into the collection after washing up dead on a beach, while other cells were sourced from roadkill. 

At the lab, geneticists establish cell lines – a population of cloned cells – from these skin scrapings. Andrew says skin cells are ideal for cloning because of its high cellular turnover. “Because our skin is constantly replacing itself, it grows really fast so it’s a really good way to get…millions of cells that we can then freeze to make sure we never lose that DNA, that uniqueness, from that population again,” he says. The cells are frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at –196°C. This sub-zero temperature puts the cells’ biological processes “on pause” and allows the genetic material to be preserved indefinitely.

Andrew is also the head of the Thylacine Integrated Genomic Restoration Research Laboratory (TIGRR Lab) at The University of Melbourne and is arguably best known for his work on the “de-extinction” of the thylacine. Without access to any living genetic material from a thylacine, Andrew says the bulk of his work at the TIGRR Lab involves engineering cells back into existence. “For the thylacine we never had this foresight – or the technology – to save cells down,” he says. “It’s a very long, slow process [that’s] going to take us years and years and years.” But the frozen biobank means that, should a species become extinct, scientists will have access to a frozen repository of cell lines. “You already have that living cell, you’ve got that intact nucleus, and so it’s just a matter of turning those cells back into an animal,” Andrew says. 

Some skin cells are reprogrammed into stem cells that, in turn, can be differentiated into gametes – sperm and egg cells – and used to create a living animal. But animals can be cloned without this stem cell technology. “You can take just the nucleus from that cell line – so these are just skin cells – and put it into an embryo that you’ve taken the DNA out of, and then you can create a whole other animal from that,” Andrew says, explaining that this was the method used to clone Dolly the sheep in 1997. 

The genetic material preserved in the biobank is an insurance policy against diversity loss at a time when an entire species might be wiped out in an extreme weather event. A single flood or bushfire could render an entire species locally extinct – or shrink a population to such a degree that they’re put on the fast-track to extinction. 

The smoky mouse is one such species. This critically endangered rodent is scattered across south-eastern Australia but is mostly concentrated around the Victoria–New South Wales border. Urbanisation and bushfires have fragmented populations and prompted a major collapse of genetic diversity within the species. “[Smoky mouse populations] were heavily impacted by the 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires in NSW, and the smoke may have been the cause of deaths in the captive breeding program in Canberra,” says Dr Kevin Rowe, Senior Curator of Mammals at Museums Victoria. “In Victoria the populations were mostly spared. There’s a major smoky mouse population in Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park in western Victoria that didn’t suffer from the fire, but they suffered from the fire [in February 2024].” Faced with an uncertain future, the biobank has cryopreserved DNA donated by the University of Canberra’s smoky mouse captive breeding program.  

The biobank also holds genetic material extracted from two broad-toothed rats, which were trapped and released back into the wild after an ear biopsy. These endangered rodents dwell in Australia’s alpine and subalpine regions – and this was the first species to have its cells cryopreserved in Museums Victoria’s collection. “Broad-toothed rats were heavily impacted by the [Black Summer] bushfires, particularly in their northern habitat in the alpine regions,” Kevin says. “In the eastern alpine region we had quite a few sites that were completely scorched earth where they were present.” 

As well as preserving the genetic material of animals teetering on extinction, the biobank holds material from animals seemingly back from the dead. The grassland earless dragon was believed extinct from the 1960s until a small population was discovered during a building survey last winter. Melbourne Zoo has now established a captive breeding program to ensure the future of this species, and has donated cells to the biobank. 

At the time of going to press, 18 of the species preserved in the biobank are native to Australia. Two are non-native but endangered – the Asian elephant and Bornean orangutan – and there’s even one invasive species, the black rat. 

“One of the interesting things about cells is we can use them to preserve genetic diversity in a living form in species, but we can also use it as a tool to potentially control invasive species,” Kevin says. “Our colleagues in the TIGRR Lab are working on growing those cells and making stem cells from them, ultimately to come up with methods for controlling their populations in the wild.”

The post A place of last resort appeared first on Australian Geographic.

But the magnificent tree frog recently discovered by Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) ecologists is anything but normal!

The bright blue individual is living within AWC’s Charnley River-Artesian Range Wildlife Sanctuary, on Wilinggin Country. Incredibly, it was first spotted within just metres of the team’s research station. 

“I was out there at the time and I got a message with a photo of the blue frog from another member of our team, asking what the cool frog was,” says AWC field ecologist Jake Barker. “As soon as I saw the picture, I was pretty excited – it was rare, so I ran down with my own camera.”

“Magnificent tree frogs are already spectacular, they’re very pretty frogs to begin with when they’re green… So to see a blue one rates pretty highly on the list of cool things I’ve seen on this job.

“And we were able to find it a second time, about a week later,” says Jake. “No one’s really looked for it since then, so there’s a decent chance it’s still hanging around the vicinity.”

Why is the frog blue?

The frog’s blue-coloured skin is due to a rare genetic mutation called ‘axanthism’.

“Essentially, green frogs have both blue and yellow pigments in their skin. The pigments combine and that’s why green frogs are green,” Jake explains.

“This mutation basically inhibits the yellow pigments so only the blue ones come through.”

Is this a first?

AWC ecologists believe this may be the first recorded instance of axanthism mutation in a magnificent tree frog. 

Amphibian expert Dr Jodi Rowley adds that axanthism is an extremely rare occurrence in any frog species.

“I’ve seen tens of thousands of frogs over the years, but I’ve only seen one blue frog – and it was nowhere near as spectacular as this magnificent tree frog,” Jodi says.

Related: Why would a green frog be blue?

The post Mutant blue frog excites ecologists appeared first on Australian Geographic.

“They [the old people] have been looking after all these tjakura for a long time,” says Cedric Thompson, a Mutitjulu Community Mala Ranger (Anangu rangers who care for Country in Uluru-Kata Tjuta NP). “That’s why it’s for us mob to look after them now.” 

Tjakura is a striking desert reptile species that’s of widespread cultural significance for First Nations people. Belonging to the same family as the better known blue-tongue lizards, tjakura is a skink with a solid body. It reaches 45cm in length and has smooth scales coloured orange-red on its upper body, fading to bright yellow on its under-belly – perfect camouflage against the red desert sands. In some places they can also be grey in colour.

Tjakura is the species’ name in the languages of the Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra peoples. In other areas, it’s known as mulyamiji, tjalapa, warrana or nampu. In English, the great desert skink is its common name. 

Celebrated in art, dance and song, tjakura is an important Tjukurrpa (Creation) animal, and was once a food source, said to taste like fish. But because its numbers have been declining, Traditional Owners are now opting to protect the lizard. Occurring almost exclusively on Aboriginal land, tjakura is endemic to Australia, with a natural distribution across a large part of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and into the north-western corner of South Australia.

It’s a crepuscular species, meaning it’s most active during dusk and dawn. Termites make up the bulk of its diet, but the lizard is also partial to nibbling on beetles, spiders, centipedes and other invertebrates, as well as parts of plants, including bush tomatoes and paper daisies. Tjakura are least active in the middle of the day when the sun beats down on the desert sand.

To escape the heat, it lives underground in extensive communal burrows. It’s also one of few reptiles worldwide that cares for its young. One burrow is home to a family unit, with up to 10 individuals nestled in – a male, female and their young from multiple breeding seasons.

The small above-ground entrances belie the large, cosy home below. Tjakura burrows are more than 1m deep and up to 10m in diameter, with multiple entrances. On the surface is a communal latrine where all the family deposit their faecal pellets – known as scats. If you want to picture the latrine, imagine that someone has spilt a packet of old chocolate bullets on the desert sand.  It’s these scats – also known as kuna in many desert languages – that are helping us to understand more about tjakura. Tjakura have disappeared from many areas, and their population is in decline. 

The key threats to the skink are feral animals and unmanaged bushfires. Feral cats are a menace across Australia’s deserts. “When we look at cat kuna, we find a lot of tjakura scales. You can see them; the skin is still orange,” says Dr Rachel Paltridge, an arid-zone ecologist with the Indigenous Desert Alliance, an Indigenous-led organisation strengthening desert ranger teams to keep Country healthy. 

“Tjakura is endangered, and we have to monitor them because [there are] a lot of cats and foxes here. When you do a dissection of a cat’s stomach you see all the lizards, skinks and dragons, the whole lot, in a cat’s stomach,” explains Leroy Lester, a senior Anangu Traditional Owner and Parks Australia Anangu Engagement Officer.

Unmanaged bushfires also pose a major threat to tjakura. In the past, Traditional Owners carried out regular burns with fine-scale fire mosaics – they burnt small patches of the landscape and left other patches unburnt where animals could seek refuge. But since European colonisation, there are more hot, unmanaged fires – sometimes started by lightning – that sweep across large swathes of the landscape and raze everything in their path. 

When bushfires and ferals combine, tjakura fight a losing battle. Unmanaged bushfires remove the protective cover of plants such as spinifex from around tjakura burrows. Although skinks usually survive the fire, they become easy prey for feral cats and foxes.  

Vital Indigenous knowledge

Tjakura are now confined to a small number of locations. The species is nationally classified as vulnerable to extinction. “This means,” as the skink’s National Recovery Plan explains, “that it is at risk of going extinct in the wild (in the next 100 years) if nothing is done to manage threats.” 

This is where Indigenous rangers are vital. Yes, tjakura are threatened. But the species is also thriving where Indigenous rangers are looking after Country – controlling feral cats and re-establishing traditional fire regimes.

But part of the puzzle is still missing. We don’t have a solid understanding of tjakura numbers, and whether the population is increasing or declining.

And that’s why I’m here, with a wonderfully diverse team made up of Anangu Traditional Owners, Mutitjulu Community Mala Rangers, Indigenous rangers from nearby areas, scientists, Parks Australia Rangers, and school kids from near and far. 

We’re camping in the heart of World Heritage-listed Uluru-Kata Tjuta NP, and each morning we’ll be up before sunrise. It’s already warm at 6.30 and the mercury will rise daily to 41°C for the rest of the week. To say the location is stunning is an understatement. We’re flanked by two of Australia’s most iconic sites: to the east lies Uluru, the sandstone monolith in all its glory, and to the west is Kata Tjuta, with its domes glowing in the morning sun. 

About 30 of us are camping out, and on the first morning, as everyone begins to stir, heads emerge from tents and tarps pitched under a small patch of mulga trees. 

We make cups of tea and coffee and load up on breakfast before we embark on five long days of surveys. From dawn to dusk, we’ll work together to look for tjakura burrows and their latrines, recording important scientific information. We want to know if there are more or fewer active burrows, compared with what the surveys found in 2023.

This extraordinary monitoring program is called Mulyamiji March. Mulyamiji is the Martu name for the skink. And March is the designated month for ranger groups to march across the desert doing their surveys. It’s the largest collaborative threatened-species monitoring program in Australia’s deserts. The ranger groups are spread across 500,000sq.km – seven times the size of Tasmania.

The driving force behind Mulyamiji March is Rachel Paltridge, who is funded by the National Environmental Science Program’s Resilient Landscapes Hub (known as the hub). 

“The exciting thing about this project is that we’re developing a scientifically robust monitoring method that’s based on expert tracking skills,” Rachel says. “With so many rangers involved, all using a consistent method to collect the same information from nearly 100 sites across the desert, we can pool the data to create a really powerful dataset to monitor trends in the national population.”

Understanding the size of the population and how it’s trending over the next 10 years is also a key strategy under the  ‘Indigenous Desert Alliance (2022), Looking after Tjakura, Tjalapa, Mulyamiji, Warrarna, Nampu. A National Recovery Plan for the Great Desert Skink (Liopholis kintorei)’. This is the first Indigenous-led recovery plan in Australia. The Australian government has listed tjakura as a priority species under the 2022–2032 Threatened Species Action Plan, and is supporting ongoing monitoring and recovery efforts.

The Resilient Landscapes Hub provides scientific advice to support work under the recovery plan. For example, it created standardised monitoring methods and a power analysis so information can be accurately compared about tjakura across its range. The first Mulyamiji March was launched here in 2023, involving 13 Indigenous ranger teams from the NT, WA and SA. Together with Traditional Owners, scientists, and land managers, they surveyed 90 sites and found 541 active tjakura burrows.

Reading the signs

So here we are in 2024 and the second year of Mulyamiji March surveys is underway at Uluru-Kata Tjuta NP, a stronghold for the species. After waking up in the desert, we join a convoy of four-wheel-drive troopies to the first survey site, each of which is a 10ha rectangle. We split into a group of men and a group of women, walking up and down the monitoring sites. Tracking skills are needed to find the burrows, and the Indigenous rangers’ expertise is key to the success of this project.

“It’s amazing how much detail people can read in the tracks: the size of animals, what they are doing, which predators are hunting around their burrows,” Rachel says. 

And how do you know who is living underground when you find a burrow? The clue is in the poo. If a latrine has fresh, dark-brown scats, it indicates there are tjakura in the burrow below and the burrow is considered active. The size of the scats also reveals who is below – large scats suggest adults, for example. The rangers enter all of this information, plus photos and other details, into a tablet. This data will be used to monitor how the tjakura population is changing year to year. 

Mulyamiji March is not just about science. It’s also about culture. To celebrate the monitoring program, artists from Walkatjara Art, an Anangu-owned not-for-profit art centre, have made large sculptures and several paintings of tjakura. Other ranger teams visit sacred Creation sites for tjakura to conduct increase ceremonies for this culturally significant species.

The project is also about sharing knowledge. The Tjuwanpa Women Rangers from nearby Hermannsburg (Ntaria) are joining the Mutitjulu Community Mala Rangers this week to learn how to do their own lizard surveys. They are led by senior ranger Sonya Braybon.

“The Uluru and Mala rangers invited us,” Sonya says. “We feel really happy to join them and do some surveys on their sites here. We’ve learnt a lot. It was great to see a live desert skink, the tjakura, and nice to meet the scientist people as well.” 

Mulyamiji March is also about passing knowledge on to the next generation. Troops of school kids and recent school-leavers join us for surveys during the week: some students are from the local Nyangatjatjara College, outside Yulara; other students drive all the way from Warakurna in WA, a 330km journey. 

At first the kids laugh at the idea of measuring kuna, but in no time they’re scouring the spinifex for tjakura burrows and latrines and helping enter data into the tablet.

Importantly, Mulyamiji March is also about having fun. In 2024, there are several competitions between the participating ranger groups. Which group will cover the largest number of survey sites? Which group has the best school participation? Who can capture the best photograph of a tjakura? The stakes are high: the legendary television reporter Barranbinya man Tony Armstrong will present the awards, including the coveted Most Burrows trophy. 

The team effort continues

It’s a full week of monitoring tjakura at Uluru-Kata Tjuta. Each night we drive back to the camp, sharing food and stories, and getting ready for the next day of surveys. In total, we cover 34 sites in the 41°C heat. 

Then, with the Mulyamiji March surveys done at Uluru, the rangers set to work, doing the cat-control activities and mosaic burning that give these skinks a fighting chance. Rachel hits the road, driving to the next monitoring sites, supporting the next team of Indigenous rangers and expert trackers as they march across the desert, searching for tjakuraa. 

With this team effort, along with First Nations knowledge and western science, we’re hoping these skinks will continue to appear at their burrow entrances, warming themselves in the early morning sun for generations to come.

Kate Cranney is the Communications Manager for the National Environmental Science Program’s Resilient Landscapes Hub, which partners with the Indigenous Desert Alliance for Mulyamiji March. Through the hub, researchers ensure that the science behind the survey is robust, so that the data collected can accurately indicate if the tjakura population is increasing or decreasing across the country.

Keeping the desert connected

Brought to you by Indigenous Desert Alliance

The Indigenous Desert Alliance (IDA) is an Indigenous-led organisation strengthening desert ranger teams who work together at landscape-scale to keep Country healthy. Together with its members, including 65 Indigenous ranger teams, the IDA facilitates the largest Indigenous-led and culturally connected conservation network on Earth.

The IDA works to enable a strong and united voice for Indigenous desert rangers, to support strong and sustainable ranger teams, and to ensure the future health of Australia’s precious living deserts.

Learn more about how you can support the IDA’s vital work.

Looking After Tjakuṟa

Rangers across the Australian desert have joined forces to protect the iconic great desert skink ­­– or Tjakuṟa – also known by different Aboriginal language groups as Tjalapa, Mulyamiji, Warrarna, and Nampu.

The great desert skink is a species of cultural significance for Indigenous people, both as an important Tjukurrpa (Dreaming) species and, historically, a favoured food resource. It occurs almost exclusively on Aboriginal land.

Threatened by the combined impacts of unmanaged wildfire and feral cat predation, these iconic lizards have disappeared from many sites where they were formerly known. But they continue to thrive in areas where Indigenous Rangers conduct traditional burning and/or cat management.

The IDA is coordinating the implementation of priority actions in the Great Desert Skink Recovery Plan with support from the Australian Government’s Saving Native Species Program and the National Environmental Science Program’s Resilient Landscapes Hub.

Ranger Teams are supported to record cultural knowledge, conduct surveys, establish monitoring programs, and manage fire and cats around great desert skink sites. A collaborative, simultaneous, tri-state monitoring event called ‘Mulyamiji March’ is conducted annually.

Learn more about the program on the IDA’s website

The post Looking for Tjakuṟa appeared first on Australian Geographic.

By Ashley’s own admission, he is only one person in a colony of committed conservationists who have, for decades, been fighting for the koalas of the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. 

“Local conservationists were campaigning to protect koala habitat back in the 1970s,” Ashley says. “But it’s taken 50 years of hard graft, and a recent change in classification of the koala – from vulnerable to endangered – to finally protect the most important koala habitat in the world.” In February 2022, under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, the iconic marsupial was classified as endangered on Australia’s east coast, with reports revealing up to 62 per cent of NSW’s population had been lost since 2001. Queensland’s population crashed by an estimated 50 per cent over the same period. 

At the time of the classification, conservationists and scientists declared the endangered listing as an imperative turning point for koalas. 

“Koalas have gone from no listing, to being listed as vulnerable, then endangered, within a decade,” said WWF-Australia conservation scientist Dr Stuart Blanch. “That is a shockingly fast decline. The decision [to list koalas as an endangered species] is welcome, but it won’t stop them from sliding towards extinction unless it’s accompanied by stronger laws and landholder incentives to protect their forest homes. Koala numbers have halved in the past 20 years… We must turn this trend around and instead double the number of east-coast koalas by 2050.” On the heels of this change in classification, and perhaps emboldened by it, NSW Labor campaigned for the GKNP in the lead-up to the March 2023 election, which they won. Shortly afterwards, the new government committed $80 million in funding over four years to support the park’s development. 

“I don’t accept that one of our most loved and iconic native species could become extinct here,” said Premier Chris Minns. “By protecting the places these koalas live, and by working closely with all stakeholders, we can ensure we bring these incredible creatures back from the brink.”

By June the government was being urged to fast-track the GKNP, with MPs and environmentalists alike saying state-owned logging operations continue to kill the endangered marsupials across land set down for the park. By September logging was stopped in 106 koala hubs – areas of important habitat identified by the NSW environment department in 2017. The hubs cover just 5 per cent of the state forest that the government is now assessing for potential protection. The reviews are expected to be complete by the final quarter of 2024.

While this was a much-welcomed first step, many believed it didn’t go nearly far enough and called for the government to impose a logging suspension across the entire area of the proposed park. “We need to stop logging the hubs and the compartments that surround them,” said National Parks Association NSW president Dr Grahame Douglas. “We need to stop logging all native forests within the GKNP.”

Ashley concurs. “Koalas don’t just live in isolated hubs. They move. They travel. We know that from the extensive survey work we’ve done. If you protect a hub, but decimate the surrounding forest compartment, you destroy the corridors that koalas, and a raft of native species, use to access other habitat and feed trees.”

As it stands today, the proposed park will include 1760sq.km of state forest and 1400sq.km of existing national parks across five LGAs – Clarence Valley, Coffs Harbour, Bellingen Shire, Nambucca Valley and Kempsey Shire. It will also be a world first – a dedicated koala national park – and will protect about 20 per cent of the state’s wild koala population, 44 per cent of its identified koala hubs and, according to Ashley, it is the best koala habitat in the world, bar none.

Koala land custodians

For years, Uncle Micklo Jarrett has been a fixture in the idyllic country town of Bellingen, a 35km drive south-west of Coffs Harbour. 

With his long, dark dreadlocks and easy smile, he’s hard to miss, and his exuberant welcome sets him apart. “Giinagay. Yaam ngaya Gumbaynggirr ngulungginyay. Yaam nganyundi wajaarr,” he says. “That means welcome. I am a Gumbaynggirr Elder and this is my Country.”

Surrounded by state forest, national park and private landholdings, Bellingen is nestled in the heart of the GKNP. As a Traditional Owner and Elder, Uncle Micklo is keen to be part of the dialogue about the park. “The concept of a GKNP has been around for decades and I come to it as a custodian of the land to support it through my language and storylines, and thousands of generations of Dreaming,” he says. “It’s my job, it’s all Gumbaynggirr mob’s job, to let people know how important it is. Ngiambandi wajaarrbin yarrang jaagi gurraygu – our homelands are sacred to everyone.” 

Uncle Micklo is particularly set on conserving koalas. “Dunggiirr [koalas] are sacred to my people and the landscape of the Gumbaynggirr Nation. They’re vital to our Creation stories, laws and customs, and the Gumbaynggirr identity.”

As well as this, dunggiirr are a widjir (totem) animal for Uncle Micklo. “When dunggiirr are dying it’s like part of my family is dying, you know. We need to help people understand that. We need to help people realise that looking after Country, protecting it, is everyone’s purpose and it will make us all strong.”

Related: New genetic data reveals five distinct koala groups

His point is reiterated by ecologist and tireless eco-warrior Mark Graham when I meet him at Clouds Creek State Forest, 90 minutes drive north-west of Bellingen, the following day. “It’s all Gumbaynggirr Country,” he says, as we gaze over the heavily wooded hills and gullies that roll east to the sea. “And it’s all a place of plenty, on a continental scale.”

Mark explains: “Australia is a place of waxing and waning resource availability, drought to flood, and Gumbaynggirr Country was traditionally seen as a place of last resort – where other nations’ people could come to survive. That’s because the mountains come right to the coast, so there’s always water and an abundance of food, from the forest through to the sea. 

Our mission now is to protect, restore and expand the fabric of life here, to keep the rivers flowing, the rain falling, the forests intact and the animals thriving.” 

Mark’s words hold great resonance because of what has been – bushfires ravaged the region from September to Christmas Eve in 2019 – and what is to come: the state-sanctioned logging of great swathes of Clouds Creek State Forest, home to a host of ancient Gondwana plant species, native hardwoods and endangered animals, including the koala, southern greater glider and glossy black-cockatoo.

A dedicated band of locals beat back the fires, and today this incredibly resilient community is standing together once more to fight a “scourge we deem to be just as destructive, the Forestry Corporation of NSW”. 

Related: Koala sperm banks could future-proof populations

I meet Barry Hunt and Rhona Verrall at the Clouds Creek blockade site, along the Armidale to Grafton road and aptly named Glider Reviver, where you can stop for a chat about the cause as well as a cuppa, a slice of cake, a bunch of freshly picked flowers and even some home-grown vegies. Since January 2024 the duo have turned up at 4am sharp to prevent loggers from entering the native forest and to protect endangered species. Despite the early starts, both are determined to hold strong. 

“We’ve lived here for more than 20 years and over that time have seen logging practices change dramatically,” Barry says. “It used to be a small crew with chainsaws selectively logging, but now it’s massive machinery that rips and tears at the forest and decimates wildlife habitat. It’s apocalyptic and we can’t have it.” 

As if on cue, a logging truck rolls past, hauling a huge, bright-yellow feller buncher – a heavy-duty vehicle with tracks that rotate like an excavator, allowing it to move through the forest while dropping and gathering trees. 

Barry explains: “It has an arm with a chainsaw attachment. The arm grabs hold of the tree around the base, cuts it, then puts it in a pile. The number it can log in a day depends on the slope of the terrain and the density [of trees], but it’s in the hundreds.”

This is not the first time Clouds Creek has been blockaded. According to local activist Meredith Stanton, logging contractors came calling in the late 2000s, despite detailed reports highlighting the decline of koalas in the area during a 10-year period from 1998. “Then, as now, the harvest plans failed to provide adequate protection for koala habitat, so we must [provide it],” Meredith says, resolute. Clouds Creek, which sits within the boundary of the GKNP, is one of many government-owned native forests that are currently available to be harvested for hardwood. Vigilant locals continue to protest logging operations in other state forests within the proposed park and the NSW Environmental Protection Agency has been charged with ensuring that there is no increase in logging in the permitted areas to compensate for the halt to logging within the hubs.

“It’s profoundly distressing to me, to the Gumbaynggirr people, to our community, to realise that the government’s intention is to let loggers in and at some point down the track, maybe a year or 18 months from now, make some form of GKNP after these globally significant habitats have been gutted,” Mark says. “The koala is endangered and in steep decline. The reality is that all industrial logging needs to stop across the GKNP immediately.” 

Related: Unbearable loss: our koalas are endangered

Forest for conservation

Dean Kearney is for the trees. He’s worked for the Forestry Corporation of NSW for more than 25 years, developing a deep understanding of the canopy and the life that lives beneath it. 

As we stand in a slice of state forest north of Coffs Harbour, Dean explains the principles of multi-use forests, where sustainable timber production is just one objective. 

“More than 80 per cent of the NSW public forest estate is permanently dedicated to conservation,” the Manager of Environment and Sustainability says. “And in state forests where timber harvesting is permitted, we also look after hundreds of public recreational areas, are charged with fire management, maintaining roads, tracks and trails, and we support local organisations with recreational and tourism businesses and forest regen[eration] projects. Our harvesting program involves just 1 per cent of state forests each year.”

While there is no dispute over the management of Forestry’s 20,000sq.km of ‘recreational’ forest when it comes to the GKNP, there is over its continued logging of native hardwoods within the proposed park. Dean won’t be drawn on this matter – “That’s a government policy issue so I can’t comment” – but is happy to walk me through the planning that precedes a harvest operation.

“We have an overarching strategic plan, which sets out our sustainable yield limits for the next 100 years, and tactical plans for the next 5–10 years. And on the ground, in a hardwood forest like this, we develop a detailed site plan that will take us anywhere up to one or two years to complete. It includes ecological and cultural surveys, as well as plans for where roads will be maintained and detailed maps of the area.”

I’m particularly interested in the survey work, which, Dean explains, include broad-area habitat searches, acoustic wildlife monitoring and, most recently, thermal drone imaging to help better understand how wildlife populations respond to timber harvesting in state forests over time. 

Whipping out an iPad, he pulls up a topographic map of the forest in which we stand. It’s overlaid with a confusing confection of colours, shapes, symbols and letters that, when zoomed in on and deciphered, show areas set down for tree felling and the survey work accompanying it. The map also includes areas where felling is excluded and individual trees have been identified to be retained, listed by type: “giant”, “dead standing”, “hollow bearing”, “glossy black-cockatoo feed”, “nectar”, “koala browse” and others. 

“This iPad-based electronic mapping is crucial,” Dean says. “We have people out in the field for weeks at a time, undertaking surveys, gathering data on wildlife, identifying habitat trees and assessing forest use. It’s all recorded and used to inform our operations. When our contractors come into the forest to fell trees, they are required to use the same system and data so we can be sure they’re only taking trees that are suitable to be felled for timber and not those that are to be protected,” Dean says. “We conduct regular compliance checks to ensure it’s all being adhered to.” 

According to the Environmental Defenders Office, however, “in the past three years alone, Forestry Corporation has been fined 12 times for illegal logging activities. There are 21 investigations still pending,” a spokesperson says. 

“Forestry Corporation operates under bilateral agreements with the federal government, called ‘regional forest agreements’ (RFAs), which allow logging to bypass normal federal environmental scrutiny. No other industry benefits from such an allowance. Under the current system of RFAs, threatened species such as the koala, greater glider and gang-gang cockatoo are being driven to extinction and the ecosystems and landscapes that we depend on are being destroyed at an astounding rate.”

Iconic koala habitat

Data recording on an iPad may not feature in John Pile and Anne Coyle’s forest surveys, but they’re exhaustive nonetheless. 

Many moons ago the couple bought an over-worked patch of land in Valery, just south of Coffs Harbour, and have spent the ensuing years regenerating it. Today, it’s a green haven where frogs, birds, possums, pademelons, koalas and all manner of other native wildlife find refuge. 

Beyond its boundary lies Pine Creek State Forest. Earmarked for inclusion in the GKNP, it is widely recognised as the most iconic coastal koala habitat in the world. 

As I wander among old-growth tallowwood, brushbox, pink bloodwood, ringwood and flooded gum with a barefoot John on a mizzly Monday, John talks about the logging that has occurred here in the past 30 years. 

“Integrated logging began in the early 1990s,” he says. “It’s the tool used to turn the last of these diverse, moist coastal forests into simple plantation forests [blackbutt]. It reduces biodiversity, dries out the forest and creates a young, even-aged forest that poses an incredible fire risk. Despite our protest to Forestry Corporation NSW at the time, it continued. And we weren’t alone in our protests, with some saw loggers siding with us, stating, ‘Until the conservationists strengthened their attack, there seemed no way of protecting other species.’”

Thanks in no small part to John and Anne’s tireless work to protect the forest, Pine Creek has also been the focus of three major independent scientific studies on koalas over the same three decades. 

The latest, published by renowned wildlife ecologist and environmental scientist Dr Andrew Smith in December 2023, and co-authored by John, says: “The area supports a mosaic of  wet and dry sclerophyll forest and rainforest on undulating topography across a network of moist drainage lines, which provides a high level of protection against intense fire and drought, enabling this region to support one of the largest and most stable koala populations in NSW.

“These findings indicate that the continuation and expansion of high-intensity logging across the remaining parts of the Pine Creek State Forest available for wood production has the potential to eliminate koalas from logged areas, destroy corridor links between remnant koala habitat in Bongil Bongil National Park and nearby upland conservation areas, and reduce the quality and integrity of koala habitat in the surrounding region including the proposed Great Koala National Park.”

Pine Creek is also a critical fire refuge. It escaped the Black Summer bushfires of 2019–20, unlike great swathes of state forest, national park and private landholdings to the north, west and south of it. More than 10,000 koalas across NSW perished during the fires and hundreds of thousands of hectares of prime koala habitat was burnt. It affected more than a third of the proposed park, and killed many hundreds – possibly thousands – of koalas within it. “Everyone loves koalas,” says Anne, “but won’t do what they need – protect their habitat from logging.”

Fighting fire with forest

Nurseryman Barry Hicks knows a thing or two about the 2019–20 fires. He lost everything. Well, almost. Incredibly, his sanity remained intact…and his caravan. “We called it an act of God,” he says, blue eyes twinkling. “It ate up everything in its path but left my van. Ran a circle around it. Can’t make any sense of how or why.”

The septuagenarian lives at Billys Creek on the western Dorrigo Plateau, surrounded by rainforest and native bush. He fought the fires for four months alongside his brother, whose shack is a stone’s throw to the north, and the locals of nearby Dundurrabin village. “I remember seeing a trail of smoke across the valley and thought, ‘Oh no, here we go.’ It didn’t ease up until Christmas Eve, when we finally had good rain. It was the first full night’s sleep we’d had since September.” 

The devastation the fires wrought is writ large across the landscape – charred bones of homes and burnt-out banksia trunks – and in the battle scars the survivors have band-aided with nonstop recovery work. That work includes the nurture of thousands of rainforest and koala feed-tree seedlings in greenhouse tunnels at Barry’s now-rebuilt Blue Rock Nursery. 

“I collect the seeds down in the gully,” he says. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but the rainforest down there pulled up the fires.”

Barry and I sit in his rebuilt shed (sans walls) chatting about this phenomenon with ecologist Mark Graham. “There’s been a huge body of work done into how and why rainforest retards fire,” Mark says. “The naturally high levels of moisture that give rainforests their name result in rapid breakdown of leaves once they fall from the canopy, so that these areas have much lower fuel loads and are moister than other forests.”

But surface fuels aren’t the whole story – there are shrubs and grasses that also contribute to fire behaviour. “The vegetation is quite dense, but much of the foliage often holds moisture, making them less likely to burn,” Mark continues.

Logging of adjacent native forest, however, creates greater fuel loads, which in turn pushes fire into these protected wet zones and attacks it. According to research by the Bushfire Recovery Project – a joint endeavour between Griffith University and the Australian National University in response to the 2019–20 fires – native forest logging increases the severity at which forests burn, beginning about
10 years after logging and continuing at elevated levels for 30-plus years. The project also found that the likelihood of “crown burn” (when the canopy is burnt) is about 10 per cent in old-growth forest versus 70 per cent in forest logged 15 years ago. 

This drops steeply as the forest continues to age, but remains elevated for decades. This is because logging removes the canopy, resulting in increased drying of the young plants and soil by the sun and wind, and greater wind speeds on days with extreme fire danger. After logging, the young trees that begin to grow create an increased fuel load in the forest; many of those trees will die, becoming dry and highly flammable. 

World-leading forest ecology expert Professor David Lindenmayer AO stated in the bushfire recovery report that the link between fire severity and logging had been found in global studies, such as in the USA and Patagonia, as well as locally in Australia. 

“Logging typically takes only the trunk of the tree; the branches, the bark and the top of the tree are left dead in the forest. While some logging operations (mostly in Victoria) burn the forest after logging, up to 50 per cent of woody fuel can remain after the burn-off.”

Barry’s work with saplings, then, is fundamental to the recovery of the fire-ravished forests across the western plateau, as is his cultivation of koala feed trees, of which hundreds of thousands of acres were decimated (along with their inhabitants) during those darkest of months. “My life’s work is to regenerate the rainforest,” Barry says. “Like a wet blanket, it protects our forests and animals, the koala included, that call the bush around here home.”

Mapping koala hubs

When I meet Jack Nesbitt in the blue gum forest behind his family home in Brierfield, roughly 10km south of Bellingen, his English springer spaniel, Max, is running drills. 

While thunderheads storm across the sky and industrial-sized mosquitoes make quick work of the thin layer of cotton protecting my legs, Max puts his nose to the ground, hunting for scats.

“He’s trained in koalas as well as two species of endangered antechinus: the silver-headed and black-tailed dusky,” Jack says, as the dog tracks left, then right, across the forest floor, back and forth, before pulling up at the base of a towering tree. He steps back and waits. “See how he’s not digging or pawing at the ground?” Jack says. “We don’t want him disturbing the site. We need the scats intact so we can send them to the lab for testing.”

Max is a conservation detection dog and a vital member of Canines for Wildlife, run by Jack, his father Brad Nesbitt and mother Lynn Baker, who are both long-time ecologists.

“We have four scent-detection dogs working on threatened species research, survey and management, as well as invasive species detection and control,” Brad says. “We work all the way up the coast and into south-east Queensland, and inland to New England.”

While Max waits, Jack collects a scat buried beneath leaf litter at the base of the eucalypt. “If this was a live hunt, we’d mark the position using GPS, note the time and date, take photos of the scat and any other identifiable koala signs [such as scratchings on the tree trunk], take it back to the office, label it and put it in the freezer [–20°C or below to slow degradation]. Then we’d send it off for analysis.”

At the lab, an array of testing is undertaken: DNA is extracted, which helps identify individual animals and their sex, and pathogen sampling for Chlamydia pecorum and koala retrovirus. It also provides insight into the overall population health and interrelatedness of groups of koalas.

This information, and Max’s work, Jack says, has been instrumental in helping map koala populations in hubs identified for inclusion in the GKNP. “Genetic analyses can be used to monitor populations over time and provide data on size, structure, diversity and health,” he says. “It also helps investigate movement. For instance, we collected scats from two small patches of remnant bushland in Toormina [a heavily urbanised area just south of Coffs Harbour] and found it was from the same koala.

Looking at the map, you have to wonder how it got from one patch to the other – it’s a bit of a mystery, did it hitch a ride in a car boot? – but goes to show how important backyard trees and wildlife corridors are. While they’re mostly sedentary and stay in one spot, when they need to, these guys can travel.”

Related: Pap not poop: The ‘gift’ a mother koala gives her joey

Meet Mr Koala Head

It’s a steamy Sunday afternoon in Bellingen as the rally gets underway. Posters pasted around town have invited people to join a march across Lavenders Bridge in support of the GKNP. It’s the first of two for March, with more planned for the months beyond. The mood is upbeat as I walk alongside a tall, lean fellow wearing an oversized koala head. We stop for a group photo – handmade banners, gum leaves and toy koalas raised on high – before making our way to a grassy spot on the northern side. Seeking respite from the heat, kids stream in and out of the Bellinger River while others swing from a rope thrown over a tree branch.

Mr Koala Head steps up to the microphone, removes his ‘hat’ and introduces himself. “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Dr Tim Cadman. I live within the footprint of the proposed park and I, like all of you, have had enough of the carnage.” A respected environmental researcher and academic at Queensland’s Griffith University, Tim is referring to the current clear-fell plantation logging in Tuckers Nob State Forest. A few clicks north of town, it’s also set down for inclusion in the GKNP. “It’s a visionary idea, a national park for koalas,” he continues. “But logging and koalas do not mix. In fact, clear-felling is like a nuclear bomb for wildlife – nothing survives.”

I’d driven past the site on my way into Bellingen today and was confronted by the scene. Where once stood a thriving forest now lies a ravaged landscape. Broken limbs, exposed earth, burnt trees. 

“If the proposed park is to live up to the ‘Great’ in its name, it has to be as big and as well connected as possible. The government has to end its take within the proposed GKNP area. It needs to stop the killing fields.” 

They’re potent words, and as I look around, I see everyone nodding in agreement. They remind me of something the park’s founding father, Ashley Love, told me a week ago: “We have the best koala habitat in the world right here, on our doorstep. We must do everything we can to protect it. The time is now.”

Amen, Ashley. Amen.

The post Clear-cutting koala country appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The chuditch (Dasyurus geoffroii)– also know as the western quoll – is another of those small-to-medium-sized mammals that only occurs in Australia, but has been almost completely wiped out during the past 200 years. Their natural distribution has been reduced by more than 90 per cent since European settlement and its last remaining natural strongholds are a handful of isolated populations south of Perth. 

A few limited translocations earlier this century saw the chuditch reintroduced to South Australia, although it remains endangered there. And the species continues to be either extinct or presumed extinct in the Northern Territory, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.

After a decade of planning, in 2023 Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) carried out the first of five planned translocations to Mt Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary, 350km north-east of Perth, of animals caught from remnant wild chuditch populations near Perth. It was the start of an ambitious plan that might one day lead to the species being re-established across much of its former range.

Related: A guide to all six species of quoll

‘A huge program’

Mammal reintroductions have been a key feature of management for the Mt Gibson sanctuary and crucial to this has been the property’s large predator-free enclosure. Almost 8000ha of the property’s most intact habitat has been protected within a 43km x 1.82m specially designed feral-proof fence.

In 2015 AWC began reintroducing to the property 10 mammal species that had been extinct in the area for many years, including nine species that are also threatened at the national level. It started with the greater bilby in 2016, and has since seen populations of numbat, woylie, Shark Bay bandicoot, red-tailed phascogale, greater stick-nest rat, banded hare-wallaby and the WA subspecies of the brushtail possum become established within the safety of Mt Gibson’s feral predator–free enclosure. 

“It’s been a huge program. But it’s been worth it,” says Isabel ‘Issie’ Connell, a field ecologist and senior guide at the Mt Gibson sanctuary. “This is the first place in the world to reintroduce so many species into one area.” 

Not only have these reintroduced populations begun to flourish safely away from the foxes and cats that have decimated their numbers, but the environment has also begun to visibly respond positively to the presence of the animals. 

“Something that many people may not be aware of is how important these animals are in the ecosystem and in the landscape,” Issie says. She points out that, as a result, the condition of the soil inside the fence is remarkably better than it is outside. “That’s because of the work done by the animals we’ve reintroduced there,” she says.

The extensive scratching and digging – while looking for food and making burrows – by the mammal species so far introduced behind the fence turns over huge quantities of soil every day. “The reason this is so important,” Issie says, “is that every time a little dig is done, it’s breaking up the topsoil and pulling down nutrients. When it rains the water doesn’t just run off, it actually penetrates the ground, and this can really have quite a quick effect on the quality of the habitat.”

The return of the chuditch to Mt Gibson began in 2023 with the same sort of intensive planning that had been undertaken for the other species, but with one important difference: The other mammals are mostly herbivorous, but the chuditch is a carnivore that eats large invertebrates, reptiles and small mammals. For now it has been decided to establish the translocated chuditch populations outside the predator-proof fence, to give the protected herbivores within more time to become established before being exposed to another native predator. (Natural populations of goannas, snakes and birds of prey all presently hunt for food behind the fence.) 

The other issue facing chuditch is that, being a carnivore, the species requires a much larger home range than other herbivores – a male chuditch can range across at least 1500ha and females need up to 400ha for hunting prey and searching for mates. 

As a result, an intensive effort went into making a huge area outside the fence as free of feral predators as possible for the chuditch translocations. “To be able to release outside the fence, we had to get cats and foxes down to a reasonable level,” says Georgie Anderson, who was until recently the senior field ecologist at Mt Gibson. Foxes are now rarely seen on the sanctuary or the surrounding area, but feral cats are an ongoing problem. 

“Cats are a big thing for us and incredibly difficult to manage, because different approaches work for different cats,” Georgie says. “So we do a whole suite of different controls.” Feral cat suppression is an ongoing part of management right across the property, and it was stepped up about 18 months before the first chuditch translocation, in the area where they were being released. 

“Across Mt Gibson we trap for cats. We also aerial- and ground-bait with Eradicat® [a commercial product that uses 1080 poison]. But we’ve also been trialling the Felixer grooming trap for the past year.” A Felixer is a device that uses a camera-based artificial intelligence system to attract feral cats, recognise them and spray them with 1080, which they then ingest when they groom.

Related: “A diabolical problem needing radical answers”: when cats are not so cute

Breeding underway

The fifth and final translocation of wild chuditch went ahead at Mt Gibson in May 2024, releasing 18 animals caught at Dryandra Woodland National Park, 180km south-east of Perth. In the 12 months prior to the release, more than 20 feral cats were removed from the area using a combination of Felixers and traps. As with the other releases, a mix of male and female chuditch were chosen and released at selected locations outside the fence, after first resting up for vet checks and a good feed at Perth’s Chuditch Hotel, a purpose-built facility operated by Native Animal Rescue.

Some of the released animals were fitted with radio-tracking collars, and data from these revealed some animals dispersed far and wide shortly after release, even as far as neighbouring properties. These data, along with field sightings, trapping of the translocated animals and evidence from camera traps, demonstrated that the program overall has so far been successful in establishing a chuditch population back at Mt Gibson.

“We’ve shown that we’ve got really high survivorship, with a couple of mortalities from predation. But some of those predation events have been by native animals, including by a bird of prey,” Georgie says. “There were a couple of mortalities that were likely to be cat or fox. But it was low enough that we think the majority are doing okay.”

Perhaps, however, the best indicators of the population’s health are signs of breeding and there has been clear evidence of that, with six new individuals detected either in traps or on camera in recent months.

Please help save the chuditch

You can help Australian Wildlife Conservancy continue its chuditch translocation program, vital to the ongoing survival of the species, by contributing funds to Australian Geographic Society’s Australia’s Most Endangered campaign.

Donate here.

The post Rescuing the chuditch appeared first on Australian Geographic.

A tiny animal – with a very tiny brain – goes busily back and forth, carrying branches, feathers, grass and sometimes fur with a very specific plan in mind – a design for a nest.

Birds’ nests can come in all shapes and sizes – from the traditional cup nests to those that hang like pendulums from the branches of trees.

Building a nest can take hours, days, sometimes even weeks. But each design has been refined over millions of years of evolution and is specific to each species.

Nests are the key to the survival of birds, quite literally holding the future of their populations within them.

But how did nest designs become so very different? And will they change as the planet does?

Our research has been looking into these questions using over 700 museum specimens.

The answers will help us understand how future climatic challenges might affect species’ designs and how bird nests, and their occupants, will cope in a changing world.

Domes, pendants and cups

When we think of nests, the first image that usually comes to mind is a cup, a simple structure that works like a vessel to hold eggs and chicks. But with a plethora of designs in the bird world, this vessel can take many shapes.

Some species build enclosed nests, domed structures with a side entrance and a roof.

These nests are rarer than open cups but many perching birds build them, including Australian species like lyrebirds, thornbills, gerygones and fairy-wrens. Building a roof may be a tool to help protect young from higher levels of solar radiation.

Researchers are only just starting to understand the reasons behind the great variation in nest designs. There are broad architectural differences but, as with human houses, there is also variation in many other features.

Some nests have incredibly thick walls, while others you can see right through. Some nests are pendant shaped and elongated, while other nests are wide and flat.

Our team, along with others across the world, are studying why species build nests the specific ways they do, and how we ended up with such a huge variety of nest designs.

To do this, we looked to museums as an incredible, but often overlooked resource, that not only contain collections of animal specimens, but what they build.

Museums across the world, including Australia, have large collections of preserved nests, with some collected centuries ago. In cases where species have disappeared, all we have left are the structures they built.

By taking detailed measurements across collections in the United Kingdom and Germany, we characterised the type of nest built by different species.

For one study, we explored more than 700 nests from 55 perching bird species, and another paper looked at 49 species of tanagers – perching birds from Central and Southern America.

We connected nest diameter, wall thickness, cup depth and opening size with climatic information from the locations where the nests were found.

This allowed us to draw interesting links between certain climatic conditions and specific nest features.

For example, we found that nests constructed in locations with high levels of rain had thinner walls, while nests with thicker walls tended to be from drier environments.

Our findings supported at broad scale what had been reported in a few species – that thinner walls in wet environments would allow nests to dry much faster, so puddles don’t form inside.

Thicker walls on the other hand, might be able to capture and hold humidity better in dry environments, which is especially important to help eggs hatch.

Wind also seems to be an important force driving the evolution of certain nest features, specifically in open-cup nests. Here, we found nests had deeper cups if they were built in environments with higher wind speeds.

This makes sense, because if nests don’t have a roof, then strong winds can dislodge eggs and nestlings.

The higher walls in these nests would also protect eggs from cooling down too quickly – eggs need consistently high temperatures of around 37 °C to develop.

Other studies have also shown that the size of the nest and the amount of lining material also varies depending on the local temperature, with colder conditions favouring nests with more lining that may help keep their contents warm.

Our results support the idea that the link between environment and nest design is more refined than we previously suspected, and that the structures we see now are made for the local conditions where the birds are breeding.

The insights from our study come from very closely related species of birds called tanagers, which suggests that these design alterations could have evolved relatively recently or could even be the product of experience and learning.

A strict design or a general set of instructions?

Our research shows that closely related species can have a large range of variations in their nests, but we also wanted to know what happens within species and populations.

Do all individual birds from the same species use the exact same recipe for construction?

Looking at museum specimens, we found the individuals of some species build very uniform nests; for example, the width of the cup or height of the dome varies by less than two per cent.

But there are some species that show extreme variation in the shape of nests they build, with some building both open-cup and enclosed domed nests within the same species. 

Because similar levels of variation were found in closely related species, this nest building flexibility may be genetically determined, which could mean some groups of species may respond more effectively to global climate change.

It’s interesting to note that flexibility in food foraging behaviour did not appear to correlate with flexibility in nest construction.

Our study was a proof-of-concept that we could find this kind of information from museum nest collections, but we need more research to understand why some species are much more flexible in their designs. 

Avian architects of the future

Nest builders are deeply connected to their environment and their constructions tend to match their local climatic conditions.

We found this was the case across millions of years of evolution, but the obvious question is, what happens if we suddenly change the environments where birds are building their nests?

What happens if the temperatures where they breed become much warmer? And if the materials they build their nests with are not available anymore?

While we don’t yet have these answers and more research is needed, it’s clear that these environmental changes could have dramatic consequences for bird populations.

For example, recent research has already told us that temperatures inside nests are rising and this is leading to a decline in some bird populations.

There is almost no information about if and how quickly birds can adjust their designs. Nor about how effective those changes would be in protecting their offspring.

Our work suggests that not all birds will be able to adjust their designs within the tight time frames that might protect them from a warming climate, so some species might have to respond in ways that don’t involve architectural solutions, like shifting their ranges or breeding at a different time.

Other species might be able to adjust specific design features to decrease temperatures inside their nests or use different types of materials that can offer better insulation.

Next spring, spare some time to appreciate the wonder of nest building if you are lucky enough to see it happening.

The designs that have evolved over millions of years may not stay the same, needing adjustments to cope with the challenges imposed by humanity.

This article was first published on Pursuit. Read the original article.

The post Birds are the ultimate architects, designing their nests for every climate appeared first on Australian Geographic.

This catastrophic and ongoing biodiversity loss surpasses the devastation wrought by other notorious invasive species such as cats, rats and even cane toads. Short of removing species from the wild and treating them in captivity, few strategies exist to deal with the chytrid threat.

Related: Impact of fungus on world frog populations revealed

New research, published in the journal Nature, offers a promising option.

Outbreaks of chytrid (pronounced “KY-trid”) are more common in cold winter months – just like seasonal human flu. We found a way to combat these winter outbreaks using heat. Our purpose-built “frog saunas” allow affected amphibians to warm up and bake off their infections. They are so simple you can build a frog sauna using supplies from the hardware store.

Why should we care about frogs?

If frogs’ good looks are not enough for you to care about their welfare, perhaps learning how they contribute to the environment or human health will pique your interest.

Frogs eat insects that carry and spread human diseases. Their skin is also a rich source of new medicines that could help us combat antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” or curb the startling increase in opioid addiction. The frogs themselves are food for many predators, including humans.

Often starting life as a tadpole eating algae, before morphing into a carnivorous adult, frogs carry energy from aquatic ecosystems onto land – where it can be transferred throughout the food web. So losing a single frog species can have serious flow-on effects.

The origin and spread of chytrid

It’s likely the chytrid fungus originated in Asia, where the pathogen seems to coexist with native amphibians. But chytrid is deadly elsewhere, possibly because other frogs have no natural defences.

Chytrid harms frogs by disrupting the integrity of their skin, depleting electrolytes needed for heart function. Infected frogs can die of cardiac arrest.

Chytrid has spread worldwide through the trade of amphibians, becoming a seemingly permanent part of ecosystems. As eradicating chytrid from the wild is not possible, we need a way to help frogs battle infection.

Introducing frog saunas

Research has shown chytrid is worse in winter. My colleagues and I wondered whether, if frogs had access to warmth during winter, could they fight off infection?

The fungus can’t tolerate high temperatures, so if we gave frogs a place to stay warm – even for a few hours a day – perhaps they could survive and recover.

We tested this idea, both in the laboratory and in outdoor experiments.

First we established that endangered green and golden bell frogs will select temperatures that reduce or eliminate chytrid infections, when given the opportunity.

Then we conducted experiments in the lab, with 66 infected frogs. The group given the option of choosing the temperature they liked best rapidly cleared their infection. The group placed in a set, warm temperature also cleared their infection, but it took longer. The low-temperature control group remained infected.

Next, we wanted to see what would happen if frogs that cured infections with heat would still get sick. Or were they immune? The group of 23 heat-cured frogs were 22 times more likely to survive the second infection than the 23 frogs that were heat-treated but not previously infected. So frogs cured with heat acquire resistance to future infections.

Related: How to make your backyard frog-friendly

Finally, we wanted to see if this could work in a natural setting. We ran outdoor experiments with 239 frogs. Half were infected with chytrid one week before the experiment began. Then they were placed in enclosures with artificial structures that heat up in the sun, called “frog saunas”. But the frogs could choose from shaded and unshaded areas, with or without saunas.

We found frogs flocked to the sunny saunas, heated up their little bodies, and quickly fought off infection. Think of frog saunas as little factories that pump out healthy, chytrid-resistant frogs.

The frog saunas could be used on a wider scale. We believe they would be best suited to supporting populations of Australian green and golden bell frogs, but they could be useful for other species too.

The saunas are made of inexpensive materials that can be found at your local hardware store, making them accessible to the general public and wildlife managers alike.

We are already building shelters at Sydney Olympic Park, working with Macquarie University and the Sydney Olympic Park Authority. The park is home to one of the largest remaining populations of green and golden bell frogs.

Want to get involved?

You can become a citizen scientist and help save frogs from extinction. Start by downloading the FrogID app to learn how frogs are faring. Record frog calls with the app for scientists to identify them. This helps provide valuable data for frog conservation.

You can also build a frog sauna for your backyard, to help keep them healthy through winter.

It’s essentially a brick-filled greenhouse, warmed by sunlight. All you need is some common clay ten-hole masonry bricks, black paint and cable ties – and a little greenhouse to put the sauna inside.

Changing the fate of frogs

Since the discovery of chytrid more than 25 years ago, the pathogen has been a seemingly insurmountable challenge to endangered frog conservation. Now, we have developed a promising, inexpensive and widely applicable strategy to combat chytrid.

Amphibians are such a diverse group that no single approach will be suitable for all species. So this is no silver bullet. But a useful tool for even one threatened or endangered species is cause for optimism.

The concept could also be applied to other wildlife diseases, where differences between the physiology of the host and pathogen can be exploited.

Related: Hot frog bodies fight deadly infection

Anthony Waddle is a Schmidt Science Fellow in Conservation Biology at Macquarie University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post How soaking in saunas could save our frogs appeared first on Australian Geographic.

From February 2023 to April 2024, significant coral bleaching occurred in at least 53 countries. In 2022, bleaching affected 90 per cent of coral reefs assessed at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, one of the world’s largest coral reef ecosystems.

Despite bleaching events and rising sea temperatures causing widespread decline, a glimmer of hope emerges from an unexpected source — the remote Kimberley coast of Western Australia.

The Kimberley region is known for its landscapes, gorges and waterfalls. These reefs located along the vast 12,000km Kimberley coastline contain a hidden treasure: a network of pristine intertidal reefs, teeming with life including dugongs, sharks, stingrays and seabirds.

It is home to the Montgomery Reef, the world’s largest inshore reef with a total area of 400 square kilometres, which rises from the ocean floor at low tide, creating cascading waterfalls and revealing a vibrant underwater ecosystem.

Coral cover at the Kimberley region averages about 23 per cent, similar to what is recorded on the Great Barrier Reef.

More than 225 species of coral have been documented — other intertidal reefs around the world usually have just a handful.

Taxonomic studies have revealed many species recorded in the Kimberley are known only from Indonesia and they do not occur anywhere else in Australia, hinting that the corals that now live in northwest Australia may be closely related to corals in Indonesia, although this remains to be tested with population genetic studies.

What is most remarkable about these corals is their resilience.

Taking on a harsh climate

Unlike reefs elsewhere, Kimberley corals thrive under harsh conditions. The reefs endure hours of exposure at low tide to scorching sun and intense UV light. Even a major global mass bleaching in 2016 failed to trigger mass mortality, while neighbouring reefs suffered devastating losses.

Scientists believe the answer lies in the corals’ unique genetic makeup.

Recent studies have identified genes in Kimberley corals that are under evolutionary pressure, suggesting an adaptation process. These naturally resilient corals may hold the key to understanding how coral reefs can survive a changing climate.

An examination of the whole genomes of Kimberley corals has found genes under recent selective pressure providing evidence that the corals are actively evolving in response to changes in the environment. While the exact function of these genes is not known, it is likely their increased prevalence helps corals survive extreme environmental conditions.

Researchers discovered that less tolerant corals have historically been eliminated from the Kimberley coast, resulting in a collection of locally adapted corals with the genetic make-up to withstand current climate stress.

Coral of the future

Further research is required to understand how Kimberley corals have developed higher thermal thresholds. However, these corals offer significant opportunities to enhance our knowledge of coral adaptation.

Despite their potential, the vast diversity of naturally thermally tolerant Kimberley corals has been largely overlooked in the coral adaptation narrative.

Related: Tough Aussie corals thrive under pressure

These corals serve as a natural laboratory to study how diverse corals have adapted to climate change and to uncover the nature of these beneficial adaptations.

Integrating Kimberley corals into the broader coral adaptation discourse is essential, as they offer evidence that corals can adapt to environmental pressures.

Associate Professor Zoe Richards is a coral taxonomist at Curtin University, Australia whose research revolves around coral biodiversity and how best to monitor and protect it. Working in the areas of systematics, phylogenetics, population genetics, ecology and conservation biology, she has conducted research on coral reefs across the globe for over 25 years. She is also curator of marine invertebrate zoology at the Western Australian Museum.

This article was originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

The post Kimberley corals could hold the key to saving our reefs appeared first on Australian Geographic.

If just one species can shift the equivalent mass of the Great Sphinx of Giza each year – as was recently discovered by a study conducted by the University of Newcastle – then the scale of impact that these species are having collectively is nearly unfathomable.

The study focused on the estuary stingray (Hemitrygon fluviorum), which is well known as providing important ecosystem services to the estuaries it inhabits, but the study lead, PhD student Molly Grew, and her team wanted to know just how much of an effect the rays were having.

“When rays are feeding, they use their pectoral fins to push the sand in and out so they can excavate their food,” explains Molly.

“They’re also moving sand when they’re resting – they kind of shimmy down and hide themselves in the sand. We know that this turning over of the sediment helps with nutrient cycling, oxygen penetration and other ecosystem services, but we wanted to put a number on it.”

Molly’s team used drone imagery to survey a 1400sq.m area of the Brisbane Water estuary, near Gosford on the NSW coast, over the period of a week to look at the impacts of this ray behaviour.

They then extrapolated the data using high-resolution aerial imagery of the estuary to identify other ray feeding areas, which covered a 69,000sq.m area.

“We used special software to analyse the drone images, which gave us the mass of sand removed from ray feeding pits. Then, by using the aerial images, we could work out the mass of sand being moved per day, week and year in the identified ray feeding areas within the estuary,” Molly says.

What the team found was…monumental.

“Over a year, we found that they turned over more than 21,000 tonnes of sand, which is actually a greater mass than the Great Sphinx of Giza! It’s an insane amount,” says Molly.

“It’s so important that we’re managing how we interact with these species, and what we do around different estuaries and ecosystems. We need to be protecting those individuals and protecting their environment.”

Ecosystem engineers

Ecologists often refer to environment-sculpting species as ‘ecosystem engineers’. Though many species help to maintain, and ensure balance, in their ecosystem, it’s startling how much influence a single species can sometimes have on their surroundings. The rays in Brisbane Water ‘engineer’ an environment where other species can thrive, and without their machination, that delicate system could fall apart.

“When you lose ecosystem engineers, you’re also losing their ecosystem services. If the sand’s not getting turned over, the sediments become anoxic and the small animals living in the sand die out. That’s a bigger problem up the food chain because important fish species eat those little creatures,” says Molly.

Unfortunately, this loss is exactly what Molly is concerned might happen in Brisbane Water.

Estuary stingrays are often caught as bycatch in commercial fishing, but the main threat to many coastal ray species comes from coastal developments and commercial infrastructure that often destroy critical stingray habitat.

Pressed on all sides, the numbers of estuary stingrays have been steadily declining for decades, and they’re now classified as near threatened.

“When you lose important habitats like mangroves or seagrasses, you also lose the fish living in those habitats. As suitable spaces are getting smaller and smaller, there aren’t as many individuals that can live in them,” says Molly.

Threatened with extinction

As it stands, 30 per cent of all ray species are near threatened with extinction, and 19.9 per cent are listed in a threatened IUCN red-list category. Efforts are being made to help conserve stingray populations, but their numbers have continued to decline all over the world. Often, conservation endeavours are stymied by a simple lack of information.

Related: World first: evidence of stingrays making sounds

“We hardly know anything about any estuarine elasmobranch [sharks and rays]. Unless they’re one of the big, charismatic species, very little research has been done”, says Molly.

“We need to find out so much more about them – where they hang out, what they eat, where they go. If we can provide more information to estuary managers, that would go a long way to help conserve stingray numbers.”

One species can make all the difference to the health and wellbeing of an environment, but we first need to act and ensure those ecosystems builders are still around to do so.

The post Estuary stingrays shift ‘insane amount’ of sand appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Images sent to WWF-Australia from a landholder in Murrays Run in the Lower Hunter Valley region of New South Wales clearly show a wombat sharing its burrow with a fox and cub. 

The landholder – who wishes to remain anonymous to the public – sent the images to WWF-Australia after they saw the organisation sharing research showing that wombat burrows provide critical shelter for numerous species following severe bushfires.

The camera trap recorded not just one, but a series of comings and goings on the same night, indicating that the wombat, the fox, and the cub were using the burrow at the same time. This behaviour continued for the four days the camera was in place.

This is the first time a wombat has been found to be sharing its burrow with a predator. 

But don’t wombats crush fox skulls with their bottoms?!

What makes this discovery even more remarkable is that some experts believe wombats actually kill foxes.

The bodies of deceased foxes, dingos and wild dogs are often found at the entrance to burrows. It is believed wombats kill these animals by crushing their skulls between their robust bottoms and the roof of their burrows.

Adding fuel to this theory was a Facebook post that went viral in 2020, showing a photo of a dead fox beside a wombat in a burrow entrance, accompanied by the words “We think the furry feral was outfoxed and crushed to death by a grumpy wombat”:

Katja Gutwein, from Mange Management, a group of volunteers in Victoria who treat mange in wombats in the wild, says a landholder she works with witnessed an “epic battle of wills” between a wombat and a fox.

“The fox tried to take over the wombat’s burrow and each day it would carry vegetation in to create bedding. Each night the indignant wombat would turf out the fox’s bedding. This went on for days until, in the end, the fox gave up,” says Katja. 

Wildlife rescuer and carer Narelle Thompson says she’s also heard similar reports over the years, particularly about female wombats with joeys.

“I was told the female wombat lays flat in the entrance, giving the fox a false sense of assurance that it’s okay to climb over her back. Once the fox is in place, she stands up and crushes the fox between her hard armoured butt and the roof of the burrow,” Narelle says.

“That’s why I find it extremely unusual for a wombat to be sharing its home with a fox. But stranger things have happened!”

Related: Wombat burrows provide refuge from fires

The post An unlikely alliance: Wombat and fox family become housemates  appeared first on Australian Geographic.

In our recent research, my colleagues and I observed Norfolk Island green parrots applying chewed pepper tree bark and shoots to their feathers and skin during preening. We believe this is a rare example of a bird using plant matter to rid themselves of parasites. But there may be more to it. These birds do seem to be enjoying themselves.

For more than a century, scientists have puzzled over the purpose of anting. When birds engage in this behaviour, they either actively spread ants or simply allow ants to move through their feathers. In defence, the ants release formic acid. Could birds be getting high on the fumes?

Maybe pepper tree bark has more than medicinal effects too. It’s highly likely such self-medicating is stimulating.

Stimulating substances

Both formic acid and piperine (from pepper trees) are pungent chemicals with proven medicinal, antimicrobial and insect-repelling qualities.

Our green parrots appeared extra animated while they busily snipped, chewed and rubbed the pungent pepper tree bark and foliage through their plumage.

Almost a century ago, in 1931, Prussian naturalist Alfred Troschütz noted of anting “the formic acid must have an especially agreeable effect”.

Then, in 1957, US ornithologist Lovie Whitaker concluded the bird she was studying “appeared to derive sensual pleasure, possibly including sexual stimulation” from anting. Her views were quickly dismissed and anting declared “strictly functional”. But is it?

The apparent ecstatic state reached by some anting birds is well known. People often come across Australian magpies with their feathers fluffed, body contorted, perhaps staggering and seemingly unable to respond normally — that is, to flee.

In humans, piperine (the key ingredient in pepper) is mildly stimulating. And several potentially hallucinogenic or mind-altering substances, notably formic acid, have been isolated from ant toxins.

Formic acid has been used to tone the muscles, increase muscular energy and ease the sense of fatigue. In 17th-century Europe, it was the “secret” ingredient in a popular tonic believed to improve wellbeing, calm digestion and increase sexual appetite.

Indigenous groups across southern California used red harvester ants for medicinal purposes as well as religious rituals. The ants were ingested alive, in massive quantities, to induce prolonged catatonic states punctuated by hallucinogenic visions.

Flying under the influence

Many birds become intoxicated after eating fermented fruits and berries. Their drunken state is often detected when they collide with windows or cars, get caught by cats while in a stupor, or suffer from alcohol poisoning.

In 2021, about half a dozen drunk red-winged parrots were handed in to Broome Veterinary Hospital in Western Australia after feasting on overripe mangoes. Many more never made it to the clinic.

The drunken reputation of the Kereru saw it voted in as New Zealand’s Bird of the Year in 2018. This pigeon is known for occasionally becoming tipsy, even falling out of trees.

All of these pissed parrots and pigeons lend themselves to jokes about party animals, but there is a deeper evolutionary context to such behaviour.

As fruit ripens it becomes sweeter and more nutritious. As it overripens, the sugar begins to ferment and the alcohol concentration increases.

Volatile compounds (alcohols) produced during fermentation can be carried in the air, helping birds locate the rich food source. Ethanol is also a source of energy in its own right and stimulates the appetite.

Fruit eaters including birds, our human ancestors and other animals may have come to associate the presence of ethanol with a sugar hit and mild pleasure. In turn, the fruit eaters reward the fruit or nectar producing plants by dispersing seeds, or facilitating cross-pollination.

This evolutionary explanation for an attraction to alcohol is sometimes referred to as The Drunken Monkey Hypothesis, first suggested by US biologist Robert Dudley.

Related: Drunk birds: inebriation in the wild

Eat, drink and be merry

While some birds are inclined to imbibe, it seems most can handle their liquor. Like humans, their central nervous system may well reward moderate alcohol consumption, making them feel less fatigued, more relaxed and sociable.

Such pleasure-seeking may seem like an evolutionary dead end, but nature generally contrives to limit availability to alcohol. Stimulation is mild and cases of drunken excess are the exception. The latter often occur in situations where the fleshy fruits are in abundance, other food is scarce or conditions have produced unusually high sugar content, which yields an extra potent brew when it ferments. Often, the boozy casualties are young birds. Sound familiar? Just as well smart birds haven’t figured out how to distil alcohol.

Likening green parrots rubbing aromatic vegetation through their plumage to inebriated pigeons falling from trees may seem a stretch. But nature rewards behaviour that offers evolutionary advantage, often, it seems by tapping into animals’ pleasure centres. The pursuit of pleasure is an important, usually overlooked, aspect of animal behaviour, worthy of attention and further research.

Penny Olsen is an Honorary Professor in Ecology and Evolution at Australian National University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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It was a serendipitous moment that ultimately fuelled a revolutionary new Melbourne-based program now helping to save some of Australia’s most endangered creatures from extinction, by applying the scientific discipline of wildlife endocrinology. At the program’s helm are two reproductive biologists who were on that original team: Dr Marissa Parrott, Senior Conservation Biologist in the Wildlife Conservation and Science team at Zoos Victoria, and Dr Kerry Fanson, who leads the Wildlife Conservation and Reproductive Endocrinology Lab (WiCRE) at Melbourne’s La Trobe University.

Wildlife endocrinology is simply the study of hormones in wild animals, and during the past two decades it has successfully underpinned breeding programs for many exotic species – from tigers and elephants to pandas – in zoos around the world. But until now, it’s rarely been used in Australia to help recover declining populations of native species, and its potential is huge. 

To understand this, it’s necessary to appreciate the role played by hormones, which are chemical messages produced inside all animals and detectable in biofluids such as saliva and urine, and in faeces. “They underlie every part of animal health, behaviour and reproduction,” Marissa says. “Knowing what healthy baseline levels of hormones are allows us to identify [physiological] problems and look for solutions, which is important in endangered and critically endangered species.” 

That’s because when a species’ population falls to desperately low levels it usually means a captive breeding program is needed to save it, but this is unfortunately often viewed as a last resort. “But by the time a species is brought in to start a captive breeding program, it usually has low genetic diversity because its populations are so reduced, and that often leads to health and hormone issues that cause low fertility and low fecundity,” Marissa says. 

And that’s exactly what’s happened with a key population of the mountain pygmy-possum.

Pygmy-possum breeding success

With fewer than 2000 of the critically endangered possums now estimated to survive in the wild, inbreeding – which leads to a loss of genetic diversity – is a major issue. The species has a complex life history. The mountain pygmy-possum’s natural distribution range is limited to Australia’s alpine areas and it is the only Australian marsupial that hibernates for around six months a year beneath a thick layer of snow. Its survival is also closely tied to the life cycle of its major food source – the migratory bogong moth, which is also endangered.

When Zoos Victoria began its mountain pygmy-possum breeding program almost two decades ago, wild-caught females were brought in to mate with wild-caught males from a different population. The males were genetically robust and had already proven to be successful in the breeding stakes. But the new females came from an extremely small inbred wild population and some weren’t becoming pregnant.

“We looked at hormone levels in our breeding females that had successfully raised young and compared them with the females that hadn’t bred,” Marissa says.

Kerry elaborates: “We found that successfully breeding females had really nice clear cycles, whereas the unsuccessful breeders didn’t have any progesterone cycles – they didn’t seem to be ovulating when they should have been.” 

In response, the team refined the care and management of the possums, including their diet and social system. When further wild-caught females from genetically healthy populations were introduced to the breeding program, all of them successfully bred and raised young.

The zoo’s breeding success rate for mountain pygmy-possums is now up to 100 per cent. 

Building a database

Leadbeater’s possum is another critically endangered species that’s now having its hormones scrutinised and documented by the team. It has a vastly different reproductive strategy from the pygmy-possum. But there also appear to be treatable hormone imbalances in animals that have been failing to reproduce, and the team was able to breed the first Leadbeater’s babies in the new conservation breeding program last year. 

“At the moment we’re looking at what’s happening with females that are reproducing versus those not reproducing, as we did in the pygmy-possums,” Marissa says, explaining that for female Leadbeater’s the current focus is on the hormone progesterone. One of the major challenges is recognising and understanding individual differences in animals’ physiology –not all females are the same. “We found that female Leadbeater’s in this population have seasonal changes in reproduction. For some females, the window of reproductive activity is quite long, whereas other females have a restricted window of breeding opportunity. But our next step is working with male samples and looking at testosterone.” 

The Tasmanian devil is another endangered marsupial species that’s so far been a focus for the project, and the New Holland mouse, also known as the pookila, a native mouse that’s now extinct from large parts of its former range, is another. 

The project is still in its early stages. Currently it’s focused mainly on building a database of what are normal and abnormal hormone levels for some endangered and critically endangered species – mostly mammals, although some work has begun on frogs that, as a group globally, have suffered significant declines.

This work alone is of massive interest simply because it’s never been done before. It will help flesh out what makes our native animals function and inform conservation breeding programs. But what makes this project particularly exciting are the ways in which this vast bank of knowledge will ultimately be used in the field.

Non-invasive approach

Unlike a lot of animal research that requires live specimens to be captured and handled, endocrinology can be a non-invasive science. Hormone levels can be detected from biofluids, hair, feathers and scales, so urine and gland secretions used to scent-mark territories, and faeces left at regular latrine sites – like those used by devils – can be sampled in the field without even needing to see an animal. 

“Non-invasive hormone monitoring has a couple of unique benefits for understanding the physiology and behaviour of Australia’s unique endangered wildlife,” Kerry says. She explains that for mountain pygmy-possums, urine – which is easy to collect in captive populations – has so far been the preferred sample type for the project.“ But for Leadbeater’s possums, Tassie devils and pookila, we’re largely using faeces because it’s so much easier to collect without even seeing the animals.”

To collect hormone samples as non-invasively as possible in frogs, the team is developing special capabilities that involve placing a small patch of filter paper onto the frog’s back to pick up skin secretions without hurting it. “Yes, you would have to first find the frogs to do that,” Kerry says. “But for all these species, we’re currently using captive-based populations to establish a critical foundation of knowledge about what their normal reproductive physiology is, and from that we’ll be able to develop biomarkers.”

The sorts of physiological conditions for which researchers are hoping to develop biomarkers include, for example, reproductive health, pregnancy and lactation. Having this sort of capability would allow researchers to identify situations such as whether or not a wild population of an endangered animal was successfully breeding. This could be done without exposing animals, or mothers and offspring, to a potentially stressful experience. 

Taking this sort of application even further: Zoos Victoria already has a team of highly trained wildlife-detection dogs that can detect the presence (or absence) of particular species without the need for trapping or tagging. The dogs have also been trained to detect scents associated with reproductive status and cycling in Tasmanian devil faecal samples. It’s a world first using detection dogs to track reproductive cycles in a conservation breeding program and may be adaptable to wild populations. 

“It’s an exciting time in the field of wildlife endocrinology. Much of the groundwork has been laid, so now we can start applying these methods to generate meaningful insights for wildlife conservation,” Kerry says. “It’s revolutionising what we can do. That’s why this new partnership between my lab and Zoos Victoria is so important, because they are on the ground with the animals, either for captive breeding or in the field, and we are able to turn those samples they collect into meaningful insights about reproductive biology, how healthy a population is and how the animals perceive their environment.” 

Relevance to human reproduction

Perhaps, however, the most remarkable aspect of Kerry and Marissa’s work is how it’s informing our understanding of human reproduction and potential infertility issues. Their work together – first in mountain pygmy-possums, but now also in devils and Leadbeater’s – has, for example, revealed a new role for the group of hormones called glucocorticoids. These have widely and traditionally been thought of as stress hormones.

“But they’re not!” Kerry says. “They do so many different things to the body.” When Kerry and Marissa were studying mountain pygmy-possums, they found that cortisol, a type of glucocorticoid, consistently increased before ovulation. At first, this was counter-intuitive, because everyone thought that elevated glucocorticoid levels should inhibit reproduction.

“But we’ve been looking a lot more closely at reproduction and glucocorticoids in other species and found that they increase during important reproductive events: when females become reproductively mature, before they ovulate and throughout pregnancy,” Kerry says. These insights have come from the endocrinology studies done by her and Marissa.

“If glucocorticoids increase at all these critical stages in female reproduction and promote successful outcomes, we need to change our thinking about how glucocorticoids affect reproduction. We are really driving this paradigm change together,” Kerry says. “We found that in mountain pygmy-possums, cortisol [one of the glucocorticoids] increases just before the female ovulates and that it’s followed by an increase in progesterone. That will be really useful for giving us another tool to first diagnose and then potentially treat reproductive failure.”

And that is likely to not just be limited to these three mammal species, but to all mammals.

Not surprisingly, researchers in the areas of fertility and IVF have begun looking at how this might be relevant to treating infertility in humans.

The post Sex, stress and fertility in Australian wildlife appeared first on Australian Geographic.

These relationships have been captured in people’s homes, such as with Molly the magpie and Peggy the dog, in zoos, such as with Baloo the bear, Leo the lion and Shere Khan the tiger, and even in the wild, such as one case of a fox and cat living together in Turkey.

A plethora of research on primates, birds, kangaroos, dolphins, horses, cats and dogs has shown many non-human animals can develop deep social bonds with their own kind.

And while inter-species bonding hasn’t been studied to the same extent, videos like those mentioned above show animals from different species displaying the same affection to each other as they would to their own, such as through cuddling, playing and grooming.

Why do we, as people, find these stories so enjoyable? Answering this question requires us to consider some of the nicer aspects of our own nature.

When animals reflect us

Witnessing animals get along well together isn’t just cute, it can also make us feel like we have things in common with other species, and feel more connected with the other life on the planet. Decades of research reveals how feeling connected to nature fosters happiness in humans.

While the mechanisms behind inter-species bonding are not fully understood, one 2022 research review suggests the mechanisms that operate in other animals’ brains during social interactions with their own are similar to those that operate in human brains.

The researchers suggest that, due to the evolution of common brain mechanisms, animals engaged in social interaction may experience similar emotions to humans who engage with their own friends or loved ones.

So while it’s very hard to know what this subjective social experience is like for other animals – after all, they can’t report it on a questionnaire – there’s no reason to think it isn’t similar to our own.

Humans like co-operation and pleasant surprises

Humans have evolved to enjoy co-operation, which might also help explain why we enjoy seeing co-operation between different animal species. Some scholars suggest the human instinct for co-operation is even stronger than our instinct for competition.

Another reason we may be drawn to unlikely animal friendships is that they are, in fact, so unlikely. These interactions are surprising, and research shows humans enjoy being surprised.

Our brain has evolved to be incredibly efficient at categorising, solving problems and learning. Part of the reason we’re so efficient is because we are motivated to seek new knowledge and question what we think we know. In other words, we’re motivated to be curious.

Inter-species friendships are indeed a very curious thing. They contradict the more common assumption and observation that different species stick with their own kind. We might think “cats eat birds, so they must not like each other”. So when we see a cat and a bird getting along like old pals, this challenges our concept of how the natural world works.

Neuroscientists have documented that, when surprised, humans experience a release of brain chemicals responsible for making us more alert and sensitive to reward. It is this neurochemical reaction that produces the “pleasantness” in the feeling of being pleasantly surprised.

A desire for peace and harmony

Perhaps another explanation for why humans are so intrigued by inter-species friendships is because they feed a human desire for peace and harmony.

These connections may be symbolic of what many people yearn for: a world where differences can be put aside in favour of a peaceful co-existence. These friendships might even prompt us to imagine, consciously or subconsciously, a future in which we become more enlightened as a species.

One could argue a key reason behind the success of the TV series Star Trek is its optimistic take on the future of humanity. Inter-species co-operation is a central theme of the show.

Inter-species friendships may serve as a concrete example of breaking free of the “natural” way of being for a more peaceful way of being. And while it might only be a dream, it’s nice to watch cute animal videos that help us feel like this dream might be possible.

Shane Rogers is a Lecturer in Psychology at Edith Cowan University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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As a result, the exploiter can diverge from its original population and ultimately become a new species. Charles Darwin proposed this process more than 160 years ago, but it has been difficult to observe in practice.

In new research published in Science, we show how this process drives the creation of new species of cuckoos. These birds lay their eggs in the nests of other species, and their chicks mimic the appearance of their host’s chicks to avoid detection.

An escalating arms race

The deceptive behaviour of bronze-cuckoos imposes heavy costs on their hosts. They lay their eggs in the nests of small songbirds, such as fairy wrens and gerygones, and abandon their young to the care of the host.

Soon after hatching, the cuckoo evicts the host eggs or chicks from the nest to become the sole occupant. The host parents not only lose all their own offspring, but also invest several weeks rearing the cuckoo, which eventually grows to around twice the size of its foster parents.

Not surprisingly, given these high costs, hosts have evolved the ability to recognise and reject odd-looking chicks from their nests.

Only the cuckoo chicks that most closely resemble the host’s chicks will evade detection, and so with each generation, the cuckoo chicks become a closer and closer match to the host chicks. This is why the chicks of each species of bronze-cuckoo look almost identical to their hosts’ chicks.

Divergence between populations that exploit different hosts

This exquisite mimicry has evolved to an even more fine-tuned level. Within a single species of bronze-cuckoo that exploits several different hosts, the appearance of the chicks tracks that of their hosts.

In response to chick rejection by hosts, both the little bronze-cuckoo and the shining bronze-cuckoo have diverged into several separate subspecies. Each subspecies exploits a different host and produces a chick that matches that of the host.

This divergence can happen even when two hosts live in the same geographic area. In northern Queensland, the little bronze-cuckoo exploits both the large-billed gerygone and the fairy gerygone. The cuckoos have undergone selection to match the chicks of their respective hosts, leading to genetic divergence into two separate subspecies.

This shows the split into subspecies cannot be explained by geographic separation.

A higher cost for hosts leads to more new species

It was difficult to find out exactly what was happening with these birds, because we couldn’t easily find cuckoo chicks in host nests in the wild. So we developed a non-destructive method for extracting DNA from the shells of tiny cuckoo eggs (2.5cm long), which allowed us to sample museum egg specimens that have been collected over many decades.

Our results also suggest that the evolution of cuckoos and their hosts is most likely to drive the creation of new species when the cuckoos impose a high cost on their hosts – such as by killing off all the host’s own offspring. This leads to an “evolutionary arms race” between the host’s defences and the cuckoo’s counter-adaptations.

This finding was supported by our broad analysis using evolutionary modelling across all cuckoo species. We found lineages that are most costly to their hosts split into new species more often than less costly cuckoo species (those that live alongside their host’s chicks) and their non-parasitic relatives.

Interactions between exploiters and their victims may be one of the main drivers of biodiversity. The process of speciation we described, in which the exploiter shows very specialised adaptations to their victim, may occur in other parasites and hosts, and in predators and prey. These tightly coupled interactions might even explain why there are millions, rather than thousands, of uniquely specialised species across the globe.

Related: The channel-billed cuckoo is a magpie’s worst nightmare

Naomi Langmore, Professor, Australian National University; Alicia Grealy, Research Projects Officer, CSIRO; Clare Holleley, Senior Research Scientist, Australian National Wildlife Collection, CSIRO, and Iliana Medina, Lecturer in Ecology, The University of Melbourne.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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They belong to the Pteropus genus and are Australia’s largest flying mammals.

All flying-foxes are social animals that roost in large, noisy camps.

They can travel up to 500km in a 48-hour period in search of food, including introduced fruits – pollinating flowering plants and dispersing seeds.

Since European settlement, Australia’s flying-fox species have been subjected to dispersal attempts, demonisation, and acts of cruelty.

Habitat loss and animal-control actions labelled as “pest management” have contributed to a heavy decline in populations. Climate change and extreme heat events are other significant factors affecting their ongoing survival.

Related: Saving our bat babies

Australia’s five flying-fox species:

Spectacled flying-fox (Pteropus conspicillatus)

Spectacled flying-foxes occur on Cape York Peninsula’s eastern coast in northern Queensland. The name comes from the distinctive markings around their eyes.

These flying-foxes are endangered under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). Their diet consists of rainforest fruits and the nectar and pollen of eucalypt blossoms.

Christmas Island flying-fox (Pteropus natalis)

Christmas Island flying-foxes are believed to be the last native mammal found on Christmas Island (not shown on above map), an Australian territory west of the mainland.

This bat has been heavily impacted by feral species, notably cats and yellow crazy ants, and is listed as critically endangered under the EPBC Act. The population has been reduced to two main camps.

Unusually, this species is sometimes active in the day and can forage for food in the mid-afternoon due to a lack of predators.

Related: The Christmas Island flying fox is a rare sun-seeker

Grey-headed flying-fox (Pteropus poliocephalus)

Grey-headed flying-foxes are typically found close to Australia’s south-eastern coastline, from central Queensland down to Adelaide. The species is listed as vulnerable under the EPBC Act and is found across a number of habitats, including forests, woodlands, intertidal mangroves and urban areas. Grey-headed flying-foxes eat the nectar and pollen of flowering native trees, including banksia, melaleuca and eucalypts.

Related: ‘They’re in trouble’: photograph reveals struggle of Australia’s flying foxes

Little red flying-fox (Pteropus scapulatus)

Little red flying-foxes have the widest distribution of all Australia’s flying-fox species, being found across all mainland states except SA. It also travels the furthest, notably across central Queensland and NSW.

The little red flying-fox is Australia’s smallest flying-fox species, with adults weighing 300–600g.

Nectar and pollen from eucalypt and melaleuca blossoms make up the bulk of the species’ diet, but these bats have been known to eat from orchards when food is limited. It’s not listed under the EPBC Act. 

Black flying-fox (Pteropus alecto)

Black flying-foxes live in woodlands and tropical and subtropical forests across Australia’s northern and eastern coastline.

The species’ distribution stretches from Shark Bay in WA to Booyong, near Lismore in northern NSW and as far south as the ACT, and it’s also found in New Guinea and Indonesia.

The black flying-fox is not listed under the EPBC Act. 

The post A guide to the flying-foxes of Australia appeared first on Australian Geographic.

If you were wading ashore in Australia in 1788 and walked into the forest, what would this forest have looked like? Would it have been an easy stroll because the forest was open and park-like with widely spaced trees and grassy ground cover? Or would the forest have been characterised by closely spaced tall trees and a dense, wet understorey of tree ferns and other mesic plants?

There has been much debate about the state of tall, wet forests when the British first arrived in Australia. This matters for several reasons.

First, the condition of forests 236 years ago is linked to how they were managed by First Nations people. An open and park-like forest would develop if it was subject to repeated, low-intensity cultural burns and “farmed” by First Nations people. Conversely, in the absence of repeated fire and farming, the forest would be dense and wet with many large trees.

Second, understanding what forests were like when the British first arrived provides crucial insights into how best to repair these ecosystems to their “natural state” and conserve the species dependent upon them.

My research team assembled different kinds of evidence to determine what tall, wet forests dominated by mountain ash – the world’s tallest flowering plant – were like 236 years ago.

We checked diaries of early British expeditioners such as Paul Edmund de Strzelecki, Hamilton Hume and William Hovell, and examined early paintings, photographs and the testimonies of First Nations Elders. We also compiled evidence from carbon dating, dendrochronology (the study of tree rings) and pollen cores taken from swamps and wetlands.

Finally, we assembled information on the basic biology and ecology of mountain ash and the other plants and animals found in these tall, wet forests. Our particular focus was on the mountain ash forests of Victoria’s Central Highlands, but our findings are highly likely to be relevant to other kinds of tall, wet forests elsewhere in eastern Australia.

The diaries, testimonies, paintings, photographs and ecological information all contained consistent evidence that tall, wet mountain ash forests were not open and park-like at the time of colonisation. These forests were not subjected to repeated and widespread cultural burning, nor was there any indication they were farmed by First Nations people.

Rather, the dense, wet condition of these forests is the natural state of mountain ash ecosystems. Bushfires did occur in mountain ash forests but were rare. Aboriginal people ventured into the forests to collect lyrebird feathers, harvest the pith of tree ferns and gather roots and leaves of key plants.

The forests also featured a number of sites of great cultural significance and contained pathways to helped facilitate journeys to the High Country to feast on bogong moths, for example.

Because the natural state of mountain ash forest is dense and wet, management activities such as repeated fires are inappropriate.

Thinning these forests could make them more fire-prone, generate more greenhouse gas emissions and destroy habitat for wildlife, including the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum.

The management for mountain ash forests is to leave them alone. Let them mature and recover from the almost 120 years of logging that has dreadfully degraded them.

The post OPINION: The real natural history of our tall, wet forests appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The work was published this week in the journal Alcheringa.

The weird new species, dubbed the “echidnapus” (Opalios splendens), is just one of several remarkable creatures identified from a batch of previously overlooked fossils found in the Australian Museum in Sydney.

Also of note is evidence of a 100-million-year-old platypus that’s almost identical to the modern platypus, a species that was previously thought to have only arisen some 50 million years ago. It’s been assigned the new genus name of Dharragarra, which means platypus in the Gamilaraay, Yuwaalaraay and Yuwaalayaay languages of the First Nations people from the Lightning Ridge area of north-western New South Wales.

“There are a number of big takeaways from this work,” Tim told Australian Geographic. “One is that we hadn’t really suspected before that there was a period in Australia’s history where there was a great diversity of monotremes, [at a time] when there were no other mammals living on the continent.

“Today, Australia is known as a land of marsupials, but discovering these new fossils is the first indication that Australia was previously home to a diversity of monotremes. It’s like discovering a whole new civilisation.”

Monotremes are egg-laying mammals, and are only represented today by the echidna and the platypus. Most modern mammals, such as humans, are in the placental mammal group. Marsupials, which survive mostly in Australia and nearby islands, make up the third group of mammals.

Related: Discovery identifies Australia as birthplace of all modern mammals

This new work has now identified six monotreme genera surviving some 100 million years ago (mya), all roaming across the landmass that would ultimately become Australia.

The fossils have come from Lightning Ridge, which is well-known for its fish and reptile fossils.

“Lightning Ridge was then [100mya] at 60 degrees south, so it was a very polar environment,” Tim said. “The earliest monotremes we’ve got – which look like they are the beginning of the group – are about 126 million years old and are from southern Victoria.”

The “echidnapus” is just one of six remarkable monotremes identified to have been roaming 100 million years ago across the landmass that would ultimately become Australia.
Illustration credits: Peter Shouten

This new work shows that within 26 million years of when monotremes were thought to have arisen, the group was rapidly evolving.

“By 100mya the group had really started to diversify. We’ve got pig-sized species, rat-sized species, and everything in between – some terrestrial, some aquatic. There’s quite a diversity of types,” Tim explains.

It means that Australia experienced a kind of “Age of Monotremes” during the first part of the late Cretaceous, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and placental mammals were lurking around in the form of tiny, shrew-like creatures. 

It’s a period referred to as the “Cenomanian” – the earliest age of the Late Cretaceous Epoch.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery,” Tim said. “In all the time that people have been looking at fossils from Lightning Ridge, previously they’ve only found four jawbones of mammals, and here we have five new jawbones – so, more than double the number of specimens, which is hugely enlightening.”

“[These fossils] came to the museum and were then somehow lost – no-one took much notice of them or realised how important they were. Then between lockdowns there was a period when the museum was open and I went in and accessed a particular drawer and there were these amazing fossils – they were kind of like a Rosetta Stone to understanding the past.”

The Rosetta Stone is considered one of the British Museum’s most important objects because it holds the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The prestigious team, led by Tim, which has been crucial to unlocking the meaning of the recent Australian Museum find, includes Dr Tom Rich, Senior Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at Museums Victoria Research Institute; Professor Kris Helgen, the Australian Museum’s Chief Scientist and Director; Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich, Honorary Researcher at Museums Victoria Research Institute; Dr Matthew McCurry, a vertebrate palaeontologist and functional morphologist and palaeontologist; and Dr Elizabeth Smith, a palaeontologist, author and artist.

Related: Stunning breakthrough: the platypus and echidnas came from the South Pole

The post Is the “echidnapus” the Rosetta Stone of early mammal evolution? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

I’m not the only one who hasn’t seen this endangered shorebird; according to BirdLife Australia, the painted-snipe is one of the 10 most difficult-to-find bird species in Australia. That not only means it’s difficult for birdwatchers to find but, more importantly, it’s also a challenge for researchers. 

For most of the 20th century – up until the 1990s, when DNA testing confirmed the Australian painted-snipe (Rostratula australis) has been isolated on mainland Australia for millions of years – the bird was considered a subspecies of the greater painted-snipe (Rostratula benghalensis) of Africa and Asia. Although greater painted-snipe populations have declined markedly, it remains a widespread wetland species. In parts of Asia, for example, it’s reliably found in traditional rice paddy landscapes, where it nests in fallow fields.

In contrast, the Australian painted-snipe’s distribution is patchy and its presence at any particular location is unpredictable. “They can turn up in very isolated wetlands that have been dry for ages,” says Dr Danny Rogers, an ornithologist with the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. “My guess is that [the] Australian birds are a lot more mobile than the greater painted-snipe. Their longer wings suggest that.” 

Australian painted-snipe inhabit ephemeral wetlands, temporary swamps and shallow lagoons that periodically dry up and refill after replenishing rains. They probe for insects, worms, molluscs and other invertebrates in shallow water and exposed mud on wetland margins, and nest on the ground, typically among grass tussocks and reeds on small islands left by receding floodwaters.

The species is thought to be polyandrous, meaning females mate with multiple males that then incubate eggs and care for chicks. If ephemeral wetlands aren’t available, the birds make use of altered habitats such as farm dams, town ponds, and even airport drainage ditches.

Like many Australian wetland birds, the species appears to be nomadic, but little is currently known about its migratory behaviour. With so few sightings recorded, the mysterious species seemingly vanishes for months at a time.

Rare sightings

Australian painted-snipe sightings are rare and becoming rarer. Reported sightings have been declining since at least the 1950s, especially in the Murray–Darling Basin, which was once a stronghold for the species. Researchers estimate there are now only a few hundred birds left. 

Concerned about a lack of sightings in 2021 and 2022, Dr Matt Herring brought together a team of shorebird experts that launched the Australian Painted-Snipe Tracking Project (APSTP). Matt, an ecologist at private conservation consultancy Murray Wildlife, and his colleagues launched the program with a crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $124,000 in only 40 days. Through the project, the team is also seeking help from the public in reporting sightings and, in a breakthrough for the species, to track the birds for the first time. 

By the end of last year, 58 birds across 23 locations had been reported to the APSTP. Matt is encouraged by the spate of sightings but isn’t complacent. “With so many people on the look-out, and such great conditions, the number of birds found nationally emphasises how rare the bird is,” he says. “We know its population has declined.”

Also, very little is known about this unpredictable, cryptic bird’s ecology. Researchers are in the dark on where the elusive birds go during winter and droughts – when they seemingly vanish for months or even years at a time – and whether their habitats are secure. “A real threat is our lack of knowledge,” Matt says. 

Matt, Danny and their wetland-loving colleagues plan to attach a dozen devices – a mix of satellite and mobile phone network transmitters – to individual birds to learn more about their habitat use and movements. Most sightings are in south-eastern Australia during spring and summer, and little is known about where the birds spend autumn and winter.

A smattering of sightings recorded in northern Queensland and along the coast of central Queensland suggests part of the population undertakes regular seasonal migration. Tracking may uncover their migration mysteries and, it’s hoped, reveal key sites and drought refuges. 

Recording the call

With so much information to be gained, the tracking team was thrilled when a group of 25 birds was reported in a private wetland on a farm near Balranald, in the New South Wales Riverina, in October 2023. One was promptly caught in a mist net and fitted with a satellite transmitter, and Gloria, as she’s known, became the first Australian painted-snipe to have her movements tracked. Her behaviour has surprised Matt. “Already we’ve learnt that she uses dry roosts far more than I would have anticipated,” he says.  

The tracking team plans to catch and track more birds at this and other sites. However, the species’ skulking behaviour, and habit of sheltering in dense vegetation during the heat of the day, means they can be hard to spot and are easily overlooked. 

The team also hopes to bag a potentially useful survey tool – an audio recording of the Australian painted-snipe’s call. The greater painted-snipe makes deep loud hoots to advertise for mates and the sound often reveals their presence to birdwatchers. But the Australian painted-snipe’s advertisement call has never been recorded and the species doesn’t respond to the greater painted-snipe’s call. Presumably, millions of years of separation means they now speak a different love language. 

The main threat to the Australian painted-snipe seems to be the loss of temporary wetland habitat, particularly for breeding and refuge from drought. Drainage and water diversion for irrigated agriculture have taken a toll. “Many temporary wetlands don’t exist anymore, or they have permanent water regimes that are too deep and just not suitable breeding habitat,” Danny says.

Compounding the problem, remaining wetlands are dry for longer periods due to extended droughts. “Climate change, with the increasing frequency and severity of droughts – that’s possibly their biggest threat,” Matt says. 

Armed with knowledge of which wetlands Australian painted-snipe are using, the trackers will be able to engage with landholders to help them manage their wetlands to support the endangered bird. Finding the birds is the first challenge, so the team is calling on citizen scientists across Australia to join the hunt and report sightings. “Get out there and find this wetland jewel,” Matt says. “You never know where it might turn up.”

Related: ‘Bunyip’ bird returns to restored Tasmanian wetlands

The post In search of our mysterious painted-snipe appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Others quipped on Twitter (now X) : “I’m hearing reports of wombats ushering forest creatures into their burrows, mixing them a killer mango daiquiri and asking them to ‘kick back and listen to a few tunes’”, and, “We’re seeing more leadership and empathy from these guys than the entire federal government”.

But if the idea of altruistic wombats sounds too good to be true, that’s because it was. The story was soon debunked. 

Accidental heroes

While wombats do not actively herd other animals into their fireproof homes, the burrows do provide refuge – and a food and water source – even if it’s not the wombat’s intention.

How do we know this? It’s been captured on camera.

Between 29 December 2019 and 18 February 2020, more than 18,000ha of bush burned in Woomargama National Park and Woomargama State Forest in southern New South Wales.

Following the fires, scientists set up sensor cameras to monitor the recovery of wildlife in the area, focusing on the role of wombat burrows.

In a collaborative project between Charles Sturt University’s Gulbali Institute and WWF-Australia, the team placed camera traps in front of 28 burrows of bare-nosed wombats (Vombatus ursinus), also known as common wombats. The locations were chosen to include areas of varying degrees of fire damage. Cameras were also placed at 28 nearby control locations – with the same levels of fire damage, but without burrows.

Food and water

The analysis of these camera recordings, published in the May 2024 issue of Journal of Mammalogy, reveals “wombat burrows play a valuable and underappreciated role in Australia’s fire-prone forests”.

“The burrow sites had higher native mammal species richness,” says the study’s lead author Grant Linley, an ecologist and PhD Candidate at Charles Sturt University. “Wombats alter the soil, topography and vegetation around their burrows. They turn over tonnes of soil [while] constructing a burrow and their scats increase nitrogen levels, which boosts herb cover.”

Grant and the team think these ground changes increase foraging opportunities for small insectivore and omnivore species, such as the bush rats, agile antechinus, grey shrike-thrush and painted button-quails captured on camera.

“More small vertebrates hanging around wombat burrows could then be drawing in larger native predators, such as lace monitors, so the impact of burrows may be cascading through the system,” Grant says.

Related: AI discovers bushfire-ravaged native species are bouncing back

Between June 2021 and April 2022, the cameras recorded more than 15,000 individual animals. Of the 56 species identified, 47 were native and nine introduced.

The cameras recorded 30 species inspecting a burrow, 11 foraging at a burrow and 10 entering or leaving a burrow.

During this time 19 burrows also filled with water at least once. Four species were recorded drinking from one of these flooded burrows, and one was seen bathing in another.

This suggests that in dry periods, wombat burrows could be providing a critical service, serving up an important water source.

Examples of animal species and behaviours observed at the wombat burrows.
Image credits: Grant Linley

Shelter

Then there’s the well-publicised service wombat burrows provide – shelter. The study found small animals not only seek refuge in burrows to escape an active fire, but also after a fire to avoid predators.

“Many resources critical for species survival, such as logs, were destroyed by severe fires,” says co-author Dale Nimmo, a Professor in Ecology at Charles Sturt University.

“We found associations between species and burrows were often strengthened in fire-impacted habitat. For example, agile antechinus, bush rats and painted button-quails – all smaller-sized animals – were most active at burrows subject to high-severity fire,” says Dale.

The study found smaller species benefit most, with larger species less active around the burrows because they are unable to take full advantage of the shelter and foraging potentials due to the size of the burrow openings.

Regardless, Dale says the study has certainly proven “wombat burrows are potentially aiding in the survival, persistence and recovery of animal populations following severe wildfire events”.

The post Wombat burrows provide refuge from fires appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Heavy rains like these can trigger a surge in wildlife activity, prompting frogs into a frenzy of courtship and breeding, making them easier to detect.

Hear the call of the Tanami toadlet

Dr Tim Henderson, AWC Wildlife Ecologist at Newhaven, who captured the above audio, said the team visited one of the claypan lakes at the sanctuary after the rains to look for frogs and see if they could track down the Tanami toadlet.

“The lake was extremely full at the time, and while we were there, we heard lots of frogs calling. The calls were distinctive, and unlike any other species we find out here regularly, so we suspected it could be the toadlet,” Dr Henderson said.

“We were eventually able to pinpoint the calls through the undergrowth to locate these little frogs, which matched the description for Tanami toadlets.

“They appear to only emerge after significant rainfall, and call for a very short time to look for mates – there was probably less than a week after they emerged that they stopped calling, so we were very fortunate to encounter them during such a short space of time.”

Dr Henderson was able to confirm that the call belonged to the Tanami toadlet using the Australian Museum’s FrogID app.

FrogID is a national citizen science initiative that enables smartphone users to record frog calls using the free app. Experts then verify recordings to provide scientific data on Australia’s frog populations to help aid conservation efforts.

Related: 20 Aussie frogs you need to know about

First identified by scientists in 1981, little is known about the Tanami toadlet.

The tiny frog grows to just four centimetres and is found in the Tanami and Great Sandy Deserts in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. It’s one of 28 small, inconspicuous frog species in the genus Uperoleia, commonly known as toadlets because of their bumpy skin, even though they are not closely related to toads.

Dr Jodi Rowley, Lead Scientist of FrogID and Curator of Amphibians at the Australian Museum, said she was thrilled to confirm the toadlet’s call.

“It’s taken 43 years since we first recognised this species for someone to record its call – that’s pretty amazing! There’s still so much to discover about Australian amphibians, and this recording will make it easier for other people to detect Tanami toadlets in the future.”

The post Tiny Tanami toadlet call captured for the first time appeared first on Australian Geographic.

As well as promoting backyard beekeeping, Flow now offers educational online courses for beekeepers and supports habitat regeneration projects worldwide. Through Flow, the Andersons have brought together a global community of like-minded people who support being kinder to bees and caring for local environments that support the flora bees need to thrive.

“Beekeeping is a gateway hobby and we’re finding people campaigning to turn neighbourhoods into safe havens where bees want to be,” Cedar says. Interest in beekeeping is growing, he adds, in part due to the influence of celebrities such as David Beckham. In the opening scene of his 2023 four-part Netflix documentary, Beckham, the soccer superstar proudly shows off honey harvested from one of his nine Flow Hives. 

“We were amazed to see our Flow Hives featured in one of the biggest documentaries the world is currently watching,” Cedar says. “That shows the connection we can have with bees on a global scale, and it helps spread the message about the importance of bees to our food chain.”

Because pollinators help plants – including farm crops – reproduce, they play a crucial role in healthy food chains. But to be effective, bees and other pollinators need access to the right type of flora. So Flow has partnered with conservation and reforestation projects across the globe to protect and regenerate crucial bee habitat – helping to change the landscape for pollinating species worldwide.

“To protect the pollinators, we must protect the plants, and to protect the plants, we have to protect entire ecosystems,” Cedar says, acknowledging that all bees – not only European honeybees – are crucial for pollination and the future of healthy ecosystems.

Cedar has been beekeeping beekeeping since he was six, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. He grew up in an intentional community in northern New South Wales, where there were no TVs or electronic gadgets, and he spent his childhood building things from spare parts, like go-karts, with his siblings and friends. His father actively encouraged creative thinking.

It’s no surprise, then, that during one honey harvest, Cedar wondered if there might be a way to retrieve honey from hives that would be gentler on the bees and also reduce his chance of being stung. In 2005 he and Stuart began working on an idea. It took the duo 10 years to refine their design and build their prototype. In 2015, when Flow Hive was ready to launch, they established a crowdfunding campaign to help set up the manufacturing supply chain. “It took us by surprise when we received US$12.2 million in presales within eight weeks,” Cedar says. With initial presale orders for 24,500 Flow Hive units from 130 countries, Flow became a global phenomenon overnight. “Life hasn’t been the same since,” Stuart says.

A penchant for environmental activism runs in the Anderson family. In 1979 Cedar’s parents joined anti-logging protestors at Terania Creek, in northern NSW. “My parents were part of a landmark piece of activism – the first recorded successful rainforest blockade in the world – and I was there, in my mum’s belly,” Cedar says, smiling. During his 20s, Cedar worked for Greenpeace, flying across the Sumatran jungle in a paramotor (a powered paraglider) to document the illegal burning of orangutan habitat. Fast-forward to today, and Cedar is still an activist at heart. He recognises Flow’s potential to make a big impact on the world by tackling a pressing issue: the pollination crisis. 

In a 2023 paper in the journal Ecology and Evolution entitled “Pollination crisis Down-Under: Has Australasia dodged the bullet?”, Australian native-bee scientist Dr Kit Prendergast and others raised concerns about a human-induced “pollination crisis”. Kit and her colleagues identify the major threats to plant pollinators as habitat loss, climate change, pesticide use, pathogen spread and introduced species. “Any threat to pollinators has potentially damaging consequences for human wellbeing and other biota on earth,” Kit says. 

Cedar and his team are committed to tackling this by returning some of the profits from Flow Hive to support bee conservation. In 2020 the company launched thebeekeeper.org, an online beekeeping course that funds habitat regeneration projects worldwide. “We identified a need for quality education for beekeepers and to bring the global beekeeping community together,” Cedar explains. The entry-level, self-paced course is designed to take new beekeepers to a stage where they’re confident in beekeeping and includes content contributed by experts from throughout the world. Members seeking a deeper scientific knowledge can opt in to further study. 

The creator of the training course was Flow’s strategy and key-projects manager, Niall Fahy. Originally from Ireland, Niall was an ecological activist in his youth. He moved to Byron Bay and approached Flow for work in 2016. “I like how Flow is a company using human ingenuity to solve problems to make the world a better place,” he says. Half the profits from the course are used to protect and create biodiverse habitats for pollinators. “We named the program Billions of Blossoms (BoB), because that’s what bees need to thrive,” Niall says. Through partnering with organisations across the globe, Flow supports projects doing quality regeneration work. “There are roughly 20,000 bee species in the world, and many may not be able to get to the next flowering space,” Cedar says. “If we plant flora to help the world’s pollinators, then we’re doing something to help save the planet.” 

Cedar, Stuart, Niall and the Flow team have detailed in-depth discussions about where to disburse funds. “When carrying out reforestation, you have to ensure you’re working with good partners, that they’re planting the right species in the right places, and looking after them appropriately,” Niall says. BoB first began supporting projects in July 2021. “From the outset we chose to support a range of organisations both big and small, locally and internationally,” Niall says. “This diversity allows us to work in countries where our customers are based and also where we are likely to get more impact per dollar in regions where costs are lower.”

For example, in Madagascar, BoB works with an organisation called Eden: People+Planet, which supports planned reforestation and landscape restoration schemes. In Ecuador, in the foothills of the Andes, BoB supports the YAKUM Project, working with Indigenous communities to reforest land that was cleared for cattle. Another Ecuador-based project BoB supports, the Rainforest Information Centre (RIC), has a family connection – Stuart’s brother, Patrick, is on the board. This grassroots, volunteer-based, not-for-profit organisation partners with Indigenous and local communities battling to save the rare and beautiful cloud forests that are under constant threat from mining. By 2023 BoB had helped plant 1.5 million trees and protect thousands of hectares of biodiverse habitat, which translates to billions of blossoms for bees and other native foragers. 

Flow launched a new product in 2017 called the Pollinator House, a “cosy home” for solitary bees made from upcycled timber offcuts. “Unlike European honeybees, which build hives, native bees are solitary nesting bees that need a wild space, a hole in a piece of wood or a tube of bamboo,” Stuart says. “Creating habitat in your backyard gives these bees a stepping-stone through the urban landscape. Our pollinator house may be the difference between these native pollinators being on the brink of extinction and connecting them to another wild space.” All of the profits from pollinator house sales go towards organisations working to improve pollinator health. “The funds are used to support research, charity, education and conservation projects in Australia, the USA, the UK and Africa,” Niall says. “It’s a lot of work vetting these projects, but it’s important that Flow utilises business for positive change.”

While studying for her PhD between 2016 and 2022, Kit Prendergast applied to Flow for a Pollinator Community Group Grant. She was successful and used the grant to work on a project barcoding the DNA of Australian native bees. “Australia has an estimated 2000-plus species of native bees, yet only 1660 species have been described, and it’s likely many that are described need to be revised,” Kit says. “I was able to resolve the taxonomy of two species through DNA barcoding.” She’s concerned about the future of native bees, “our unsung heroes”, and it’s not only because of habitat loss. “Another threat is the lack of investment into studying native bees and advancing their taxonomy,” she says. “Without adequate funding, some of Australia’s unique native bees will disappear before they are even recognised.”

With celebrities such as David Beckham, Jamie Oliver, Chris Hemsworth and Johanna Griggs espousing beekeeping using Flow Hives, the message about the importance of bees is being elevated. While Cedar appreciates the celebrity affirmations, it’s not what drives him and his team. “What gets us out of bed in the morning is that we are more than a business selling a product,” he says. “Inspiring beekeepers is wonderful, but what we want is to join the global community in making a difference and to repair our world.

Related: A photographic guide to Australia’s bees

The post Protecting our pollinators appeared first on Australian Geographic.

This phenomenon – called stranding or beaching – isn’t new. It’s been happening for thousands of years, at least.

Even Aristotle wrote about it back in the 4th century BCE. “It is not known why they sometimes run aground on the seashore: for it is asserted that this happens rather frequently when the fancy takes them, and without any apparent reason,” he wrote in Historia Animalium.

A stranding occurs when one or more cetacean species (whale, dolphin or porpoise) becomes marooned on land, usually on a beach.

Most scientists agree on the cause of single strandings – the individual has become ill, and either died at sea (its carcass then floating and washing ashore) or it has stranded because illness has led to weakness, distress or disorientation. Mother/calf pairs are also classified as single strandings.

But when it comes to multiple strandings, more commonly known as mass strandings, scientists don’t have a definite answer.

Why pilot whales?

While we don’t know why cetaceans strand en masse, we do know which species are most susceptible.

Mysticetes (baleen/toothless) species rarely mass-strand. It is the odontocete (toothed) whales and dolphins that beach themselves in large numbers. In Australia and New Zealand, pilot whales strand in greater numbers than any other species.

But why?

Theories

Scientists have been studying the cause of strandings for centuries. In that time many theories have emerged – some popular and some extremely contentious among experts.

When it comes to pilot whales, specifically, there are several prominent modern theories.

The answer is most likely a combination of these:

Natural causes:

Strong social bonds

Pilot whales, like most toothed-whale species, form pods with extremely strong social cohesion. This means if one member of the group heads towards shore, the rest could follow, their herding instinct kicking in. Similarly, if one becomes stranded, the group will hear that individual’s distress calls and could strand themselves alongside them in solidarity.

Navigational errors

Toothed whale species use echolocation to navigate their underwater world, sending out pulses of high-frequency sound and using the sound’s reflections to map their surroundings.

But sometimes these sonar signals fail, and could do so for a number of reasons.

Bad weather, rough seas and/or dirty water could reduce sonar effectiveness. Echolocation also works best in deep water. This means the whales can run into problems when they encounter a sloping sea floor as masses of sand can absorb the sonar signals too fast. This could make it hard for the whales to realise the sloping sand is there until they are very close. By this time the whales may have already strayed too close to shore, or be trapped.

Confusing tidal patterns

Coastal regions with shallow topography and unexpected tidal ranges could also confuse the pilot whales. In these types of locations, sometimes called ‘whale traps’, the animals may not only have lost their navigational skills due to the shallow water, but can be caught in a race against the confusing outgoing tides.

Chasing prey

Pilot whales could easily make mistakes while hunting, most likely not realising they are entering shallower waters in pursuit of prey, until it is too late.

Food shortages could also be to blame, forcing the whales to travel into less familiar waters to chase animals they wouldn’t usually prey on.

Fleeing predators

Just as pilot whales are themselves hunters, they are also hunted by larger and more aggressive species, such as orcas.

When being chased by these predators, pilot whales might strand themselves in a panic to avoid being caught.

Spooked

It’s not just predators that pilot whales could be fleeing. They could also swim in the wrong direction or even strand themselves after being frightened by a loud sound or strange movement.

Human-made causes:

Although whale strandings have been occurring long before human activities could be to blame, they may now be happening more often, due to human-made disturbances in our oceans.

Noise pollution

This could be the cause of some modern-day strandings.

Loud vessel and other human-made noises might not only spook the whales, but they might also interfere with the effectiveness of their echolocation systems.

Other, more extreme human-made noises, such as those emitted from military sonar activities and seismic surveys, might also cause acoustic trauma in pilot whales, causing long-term hearing problems and, again, affecting their echolocation systems.

Injury

Other human activities, including fishing, boating, underwater construction and polluting, are responsible for many injuries or illlnesses that can cause a pilot whale to strand.

Overfishing also deprives pilot whales of their main sources of food, leading them to hunt different animals closer to shore.

Silver linings

While scientists haven’t yet reached a shared conclusion as to what causes pilot whales to strand, one thing they can all agree on is that every stranding brings them a step closer to discovering the reason.

As distressing as each stranding is, scientists are able to collect invaluable data from each one. This comes from both physical samples taken from the deceased animals, and observations made about the behaviour exhibited by the whales before, during and after each stranding event.

With scientific technologies constantly advancing, and everyday citizens now able to capture footage of mass strandings from every angle, one day soon the mystery could very well be solved, and with it, hopefully, a solution found to prevent them.

Related: Scientists begin studying bodies of whales from recent WA mass stranding  

The post What causes pilot whale strandings? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Within 24 hours we received 160 reports of sick and dying frogs, sometimes in their dozens, from across the country. That winter, we received more than 1,600 reports of more than 40 frog species.

We needed help to investigate these deaths. We asked people across New South Wales to collect any dead frogs and store them frozen until travel restrictions eased and we could pick them up for testing. Hundreds of people stepped up to assist.

What could be causing these deaths? Aside from the obvious suspect, disease, many people wondered about pesticides and other chemicals. One email we received pondered:

Maybe a lot of these green frogs that are turning up dead have in fact died from chemicals.

Another asked:

Is there any relationship between chemicals being used to control the current mice plague in eastern Australia and effects on frogs?

In our newly published research, we detected pesticides in more than one in three frogs we tested. We found a rodenticide in one in six frogs.

Pesticides have been shown to be a major cause of worldwide declines in amphibians, including frogs and toads. In the case of the mass deaths in Australia, we don’t believe pesticides were the main cause, for reasons we’ll explain.

What did the research find?

As soon as travel restrictions eased, we drove around the state with a portable freezer collecting these dead frogs. We began investigating the role of disease, pesticides and other potential factors in this awful event.

We tested liver samples of 77 frogs of six species from across New South Wales for more than 600 different pesticides. We detected at least one pesticide in 36 per cent of these frogs.

Our most significant discovery was the rodenticide Brodifacoum in 17 per cent of the frogs. This is the first report of rodenticides – chemicals meant to poison only rodents – in wild frogs.

We found it in four species: the eastern banjo frog (Limnodynastes dumerilii), green tree frog (Litoria caerulea), Peron’s tree frog (Litoria peronii) and the introduced cane toad (Rhinella marina).

How did these poisons get into frogs?

How were frogs exposed to a rodenticide? And what harm is it likely to be causing? Unfortunately, we don’t know.

Until now, frogs weren’t known to be exposed to rodenticides. They now join the list of non-rodent animals shown to be exposed – invertebrates, birds, small mammals, reptiles and even fish.

It’s possible large frogs are eating rodents that have eaten a bait. Or frogs could be eating contaminated invertebrates or coming into contact with bait stations or contaminated water. Whatever the impact, and the route, our findings show we may need to think about how we use rodenticides.

Two pesticides detected in frogs were organochlorine compounds dieldrin and heptachlor. A third, DDE, is a breakdown product of the notorious organochlorine, DDT.

These pesticides have been banned in Australia for decades, so how did they get into the frogs? Unfortunately, these legacy pesticides are very stable chemicals and take a long time to break down. They usually bind to organic material such as soils and sediments and can wash into waterways after rain.

As a result, these pesticides can accumulate in plants and animals. It’s why they have been banned around the world.

We also found the herbicide MCPA and fipronil sulfone, a breakdown product of the insecticide fipronil. Fipronil is registered for use in agriculture, home veterinary products (for flea and tick control) and around the house for control of termites, cockroaches and ants. MCPA has both agricultural and household uses, including lawn treatments.

What are the impacts on frogs?

There’s very little research on the impact of pesticides on frogs in general, particularly adult frogs and particularly in Australia.

However, from research overseas, we know pesticides could kill frogs, or cause sub-lethal impacts such as suppressing the immune system or malformations, or changes in growth, development and reproduction. Pesticides are considered a threat to almost 700 amphibian species.

Unfortunately for them, frogs do have characteristics that make them highly likely to come into contact with pesticides.

Most frog species spend time in both freshwater systems, such as wetlands, ponds and streams (particularly at the egg and tadpole stage), and on the land. This increases their opportunities for exposure.

Second, frogs have highly permeable skin, which is likely a major route for pesticides to enter the body. Frogs obtain water through their skin – you’ll never see a frog drinking – and also breathe through their skin.

Our findings are a reminder that frogs are sensitive indicators of environmental health. Their recognition as bioindicators, or “canaries in the coalmine”, is warranted.

Frogs and other amphibians are the most threatened group of vertebrates on the planet. More research is needed to determine just how our use of pesticides is contributing to ongoing population declines in frogs.

So, were pesticides the major driver of the mass frog deaths in 2021? We don’t believe so.

We didn’t detect pesticides in most frogs and the five pesticides detected were not consistently found across all samples. It’s certainly possible they contributed to this event, along with other factors such as disease and climatic conditions, but it’s not the smoking gun.

Our investigation, with the help of the public, is ongoing.

Chris Doyle, from the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, contributed to this article.

Jodi Rowley, Curator, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Biology, Australian Museum, UNSW Sydney and Damian Lettoof, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Wildlife Ecotoxicology, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Are pesticides to blame for recent mass deaths of frogs? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Wildlife carer Tamsyn is head of the Melbourne-based Fly By Night Bat Clinic, and these pups in her care are just a few of the many hundreds of orphans left vulnerable by a wildlife crisis that has astounded Australia’s bat rescue and carer community.

When I visited her in February 2024, Tamsyn was caring for 86 pups and the number was climbing. “It all began to unfold,” she says, “in September 2023 in south-eastern Queensland and northern New South Wales. We had reports of large numbers of females experiencing miscarriages and premature births – an evolutionary event that occurs when food is scarce and the adult is unable to sustain both her own life and that of her baby.” This was soon followed by observations in Victoria of pups dropping from the sky, too undernourished to be able to hold on to their mums (and their mums probably too weak to do much in response).

Rescuers and carers were inundated with calls for help. As we speak, there are 440 in care, with many more coming in every day. According to the carers, a conservative estimate of the deaths so far is 1500. “We have never seen anything like this event,” Tamsyn says. “It’s been impossible to keep up with just how many have died.”

The species begins mating January–April each year, when large camps form at established sites. Females give birth October–December to a single young that’s carried by its mother for 4–5 weeks. The females lactate for 3–4 months, meaning the pup is dependent for that period.

In Victoria in 2023, transient camps were being created, based on where food was available. Orbost, in south-eastern Victoria, was one such location, where the camp grew to about 50,000 animals. By early November 2023 more than 100 pups were in care, shelters were stretched beyond their means and it was clear to the bat rescue and carer community that it was going to be a particularly devastating season for the species. The pups were arriving underweight or emaciated and often in need of intensive care.

Normally in a bad year, carers have only 50–70 pups for the entire season of September–March. Common causes of fatality for mothers include electrocution on powerlines, entanglement in barbed wire or wide-aperture fruit-tree netting.

The grey-headed flying-fox is endemic to Australia. Since European settlement, along with the other flying-fox species that occur here, it’s been subjected to dispersal attempts, demonisation, and acts of cruelty, such as cannons discharged at flying-fox camps for sport during the 19th century. Habitat loss and animal-control actions labelled as “pest management” have contributed to a heavy decline in the grey-headed flying-fox population. Climate change and extreme heat events are significant factors affecting their ongoing survival. The species has been listed as vulnerable under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). In December 2021 the species was added to the IUCN Red List of threatened species.

Spectacular pollinators

Australia’s flying-foxes are vital pollinators of our flowering forests and a raft of species, humans included, rely on that. Each night grey-headed flying-foxes disperse thousands of fruit seeds each via their feeding as the species services forests from southern Queensland through to South Australia. That’s impressive enough, but physiologically this megabat is even more spectacular. For example, its wingspan, made up of a complex network of membrane, veins, muscles and bones, can extend more than 1m and reveals itself in a transparent brown glow when the animal is flying through sunlight.

It’s in the spring and summer months, as they follow the warmer weather and flowering events to feed and raise their young, when we see them most often. Yarra Bend Park, just 6km from the Melbourne CBD, is one of the camps that can grow to 50,000 individuals. But this year, the park has also become an orphanage and graveyard for pups.

The park is a popular spot for tourists, walkers, bikers and kayakers, with several trails and points of access. But the standout feature for visitors this year is that it’s not hard to spot an orphaned or dead flying-fox pup.

The park is well visited, meaning that calls have come in hard and fast for rescues. The attention has meant that a great number of orphaned pups have been saved from a drawn-out death. The rescues can often be a precarious exercise for wildlife rescuers, who have to test their agility and use netted poles up to 18m long to reach the pups.

You may even hear a pup before you see it, chirping its distinctive call. It’s achingly sweet, but when left unattended, the pup will make a desperate attempt to climb further up the tree, only to eventually drop off to where a fox can nab them come nightfall. It’s a jarring experience to walk through this area. On the one hand, it’s a wildlife marvel to see a flying-fox camp up so close, but it is countered with the sounds of speeding cars on the highway, and now dead pups littered in the trees and on the ground.

An unknown cause

Near the end of 2023, 10 to 15 pups a day were being rescued and delivered into care. Meanwhile, the number of mothers – with their need for continuous food to enable lactation – grew and so the situation became increasingly dire.

“We don’t know the root cause of this starvation event, but, given eucalypts are their primary food source, it’s possible it’s related to the high rainfall and storms we saw along the south-eastern coast,” says Melbourne local Emma Hood, who’s been a wildlife rescuer for seven years and a carer for four.

“This, of course, is on top of a changing climate and climatic events, the Black Summer fires [of 2019–20] and continued habitat destruction,” Emma adds. “When they can’t find their native food of pollen and nectar, that’s when they venture into backyards and farms. So, secondary to this starvation event is the rise in fruit-tree netting entanglements where the mum will never make it back to her pup.”

Emma says nothing could have prepared carers for what came next, over Christmas. Rescuers got a call for a bat stuck in netting on a cherry farm in regional Victoria on 23 December. By mid-morning on Christmas Day there were five needing rescuing and that’s when the red flag started waving. More than 80 bats (mostly lactating females) desperate for food were eventually caught in the nets and an “all hands on deck” effort was launched by rescuers to save as many as they could.

The culprit here was the large-aperture fruit-tree netting, made illegal in 2021 for sale and private use in Victoria, but which is still legal for commercial use. “It was really great the farmer let us on to the property – that he allowed rescuers in,” Emma says. “According to the law, he had done nothing wrong. This level of entanglement had never occurred before, and no-one could have predicted what was going to happen at his farm – not on this scale anyway. “I was overwhelmed at the community effort to help and rescue these poor animals. More than 60 were released that day, while 10 or more went into rehabilitation, where we could monitor die back – a process of wing and limb death that occurs days after the injuries occur. We need to get rid of these wide-aperture nets, across the board, and replace them with wildlife-friendly nets.”

Tragic aftermath

In the aftermath, Emma collected several dead specimens and froze them for analyses to be written up in reports about the event. Terror and pain are evident on their faces. Emma pulls them from the freezer bag for inspection and tears well up in a display of empathy and compassion. But she regains her composure quickly – there are hungry mouths to feed and injuries that require attention. There are the torn wings of adults and a three-week-old pup, Cillian, who needs to be cuddled constantly to replace the comfort he’d normally get from his mother.

Emma is part of a small but fiercely dedicated and passionate group of wildlife rescuers and grey-headed flying-fox carers that stretches from southern Queensland through to Adelaide. The group is predominantly self-funded, and all members volunteer their time, energy and resources. Grants, donations and the generosity of the public help to support them. However, many feel that, in times of crisis such as this, there is lack of infrastructure and a shortfall of systems in place to support this nationally threatened keystone species, both at state and federal levels.

“Why can’t we see a place like Yarra Bend Park get the infrastructure, protection and funding that the Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens receives?” asks Lawrence Pope, co-founder of the Friends of Bats and Bushcare group in Melbourne. “We see tourists coming to see the bats [here] all the time, particularly for the dusk fly-out, which is a sight to behold. Places like Yarra Bend Park should be at the top of the list for funding and wildlife conservation.”

But the public value of these animals is not only as a tourist attraction. “From a biodiversity point of view, these animals are solid gold when you consider the pollinating services they provide. It’s in our best interest to ensure their survival in these urban environments.” And yet, Lawrence says, grey-headed flying-foxes are facing immense pressures. “They have a very low capacity to stabilise numbers as continued climatic events such as fires, heatwaves and unseasonal rainfall directly impact numbers and breeding,” he says. Friends of Bats and Bushcare was formed in 2003 and became incorporated in 2016, undertaking bushcare around Yarra Bend, revegetating habitat and creating a soft-release program for bats about to re-enter the wild.

Once pups are big enough, they need to be socialised and to practise flying. The organisation’s soft-release enclosure at Yarra Bend is purpose-built for rehabilitating flying-foxes. Every day, a group of volunteers chop up to 60kg of fruit, including apples, pears and melons. The fruit is combined with protein powder to feed and nourish the bats in the enclosure. The following morning, the volunteers clean up a carpet of ‘spat’– debris from the bats’ eating – and the same process proceeds until one day the pups are strong enough for the hatch to be left open so they can fly out when they feel ready for the wild. Some return and are left with the next “class” to build their confidence. More than 95 per cent leave permanently.

“We believe this is one of the best flying-fox soft-release programs in Australia, and I’d love to see a bunch more across the country,” Lawrence says. “Heat events are a major concern, consecutive days of 38°C to 40°C see desperate bats descend to the base of trees where they “clump”, and can die in great numbers. Heat can wipe out half a camp or more in one day. Here at Yarra Bend, we don’t have the understorey they are accustomed to, so the heat can be catastrophic, but we are working on installing sprinklers and improving the density of the understorey.”

A most-unusual season

In Adelaide, near the south-west limit of the grey-headed flying-fox’s range, Linda Collins, a flying-fox consultant for Fauna Rescue of South Australia, has seen a very different scene unfold among the local camps. With a successful winter flowering event, one camp grew to 50,000 individuals, where numbers would normally sit at 32,000. A possible explanation for that is the lack of food available across the south-eastern coast.

“In my 35 years of flying-fox research, this is the most unusual season I have ever recorded,” Linda says. “We were seeing premature babies come in at good weights (for example, a newborn had the weight of a six-day-old pup), but they were dead. Concurrently, 42 per cent of our adults were underweight.Our [premature-born] pup numbers went up too – from 0.04 per cent in 2018 compared with 0.12 per cent in 2023 – but again, they were overweight. I am still trying to figure out why. It strikes me that what is happening in Victoria is that we have a fallout population from the starvation event further north.

“Are they stuck there in a compounding situation because of what’s happened in Queensland and northern NSW? We just don’t know. If the nation-wide population of grey-headed flying-foxes is at 500,000, and Adelaide has 50,000, that means we have 10 per cent of the entire population. And we simply don’t know if the Adelaide summer flowering can sustain these numbers. We also don’t know if this is the beginning of something bigger and much more alarming – things seem completely out of whack and the species is maybe trying to tell us something.”

As rescue calls continue to come in, there are indeed a lot of unknowns regarding the crisis. What can’t be questioned is that, for a species where individuals only have one baby a year, we are looking at the possibility of losing almost the entire population of this season’s pups. Is it an extinction crisis in overdrive?

The passion of carers

Perhaps it is these sobering thoughts that have kept the carers and rescuers working into the wee hours, all season. It’s 2am in late December 2023, and Lynne Amore, from the Moonshadow Flying Fox Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre in Sale, 215km south-east of Melbourne by road, has just fed her last pup for the night. Because carers around Melbourne have been inundated, she has taken in more than 50 pups from Melbourne and regions further west and north such as Geelong and Wangaratta.

“We haven’t had the pup crisis in Sale or Bairnsdale, most likely because they have roosted elsewhere – the camps just aren’t as big this season,” Lynne says. “It’s a time where you feel like you need the old matchsticks to keep your eyes open. What keeps you going is knowing that these beautiful pups only have you for their survival. You need to only spend a short while with them to know that the flying-fox is a very special animal.”

Lynne’s journey in bat care and conservation has made significant inroads into changing the attitudes of Sale locals to the mammals. She gives bat talks and collaborates with Wellington Shire, her local council, on education, tourism opportunities and flying-fox management. As a result, the council has undertaken revegetation for flying-fox habitat and a flying-fox management-for-conservation plan, turning a potential reason for public complaint into a tourism drawcard.

“And this is what the species needs – a coordinated approach, people on the ground, councils, and state and federal government all playing an essential role,” Lynne says.

As autumn approaches, the rehabilitated pups will soon graduate to the bat schools, such as the soft-release enclosure in Melbourne. After they’re released back into the wild, what’s to come for this generation of grey-headed flying-foxes is a big unknown – but it has the rescue and carer community very concerned.

To date, the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water does not have any approved conservation advice for this species, nor does it have an approved recovery plan, which was put on the to-do list in 2009.

Back in Adelaide, Linda Collins feels as if it’s Groundhog Day. “It feels like I have been fighting the same fight for 35 years,” she laments. “There is so much more to this animal than most could ever realise – their high level of intelligence, sophisticated social structures and the service they provide our forests.

“The pup deaths of 2023–24 have to be meaningful. We need conservation efforts and scientific research occurring alongside the work of the rescuers and carers, because without the grey-headed flying-fox, Australia’s fragile east-coast ecosystem will collapse.”

Related: ‘They’re in trouble’: photograph reveals struggle of Australia’s flying foxes

The post Saving our bat babies appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Numbats have been a feature of the AWC’s species recovery operations since the organisation’s early days. In 2002, when it acquired the property Yookamurra, in SA, and Scotia, in NSW, both sites had small numbat populations protected by predator-proof fences. Since then, the fences have grown and so too have the numbat populations at those properties. In fact, Scotia’s numbat numbers have been so healthy that in 2016–22 the property provided 73 animals to create or supplement populations at other AWC properties. These include the huge 1305sq.km Mt Gibson, north-east of Perth, that received 20 animals in 2016–18, and Mallee Cliffs National Park, in NSW, where in 2020–21 AWC released 30 numbats into a 9500ha fenced area – Australia’s biggest feral-free enclosure. Mallee Cliffs is managed in a joint partnership between AWC and the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.

“We’ve been able to continue to expand the number of reserves that numbats are at, as well as the number of populations and the extent of those populations,” explains Dr Jennifer Pierson, the senior ecologist with AWC’s national science team. “So [the species has] been spread across more of its former distribution, and that’s really critical to recovering the species.”

A unique marsupial

One of the first of many unusual things about the numbat is that it comes out into the open during the day: it’s one of very few strictly diurnal – day-active – native Australian mammal species. Most are either nocturnal or, in a lifestyle described as “crepuscular”, they venture out only in the dim light of dawn or dusk. It’s highly unusual to see small Aussie marsupials venture out in the open during daylight hours as the numbat does.

That’s because its behaviour is closely tied to the activity of termites, on which it feeds almost exclusively. As the day warms up, termites will move from underground nests to travel along “termite highways” near the soil’s surface, and that’s when numbats emerge from the safety of overnight dens and sleeping chambers to feed.

The numbat’s appearance and behaviour also set it apart. No other Australian marsupial looks like or could be mistaken for a numbat. It’s a stunning-looking mammal – red-grey fur with black and white bands, a long bushy tail and pointy ears. Those stripes are a form of camouflage known as disruptive colouration. They can make it stand out when it’s motionless, but, in the same way a zebra’s stripes incongruously equip it with an effective way of hiding on the African savannah, when a numbat moves, its markings can quickly make it disappear into the background.

Numbat movements are also remarkable, like those of a wind-up toy, or a figurine in a stop-go animation. Numbats’ main natural predators are birds of prey, which rely heavily on visual contact with their target when hunting. Those jerky movements displayed by numbats when they are out in the open, together with their colouration, are thought to be particularly confusing to visual predators like hawks and falcons.

The pattern of stripes is unique to each numbat, making it possible to identify individual animals. Recent research by Sian Thorne, from the University of Western Australia, used patterns of stripes to assess the size of the species’ remnant populations in WA. AWC is trialling the method in fenced areas. Since feral predators have been brought under control in the area with baiting programs undertaken independently of AWC, those remnant populations have also been doing well – in fact, better than thought.

“In terms of the remnant pops, we thought there was less than 1000 and now we think there’s probably closer to 2000, and potentially more,” Jennifer says. There’s perhaps another 500 safely surviving on AWC properties.

Related: The plight of the numbat

Widening the management focus

While simply increasing the size and spread of the numbat population has been an AWC priority to date, the organisation is now widening its management focus. “We’re very optimistic that numbat numbers are doing really well and so the two areas we are now focusing on in terms of management are genetic management of the population and the potential impacts of climate change,” Jennifer says. The individuals at the various sites – from WA to NSW – are being managed as one large population by the various bodies involved in numbat conservation. Because all the new sub-populations originated from the two tiny remnant populations, the genetics of all groups are being monitored to ensure inbreeding doesn’t occur.

“There are two things we are doing in terms of climate change, and one is – in conjunction with the genetic management – managing the population’s adaptive capacity,” Jennifer says. So establishing populations across the species’ former range will ensure individuals are exposed to a variety of conditions. In that way, natural selection will keep strong the species’ adaptive capacity – which is its ability to respond to changing environmental conditions.

But AWC has also just begun a large study looking at the “activity budgets” of numbats under different thermal conditions, which will show how numbats cope in drier and hotter conditions.

“We did a very big project this year at Mt Gibson, where we put high-tech collars on individuals so we could track their activity,” Jennifer says, explaining that multiple sensors on the collars revealed how and where an animal was moving around the environment. These data will indicate whether an animal can still forage enough when it’s hot to ensure it gets its necessary quota of termites.

“We got lucky, in a way – Mt Gibson had some incredible heatwaves this summer,” Jennifer says. “So we have an extraordinary amount of data under extreme heat conditions, tracking these animals through the season to see how they changed their activity budgets.”

The results will help scientists understand if and how they’ll need to alter their management as the effects of climate change continue to hit.

Help us help numbats

You can help AWC’s efforts to keep this beautiful little creature as a critical part of the Australian landscape by contributing funds to our Australia’s Most Endangered campaign.

Donate here.

The post Spreading the joy: Help us help our native numbats appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Nightmares aside, when most people hear the word wasp, they think of the problematic and invasive European wasp. But did you know there are more than 10,000 species of native wasps in Australia – wasp taxonomists are finding new species in backyards every year –  and they have some of the most bizarre life histories of any animal.

Here’s a collection of some of our most fascinating native wasps:

Cuckoo wasp (Chrysididae)

In Australia, the cuckoo wasp comes in a variety of bright metallic blues and greens. Classed as a parasitoid, like many wasps, it lays eggs in the nests of mud-dauber wasps. The cuckoo wasp’s eggs hatch first and the larvae then eat all the stored food in the chamber. The cuckoo wasp has the impressive ability to roll into an armoured ball to protect itself if it is caught entering another wasp’s nest.

Gasteruption wasp (Gasteruptiidae)

The most elegant of insects, the female gasteruption wasp often has long ovipositors to insert an egg into the cell of solitary bee nests, so the larva can hatch and feed on the bee larvae and nest provisions. They are difficult to spot, with a unique – and almost invisible – way of flying, which makes them look like a piece of string floating in the air, leading to the common name of “ghost wasp”. They also have organs in their legs that act like ears. These organs help them to sense vibrations when waiting for bees to leave their nest. You may notice them hanging around the bee hotel in your backyard.

Velvet ant (Mutillidae)

The female velvet ant is flightless and resembles a furry ant. Once the female mates with the winged male, it spends the day searching for the underground nest of another wasp or bee to lay eggs. Because the female is vulnerable walking on the ground, it has a stridulating organ in its abdomen which produces a squeaking sound to help it deter predators. If that fails, the velvet ant has developed a very potent sting. North America has many large and colourful velvet ants, but we also have our fair share of beautiful species in Australia.

Thynnid wasp (Thynnidae)

This group of flower wasps has a fascinating life cycle. The wingless female releases a pheromone to attract a winged male. The male picks her up, mates, and then takes her to a nectar-oozing flower for one of the few meals in her short life. He then drops her back on the ground so she can find the larva of a scarab beetle on which to lay an egg. Many orchids in Australia have co-evolved to mimic the shape and pheromones of a female thynnid wasp in order to fool the male into pollinating them.

Reindeer wasp (Eucharitidae)

Believe it or not, its reindeer-like antennae are not the weirdest thing about this wasp. Once the wasp larva hatches on a leaf, it searches for a specific ant species to latch onto. Once attached, the ant will enter the nest where the wasp larva will drop off and feast upon the defenseless ant larvae before pupating and eventually emerging as an adult. They are able to avoid attacks by the host ants by mimicking the ants’ chemicals.

Australian hornet (Abispa ephippium)

Not actually a true hornet, this large potter wasp is a common sight across Australia, where it almost sounds like a miniature helicopter as it buzzes around. It forms a mud nest on buildings or other structures, where it captures the caterpillars of moths to feed its growing larvae. You may notice these, and other potter wasps, gathered around pools of water, where they collect mud to build their nests.

Giant spider wasp (Leptodialepis sp.)

Including the largest wasps in Australia, these beautiful insects attain a body length of almost 30mm. Once the female has dug a chamber, it finds and paralyses a large huntsman spider with a powerful sting and drags it back to the burrow. It lays an egg on the spider’s body and seals the chamber. The wasp larva slowly feeds on the spider, leaving its vital organs to last to ensure the spider doesn’t decompose before the larva is ready to pupate.

Perilampid wasp (Perilampidae)

This tiny “disco-ball” wasp takes things to a new level – it is a hyperparasitoid. The larva, known as planidia, enters the body of a parasitic larva of another wasp that is already present in a chamber of a host arthropod. Once the initial parasitic wasp larva has finished eating the host (usually a caterpillar) and is pupating, the perilampid wasp planidia exits the host wasp’s body and begins feeding on it, ending up as the last one standing in the chamber.

Torymus wasp (Torymidae)

This tiny, odd-looking wasp is part of the super-family Chalcidoidea. Its long ovipositor is used for inserting eggs into a variety of different hosts – other wasp nests, inside caterpillars or even fly larvae inside flower-heads. One species inserts its eggs into the galls (abnormal plant growths) on leaves, after which the larvae either feed on the plant material itself, or on the larvae of the insect that formed the gall. There are more than 50 species of these metallic coloured wasps in Australia and they can often be found feeding on native flowers.

Related: This scientist deliberately subjects himself to the world’s most painful stingers

The post Australia’s weird and wacky wasps appeared first on Australian Geographic.

“In this case, we’re not catching the parrot as a criminal,” he hastens to add. “The parrot is the victim.”

Parrots are, by number, among the most trafficked bird in the illegal wildlife trade, motivating Olah, from the Fenner School of Environment and Society at The Australian National University (ANU), to develop a project bringing together criminology and conservation.

Olah is creating a forensic genomic toolkit which will help authorities to track illegal trade routes. 

As its first test-case, the project is starting in Indonesia, which has been identified as the highest priority country for parrot conservation.

“If you want to focus on research which makes an impact, this is it,” says Olah. 

The toolkit will consist of cutting-edge, but low-cost, sequencing technology which can be used in the field. Samples will be collected from threatened species, via a feather or a drop of blood taken from a chick, and then fed into a genetic database which authorities can consult when investigating parrots they believe have been taken illegally from the wild. 

“For traded wildlife, we don’t yet have a DNA database like the one Interpol is using, for instance, to identify missing persons through international police cooperation. Once we have it, we can do network analysis, showing which birds are coming from which islands.

“We hope that after a few years, we would have a map which shows the main trade routes so law authorities can focus on those islands and work with communities there to see who is behind the poaching, and why. 

“The database will tell us about the whole dynamics of the trade, and help authorities to make a global case.”

The toolkit will also facilitate the reintroduction of confiscated parrots, helping depleted wild populations to recover.

“Currently, there might be a confiscation of parrots in Java, but no one knows where in the wild they were taken from, so they end up in rescue centres. I visited a few of these centres and often they’re really crowded. 

“But if we can prove to the authorities that the birds come from a particular island, then after health screening and disease testing, we can facilitate them being moved back to this origin.”

As well as being a threat to biodiversity, wildlife trafficking is increasingly a global public health issue because of its role in spreading zoonotic diseases. This is a “huge issue” for the region, Olah says.

“So if we know more about the illegal wildlife market, we can safeguard not only the animal species but humans too.”

Olah, who has worked on several nature documentaries including BBC’s Seven Worlds One Planet, hopes the project will increase awareness about the reality of the wildlife trade.

“There’s not much information out there about the parrot trade and lots of people assume that it’s all legal. I hope to make a film which can show what’s actually going on under the table, which is that often parrots bought as legal birds are coming from the wild. 

“We can show the suffering associated with the trade, which is really horrible for the animals, and also a direct link to how the poaching is negatively influencing the wild population.”

Olah says that people are naturally attracted to the beauty and intelligence of parrots, and feel a strong connection to them as pets, but having observed them closely in the wild, he believes this is where birds belong.

“I was working with macaws in the Amazon, and when you are on top of these huge tree canopies and you see the immense, endless rainforest from, literally, the birds-eye perspective, it’s just such freedom. 

“They belong to that wide open space.”

Tabitha Carvan is a Senior Writer at the ANU College of Science. This article was first published by ANU Reporter.

Related: Tortoiseshell database a ‘game-changer’ for critically endangered marine turtles

The post ‘Interpol’ database for parrots caught in illegal wildlife trade appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The bird’s knack for camouflaging itself in reeds on the banks of wetlands, combined with its deep booming call, meant the bird was more often heard than seen. This provided the perfect opportunity to tell scary stories to children, to keep them away from the water.

Native to mainland Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and New Caledonia, Australasian bitterns (Botaurus poiciloptilus) are now listed as endangered within Australia, and vulnerable on the global IUCN Red List, with numbers continuing to fall.

Scientists believe there could be fewer than 1000 mature Australasian bitterns remaining in Australia.

This is why birder Geoff Shannon was so excited when he recently spotted not only one bittern, but a pair with four chicks at the Lagoon of Islands on Tasmania’s Central Plateau.

“I came up the hill and looked down, and I saw this lovely lagoon,” Geoff recalls. “It was full of rushes, reeds – typical bittern habitat. I stopped, got the binoculars out, and I saw a head poking above the reeds – the big bill, the eye, the neck… I’d had enough experience to be able to pick it up [that it was a bittern] very easily.

“It’s one of my most exciting birding views ever, in my whole birding life – a magnificent sight.”

Unfortunately, Geoff wasn’t able to verify his sighting with a photograph, but an audio recording now proves that Australasian bitterns are indeed living in the Lagoon of Islands.

Related: Just add water: Australia’s wetlands are thriving. Here’s why.

It’s been 40-odd years since the species has been recorded at the lagoon. It was flooded in 1964 to create a dam to provide irrigation for farms along the Ouse River, and while the bitterns initially held on, none have been recorded living in the area since the early 1980s.

“It was a privilege hearing that booming call,” says Bec Sheldon, an environmental scientist and part of the Hydro Tasmania team working on the restoration of the lagoon since the dam was decommissioned in 2013.

“We’re now reaping the fruits of our rehabilitation efforts,” says Bec. “We set about recreating the natural hydrology in the lake, which has in turn brought back the native vegetation. Now we’re seeing this fantastic species move back, and the site is becoming a self-sustaining and productive natural wetland.”

The audio of the bitterns was recorded thanks to citizen science program, Call Trackers, which seeks to find and monitor ‘noisy but elusive’ species in the wild.

“I had already started to wonder about the return of the bittern here when, in 2022, I was contacted by a member of the Call Tracker team,” says Bec. “They wanted to tell me about the program and suggested the Lagoon of Islands was a high-priority site to be monitored, and asked whether we’d be interested in taking part.”

It wasn’t long before the team captured the audio recording, much to the delight of Bec and the rest of the Hydro Tasmania team.

“The bittern call is very distinctive. It’s a very loud deep booming sound, often in two to four calls in a row. I can liken it to blowing gently on the top of a glass bottle – that is what a bittern boom sounds like,” says Bec.

“Now, we’ve been lucky enough to hear it call a few times, which is a privilege.”

Related: Australasian bittern known as the Bunyip bird

The post ‘Bunyip’ bird returns to restored Tasmanian wetlands appeared first on Australian Geographic.

It may sound like a common bird, but the species is considered endangered by Commonwealth and state legislation, with only four populations left in the wild, amounting to less than 2500 birds.

The smallest and most critically endangered of these populations is found in northern NSW and only consists of an estimated 40 to 50 birds.

At its lowest point in the late 1980s and early 90s, the northern population consisted of only 15 birds, but long-term habitat restoration work and captive breeding programs are successfully bolstering eastern bristlebird numbers.

The eight recent releases directly result from these programs, bringing the number of birds released in the past year to 23.

Related: Endangered western whipbird returns to Kangaroo Island after bushfires

The importance of diversity

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary in Queensland is home to a captive breeding program for eastern bristlebirds, which is creating a sustainable captive population to support the reintroduction of the birds into the wild and act as an insurance population against extinction.

Currumbin’s Avian Conservation Supervisor, Allison Beutel, says the birds were once a common sight in South East Queensland, eastern NSW and Victoria, but numbers have dropped by 80 per cent since the 1980s due to urban development, habitat loss, climate change and inappropriate fire burning regimes, according to Allison.

“In response to plummeting numbers, a captive breeding program was started at the David Fleay Wildlife Park in 2004 with the acquisition of two young chicks from a nest in the wild,” Allison says. “Those chicks turned out to be a male and a female and they started the program which was inherited by Currumbin in 2014.”

Currumbin received five birds from David Fleay Wildlife Park, but they were all offspring of the initial breeding pair, creating many challenges due to a lack of genetic diversity.

“We knew we had to grow the genetic diversity – and we knew that we needed to get those new genetics from the wild – but with such low numbers in the wild, you can’t go and collect adult birds,” Allison says. “The next best thing is to take eggs or chicks, and that way the pairs that are out in the wild can continue to re-clutch and it doesn’t have a significant impact on them.”

Birds were collected from a population in central NSW (the species’ stronghold with a population estimated at 1500 birds) with the help of a conservation detector dog – an English springer spaniel named Penny – and added to the breeding program to create a more robust population for future releases.

Conservation genetic experts were then brought in to analyse the birds and find the most ideal pairings.

“We want to maintain or improve genetics in our captive population as much as possible, but we also have a window of compatibility to work with,” says Allison.

You see, although eastern bristlebirds are small in stature, they’re big in personality: “When it comes to re-pairing around breeding season, we have to be quite particular with who we pair and match their personality traits,” Allison says. “Some birds, for whatever reason, simply don’t like each other.

“We have some very dominant females that we need strong males for. We also have some females that get a little bit upset when they hear their males replying to other females and vice versa – it’s almost like a little marital dispute goes on in the cage.

“Sometimes, the females simply don’t like their males anymore, and other times, we have a little bit of a bust-up between pairs – it’s like Days of Our Lives but for birds!”

Related: Building a future for our birds: what we are doing right, and wrong

How to make a home

Before offspring from the captive breeding program at Currumbin can be released into the wild, eastern bristlebird habitats must be restored, which is where the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) comes in.

Through the Saving Our Species (SOS) program, DCCEEW works with private landholders to recreate eastern bristlebird habitat through weed control and canopy thinning, while the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) performs fire management.

Senior Threatened Species Officer Kelly Roche says through SOS, DCCEEW now performs fire management over more than 200ha along the border Rangers National Park Estate each year and has done 130ha of weed and fire management on private lands.

“The response of the environment to the habitat management works has been very successful,” she says. “We’ve seen birds returning to areas they had previously abandoned due to weed pressures or overstorey encroachment.

“We’ll be looking to continue restoring and reconnecting fragmented areas and maintaining the gains that we’ve already made, and we’ll be continuing releasing offspring from the captive breeding program.”

Life in the wild

As captive numbers continue to grow steadily and more land becomes available for habitat restoration, eastern bristlebirds are being released into the northern population twice yearly.

During the release, the birds are set up for three days in a tent enclosure in the wild for a ‘soft release’, during which they can acclimate to the environment’s noises and scents.

“Right from the get-go, we’ve seen a lot of interactions from wild birds coming up to our birds, especially the females, as they acclimate,” says Allison. “This makes us think there must be quite a big bias for males in this wild population.

“During the October release, we had a wild male approach and he picked between two female siblings, visiting her every day during the three-day acclimation window. When we opened the tab on the fourth day, he was hanging around. He approached and escorted her out of the tent, and off they went together!”

According to DCCEEW, the release program is designed to continue for at least nine more years, or until numbers reach the levels that would have been seen in the late 1980s when there were about 70 territories of birds existing in wild populations of between 150 and 170 birds.

You can learn more about the captive breeding project on the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary website.  

The post Bringing back the eastern bristlebird appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The trial, which began in February, will pump highly oxygenated water into the Darling River in a bid to improve the lakes’ water quality, which has been steadily declining for a number of years due to poor management, drought, over irrigation and reduced water flow.

In March 2023 an estimated 30 million fish suffocated after the Darling River’s oxygen levels plummeted during a heatwave. This fish-kill event was preceded by toxic blue-green algal blooms in 2018 and 2019, which killed about 10,000 fish and 1 million fish respectively.

If the trial is successful, the technology will be used to prevent and mitigate future fish-kill events at Menindee Lakes, and possibly elsewhere.

Related: OPINION: Getting the Murray–Darling Basin Plan back on track

The post Fishing for answers in Menindee Lakes appeared first on Australian Geographic.

At first glance these brown birds don’t stand out from the flock, but when they take to the air they impress with their long, narrow wings that span a metre and make them quick gliders. After a day at sea, short-tailed shearwaters return to shore around dusk, hence the nickname “moonbird”.

Short-tailed shearwaters (the name we’ll use from here) also excite birdwatchers and scientists with their annual 30,000km migration, and the fact they return each time to the exact same burrow.

Short-tailed shearwaters and King Island

The migratory short-tailed shearwaters only breed in Australia, nesting in south-eastern Australia, primarily around Tasmania but as far north as Broughton Island in New South Wales. The islands of the often-treacherous Bass Strait are primary nesting grounds for the birds, with the remote, windswept King Island one of their largest breeding sites.

The birds breed between late September to late April, laying a single egg in December and fledging chicks in April. They then travel to the North Pacific Ocean, around Russia and Japan, to feed. When they arrive back in Australia, they return to their burrow to potentially face a number of challenges.

Tasmanian ornithologist Barry Baker estimates there are more than 20 million mature adults in Australia, but King Island Landcare Group conservationist Kate Ravich has major concerns about the species’ future. She says the birds experience predation from feral cats and habitat destruction, while a cultural tradition on King Island means the chicks are harvested by humans for consumption.

After 20 years of visiting and living on King Island, Kate has noticed a decline in the species’ population. “It’s hard to know how much harvesting is done,” she says. “There is a quota but I think there’s a lot of people who take no notice of that, and it’s quite a big quota anyway. The scientists say all is well. I don’t believe it is.”

Short-tailed shearwater challenges

The harvesting of short-tailed shearwater chicks when they’re fat and fluffy – a process known as muttonbirding – has been occurring in Australia for centuries, practised by both Europeans (mainly sealers) and First Nations people. Originally taken for their meat, feathers and oil, Barry says chicks are now killed primarily for food.

While the most recent assessment of the species – conducted in August 2018 – has them listed as “of least concern” on the IUCN Red List, non-commercial harvesting has been restricted to the period of 30 March to 14 April, 2024, for Bass Strait’s King Island, Hunter Islands and the Furneaux Group. There is also a quota of 25 on the number of birds people can take. All hunters must have a licence, and are prohibited from damaging burrows. But Kate says the restrictions don’t go far enough.

“It’s not necessary for us to do this, we’ve got plenty of food,” she says. “We really do have a responsibility for these birds, and I don’t believe that we are doing enough.” Kate would like to see the cessation of harvesting, as well as more research into the destruction of colonies by the island’s feral cats.

Currently, the Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania (NRE Tas) carries out short-tailed shearwater surveys every December and March at a number of harvested colonies to assess trends in breeding bird numbers and breeding success.

“Survey results provide context to decisions regarding open seasons and bag limits for cultural harvest,” a department spokesperson says. “The department is increasing its focus on monitoring and research priorities to ensure sustainability of this important migratory species in Tasmania.” The spokesperson also says this year’s pre-season monitoring of colonies around Tasmania found chick numbers were above the long-term average, including on King Island.

Short-tailed shearwaters connection to King Island celebrated

With harvesting, predation, habitat loss, and the drowning of shearwaters in gillnets in the North Pacific Ocean, the health of the short-tailed shearwater population on King Island – and elsewhere – is worth keeping a close eye on. Helping draw attention to the species is Anthony Albrecht, an organiser of Moonbird Festival.

Moonbird Festival, to be held this year from April 13 to 21, is about connecting community with nature through art. Run by The Bowerbird Collective, of which Anthony is a co-founder, the event celebrates King Island and its wildlife with concerts, art exhibitions and artist talks.

“We think of moonbirds as a symbol of what is precious and easily lost. The Moonbird Festival is about celebrating beautiful things, community, and protecting our threatened species and remaining wilderness, especially on a place like King Island that has multiple critically endangered species and key biodiversity areas,” says Anthony.

The 2023 Moonbird Festival raised $20,000 for King Island Landcare Group, and proceeds will again be donated to help with moonbird conservation and other projects.

Anthony remains hopeful culture and conservation can come together to help short-tailed shearwaters and other troubled island species.

“I think there is a way to maintain cultural traditions while also increasing the community values around these birds as a precious part of our natural systems, that we can’t overharvest, we can’t clear their rookeries, we need to cherish their existence…”

Related: Why are we seeing so many ‘seabird wrecks’?

The post Ever heard of a moonbird? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Birds are a large part of our lives, a sign of nature even in cities. They are popular among the general public and well studied by scientists. But placing all of these birds into a family tree has been frustratingly difficult.

By analysing the genomes of more than 360 bird species, the study has identified the fundamental relationships among the major groups of living birds.

The new family tree overturns some previous ideas about bird relationships, while also revealing some new groupings.

Resolving a messy relationship

Previous studies showed the bird family tree has three major branches. The first branch contains the tinamous and ratites, which include flightless birds such as the emu, kiwi and ostrich.

The second branch holds the landfowl and waterfowl – chickens, ducks and so on. All other birds sit on the third branch, known as the Neoaves, which include 95 per cent of bird species.

The Neoaves branch includes ten groups of birds. Most of these are what biologists have named the “Magnificent Seven”: landbirds, waterbirds, tropicbirds, cuckoos, nightjars, doves and flamingos. The other three groups are known as the “orphans” and include the shorebirds, cranes and hoatzin, a species from South America.

The relationships among these ten groups, especially the orphans, have been incredibly difficult to resolve. The genome study shows a resolution is within reach.

Meet the ‘Elementaves’

Our genome study revealed a new grouping of birds we have named “Elementaves”. With a name inspired by the four ancient elements of earth, air, water and fire, this group includes birds well adapted for success on land, in the sky and in the water. Some of the birds have names relating to the sun, representing the element of fire. The Elementaves group includes hummingbirds, shorebirds, cranes, penguins and pelicans.

Our study also confirms a close relationship between two of the most familiar groups of birds in Australia, the passerines (songbirds and relatives) and parrots. These popular birds dominate the Australian Bird of the Year polls.

Songbirds make up nearly 50 per cent of all bird species and include birds like magpies, finches, honeyeaters and fairywrens. They had their humble beginnings in Australia about 50 million years ago, then spread across the globe to become the most successful group of birds.

Related: Building a future for our birds: what we are doing right, and wrong

When did birds really emerge?

A further goal of our study was to place a timescale on the bird family tree. We did this by modelling the evolution of genomes using a tool known as the “molecular clock”. By drawing on information from nearly 200 fossils, we were able to constrain the ages of some of the branches in the bird family tree.

Our study shows all living birds share an ancestor that lived just over 90 million years ago. But most groups of modern birds emerged about 25 million years later, within a small window of just a few million years after the end of the Cretaceous period around 66 million years ago.

This coincides with the mass extinction of dinosaurs and other organisms caused by an asteroid striking Earth. So it seems birds made the most of the opportunities that became available after these other dominant life forms were wiped out.

One mystery remains

The genome study is the product of nearly a decade of research, conducted as part of the Bird 10,000 Genomes Project. The ultimate goal of this project is to sequence the genomes of all 10,000 living bird species.

The current phase of the project focused on including species from every major group, or family, of birds. The study of these 363 genomes was a truly international effort led by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, University of California San Diego and Zhejiang University in China.

Even with such a huge amount of genome data, one branch of the bird family tree remains a mystery. Our analysis could not confidently determine the relationships of one of the orphans, the hoatzin. Found in South America, the hoatzin is a highly distinctive bird and the sole survivor of its lineage.

Our study shows that some relationships in the tree of life can only be determined using huge amounts of genome data. But our study also demonstrates the power of studying genomes and fossils together to understand the evolutionary history of life on Earth.

Related: Am I a bad birder?

Jacqueline Nguyen, Scientific Officer in Ornithology, Australian Museum, and ARC DECRA Fellow, Flinders University and Simon Ho, Professor of Molecular Evolution, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Perched in the ‘tree of life’: new study redefines understanding of all birds appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Ooh, and there’s some little black-fronted dotterels running along the mudflat. And some red-rumped parrots coming in for a drink. I can also hear eastern rosellas, galahs, and superb parrots in the distance. And maybe that’s a reed warbler flitting about on the other side.

For me, this is heaven. But then my flow-state is broken by an intrusive thought: with all this birdlife around – shouldn’t I be recording them into eBird, the global birding app? I scrabble around for my phone and start searching for each species in the dropdown menu to make a list.

While I’m looking down at my phone, the normally shy buff-banded rail, which is now only a few metres in front of me, starts dipping its beak into the water and feeding. I look up from my screen, and to my dismay, the bird is gone.

I’ve missed the moment. While I feel bad about that, I simultaneously feel guilty for not being more conscientious about recording my observations.

It seems my stress about being a ‘good’ birder is getting in the way of my hobby. Sometimes there are so many apps and projects to contribute to, that I feel a bit overwhelmed. Do I add it to eBird, iNaturalist and Nature Mapr? What about other worthy citizen science projects that I hear about? They’re all collecting data which is essential for practical environmental conservation.

Now I’m neither in the moment nor helping science.

Some birders have logged thousands of eBird checklists across the globe; I’ve done nothing close to that. What counts as contributing enough? Is it selfish or anti-science to prioritise a walk in nature, noticing birds for my own joy and mental health, over submitting bird lists?

Am I, in fact, a Bad Birder?

Related: A birdwatcher’s perspective

To find out if I’m overthinking this, I reach out to someone much wiser than me, Emeritus Professor Libby Robin from ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society. She is the author of a book called What Birdo is That?, where as a self-confessed birdo, she turns the figurative binoculars onto birdos themselves. She can tell me if I’m doing this birding thing right.

Professor Robin says birdos, birders, birdwatchers (whatever term you want to use) fall into a bunch of different types: some like to create lists; some are looking for rarities; some appreciate common bird species; some have lots of biological knowledge; some are photographers; some are expert at identifying species; some aren’t. Professor Robin suggests that there is no one type better than the other.

“Do you notice birds?” Professor Robin asks me. I nod, and my kingfisher earrings jangle. We’re seated facing a window over the Australian National Botanic Gardens and a pied currawong has just swooped past.

“When you see them, does that make you happy?” Of course. “Then you’re a birder.”

She tells me that birding has changed a lot since the digital age, particularly with the advancement of apps like eBird. It’s becoming more popular, for starters. It’s also become more inclusive and accessible.

She says there are many arguments to be had about the pros and cons of eBird, but the thing she’s most focused on is that we’re out there birding at all.

“In life, everything is online,” she says. “The most important thing is for us is to get off the screen some of the time. Get some air. You just need a break from screens. And birding is that break.”

“If you’re constantly looking at your device, or writing things down, you might miss the big story,” she adds.

When it comes to birding, the big story may be quite small. Like the rustle of leaves that alerts you to a critically endangered regent honeyeater in the tree above you. Or perhaps the nest hollow, previously overrun by introduced common mynas, has a new native tenant.

It’s stuff that only comes through being in nature, noticing, learning, and connecting the dots. It’s important. “In fact,” Professor Robin says, “caring about birds might just change the world.”

When you care about something, you act. You might plant a native bird and pollinator-friendly garden. Or you could write to your MP urging them to prioritise nature-first policies. You might become a citizen scientist, or simply share the joy of watching birds with others.

I leave our conversation feeling lighter because I know I care about birds, even if those feelings don’t translate immediately into direct action.

It turns out that even scientists share my struggle.

Ecologist Dr Belinda Wilson tells me she can relate to my feelings of guilt. She’s a researcher at the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society, a quoll expert, a science communicator, and a birder.

She says she often feels an obligation to be “doing more”.

“Because we can’t protect the things we don’t know exist, I find it very difficult just to go out for a bushwalk without collecting some sort of data.”

But it really comes down to what you value, and then what you can sustain, she says.

“Do you just want to enjoy the experience for what it was? Walking around, hearing the wind in the trees, hearing the calls, smelling, touching… or do you want to digitise that experience and make sure that it gets to the right channel so that it can be actioned?”

She summarises it perfectly: “One side is very flowy, and great for the soul. And the other one can be a bit draining.”

That’s what I’ve been trying to articulate: it’s this push and pull between my head and my heart that I want to learn how to balance.

Related: ‘Keep at it’: Increase in birdwatching during lockdown assists with conservation efforts

I imagine, for a scientist, this kind of obligation is even stronger than mine. I’m someone who’s around science a lot, but Dr Wilson is in it. She is also a passionate science communicator, and she knows how valuable it can be to share science to an even wider audience.

“I’m realising that there is a constant pressure on those working in the environmental sector to always do more. While there is a literal life-and-death element to conserving biodiversity, we also know we have to take care of ourselves first – because if we don’t, we can’t contribute to the other lives and world outside of us and make a difference.

“There’s absolutely a balance to be struck. I don’t know if I’m there yet.”

But citizen science apps have a lot to offer back to the user too. Having a list of all the birds she’s ever spotted, with her photos included, is very satisfying and joyous for Dr Wilson. Citizen science projects can also connect you with community, help you learn more about nature, and make you feel good about contributing – even in a small way.

“I took a picture of an orchid a couple of years back, and apparently it had been a brand-new location for that species,” Dr Wilson says. “People started messaging me on Canberra Nature Map – it turns out it was a significant recording! It just makes me want to take more recordings – can you imagine what else is flying under the radar out there?”

You can always upload your photos and data after the fact too, Dr Wilson adds.

For me, that feels more achievable. I can jot my observations in a notebook while in the field and upload records when I’m back home.

She also says not to worry about which app you choose: use the one that speaks to you most. The Atlas of Living Australia congregates data from most citizen science apps in Australia, anyway.

“Do things that bring you energy and joy,” Dr Wilson concludes. “Because otherwise, what are we even doing?”

So I’m not, after all, a Bad Birder. But maybe I need to become a more Balanced Birder.

In my notebook, I write down the words ‘My birding goals’ and underline it. I write:

1. participate in Birdlife Australia’s four seasonal bird surveys,
2. add interesting local cockatoo observations to the Big City Birds app, and
3. upload photos of rare birds or tricky-to-ID species to iNaturalist.

With this plan I can fully invest in the projects I want to focus on, while also carving out time to just be. I’d much rather be motivated by what I can do, instead of what I’m not doing.

Having settled on some concrete contributions and parameters, I feel like I can let of go of some of that guilt; let it fly away like a flock of galahs on the roadside. Because when it comes down to it, my main goal is that I remain a birder, and someone who cares. That’s what really matters.

Related: Our urban birdwatching guides to every Australian capital city

It’s the end of the day. I’m walking home with a heavy backpack and sore feet, when I suddenly hear a distinct drawn-out crackly sound, like a pterodactyl – or as if the gum trees above me are threatening to drop a limb.

But there’s no danger here, it’s just the call of a beautiful dark grey gang-gang as it flies by. I smile and squint up at the spot she came from, wondering if her partner might be here too. He is. The flashy red crest is easy to see flying towards me.

The pair land on a knot of the tree next to a hollow, and squawk around comically. They peek in and around their tree hollow home, and then start to preen each other.

I stand at the base of the tree and hang out with the gang-gangs for a while, watching their antics as the setting sun streams through the tree branches. My fingers hover over the app library on my phone, but then I change my mind and slip my phone back in my pocket.

Today, this one’s just for me.

Olivia Congdon is Senior Science Writer at the Australian National University (ANU) College of Science. This article was first published by Science at ANU.

Related: Charuka’s big year

The post Am I a bad birder? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The female juvenile platypus was captured during a survey assessing the health of the translocated platypuses.

A health assessment shows the platypus is in excellent condition, weighs 850g and is about six months old. Researchers said her age aligns with the end of the platypus breeding season, meaning she would have only recently emerged from her burrow.

Before returning her to the river, researchers assessed her body condition, took samples and fitted her with a microchip for future identification.

UNSW conservation scientist and lead of the Platypus Reintroduction Project, Dr Gilad Bino, said finding the juvenile platypus is a clear sign the reintroduced platypus population is thriving.

“[They’re] adapting well to their environment and contributing to the genetic diversity and resilience of this iconic species,” he said.

“The success of this reintroduction underscores the vital role that targeted conservation actions, such as translocations, rescues, and reintroductions, play in the preservation of the platypus across its range.”

Now she has been identified, the juvenile platypus will be named by the local Indigenous community.

Related: Platypuses thrive in new habitat within Sydney’s Royal National Park 

The return of platypus to the Royal National Park was the first translocation program for platypus in New South Wales and aims to re-establish a self-sustaining and genetically diverse platypus population.

The platypuses’ first months in the field exceeded ecologists’ expectations, with all 10 surviving – and thriving – in their new home.

Ongoing monitoring and tracking have confirmed that the platypuses remain active, with some recently venturing beyond the detection range.

Researchers have not ruled out the possibility there are more juveniles in the Royal National Park, and are planning further reintroductions over the coming years.

The Platypus Reintroduction Project is a multi-organisation initiative collaboration between UNSW, WWF-Australia, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, and Taronga Conservation Society.

The post ‘Happy news’: platypus baby born after successful translocation to NSW habitat appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The name makes perfect sense when you know the backstory.

Excastra albopilosa was discovered by James Tweed – a PhD candidate in The University of Queensland’s School of the Environment – while on a camping trip in Lamington National Park.

“I was walking through the campsite at Binna Burra Lodge one morning and something on a lomandra leaf caught my eye,” recalls James, who goes on to explain he initially mistook the beetle for bird droppings!

“To my amazement, I saw the fluffiest, most extraordinary longhorn beetle I had ever seen. Measuring 9.7mm, it was a striking red and black beauty covered in long white hairs.”

When James returned from the trip, he tried to identify the creature, searching through books, scientific papers and online resources and forums, but he could not find a match. In fact, he says, nothing looked even remotely similar.

The next step was an email to the Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC) in Canberra, whose experts confirmed the beetle was a completely new species.

Later, after examining the specimen itself, the ANIC team determined it was not only a new species, but a new genus (family of species) as well.

“So we chose the name Excastra for the genus, which is Latin for ‘from the camp’,” explains James, “and for the species name, we decided on albopilosa which translates to ‘white and hairy’.”

Why so hairy?

“We don’t yet know what these hairs are for, but our primary theory is that they make the insect look like it’s been killed by an insect-killing fungus,” James says. The purpose of this would be to deter birds and other predators from eating it.

“But until someone can find more specimens and study this species further, we won’t be able to say for sure why this beetle is so hairy,” he says.

However, this may not happen anytime soon, because Excastra albopilosa continues to remain very elusive.

“The area has been popular with entomologists for more than 100 years so it’s puzzling that it hasn’t been found until now,” says James. “I’ve been back several times to look for more of them, but haven’t had any luck.”

‘Underappreciated and understudied’

“Best estimates suggest there may be 5.5 million insect species worldwide and only one-fifth of these have been named and described,” James says. “Insects are the most diverse group of animals on the planet, but they are also the most underappreciated and understudied.”

Chance finds like James’s highlight how many unknown species of insects could be out there. And many of these could be under threat from extinction before even being discovered.

“We’re experiencing rapid declines in biodiversity globally, and it’s difficult to conserve species if we don’t even know they exist,” James says.

Related: Why we need to start naming as many species as possible

The post ‘White and hairy from the camp’: New fluffy longhorn beetle discovered in Gold Coast rainforest appeared first on Australian Geographic.

But what enables these clever birds to thrive? Are their sharp cognitive abilities innate – something coded into their genetic makeup? Or are magpie smarts more a product of their environment and social experiences?

In a new study, we shed light on the “nature versus nurture” debate – at least when it comes to avian intelligence.

Bigger social groups, smarter birds

Our study focused on Western Australian magpies, which unlike their eastern counterparts live in large, cooperative social groups all year round. We put young fledglings – and their mothers – through a test of their learning abilities.

We made wooden “puzzle boards” with holes covered by different-coloured lids. For each bird, we hid a tasty food reward under the lid of one particular colour. We also tested each bird alone, so it couldn’t copy the answer from its friends.

Through trial and error, the magpies had to figure out which colour was associated with the food prize. We knew the birds had mastered the puzzle when they picked the rewarded colour in 10 out of 12 consecutive attempts.

We tested fledglings at 100, 200 and 300 days after leaving the nest. While they improved at solving the puzzle as they developed, the cognitive performance of the young magpies showed little connection to the problem-solving prowess of their mothers.

Instead, the key factor influencing how quickly the fledglings learned to pick the correct colour was the size of their social group. Birds raised in larger groups solved the test significantly faster than those growing up in smaller social groups.

Fledglings living in groups of ten or more birds needed only about a dozen tries to consistently pick the rewarded colour. But a youngster growing up in a group of three took more than 30 attempts to learn the link between colour and food.

Related: Magpies with more friends a lot smarter, scientists find

How the social environment shapes cognition

Why would living in a larger social group boost cognitive abilities? We think it probably comes down to the mental demands that social animals face on a daily basis, such as recognising and remembering group members, and keeping track of different relationships within a complex group.

Magpies can learn to recognise and remember humans, too. The bird populations we work with live in the wild, but they recognise us by our appearance and a specific whistle we make.

A young magpie living in a group gets plenty of mental exercise recognising and remembering numerous individuals and relationships. Working to make sense of this stream of social information may boost their ability to learn and solve problems.

Our findings go against the idea that intelligence is something innately “set” within an animal at birth, based solely on genetic inheritance. Instead, we show how cognition can be shaped by the environment, especially in the first year after leaving the nest when young magpies’ minds are still developing.

While we focused specifically on Australian magpies, the implications of our research could extend to other highly social and intelligent species.

Related: Here are 4 things you definitely didn’t know about Aussie magpies

Lizzie Speechley, Behavioural Ecologist, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Nature versus nurture: the key to magpie intelligence appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Each year in Australia, cats and foxes kill an estimated 697 million reptiles, 510 million birds, and 1.4 billion mammals, totalling a staggering 2.6 billion animals. Since the predators were introduced more than 150 years ago, they have contributed to the extinction of more than 25 species – and are pushing many more to the brink.

Research suggests cats and foxes can be more active in areas recently burnt by fire. This is a real concern, especially as climate change increases the frequency and severity of fire in south-eastern Australia.

We urgently need new ways to protect wildlife after fires. Our study trialled one such tool: building artificial refuges across burnt landscapes. The results are promising, but researchers need to find out more.

Triple threat: cats, foxes and fire

Many native animals are well-adapted to fire. But the changing frequency and intensity of fire is posing a considerable threat to much of Australia’s wildlife.

Fire removes vegetation such as grass, leaf litter and shrubs. This leaves fewer places for native animals to shelter and hide, making it easier for cats and foxes to catch them.

We conducted our experiment in three Australian ecosystems: the forests of the Otway Ranges (Victoria), the sand dunes of the Simpson Desert (Queensland) and the woodlands of Kangaroo Island (South Australia). Each had recently been burnt by fire.

We built 76 refuges across these study areas. They were 90cm wide and up to 50m long – and backbreaking to install! They were made from wire mesh, mostly covered by shade cloth. Spacing in the mesh of 50mm allowed small animals to enter and exit from any point, while completely excluding cats, foxes and other larger animals. The shade cloth obstructed the vision of predators.

We then placed remote-sensing camera traps both inside and away from each refuge, and monitored them for periods ranging from four months to four years.

The placement of the cameras meant we could compare the effect of the refuges with what occurred outside them.

What we found

Across the three study areas, the artificial refuges were used by 56 species or species groups. This included the critically endangered Kangaroo Island dunnart, the threatened white-footed dunnart and the threatened southern emu-wren.

For around half the species, we detected more individuals inside the refuges than outside. As we predicted, the activity of small birds and reptiles, in particular, was much higher inside the refuges.

But surprisingly, reptile activity was also generally higher inside the refuges, particularly among skinks. We had not predicted that, because the shade cloth likely made conditions inside the refuges cooler than outside, and reptiles require warmth to regulate their body temperature.

Over time, the number of animals detected inside the refuges generally increased. This was also a surprise. We expected detections inside the refuges to decline through time as the vegetation recovered and the risk of being seen by predators fell.

But there were also a few complicating factors. For example, in the Otway Ranges and Simpson Desert, similar numbers of the mammals were detected inside and away from the refuges. This suggests the species didn’t consider the refuges as particularly safe places, which means the structures may not reduce the risk of these animals becoming prey.

So what’s the upshot of all this? Our findings suggest that establishing artificial refuges after fire may help some small vertebrates, especially small birds and skinks, avoid predators across a range of ecosystems. However, more research is required before this strategy is adopted as a widespread management tool.

Important next steps

Almost all evidence for an increase in cat and fox activity after fire comes from Australia, particularly the tropical north. But cats are an invasive species in more than 120 countries and islands.

That means there’s real potential for post-fire damage to wildlife to worsen globally, especially as fire risk increases with climate change.

Our results suggest artificial refuges may be a way to help animals survive after fire. But there are still important questions to answer, such as:

• can artificial refuges improve the overall abundance and survival of individuals and species?
• if so, how many refuges would be required to achieve this?
• in the presence of natural refuges – such as rocks, logs, burrows, and unburnt patches – are artificial refuges needed?
• does their effectiveness vary between low-severity planned burns and high-severity bushfires?

These questions must be answered. Conservation budgets are tight. After fires, funds must be directed towards actions that we know will work. That evidence is not yet there for artificial refuges.

Our team is busy trying to find out more. We urge other ecologists and conservationists to do so as well. We also encourage collaboration with designers and technologists to improve on our refuge design. For example, can such large refuges be made biodegradable and easier to deploy?

Solving these problems is important. It’s almost impossible to rid the entire Australian continent of cats and foxes. So land managers need all the help they can get to stop these predators from decimating Australia’s incredible wildlife.

Darcy Watchorn, PhD Candidate, Deakin University; Chris Dickman, Professor Emeritus in Terrestrial Ecology, University of Sydney, and Don Driscoll, Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Creating refuge for our native animals after fires appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The environmental importance of the upwelling is one reason the federal government this week declared a much-reduced zone for offshore wind turbines in the region. The zone covers one-fifth of the area originally proposed.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of a research publication that revealed the existence of the large seasonal upwelling system along Australia’s southern coastal shelves. Based on over 20 years of scientific study, we can now answer many critical questions.

How does this upwelling work? How can it be identified? Which marine species benefit from the upwelling? Does the changing climate affect the system?

Where do the nutrients come from?

Sunlight does not reach far into the sea. Only the upper 50 metres of the water column receives enough light to support the microscopic phytoplankton – single-celled organisms that depend on photosynthesis. This is the process of using light energy to make a simple sugar, which phytoplankton and plants use as their food.

As well as light, the process requires a suite of nutrients including nitrogen and phosphorus.

Normally, the sunlight zone of the oceans is low in nitrogen. Waters deeper than 100m contain high levels of it. This deep zone of high nutrient levels is due to the presence of bacteria that decompose sinking particles of dead organic matter.

Upwelling returns nutrient-rich water to the sunlight zone where it fuels rapid phytoplankton growth. Phytoplankton production is the foundation of a productive marine food web. The phytoplankton provides food for zooplankton (tiny floating animals), small fish and, in turn, predators including larger fish, marine mammals and seabirds.

The annual migration patterns of species such as tuna and whales match the timing and location of upwelling events.

What causes the upwelling?

In summer, north-easterly coastal winds cause the upwelling. These winds force near-surface water offshore, which draws up deeper, nutrient-enriched water to replace it in the sunlight zone.

The summer winds also produce a swift coastal current, called an upwelling jet. It flows northward along Tasmania’s west coast and then turns westward along Australia’s southern shelves.

Satellites can detect the areas of colder water brought to the sea surface. Changes in the colour of surface water as a result of phytoplankton blooms can also be detected. This change is due to the presence of chlorophyll-a, the green pigment of phytoplankton.

From satellite data, we know the upwelling occurs along the coast of South Australia and western Victoria. It’s strongest along the southern headland of the Eyre Peninsula and shallower waters of the adjacent Lincoln Shelf, the south-west coast of Kangaroo Island, and the Bonney Coast. The Bonney upwelling, now specifically excluded from the new wind farm zone, was first described in the early 1980s.

Coastal upwelling driven by southerly winds also forms occasionally along Tasmania’s west coast.

Coastal wind events favourable for upwelling occur regularly during summer. However, their timing and intensity is highly variable.

On average, most upwelling events along Australia’s southern shelves occur in February and March. In some years strong upwelling can begin as early as November.

Recent research suggests the overall upwelling intensity has not dramatically changed in the past 20 years. The findings indicate global climate changes of the past 20 years had little or no impact on the ecosystem functioning.

What are the links between upwelling, tuna and whales?

The Great Southern Australian Coastal Upwelling System features two keystone species – the ecosystem depends on them. They are the Australian sardine (Sardinops sagax) and the Australian krill (Nyctiphanes australis), a small, shrimp-like creature that’s common in the seas around Tasmania.

Sardines are the key diet of larger fish, including the southern bluefin tuna, and various marine mammals including the Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea). Phytoplankton and krill are the key food source for baleen whales. They include the blue whales that come to Australia’s southern shelves to feed during the upwelling season.

Unlike phytoplankton and many zooplankton species that live for only weeks to months, krill has a lifespan of several years. It does not reach maturity during a single upwelling season. It’s most likely the coastal upwelling jet transports swarms of mature krill from the waters west of Tasmania north-westward into the upwelling region.

So the whales seem to benefit from two distinct features of the upwelling: its phytoplankton production and the krill load imported by the upwelling jet.

Seasonal phytoplankton blooms along Australia’s southern shelves are much weaker than other large coastal upwelling systems such as the California current. Nonetheless, their timing and location appear to fit perfectly into the annual migration patterns of southern bluefin tuna and blue whales, creating a natural wonder in the southern hemisphere.

Related: Blue whales: scientists need your help spotting the enigmatic whale

Jochen Kaempf, Associate Professor of Natural Sciences (Oceanography), Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Where there’s upwelling, there’s whales appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Sitting on the bottom is what handfish do. Unlike most fish, they don’t have a swim bladder to regulate their buoyancy and so don’t often swim, although they can dart short distances. Instead, these fish walk along the sea floor, using their hand-shaped fins to move about and eating small crustaceans, worms and molluscs as they go.

Red handfish (Thymichthys politus) habitat has been devastated by native, but overabundant, short-spined sea urchins.

While obviously a handfish, the identity of the species Candice and Carlie saw remains a mystery. It looked most like a narrowbody handfish, collected only twice in scientific trawls, in 1984 and 1996. But it was bigger. “The narrowbody specimens are both about 5.5cm long, whereas the one we found was probably more than 10cm,” Carlie explains. “We don’t know how big the narrowbody species gets, so we don’t actually have a lot of information to go on.” It could even be a new species. 

That’s one of the problems with handfish. Although some species live in shallow estuaries, some occur in deeper coastal waters and very little is known about them. “Several species are only known from one or two specimens collected in deep water and haven’t been seen for many years,” says University of Tasmania (UTAS) researcher Dr Jemina Stuart-Smith, who, like Carlie, is a member of the Handfish Conservation Project and National Handfish Recovery Team (NHRT).

Only found in southern Australia

Handfish are found only in southern Australia, where 14 species are distributed around the mainland coast and Tasmania. It’s thought one – the smooth handfish – may be extinct. Three are critically endangered – the red, spotted and Ziebell’s. In July 2023, when Candice and Carlie saw ‘their’ handfish, RV Investigator was north-east of Flinders Island in Bass Strait, conducting the South-East Australian Marine Ecosystem Survey (SEA-MES). Fishery and ecosystem surveys were last carried out in that region 25 years ago. No more handfish were seen on the SEA-MES voyage, though it wasn’t for want of trying. “I looked at more than 90,000 images and saw in excess of 60 different fish species,” Carlie says. 

Handfish conservation efforts are necessarily focused on the better-known threatened species. “The recovery team’s efforts are focused on all three critically endangered species,” Jemina says. But there hasn’t been a confirmed Ziebell’s handfish sighting since 2005, limiting our efforts for that species.” 

The little that marine scientists know about the critically endangered red handfish is not good. Once found on shallow rocky reefs throughout south-eastern Tasmania, wild populations of this species are now confined to just two reefs. “Population numbers are so incredibly low, just 100 adults remain,” Jemina says. “That’s why we’re prioritising this species in particular.” 

Red handfish reef habitat has been decimated by overabundant short-spined sea urchins. These native grazers chomp through kelp, leaving empty habitat in their wake that provides no shelter or egg-laying sites for the defenceless handfish. In a balanced ecosystem, predators such as rock lobsters would keep the urchins in check, but fishing has reduced their numbers. 

Heat is another factor. In December 2023 the federal government authorised the temporary relocation of up to 25 red handfish to captive breeding facilities, to protect them from the anticipated marine heatwaves during the summer months. Their natural habitat will then be assessed to gauge if the fish can be safely returned after the danger has passed.

In August 2020 Jemina and her colleagues collaborated with the Tasmanian Commercial Divers Association to remove nearly 17,000 short-spined urchins from red handfish reefs. 

“But this is a short-term solution,” Jemina says. “Long term, we’re hoping to restore ecosystem balance so that urchin numbers are controlled naturally. Our greatest challenge will be keeping rock lobsters in these areas. These sites will need to be protected – or at least protected from fishing.”

Related: ‘There’s hope’: Fighting for the future of the red handfish

Assisted breeding

Meanwhile, a captive breeding and release program at UTAS Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) aims to bolster the tiny red handfish population. “Dr Andrew Trotter and his aquaculture team have 103 handfish in their care,” Jemina says. “That’s more than remain in the wild. We hope to release some of these fish later in the year.” The spotted handfish is in a similarly dire situation. 

It’s thought there are less than 3000 remaining in the wild. “They used to be very easy to find in the River Derwent estuary,” says Carlie, whose work includes monitoring spotted handfish populations. “Now there are only nine or 10 isolated populations there.” 

Spotted handfish live on the estuary’s sandy bottom, where sea squirts provide convenient stalks for them to wrap their egg clusters around. There, the eggs are attended by their protective mother. “She tends them, and cleans them with her mouth and hands,” Carlie says, describing underwater footage of a spotted handfish mum guarding her eggs. “It’s pretty amazing to watch.” 

Spotted handfish sashay across the sea floor, walking on hand-shaped pectoral fins.

Sadly, an attentive mother handfish is no match for a hungry Northern Pacific seastar. This aggressive predator is an established pest in the estuary. “The seastar likes to eat sea squirts,” Carlie explains. “With fewer sea squirts for handfish to wrap their eggs around, there’s less spawning activity.” 

To replace the sea squirt stalks lost to the introduced seastar, CSIRO has trialled ceramic sticks as artificial spawning habitat. It turns out the sticks are prime real estate. 

“When we jumped back in the water and went along the transects, we could see how many handfish had used these spawning poles,” Carlie says. “They have no problem with them – they love them.” 

Related: ‘Better than the Great Barrier Reef’

So much to learn

Unlike many fish, handfish don’t have a planktonic larval stage. “They hatch fully formed, only a few millimetres long,” Carlie says. In a partnership between researchers at Seahorse World Tasmania and the SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium, spotted handfish are being captive-bred and reared for a year or two to give them a good start in life. “We’ll keep them safe for their first couple of years. We’ll give them live food, which teaches them to forage and hunt, and replicate their natural environment, the temperature and the sandy bottom,” Carlie says. Hopefully, captive-bred youngsters can eventually be released into safe conditions in the wild. “That’s something we’re working on over the next couple of years.”

If you’d like to see a spotted handfish yourself, Seahorse World Tasmania and SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium have them on display. These ambassador fish, along with educational campaigns in schools and communities, are helping to raise awareness about handfish and the problems they face. 

Wild populations of red handfish (Thymichthys politus) survive on just two rocky reefs in Tasmania.

“They’re becoming quite an icon,” says Tassie-based photographer and marine scientist Matt Testoni. “When I sell handfish photos at the markets, there’ll be young kids, probably in Year 1 or 2, who say, ‘Mum, it’s my favourite fish’, and the parents say, ‘Yeah, that’s a spotted handfish.’” 

Far fewer people would recognise Ziebell’s handfish, which typically has a pale body with purplish patches and yellow-edged fins. Like the red handfish, Ziebell’s lives on rocky reefs. It was always hard to find but was occasionally seen around Tasman Peninsula and D’Entrecasteaux Channel in south-eastern Tasmania. 

Since the last confirmed sighting, IMAS researchers, using remote and autonomous underwater vehicles, think they have found Ziebell’s handfish in deep offshore areas in marine parks to the south and south-west of Tasmania. But no-one has seen any in their former known haunts. Matt hopes to change that. With support from the Centre for Marine Socioecology, Matt is on a mission to find and film the elusive fish. Locating any remnant population is a vital step in identifying threats and conserving the species. “We know virtually nothing about Ziebell’s handfish,” Matt says. “Let’s go find one. Then we can start that process.”

Even less is known about several other handfish species. Of the 14 species, six are described as data deficient on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. This is problematic for a group of fish with specialised habitat needs and poor dispersal abilities due to their lack of a planktonic larval stage. Whether there are particular threats to these species, no-one knows. “We can’t manage species or potential impacts without data,” Jemina says. 

This brave mother spotted handfish (Brachionichthys hirsutus) guards the cluster of eggs she has laid around a sea squirt. 

The NHRT hopes that cutting-edge environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques, which can identify minute fragments of a species’ DNA in water, will help locate new populations of handfish and recognise species seen on camera. Handfish markers with which to identify eDNA are still being developed, but soon this technique will be a useful tool for finding the cryptic fish. “We plan to analyse eDNA samples from the Investigator voyage and we should get a large range of fish sequences,” Carlie says. “Hopefully some of these match handfish.”

These secretive fishes face complex, interrelated threats, including pollution, predation, loss of habitat and warming water in their cool-water coastal regions. They’re sitting on the southern edge of the continent, with no similar habitat to move to as the weather warms. Let’s hope, that with a helping hand, there’s a future for these handsome fish.

Red handfish work is supported by funding from the Foundation for Australia’s Most Endangered species, federal government, and the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies.

Related: Photos from the field: Diving with Tasmania’s rare and elusive red handfish, your new favourite animal

The post Saving Tassie’s rare walking fish  appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Tania works on the front line of an escalating crisis ­effecting birdlife throughout south-eastern Queensland and north-eastern New South Wales – Lorikeet Paralysis Syndrome (LPS).

What is Lorikeet Paralysis Syndrome?

LPS primarily affects wild rainbow lorikeets (Trichoglossus moluccanus). Initially, afflicted birds lose balance and are unable to fly, despite not showing any apparent injuries. As the disease progresses, the birds lose control of their limbs – and their beaks – entirely.

How big is the problem?

The number of rainbow lorikeets becoming affected by LPS is increasing so dramatically that Wildlife Information, Rescue, and Education Service (WIRES) has now established an emergency response drop-in centre to cope with the influx of birds needing care.

Deployed to the centre – located in Grafton, in the northeast of NSW – are four WIRES emergency responders and three WIRES wildlife ambulances.

Tania is one of the specialist emergency responders working at the Grafton centre to triage and treat sick birds.

“LPS is a phenomenon that we’ve seen quite a few times over at least the last four years…but we’ve seen very big numbers of birds affected by it when we’ve had extreme rain events,” she says.

WIRES now estimates thousands of birds have now been affected by LPS in the region, but it’s not only the increasing number of birds with the condition that is worrying – cases are also becoming more acute.

“This time the birds seem to be more severely affected,” says Tania. “They go down more suddenly, they become paralysed more suddenly and need more immediate first aid and treatment.”

For many birds, LPS is fatal. And for the individuals that do survive, there’s a long road to recovery.

“Initially, the treatment is supplementation, support, lubrication of their eyes to make sure they don’t get damaged in this event, and making sure that they don’t aspirate [inhale food or water] because they can’t protect their airways properly,” says Tanya.

“And once we get them through the initial phase, the carers then have to very slowly take them through support, feeding them very, very carefully – going from electrolyte solutions and then gradually to food replacement solutions like nectar mix and things like that, until they can build them up and get them out into a cage where they can finally get their strength back and go back to the wild.”

Time is critical. The sooner an LPS-affected bird sees a vet, the better its chance of survival.

“The longer a bird is not flying, the longer it takes to get back that strength,” Tania says. “It’s like an athlete that’s off training for a couple of weeks.”

WIRES have been sharing the load with the EPA, Wildlife Health Australia, RSPCA, Vets Beyond Borders and private veterinary practices.

“We are extremely grateful to the concerned members of public bringing birds in for assessment, and to the local vet clinics for helping share the load. We couldn’t save them without the much appreciated assistance of the community,” says Tania.

What causes Lorikeet Paralysis Syndrome?

Various theories have emerged over recent years, including infection, but the most popular current theory is that LPS is caused by the ingestion of a toxin.

“It’s come down to us believing at this point the most likely thing is toxicosis – some substance causing a toxicity within these birds,” Tania says.

“We know that it’s something affecting their kidneys and their liver very severely, and then ultimately their musculoskeletal system.”

But identifying this toxin is the subject of ongoing research.

Scientists believe the toxin most likely forms on a plant and could be seasonal, or caused by extreme rain and heat events.

“So we’re looking at something like either a fungus or a bacteria at this stage,” Tania says. “Pending genetic testing and other research has ruled out countless suspected causes already, so we’re getting very close to discovering the cause in the current round of research from samples from this last event.”

How you can help

WIRES urges members of the public who encounter lorikeets showing suspected symptoms of LPS to follow these guidelines:

“The main thing to remember is these birds cannot swallow safely,” says Tania. “Trying to feed them yourself is actually very dangerous [for the bird].

“They are going to be desperate for food because they’re hungry, but they don’t have the ability to swallow and protect their airways properly.”

Related: Lorikeets: Four things you didn’t know about them

The post The race against Lorikeet Paralysis Syndrome appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Platypuses can become trapped in nets commonly used to catch yabbies such as “Opera House traps” (so-called because their shape resembles the sails of the Sydney Opera House). The enclosed structure stops platypuses swimming back to the surface to breathe, causing them to drown in minutes.

Enclosed traps are banned in most states, but they are still being used. They are sold online and can be shipped across Australia.

During our field research, we frequently encounter these traps and clumps of discarded fishing line. We have also conducted research on the bodies of platypuses killed by these hazards.

It’s time for a national ban on these inhumane traps. And recreational fishing waste should be kept out of our waterways. We must save our platypuses, before it’s too late.

A natural wonder

The platypus is one of Australia’s most loved and iconic species. These semi-aquatic, air breathing monotremes (egg-laying mammals) can be naturally found in waterways of the east coast, Tasmania and Kangaroo Island.

But there are growing concerns for the species’ survival. Platypuses are becoming scarce and in some areas, completely disappearing from waterways.

The animals spend most of their time foraging in freshwater creeks and rivers. They have very poor eyesight underwater and use special sensors in their duck-shaped bill to locate prey.

A trap full of live yabbies can attract platypuses, but this tempting feast may be their last meal.

Related: How to rebuild a platypus population

Closing in on enclosed traps

Closed-top traps are baited then submerged in a river or stream for hours or a day, before being hauled out.

The traps funnel creatures into an enclosed space where they can’t escape. They are designed to catch freshwater crayfish (known as yabbies or marron). But they also inadvertently trap aquatic animals such as platypuses, freshwater turtles and the native water rat, rakali.

But there are wildlife-friendly alternatives. For example, some nets are open at the top while others have a hinged lid that can be pushed open by a larger animal, such as a platypus, as it tries to escape.

Opera House style, closed-top yabby traps are now banned in Tasmania, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and South Australia.

Queensland allows use west of the Dividing Range, where platypuses are not thought to exist, or on private property. Restrictions around the size of trap entrance holes were introduced in 2015.

A litany of platypus deaths

The Australian Platypus Conservancy found 41% of reported platypus deaths from 1980 to 2009 were caused by drowning in enclosed nets.

Meanwhile platypuses have continued to drown in closed-top traps. In 2022, four reportedly died in one trap at Dorrigo on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. In 2021, a platypus died in Queensland’s Broken River and in 2018, one trap drowned seven in Victoria’s Werribee River.

Aside from deaths by closed-top traps, many platypuses become entangled in abandoned fishing line as they search for food along the bottom of waterways.

The animal’s tapered shape, duck-shaped bill and short webbed feet make it hard to free themselves. They are prone to getting wrapped in rings or loops of plastic, rubber or metal rubbish.

Related: Platypuses thrive in new habitat within Sydney’s Royal National Park 

In 2021 a Victorian study of 54 cases of platypus entanglement found litter commonly encircled the neck (68%). Almost one in five were wrapped “from in front of a shoulder to behind the opposite foreleg” (22%). Others had plastic around their torso or jaw.

That study also found platypuses in greater Melbourne were up to eight times more likely to become tangled in litter than those in regional Victoria. That’s because urban areas tend to be more polluted.

Fishing line can cut through skin and muscle, causing a slow painful death. Entangled platypuses can also drown after they become caught on underwater debris.

We study how heavy metals and other emerging contaminants accumulate in platypuses. Together with the community, local and state governments and wildlife organisations such as Taronga Zoo, we collect dead platypuses to examine their organs and body tissues.

On a trip this month to regional NSW for water quality testing and sampling, we found multiple instances of tangled fishing line and an abandoned submerged Opera House trap.

Swapping traps and binning trash

Between December 2018 and February 2019, when the Victorian Fisheries Authority invited people to swap their old closed top nets for a free “wildlife friendly” net, 20,000 traps were exchanged.

OzFish is currently running a Yabby Trap Round Up in NSW and SA. The Opera House traps are recycled and turned into useful fishing products.

Recreational fishers should also round up their used fishing line and hooks. The “TAngler bin” initiative encourages safe disposal. Since 2006, more than 350 TAngler bins have been installed at fishing hotspots in Victoria, NSW and Queensland, collecting more than ten tonnes of discarded fishing line.

A study in known platypus habitat on the Hawkesbury-Nepean River in Greater Sydney found more than 2.5km of fishing line was disposed of correctly in the bins in just three years.

Related: Rare white platypus spotted in northern NSW

Save our platypuses

Closed-top nets should be banned nationwide. This would ensure recreational fishers can no longer buy these traps and then use them in banned areas, as is happening now.

Net exchange programs should continue, in conjunction with a national awareness campaign, so the closed-top traps already sold are all handed in.

And both fishers and the wider community can take action by collecting discarded fishing line and nets.

Platypuses need all the help they can get. With our support, these beloved iconic animals can live on in Australian waterways.

Katherine Warwick, PhD Candidate, Western Sydney University; Ian A. Wright, Associate Professor in Environmental Science, Western Sydney University, and Michelle Ryan, Senior lecturer, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related: Hobart community rallies around rivulet platypus

The post Hook, line and sinker: the much-needed changes to recreational fishing to prevent more platypus deaths appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The greater bilby is the largest member of the bandicoot family. It shares the same short forelimbs and powerful hind legs as bandicoots. But it has some distinctive differences, such as those large, translucent pink ears and a spectacular long tail with a thick band of black-coloured fur along half its length and a pure white feathery end with a mysterious horny spur. At the time of European settlement, the two species of bilby were found across 70 per cent of the mainland and believed to number in the millions. Now, the lesser bilby is extinct, and the greater bilby is found in just 20 per cent of its former range with less than 10,000 estimated to be remaining in the wild. The greater bilby is now classified as vulnerable nationally, but is locally extinct in NSW.

Conservation efforts have focused on creating feral-free sanctuaries. Among the first of these was AWC’s Yookamurra Wildlife Sanctuary in SA. This 1000ha enclosure was originally established in 1988 by AGS Lifetime of Conservation awardee John Wamsley OAM. This brilliant mathematician and fearless advocate for native animals developed a fencing system that protected smaller animals, such as bilbies and numbats, by keeping out ferals while allowing the passage of larger native species.

Today, Yookamurra is one of more than 30 sanctuaries and partnership sites where AWC works. John’s revolutionary fence technology has evolved too, allowing the establishment of vast, fenced, predator-free zones across the continent. Currently about 10 per cent of the surviving bilby population is protected within an AWC facility. These sanctuaries – Yookamurra (SA), Scotia (New South Wales), Mt Gibson (Western Australia) and Newhaven (NT), as well as two NSW government partnership projects, in the Pilliga and Mallee Cliffs National Park, all occur where bilbies once thrived but have become locally extinct.

Bilbies are “ecosystem engineers”. “It’s a phrase we use to describe a species that changes the environment it’s in, just by the fact it’s there,” explains Alexandra Ross, AWC Acting Regional Ecologist working at Yookamurra. “The bilby digs holes to live in, but also to find seeds, roots and other foods. These holes collect other things like leaves and debris and bits of seeds. And when rain falls into these holes, it turns them into mulch pots, much like you’d make if you were going to plant something at home.”

Bilbies are known to each move several tonnes of topsoil a year, and they play a critical role in desert ecosystems. The differences between bilby habitat within sanctuary fence lines and beyond them can be dramatic, and those differences explain why it’s vital to reintroduce bilbies to places they occurred naturally. So many other species – both flora and fauna – benefit from their presence.

Maintaining genetic diversity among populations of any species living within enclosures is a grand logistical challenge and animals are carefully selected by AWC staff to create founding populations in new sanctuaries. In 2022, 32 bilby “founders” were introduced to the organisation’s Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary near Alice Springs, NT. A 9450ha portion of this 2615sq.km former cattle property – located on the traditional lands of the Ngalia-Warlpiri/Luritja people – was declared predator-free in 2019, marking the start of one of Australia’s most ambitious rewilding projects. The 32 founders came from Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, NSW, and another 34 came from the Queensland government’s sanctuary at Currawinya National Park, which was built with funds raised by the national Save the Bilby Fund. Within a year, evidence of juvenile bilbies was detected in Newhaven, while across all AWC properties the overall estimated bilby population in March 2023 was at least 3315, more than double the 2022 estimate of 1480, and almost triple the 2021 figure of 1230. Bilbies are prolific breeders, and if conditions are right and predators controlled, they can bounce back quickly.

It’s good news for this engaging and iconic creature, and for a whole raft of other embattled species whose survival is inextricably linked to that of the greater bilby. It takes breathtaking courage, ambition and lots of money to tackle Australia’s crashing biodiversity on such a towering scale. But if you can bring just one species back from the brink, it might just bring a whole raft of creatures back with it.

Related: Help bilbies to bounce back

The post Rescuing an emblem appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Scientists tracked its path as it moved down the west coast of South America, reaching Antarctica’s subantarctic islands in October last year.

Now, it has officially reached mainland Antarctica. The disease has been confirmed in two brown skuas (Stercorarius antarcticus) – also known as Antarctic skuas – on the western tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Argentinian researchers found and collected the two deceased birds in early February, before handing them over to scientists at Spain’s Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) for testing.

This week the Spanish government released a statement, announcing that, indeed, the two skuas were infected with the disease.

“The presence of the virus, confirmed on February 24, has been found in samples of two dead skuas, which were found by Argentine scientists near the Primavera Antarctic base,” the statement reads.

“Analysis has conclusively shown that the birds were infected with the H5 subtype of avian influenza, and that at least one of the dead birds contained the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus. These analyses consisted of specific PCRs for the influenza virus and the H5 subtype, followed by sequencing of the protease cutting region, which defines with 100 per cent certainty the presence of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza virus.

“The virus has recently been described in the subantarctic islands, but to date, although significant deaths of some birds had been reported in the Antarctic territory, no country had demonstrated the presence of said virus in Antarctic territory.”

‘Absolutely terrifying’

The confirmation is a realisation of the Antarctic scientific community’s worst fears, many of whom relayed these concerns to AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC late last year.

“Bird flu is absolutely terrifying because it’s so deadly and it doesn’t just affect birds,” said
Professor Dana Bergstrom, the former lead of Biodiversity Conservation with the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD).

AAD seabird ecologist Dr Louise Emmerson echoed this, adding the seabird research community was anticipating a massive loss of life among Antarctica’s wildlife when the disease inevitably reached mainland colonies.

“[We are all] feeling like an existential crisis is bearing down on us and our study ecosystems,” said Louise. “We’re all incredibly attached to our study species, and it feels horrendous that there’s very little we can do, apart from monitor the impacts, avoid spreading it [bird flu] further, and maintain the resilience of the wildlife through other management actions.”

Emily Grilly, WWF-Australia’s Antarctic conservation manager, predicted, “I think we’re going to see some haunting images… And it’s the last thing that Antarctic wildlife needs right now, when it’s trying to adapt to this changing climate.”

Related: Antarctica: a continent in crisis

The post ‘We’re going to see some haunting images’: Bird flu has reached Antarctica appeared first on Australian Geographic.

It is also a global biodiversity hotspot. “There are more species in the GSR than anywhere else in the world,” says Dr Scott Bennett, a senior researcher and marine ecologist at Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) and co-founder of the Great Southern Reef Foundation (GSRF).

“Between 70 and 80 per cent of the thousands of species found in the GSR are unique to that reef, which is truly remarkable,” he says. “To put this into perspective, only 3 per cent of species in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) are unique to the area.”

The GSR is also home to most Australians, with 70 per cent of the population living along its shores and many using it daily for swimming, surfing, fishing or other recreation.

It injects an average of $11.5 billion into the Australian economy each year, compared to the GBR’s average of $6 billion. However, due to a lack of awareness, the GSR receives only 1 per cent of the federal funding that the GBR receives each year.

Once a vast and productive ecosystem, the GSR is losing its most valuable asset – the Tasmanian giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera). 

Giant kelp forests are vital to ocean productivity because, like land forests, they support a vast range of life. These undersea forests create a unique ecosystem that is home to some of the world’s rarest creatures, such as the weedy seadragon (Phyllopteryx taeniolatus), giant cuttlefish (Sepia apama) and Tasmania’s red handfish (Thymichthys politus). 

Giant kelp forests were once superabundant throughout south-eastern Australia, leading to a hugely productive harvest industry in the early 1970s.

“Boats would go up and down the coast of Tasmania harvesting giant kelp, and harvesters removed hundreds of tonnes of biomass annually, but that wasn’t an issue because giant kelp forests are immensely productive,” says Dr Bennett.

For example, 1ha of giant kelp forest produces 1–2t of fresh kelp daily. In comparison, other kelp species – such as golden kelp (Ecklonia radiata) – that are now replacing the giant kelp produce an average of 70kg daily.

“It’s a massive difference in daily production, impacting the entire food web,” Dr Bennett says. “Going from 2t of fresh kelp daily to only 70kg is a huge loss, and these other kelp species simply cannot sustain the same amount of life as giant kelp forests.”

Once a vast and thick underwater forest, only 5 per cent of giant kelp forests remain. “We attribute this loss to climate change,” says Dr Bennett.

Because of shifts in wind and ocean circulation patterns, caused by warming water, the East Australian Current is getting stronger. It’s sending warm, nutrient-poor water further south than it previously did, displacing the cool, nutrient-rich water from the Southern Ocean.

“Giant kelp grows so fast and is so productive that it needs all this energy to grow, and if the nutrients aren’t in the water column, it doesn’t have the necessary fuel. The kelp is starving – it’s literally wilting off at the root,” Dr Bennett says.

Related: The Great Southern Reef is in more trouble than the Great Barrier Reef

Climate change is also causing the redistribution of some ocean species, proving dire for ecosystems like the GSR. 

“The long-spined sea urchin (Diadema savignyi), which is native to New South Wales, is now found in Tasmania, and it is devastating kelp forests because the large populations overgraze,” Dr Bennett says. “The result is barren areas of bare rock where the urchins have destroyed giant kelp forests by nipping kelp off at its start, and the rest of the kelp floats away.”

Without giant kelp forests, the GSR will be unable to sustain the enormous biodiversity it has maintained for millions of years.

Using AI to track restoration

Scientists must be able to locate remaining canopies before the giant kelp forests can be protected and restored. Manually identifying and tracking canopies can be challenging, costly and cumbersome – imagine trying to identify a particular tree in 70,000sq.km of forest that is also underwater.

Google Earth Engine and Google Cloud’s AI platform, Vertex AI, are being used to locate and analyse kelp forests in more than 7000sq.km of satellite imagery to provide researchers with geospatial maps of the reef ecosystems, allowing them to document how they change yearly.

The AI kelp monitoring provides a complete picture of these ecosystems so researchers can create an efficient and reliable long-term monitoring strategy.

“To address the biggest challenges of climate change, we need to fully understand them,” says Melanie Silva, Managing Director of Google Australia and New Zealand.

“Using Google AI for this project we can – for the first time – find and analyse Australia’s disappearing giant kelp forests and support our partners to restore this critical habitat and protect the ecosystem of the GSR.”

Providing a ‘kelping’ hand

Although 95 per cent of giant kelp forests are gone, all hope has not been lost.

Dr Anusuya Willis, director of the Australian National Algae Culture Collection at CSIRO, is analysing the surviving giant kelp to uncover genetic patterns leading to heat tolerance.

“Some of the remaining kelp is showing resilience to heat waves, so those populations should be able to survive in the oceans as they are now,” Dr Willis says.

“By identifying the specific genetic patterns that make some kelp resistant to heat, we can take significant steps towards restoring our magnificent kelp forests by allowing scientists to grow these varieties and reintroduce them to the GSR.”

With 500 million base pairs of kelp to analyse, Dr Willis’s team is using Google AI to uncover patterns in their data.

The tool DeepConsensus helps enable genome sequencing data by spotting errors through multiple readings – something that would take humans much longer to achieve given the millions of data points.

Another tool, DeepVariant, then analyses the data and identifies any inconsistencies that may allow scientists to find the genetic abnormalities that result in heat resistance.

Related: Underwater health check shows kelp forests are declining around the world

At the IMAS laboratory, scientists then take the giant kelp that demonstrate heat tolerance and breed it for out-planting on the GSR.

When selected baby giant kelp is ready to be seeded in the ocean, divers spray twine with fertilised kelp spores and unravel it along the seafloor, where it begins growing.

The baby kelp goes into the ocean measuring 1mm, but with a growing rate of up to 50cm per day in ideal conditions, the restoration efforts could see the establishment of ‘forest-scale’ giant kelp within 12 months of out-planting if the samples demonstrate heat tolerance.

Craig Johnson, Professor of Marine Ecology at IMAS, says the rest of the world is watching Australia closely to see how restoration progresses.

“Warming in eastern Tasmania is four times the global average rate, so the impacts here are a bellwether warning for what might occur in other parts of the world,” he says.

“So there’s a lot of interest in little old Tassie right now, because of the amount of science being done here around what may become a global issue.”

Related: GALLERY: The kelp forests of the Great Southern Reef

The post Help for kelp: saving the Great Southern Reef appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Sightings of the bird are rare, for a number of reasons: there are so few of them; they are nocturnal; they inhabit some of the harshest climates in the country; and, they are well-camouflaged – their yellow and green markings allow them to hide in their spinifex habitat.

First discovered by Europeans in 1845, night parrots were once widespread throughout arid Australia, but numbers soon plummeted with the introduction of predators such as cats and foxes.

The species is now known to only inhabit very localised parts of south-western Queensland and Western Australia, explains Dr Leo Joseph, Director of CSIRO’s Australian National Wildlife Collection.

“A couple of dozen scientific specimens were collected during the 19th century, and one more in 1912. Then a specimen was found in 1990, in south-western Queensland.

“Live birds were reported from the same area in 2013, and a live parrot was finally caught and tagged in 2015,” he says.

Related: New footage of the night parrot

But despite these, and a string of other recent sightings, the estimated number of night parrots in the wild remains a staggeringly low 40-500 individuals, says Dr Kenny Travouillon, Western Australia Museum’s Acting Curator of Ornithology.

“Even though there is a [confirmed] population in Queensland, and one in WA, the number of individuals sighted is relatively low. So those estimates are still standing today, and it is hard to be able to challenge these estimates until further populations are found in other parts of Australia,” he says.

So, with the chances of ever finding a night parrot in the wild so incredibly rare, the best chance of seeing one up close is to view a specimen.

And now, WA Museum Boola Bardip, opened in 2020, is home to the best-preserved whole specimen on display anywhere in the world. It’s also only the fourth complete specimen ever collected in WA, with the other three all in overseas museums.

“This is very exciting for us,” says Dr Travouillon.

The specimen was found last year by Traditional Owners in the east Pilbara. The bird was found alive, but it was caught on a fence. Unfortunately, although retrieved, the parrot died from its injuries. The Traditional Owners then notified the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, who soon confirmed that it was indeed a night parrot.

“We are so grateful for the assistance given from Traditional Owners in delivering it to us and giving us permission to put it on display,” says Dr Travouillon.

“Having a specimen of this quality, and its preservation, is incredibly important for research and education. We still know little about this elusive bird’s habitat and biology.”

Incredibly, the specimen has already led to a scientific breakthrough that will help conservation efforts of the species.

Researchers at CSIRO have sequenced the first genome of the night parrot, using tissue taken from the specimen and donated by WA Museum.

Dr Joseph says this genetic blueprint will enable him, and fellow researchers, to explore the genetic basis of why night parrots are nocturnal, a very unusual feature in parrots.

“We’ll also investigate faculties like navigation, smell, beak shape and its less-than-optimal night vision,” he says.

“Statistical analyses can also be run on the genome of this individual to estimate past population sizes of night parrots in Australia …we have the capability to compare this annotated genome with other, closely related parrots, shedding light on the reasons behind its scarcity and limited distribution compared to many of its relatives.”

Senior research scientist Dr Gunjan Pandey, who led the genomics project, adds that the genetic data can be used to ensure that conservation programs maximise diversity, so the species is resilient and has the best chance of long-term survival.

“The night parrot genome will open up numerous opportunities for further research to help conserve this species,” says Dr Pandey. “This will empower scientists to develop a plan for saving the night parrot, which is the ultimate goal of sequencing the genome and making it publicly available.”

Related: Night parrot’s wonky skull could be its superpower

The post World’s best night parrot specimen leads to first genome sequence of the elusive species appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Related: Defining Moments in Australian History: Introduction of cane toads

An eternal arms race

Nematode lungworms are tiny threadlike creatures that live in the lining of a toad’s lung, suck its blood, and release their eggs through the host’s digestive tract. The larva that hatch in the toad’s droppings lie in wait for a new host to pass by, then penetrate through its skin and migrate through the amphibian’s body to find the lungs and settle into a comfortable life, and begin the cycle anew.

Parasites and their hosts are locked into an eternal arms race. Any characteristic that makes a parasite better at finding a new host, setting up an infection, and defeating the host’s attempts to destroy it, will be favoured by natural selection.

Over generations, parasites get better and better at infecting their hosts. But at the same time, any new trick that enables a host to detect, avoid or repel the parasites is favoured as well.

So it’s a case of parasites evolving to infect, and hosts evolving to defeat that new tactic. Mostly, parasites win because they have so many offspring and each generation is very short. As a result, they can evolve new tricks faster than the host can evolve to fight them.

The march of the toads

The co-evolution between hosts and parasites is most in sync among the ones in the same location, because they encounter each other most regularly. A parasite is usually better able to infect hosts from the local population it encounters regularly than those from a distant population.

But when hosts invade new territory, it can play havoc with the evolutionary matching between local hosts and parasites.

Since cane toads were released into the fields around Cairns in 1935, the toxic amphibians have hopped some 2,500 kilometres westwards and are currently on the doorstep of Broome. And they have changed dramatically along the way.

The Queensland toads are homebodies and spend their lives in a small area, often reusing the same shelter night after night. As a result, their populations can build up to high densities.

For a lungworm larva, having lots of toads in a small area, reusing and sharing shelter sites, makes it simple to find a new host. But at the invasion front (currently in Western Australia), toads are highly mobile, moving over a kilometre per night when conditions permit, and rarely spending two nights in the same place.

At the forefront of the invasion, toads are few and far between. A lungworm larva at the invasion front, waiting in the soil for a toad to pass by, will have few opportunities to encounter and infect a new host.

Lungworms from the invasion front

When hosts are rare, we expect the parasite will evolve to get better at infecting the ones it does encounter, because it is unlikely to get a second chance.

To understand how this co-evolution is playing out between cane toads and their lungworms, we did some experiments pairing hosts and parasites from different locations in Australia. What would happen when toad and lungworm strains that had been separated by 90 years of invasion were reintroduced to each other?

Related: Cane toads help spread parasites to frogs

To study this we collected toads from different locations, bred them in captivity and reared the offspring in the lab under common conditions. We then exposed them to 50 lungworm larvae from a different area of the range, waited four months for infections to develop, then killed the toads and counted how many adult worms had successfully established in their lungs.

As expected, worms from the invasion front were best at infecting toads, not just their local ones. Behind the invasion front, in intermediate and old populations we found that hosts were able to fight their local parasites better than those from distant populations.

While we saw dramatic differences in infection outcomes, we have yet to determine what biochemical mechanisms caused the differences and how changes in genetic variation of host and parasite populations might have shaped them.

Greg Brown, Postdoctoral researcher, Macquarie University; Lee A Rollins, Scientia Associate Professor, UNSW Sydney, and Rick Shine, Professor in Evolutionary Biology, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post A secret war between cane toads and parasitic lungworms is raging across Australia appeared first on Australian Geographic.

One of the goals of conservation is to reduce the risk of a species becoming extinct. While this might be seen as a low bar for conservation managers, it is seldom achieved. A new set of research papers on the conservation of Australian birds looks at cases of success over the past 30 years and where we have failed over the past 200.

We found extinction risks had reduced for 25 bird species and subspecies in at least one of the decades between 1990 and 2020. Nine of these would have gone extinct if not for hard work and expertise to prevent it happening.

The most effective action has been eradicating invasive species from islands. This work benefited 13 birds.

Most Australians approve of killing invasive species to save threatened species. They have good reason: it works.

What were the successes?

Nine of these successes are seabirds nesting on Macquarie Island. The program there was so successful it had a significant positive impact on Australia’s Red List Index for birds, a way of measuring overall progress on threatened species status.

This success also changed the average characteristics of Australian threatened birds. Before the pest eradications on Macquarie Island, large seabirds dominated the profile of the threatened Australian birds. Now the average threatened bird is smaller and lives on land.

Further programs have the potential to have a similar impact. The likely huge benefits from eradicating rodents from Lord Howe Island, for example, are yet to show up in these figures.

Another four birds benefited simply from having their habitat protected. Protection of rainforest reduced extinction risk for the southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius) and Albert’s lyrebird (Menura alberti). One of the largest national parks in New South Wales was acquired for the Bulloo grey grasswren (Amytornis barbatus barbatus). The Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax fleayi) also had more of its nesting habitat protected.

Related: Rescuing the goddess of the grasslands

For another species, simply enforcing the law reduced the threat. In south-western Australia, culling of Muir’s corella (Cacatua pastinator pastinator) for agriculture threatened it with extinction. Now, with better protection, there are thousands.

Some threatened birds have benefited from intensive interventions by dedicated conservation agencies, non-government organisations and individuals.

Translocations of Gould’s petrels to new breeding islands and of eastern bristlebirds (Dasyornis brachypterus) to heathlands were exemplary.

Very few glossy black-cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus lathami halmaturinus) on Kangaroo Island were nesting successfully before their nests were protected from predatory possums.

Rats twice almost wiped out Norfolk Island green parrots Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae cookii. Their population has increased ten-fold since nests have been better protected.

These examples show our society can make changes that help to prevent extinctions.

There have also been setbacks

Our stories contain salutary lessons too. The pathway to recovery can have reversals.

In the past decade, Gould’s petrel and the bristlebird have suffered setbacks due to new or escalating threats. A new report suggests Tasmanian wind farms are killing and injuring significant numbers of eagles – and many more wind farms are planned.

Our analysis of improvements in the conservation outlook for Australian birds was complemented with an assessment of Australian bird extinctions. Sadly, we found extinctions are continuing.

Even with the conservation effort of the past 30 years since Australia’s first endangered species legislation, three birds are gone forever. The Mount Lofty Ranges spotted quail-thrush (Cinclosoma punctatum anachoreta), white-chested white-eye (Zosterops albogularis) and southern star finch (Neochmia ruficauda ruficauda) were still surviving in the 1990s, but were extinct by 2010.

The number of extinct birds has risen steadily since Australia was colonised in 1788. There was an initial burst of extinctions on islands, particularly big birds that were good to eat and probably had small populations. More recent losses have tended to be small birds whose mainland habitat has been cleared or modified.

29 birds are gone, but we can halt the losses

At present, 29 Australian birds are known to have become extinct. It’s a lower percentage than for mammals, but still far too high.

Grave fears are held for another four – the Tiwi hooded robin (Melanodryas cucullata melvillensis), buff-breasted button-quail (Turnix olivii), Coxen’s fig-parrot (Cyclopsitta diophthalma coxeni) and Cape Range rufous grasswren (Amytornis striatus parvus). We don’t know whether they persist or not.

For the 29 extinct birds, we can do nothing. The important lesson is that this number of losses need grow no more. We have the resources and skills to prevent extinction.

A recent court order halting forestry activity in swift parrot (Lathamus discolor) habitat suggests at least some environmental laws are making a difference.

Other judgments expose legal shortcomings and show how much more needs to be done. The revisions of national environmental laws now being negotiated provide an opportunity to fill loopholes through which threatened species might fall.

Extinctions are neither accidental nor deliberate. They are a failure of policy and people.

However, the examples of birds whose risk of extinction has declined show what can be achieved. While some of these improvements were mostly a matter of good luck, many were the result of hard work, advocacy, investment and well-judged interventions. And they give the world hope.

John Woinarski, Professor of Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University; Sarah Legge, Professor of Wildlife Ecology, Australian National University, and Stephen Garnett, Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related: Endangered western whipbird returns to Kangaroo Island after bushfires

The post Building a future for our birds: what we are doing right, and wrong appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Known as Australia’s ‘living fossil’, the Queensland lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri) is our closest living fish relative and is considered to be a surviving link in the evolutionary chain between fishes and amphibians. Not only does the lungfish have gills, but it can also breath air using one fully functioning lung.

The species are believed to have existed for around 400 million years, and fossils indicate the Queensland variety has changed very little over the last 100 million years.

Native to south-eastern Queensland’s Mary and Burnett River systems, the once abundant species is now listed federally as vulnerable.

So how did these remarkable creatures come to be living in a man-made lake created on one of the biggest festival sites in Australia?

The 202ha Woodfordia site in Queensland’s Moreton Bay region may host more than 120,000 people every year during the famous Woodford Folk Festival (and other events), but the organisers also have a strong commitment to the environment.

Managed by Woodfordia Inc. (a not-for-profit organisation and recognised charity) the land – once a degraded rural property – has been restored and regenerated over the last three decades. With more than 100,000 trees, plus understorey, now providing habitat for local wildlife, it is now also a registered Land for Wildlife site.

The latest edition to Woodfordia is Lake Gkula, named after one of the Traditional Owners’ principal spokespersons. Uncle Noel Blair is a Jinibara man whose name in language is gkula, meaning ‘koala’. The lake was completed three years ago, after feedback from festival patrons indicated a need for somewhere to swim to escape Queensland’s summer heat.

“It gets extremely hot, it’s oppressive, people need a place to cool off,” explains Patrick Handley, the lake’s creator.

But, being Woodfordia, this was never going to end up being just any ordinary swimming spot, which is why Patrick was chosen for the task. A horticulturist with a passion for ecology and ecosystems, Patrick’s goal was to build a fully endemic ecosystem, “as native as we could get it,” he says.

The result is a lake with natural wetland filtration. Powerful pumps and nanobubble technology also maintain a constant flow and high levels of oxygen, which purify the water like kidneys, while beneficial bacteria and microorganisms keep pathogens at bay. All this means the lake is completely chemical-free.

This makes Lake Gkula not only a natural setting to swim in, but a great place for animal and plant species to thrive. It was, as Patrick says, “a no-brainer” that the habitat would be made home to native and endemic species only.

To achieve this, Patrick consulted experts and self-researched the environmental conditions needed by certain native and endemic species, then he set about making conditions just right. Soon, the lake was home to an ecosystem of more than 18 native fish and crustaceans, as well as a host of other animals – including turtles, frogs, lizards and water birds – living among more than 8000 plants, including native water lilies.

The lake’s fish species include Pacific blue-eye, Agassiz’s perchlet, gudgeon, tandanus catfish, rainbowfish and Mary River cod.

And, of course, lungfish.

Being a protected species, it is illegal to take lungfish from the wild, so three were donated to Woodfordia by a licenced local breeder.

“The release of the lungfish was so incredible, it was such a fantastic day,” says Patrick. “It’s been a real dream to have this happen – I’ve always wanted to do this.”

For the lungfish to thrive in their new environment, Patrick designed habitat space specific to their needs. Not only do they prefer to inhabit deep water, and need plenty of room to move and hunt, they also need places to hide when the lake is full of people.

“I created a habitat zone for the fish. They can enter it and be safe from predators and people. There are hollow logs to lie in, and we do see them get up in there,” he says.

“My main concern was making sure we had enough to feed them – but they’ve got plenty of food. They eat the snails in there, and they ambush prey when they can, so there’s a few smaller species – like the shrimp – they can get hold of. They also feed on the eelgrass.”

Three years on from the introduction of the lungfish into Lake Gkula, Patrick says they’re doing well. “I go and look at them every three to four months and they’re really healthy. They’re growing really, really quickly. They went in at 25cm, and they’re at least a good 75cm now.

“I identify them by their tail patterns, and I know there’s definitely two still there. When you look at them, they’re just so fat and happy.”

Looking to the future, Patrick says the ideal scenario would be for the lungfish to breed. However it’s too soon to identify the gender of the lungfish.

“We have to wait and see,” says Patrick. “If we had a breeding pair in there it would be incredible. But even if we do, it will be up to 15 years before they get to breeding size.”

In the meantime, Patrick just wants people to appreciate these unique animals.

“A lot of people still don’t know that they’re there,” he says. “So for people to go and appreciate the fact that they’re swimming with lungfish in semi-wild conditions would be incredible.

“I’ve had some great experiences with these lungfish. I think it’s going to be a wonderful thing to see and hear them at night time. When they’re older they will come up to the surface and suck at the air – apparently they sound like dolphins.

“That would be amazing. Absolutely amazing.”

Related: New brain-warp technique helps reconstruct fossil brains

The post Swimming with a ‘living fossil’ appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The two carnivorous marsupials share similar diets, although quolls tend to avoid devils, which are much larger and more aggressive. But in areas with high prevalence of DFTD (and small devil populations), quolls have access to more food resources, and, according to a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution in January 2024, are now travelling shorter distances to scavenge and breed. This is decreasing genetic exchange between individuals. 

Related: Decline in Tassie devil populations disrupting food chain

Analysis of the genome of 345 individual quolls across 15 generations showed that quolls living in areas with low densities of Tasmanian devils had less genetic diversity compared with quolls living in areas with larger devil populations. Those quolls must travel further distances to find food and breeding partners.

The study also revealed gene variants associated with muscle development and movement in the less-mobile quolls living with smaller devil populations.

Related: A guide to all six species of quoll

The post Declining devils force quoll evolution appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Recently, our team discovered that herbivores – plant-eating mammals – primarily use their sense of smell to tell which plants they want to eat or avoid.

In our study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, we show how we can use this reliance on smell to nudge wallabies away from vulnerable native tree seedlings. We artificially created and deployed the key smells of a shrub wallabies avoid.

Herbivore-induced headaches

Hungry plant eaters are a concern for conservationists, farmers and foresters alike. They can devastate revegetation efforts and post-fire recovery, destroying more than half the seedlings in these areas.

Every year, they cause billions of dollars of damage in forestry and agriculture. Herbivores also pose a risk to the long-term survival of many threatened plant species.

The most effective control strategies will likely work with a herbivore’s natural motivations – understanding and harnessing what drives the animal to find or avoid certain plants.

Previously, research had primarily focused on what herbivores were eating, but had never really asked how they find the food in the first place.

Our approach puts a new twist on “olfactory (smell) misinformation” or “chemical camouflage” approaches. In recent studies, these methods have substantially reduced invasive predators eating threatened bird eggs in New Zealand, and house mice eating agricultural wheat grain in Australia.

A landscape of smells

In navigating a scent landscape, herbivores use odour to recognise and select among plants and plant patches. Odour is key in guiding the foraging of marsupials in Australia, elephants in Africa and Asia, and deer in the United States.

With this in mind, we explored whether the smell of a plant they don’t like could be enough to nudge animals away from highly palatable native tree seedlings.

To test this idea, we focused on swamp wallabies foraging in a eucalypt woodland in eastern Australia. Studies have shown having too many swamp wallabies around can limit the number of eucalypt seedlings that survive to become trees. Swamp wallabies also have a fantastic sense of smell – they can find just a few eucalypt leaves buried underground among complex vegetation.

Using an approach we recently developed, we found the key scent compounds of a plant we know wallabies avoid – the native shrub Boronia pinnata.

We then mixed these compounds together to create “informative virtual neighbours”. They were “informative” as our mix of compounds mimicked what a wallaby would recognise as Boronia pinnata, “virtual” as we were not actually deploying the real shrub, and “neighbours” as we placed these smells in the bush next to eucalypt seedlings we were trying to protect.

In our study, a virtual neighbour was a small glass vial with a few millilitres of the mixture, with a tube pierced through the lid so the smell could waft out.

Using odours instead of real plants is a type of olfactory misinformation – it sends a deceptive message to the animals.

Real and virtual neighbours

We also compared if virtual neighbours were as good as the real thing in protecting eucalypt seedlings from being eaten by wallabies.

Five virtual neighbour vials or real Boronia pinnata plants were spaced evenly around single eucalypt seedlings the wallabies would find highly palatable. (We also had two types of controls: a seedling with nothing around it, and a seedling surrounded by five empty vials.)

Using remote cameras for 40 days, we recorded how long it took wallabies to find and munch on the eucalypt seedlings.

The results were staggering. Seedlings were 20 times less likely to be eaten when surrounded by virtual neighbours than for both controls. This was equivalent to using real B. pinnata plants, but better because vials don’t compete with seedlings for water and other resources.

A highly effective approach

The success of our study indicates we could use this approach as a new management tool – one that works by influencing the animals’ behaviour rather than trying to get rid of them.

We believe the concept behind developing virtual neighbours is directly transferable to any herbivore, mammal or otherwise, that uses plant odour to forage.

All herbivores avoid some plant species. With future development, we can deploy smelly virtual neighbours as a non-deadly and cost-effective tool to reduce the problems caused by overzealous herbivores.

We acknowledge all other co-authors who contributed to this work: Catherine Price, Malcolm Possell and Cristian Gabriel Orlando from the University of Sydney, and Adrian Shrader from the University of Pretoria. We thank Paul Finnerty for assistance in designing and constructing virtual neighbour holders.

Patrick Finnerty, PhD candidate – Behavioural Ecology and Conservation Research, University of Sydney; Clare McArthur, Professor of Behavioural Ecology, University of Sydney, and Peter Banks, Professor of Conservation Biology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related: Stinkhorns: the fungi that smell like rotting flesh on purpose

The post ‘Smell misinformation’ used to stop animals eating threatened plant species appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Some 30 years ago, I and colleagues published a paper calling for this naming practice to extend to native rodents. This group of animals contains many handsome and fascinating animals among its many species.

But sadly, native rats and mice don’t usually evoke sympathy among the Australian public. The unappealing common names for the species – such as swamp rat or long-haired rat – do little to help the problem.

Public sentiment towards an animal matters. It can affect whether their habitat is protected, if they are prioritised for research and conservation, and the amount of funding devoted to protecting them. So among the many other good reasons to ascribe Aboriginal common names to our species, it might mean the difference between their survival and extinction.

Related: Why we need a better appreciation of our native rodents

What’s in a name?

Of the 60 Australian rodent species, nearly 20 are extinct or greatly diminished in range.

As with other threatened mammals, desert-dwelling rodents have suffered most. For example among hopping mice, five of ten species are extinct. Those still remaining could do with our attention – and naming them may help.

Research has shown common names of species are an important tool when seeking to increase community support for conservation.

One study by Australian researchers analysed the common names of almost 27,000 animals from the IUCN Red List of threatened species. It found frequent words in animal common names that produced strong positive or negative sentiment.

Common words driving positive sentiment included “golden” and “great”. Words driving negative sentiment included “rat”, “lesser” and “blind”.

The research found many words were also associated with human emotions. For example, “dove” was associated with joy, anticipation and trust. “Rat” was associated with fear and disgust, probably due to its associations with disease, uncleanliness and deceitfulness, the study found.

The researchers said strategic name changes may improve public engagement and support for species and therefore provide effective, low-cost conservation benefits.

How about ‘pakooma’ and ‘palyoora’?

So where might we find new, more appealing monikers for our maligned rodents? Our 1995 paper suggested selecting common names from relevant Aboriginal words that might readily be pronounced by English speakers.

At the time, we checked our document before publication with offices of the then-current Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. Should Aboriginal words be used to rename species today, agreement should be sought from the relevant language group.

The brush-tailed rabbit-rat, Conilurus penicillatus, is an example of a rodent ripe for renaming. It’s a striking and vigorous animal of northern Australia, which became extinct in Kakadu National Park in the 2000s and now persists in only a handful of isolated regions. How unfair it is that this splendid creature should be thought of as a mere rat – as well as bearing the nomenclatural burden of Australia’s worst vertebrate pest? Perhaps it could be renamed pakooma, from the East Arnhem languages.

Another sad example is provided by Xeromys myoides, an inhabitant of coastal swamps and mangroves. It is known as the false water rat, a name which could barely be improved upon if the aim is to demean. The animal could well be called yirrkoo, from the Kunwinjku/Mayali language.

And consider the graceful Pseudomys australis, an animal of the outback Channel Country in Queensland and South Australia. The species is of conservation concern, but public attention is hardly likely when the animal is called a plains rat. It deserves better – perhaps the lovely name palyoora, from the Wangkangurru language.

The tide may be turning

Back in the 1990s, our rodent-renaming initiative sank almost without trace. Only one Aboriginal name – rakali, from Murray River languages – took something of a hold, replacing the common name water rat (Hydromys chrysogaster). In the intervening years, two authors of the paper, Dick Braithwaite and John Calaby, have passed away. Time has moved on.

But there have been flickers of encouragement. Western Australia’s 1997 recovery plan for the Shark Bay mouse, Pseudomys fieldi, used the name djoongari (Luritja/Pintubi). When Tim Bonyhady in 2019 published his unusual and matchless book, The Enchantment of the Long-haired Rat: A Rodent History of Australia, he used the name mayaroo throughout (Rattus villosissimus, from Wangkangurru).

And now interest may be resurgent. In the Threatened Species Action Plan 2022–2032, federal environment authorities adopted names of Aboriginal origin wherever possible. This included antina (Zyzomys pedunculatus, central rock-rat, Arrernte), pookila (Pseudomys novaehollandiae, New Holland mouse, Bugila/Ngarigu), and woorrentinta (Notomys aquilo, northern hopping-mouse, from Lardil, the language of Mornington Island).

Related: Here are 7 clever Aussie native rodents

A timely, much-needed change

Zoologists are rightly conservative about scientific naming conventions, in line with commitment to the principles of biological nomenclature. However, we are free to modify common names – and should, if there are good reasons to do so.

And so, 30 years after my colleagues and I first issued the call, Indigenous names for Australian rodents are commended to you once more. It is timely that the extensive Aboriginal knowledge of our continent be so honoured, that the wider culture be enriched – even if in such a tiny way – and that mayaroo and pookila should live in the English language.

The 1995 paper referred to in this article, Australian Names for Australian Rodents, was authored by R.W. Braithwaite, S.R. Morton, A.A. Burbidge and J.H. Calaby. It was published by the Australian Nature Conservation Agency, Canberra. With thanks to Andrew Burbidge, one of the original authors, for giving his blessing to this article.

Steve Morton, Honorary Fellow, Charles Darwin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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This is due to the capabilities of the photoreceptors in their eyes, which are far beyond the range of human eyes.

What animals see has been replicated before, but never in motion. Traditional methods such as spectrophotometry are often extremely time consuming, and require specific lighting.

But researchers have developed a ground-breaking camera and software system that captures animal-view videos of moving objects under natural lighting conditions.

“Our new approach allows researchers and filmmakers to record animal-view videos that capture the interplay of colours over time,” says Dr Vera Vasas, research fellow in Ecology and Evolution at the University of Sussex in England.

“Now we can fully appreciate how much information we missed when we were photographing immobile objects in the lab. This new-found ability to accurately record animal-specific colours in motion is a crucial step towards our understanding of how animals see the world.”

How does it work?

The camera simultaneously records video in four separate colour channels: blue, green, red and UV. Based on existing knowledge of the different photoreceptors in the eyes of different animals, this data can be processed into “perceptual units” to produce an accurate video representation of a particular animal’s unique vision.

“The system works by splitting light between two cameras,” Vera says. “One camera has been modified to be sensitive to UV light, while the other is just a regular stock camera, sensitive to visible light. This separation of UV from visible light is achieved with a piece of optical glass, called a beam splitter. This optical component reflects UV light in a mirror-like fashion, but allows visible light to pass through just the same way as clear glass does. In this way the system can capture light simultaneously from the four distinct wavelength regions. We then use a series of algorithms to standardise our footage and transform it to representations of animal vision.”

The results

Here’s just a sample of the incredible videos already created with this new technology:

Just the beginning

The result is vision that is not only fascinating to look at, but that also has multiple real-world applications.

“We have a number of ideas that we are planning to address with our camera,” says Vera. “You could image the iridescent mating displays of birds, and how they appear to the intended audience of females. The camera can also be used for fast digitisation of museum specimens.

“We are also excited about some welfare aspects,” she adds. “We can evaluate the visibility of UV-absorbing stickers on windows, for example, that are intended to be visible for birds, reducing the number being injured or killed from accidentally striking glass.

“But the most exciting questions will be those we have yet to consider. Only now that we have started taking videos of the natural world, we are beginning to see how much information is out there.”

Related: The science behind ant vision

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The cultural conversation has arrived in Australia where dozens of species are named after people. Some Australian scientists and birdwatchers (including one from the peak ornithological body Birdlife Australia) have proposed a review, particularly of names with colonial associations.

One Australian species has already been renamed. Birdlife Australia now prefers pink cockatoo to Major Mitchell’s cockatoo as the common name.

Thomas Mitchell led a massacre of Aboriginal people in western New South Wales in 1836, condemned for its senselessness even at the time. Birdlife Australia provides a clear argument why the bird should not bear his name. The change has sparked a conversation in online birding communities.

The Albert’s lyrebird, the topic of my PhD research, also bears a name with colonial overtones, though without the direct violent connotations of Mitchell. Should it, and other Australian species named after people, be renamed? I’m not sure, but I do know this reclusive rainforest bird has a fascinating and surprisingly complex etymology.

Why is a lyrebird named after Prince Albert?

When English ornithologist John Gould suggested the lyrebird as Australia’s bird emblem, he was recommending the superb lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae) found throughout south-east Australia. Fewer people know of the Albert’s lyrebird (Menura alberti), restricted to a tiny area on the Queensland-New South Wales border.

Fewer still know the story behind its naming. The Albert’s lyrebird bears the moniker of Prince Albert, both in its scientific (Latin) name and current common (English) name, bestowed by Gould himself.

This species was still unknown to colonial scientists when Gould’s landmark Birds of Australia was first published in 1848. This was in part due to its remote, humid forest habitat.

Under taxonomic convention – the rules for classifying species – the credit for describing the species and assigning its scientific name would normally have gone to Gould when his 1850 supplement introduced the new species. Every listing of a species provides a scientific name, the name of the person who first described it and the date they did so. So we might have expected to see the Albert’s lyrebird listed as Menura alberti, Gould, 1850.

Instead, next to Menura alberti we see a different surname – Bonaparte. Not Napoleon, but his nephew Charles, a naturalist who referred to Gould’s description of the new species. However, Bonaparte’s reference predated Gould’s actual publication, a technicality that means Bonaparte is listed as the scientific describer.

This quirk of taxonomy has tied this bird to two names deeply associated with empires.

How do birds get their names?

Scientific names change only when species are reclassified. The naming is more akin to record keeping – though honouring people can be a secondary purpose. In the lyrebird’s case, Gould cited the prince’s “liberal support” and “personal virtues”.

Birdlife Australia has an English Names Committee, which deals with such changes. Prince Albert is not directly linked to historical violence in Australia, but he was Queen Victoria’s spouse during its colonisation.

If Menura alberti requires the pink cockatoo treatment, some other common names have been used in the past.

“Northern lyrebird” is used in G. Matthews’ Birds of Australia. The volume is of the same name as Gould’s, by a self-funded author, who was controversial for his own taxonomic renaming.

More informally, “small lyrebird” has been used in relation to A.A. Leycester, the naturalist who shot the first specimen in 1844.

These are both obscure, albeit more descriptive, alternatives. “Albert’s” is much more common. Leycester himself added an even more royal connotation with “Prince Albert’s lyrebird”, but sometimes also “Richmond River lyrebird”.

The bird had earlier names

As for the bird being “discovered”, naturally earlier Indigenous names survive.

The bird has recently been described as a bird of the Bunjalung language area. This is true but it is also a Yugambeh and Githabul bird. Its habitat on the Great Dividing Range might include Jagera Country too.

Archibald Meston inexplicably recorded a Kabi Kabi language name from the “head of the Mary River” – no lyrebird is known to occur this far north.

The Yugambeh Museum has provided “kalbun” for national park signage in my home town, Tamborine Mountain. One Bundjalung dictionary provides “galbuny” or “galwuny” with an outlying possibility of “wonglepong”, “kalwun” or “kulwin” in the Tweed as meanings for “lyrebird” (with no clarification between the two species). Indigenous health service Kalwun uses the name in reference to the “rainforest lyrebird” but uses an image of a superb lyrebird as its logo.

The male Albert’s lyrebird (left) lacks the distinctive barring on the lyre-shaped feathers of the male superb lyrebird (right). Image credits: Felix Cehak; KimEdoll/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

The superb lyrebird is also found within Bundjalung Country, such as in Washpool National Park. This variance and confusion between lyrebird species and language groups is before we even consider the Githabul area to the west, a sometimes contested distinction.

The Yugambeh Museum allows for the variance by providing a different language resource for each location. You will find, for example, a different Indigenous name on the national park sign at Tamborine to the one at Lamington.

As many language groups give the bird many names (only some of which are listed here), there isn’t one obvious Indigenous option if the bird were to be renamed. Beyond these names, the cultural significance of the bird, which lives in rarely visited wet and leech-infested places, seems to have been lost.

If a new name is needed, who decides it?

Over many hours of conversation about this species, I have found the link to Prince Albert is always known. I have rarely heard anything more about why the lyrebird bears his name. Besides his irrelevance to Australian ornithology, I cannot gauge a specific reason the Prince Albert moniker is inappropriate, unlike Thomas Mitchell.

If a change is required to a bird’s name, the decision must be made with the relevant communities. If they wish to counter a history of imperial naming by renaming, the new name should not spring from a similar desire for ownership.

It would also be wise to maintain broadness in this conversation. In the Albert’s lyrebird case, that includes the birdwatchers, ecologists and conservationists who have contributed to our understanding of this little-known species.

We are about to see what happens in the United States. It would be wise to watch carefully what happens next.

Felix Cehak is a PhD Candidate at UNSW Sydney.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The latest monitoring of the reintroduced platypuses has now revealed nine out of 10 of the animals have remained inside the Hacking River – with one itinerant female venturing beyond the scientists’ tracking capabilities. But according to Dr Gilad Bino, platypus ecologist from UNSW’s Centre for Ecosystem Science and lead researcher of the platypus translocation program, this isn’t cause for concern, as the same platypus has wandered out of range before, when she explored the small creeks surround Hacking River.

“We are closely monitoring the one platypus which has ventured beyond our monitoring capacity, but she will no doubt reconnect soon,” Gilad said. 

The 10 platypuses – six females and four males – were released into the national park as part of the Platypus Reintroduction Project, to help revive the park’s platypus population. All 10 platypuses were taken from the wild, with most translocated from the Monaro region of the Snowy Mountains, with a pit-stop at Taronga Zoo’s Platypus Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre, where they received health checks and were implanted with acoustic tags for tracking. 

The platypuses’ first three months in the field exceeded the ecologists’ expectations, with all 10 surviving – and thriving – in their new home.

The successful translocation of the platypuses has sparked interest in running similar initiatives across Australia. 

“Recent water quality and macro-invertebrate surveys show the system is in generally good condition, offering suitable resources for the platypuses,” said Dr Tahneal Hawke, from UNSW’S Centre of Ecosystem Science. “As they enter their breeding season, we are optimistic they will breed.”

The Platypus Reintroduction Project is a multi-organisation initiative collaboration between UNSW, WWF-Australia, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, and Taronga Conservation Society.  

RELATED STORY: How to rebuild a platypus population

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So when I set out to find volunteers to collect poo from wild and captive marsupials – specifically eastern grey kangaroos, swamp wallabies, red-necked wallabies, bare-nosed wombats, and ringtail and brushtail possums – over an area from Queensland to Tasmania, it was mainly wildlife carers who answered the call.

RELATED STORY: Why do wombats have cube-shaped poo?

The ‘Marsupial Microbiome Poop Troop’

I enlisted a core group of around 20 people who, every season, dutifully went out in all weathers, armed with their forceps and zip-lock bags, to select fresh pellets from their in-care residents or wild animals that passed through. Then they filled in the paperwork, carefully labelled the bags and stored them in freezers until they could be posted in special temperature-controlled packaging to the university for genetic analysis.

We did this to establish a baseline of what the normal wild gut microbiome looks like in different animals in different areas at different times of the year. This lets us recognise if there is an imbalance in captive animals that can be addressed and prevented by changing diet or introducing supplements.

To aid my communication with these wonderful volunteers, I started a Facebook group page which became known as the ‘Marsupial Microbiome Poop Troop’. And it has some colourful members.

There is Kate, who obtains the freshest wombat poo by stalking wild wombats in her local reserve until they produce the goods. Don’t try this at home. Kate has serious wombat-whisperer skills.

There’s Darryl, who was devastated when the roof blew off his house in a storm and he was without power for two weeks. Not for his wrecked house or loss of possessions, but because his collection of possum poo thawed and he had to throw it away and start again.

Julie wins the prize for most prolific collector. Her poo parcels are the largest by far, and cover quite a few species. The supervisor of the university’s stores, who receives the poo parcels, is not always a fan of Julie’s efforts. He must have highly attuned olfactory senses as he routinely sends me emails announcing the arrival of more “animal excrement” or “malodorous packages” for immediate collection.

RELATED STORY: Pap not poop: The ‘gift’ a mother koala gives her joey

Saving orphaned joeys

While it all sounds like fun and games, the research we do with the collected poo has serious potential to save many marsupial lives. We have a particular focus on young orphaned joeys.

Whether their mothers were hit by cars, attacked by dogs, or died of other causes, the joeys arrive at wildlife shelters stressed, often injured, and generally cold and hungry. Because marsupials are born so undeveloped – and normally spend a long time in their mother’s pouch – they require an extended period in care when orphaned.

The gut microbiome of these “pinky” joeys is equivalent in development to that of premature human babies. It is still being established at this crucial time, via the mother’s milk, environmental conditions in the pouch, cleaning and grooming.

The sudden loss of parental care, coupled with the stress of being in captivity and a complete change of diet, can do a great deal of harm to the gut microbiota. This can leave the joey open to infections, diarrhoea and dehydration, which can be fatal.

If it were possible to fix this imbalance, the success rate of rearing orphaned marsupials would rise. Their improved general health should mean greater numbers of animals successfully reintroduced to the wild.

While the animals involved in this study are considered “common”, the same principles may be applied to endangered species held in captive breeding programmes once it has been shown to work on the more prolific species.

Without the help of the Poop Troop volunteers, it would have been impossible to sample so widely and consistently. The remaining poo will be kept frozen and made available to future researchers, so these wonderful people have, through their dedication and persistence, made a real contribution to marsupial microbiome research that will continue to help wildlife in the future.

Angela Russell, Graduate researcher PhD candidate, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

RELATED STORY: Landlocked: Kangaroos trapped by urban sprawl have nowhere left to go

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Our birds of prey are not immune – faced with habitat loss, tall buildings, and disturbance by artificial lighting and car noise.

But researchers recently discovered that raptors are adapting to urban environments, using some ingenious tactics to survive in our suburbs and cities.

The discovery was made by an international team of scientists – led by the BirdLab research group in the College of Science and Engineering at Adelaide’s Flinders University, and the University of Vienna –  while they were studying the ‘urban tolerance’ of 24 Australian raptor species.

They also found that smaller raptors – such as kites and owls – showed a higher ‘urban tolerance’ than larger raptor species like falcons and eagles.

Co-author of the study Taylor Headland, from BirdLab, says there are three main ways in which the smaller raptors are adapting to city life.

Artificial nests

Smaller raptor species such as the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) and nankeen kestrel (Falco cenchroides) have been observed nesting on artificial structures such as building cavities and ledges.

“These are analogous to cliffs found amongst more natural habitat out of the city,” explains Taylor. “This allows them to exploit the abundance of food sources available to them within cities, particularly pest animals such as mice and feral pigeons.” 

An artificial structure provides this peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) with a good vantage point for spotting prey in Salisbury, South Australia. Image credit: Michael Lee, Flinders University and South Australian Museum

Flexible diets

“Successful urban raptors are those that can adjust their diet to what is most locally abundant,” adds Taylor.

Examples of this were found in Darwin where brahminy kites (Haliastur indus) and brown goshawks (Accipiter fasciatus) have added water dragons to their diets, a reptile abundant within the city.

“These species would usually hunt naturally abundant prey such as fish, birds, or small mammals,” Taylor says.

New techniques

The third adaptation, Taylor says, is using artificial light to hunt prey. “Some species exhibit novel and innovative hunting techniques, such as hunting at night using the artificial light from streetlights or high-rise buildings,” he says.

Owls – such as the southern boobook (Ninox boobook) and barking owl (Ninox connivens) – now forage for insects around streetlights, and peregrine falcons take advantage of prey (other smaller birds) disorientated by the bright lights of buildings. 

Concerns remain

While the ability of these small raptor species to adapt to city landscapes is encouraging, the study’s lead author, University of Vienna raptor conservation researcher Dr Petra Sumasgutner, says that, of the world’s more than 500 raptor species, 52 per cent are in decline and 19 per cent are currently classified as threatened with extinction.

“While some species of raptors are able to take advantage of human-dominated landscapes and urban areas, we are seeing a worrying population decline in many parts of the world,” she says.

Petra says the worldwide population decline of all predators, not just raptors, is concerning, as it is contributing substantially to the global biodiversity crisis.

“As we see extensive cascading effects on ecosystems caused by human-dominated landscapes, we can find examples of predators which stay or return to ecosystems creating a buffer against biological invasion and disease transmission,” she says.

Taylor agrees, adding, “Raptors are vital for ecosystem functioning.

“While we see evidence of small Australian raptors persisting in urban environments, conservation management initiatives focusing on habitat protection and restoration of wilderness areas need also to focus on the needs of larger-bodied raptor species, given the rise in urban expansion and their avoidance of city zones.”

Related: Magpies, curlews, peregrine falcons: how birds adapt to our cities, bringing wonder, joy and conflict

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On the afternoon of 17 August, Elliot trekked the path to Point Lookout. While inspecting some plants on the trail, he heard a rustle in the bushes ahead and peering more closely, saw something of interest. A small mammal had abruptly appeared, dragging the carcass of another mammal, which it then began to devour.

At first glance, this was not so strange. Mammals eat each other all the time. However, it is unusual to see small mammals during the day at such close quarters, so Elliot recorded the scene, taking a video on his mobile phone.

It was only several days later when looking over the footage that our research team realised it featured something rarely seen in the wild, the record of which is now published in the journal Australian Mammalogy.

A native marsupial… cannibal

The furry critter on film was an antechinus, a native marsupial denizen of forested areas in eastern, south-western and northern Australia. Antechinuses usually eat a range of insects and spiders, occasionally taking small vertebrates such as birds, lizards, or even other mammals.

But this camera footage clearly showed a mainland dusky antechinus (Antechinus mimetes mimetes), and it was eating a dead member of its own species!

Antechinuses are perhaps best known for exhibiting semelparity, or “suicidal reproduction”. This is death after reproducing in a single breeding period. The phenomenon is known in a range of plants, invertebrates and vertebrates, but it is rare in mammals.

Each year, all antechinus males drop dead at the end of a one to three week breeding season, poisoned by their own raging hormones.

This is because the stress hormone cortisol rises during the breeding period. At the same time, surging testosterone from the super-sized testes in males causes a failure in the biological mechanism that mops up the cortisol. The flood of unbound cortisol results in systemic organ failure and the inevitable, gruesome death of every male.

RELATED ARTICLE: Wild sex leads to ‘reproductive suicide’

Mercifully, death occurs only after the males have unloaded their precious cargo of sperm, mating with as many promiscuous females as possible in marathon, energy-sapping sessions lasting up to 14 hours. The pregnant females are then responsible for ensuring the survival of the species.

So, exactly what was happening that day at Point Lookout – why had an antechinus turned cannibal?

Cheap calories

August is the breeding period for mainland dusky antechinuses at that location. Intense mating burns calories, and at the end of winter it is cold and there isn’t as much invertebrate food about.

If there are male antechinuses dropping dead from sex-fuelled exhaustion, our thinking is that still-living male and female antechinuses are taking advantage of the cheap energy boost via a hearty feast of a fallen comrade.

After all, animal flesh provides plenty of energetic bang for the buck, particularly if its owner does not have to be pursued or overpowered before being devoured.

In many areas of Australia, two antechinus species (of the known fifteen) occur together, and usually their breeding periods are separated by only a few weeks. One can imagine a scenario where individuals may not only feed on the carcasses of their own species but consume the other species as well.

RELATED ARTICLE: Population of rare marsupial discovered after fire devastation

Each species may benefit from eating the dead males of the other. For the earlier-breeding species, females may be pregnant or lactating, which is a huge energy drain.

For the later-breeding species, both sexes need to pack on weight and body condition before their own breeding period commences.

Plausibly then, antechinus engage in orgiastic breeding and, when opportune, cannibalistic feeding.

So, the next time you are out and about in the bush, keep your eyes and ears peeled – you never know what secrets nature might reveal to you just around the next corner.

The author would like to acknowledge the co-authors of the paper, Elliot Bowerman from Sunshine Coast Council, and Ian Gynther from the Queensland Department of Environment, Science and Innovation.

Andrew M. Baker, Associate Professor in Ecology and Environmental Science, Queensland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post These fierce, tiny marsupials drop dead after lengthy sex fests – and sometimes become cannibals appeared first on Australian Geographic.

After a tiring day in the field, he parked his LandCruiser near a crossroads to sleep. At about 2am, with rain thrumming on the thickly forested landscape, something woke him, and he pointed his torch out into the night.

“When I opened the window, the rain just poured in, and I shone the spotlight around at the end of the [torch] beam. Sure enough, it was a thylacine, right in front of the car, ” Hans told The Mercury newspaper, many years later.

Hans’s camera was out of reach, so he instead focused his efforts – and channelled his many years of experience observing wildlife in Africa and Australia – on mentally documenting the encounter, which lasted for about three minutes. He described a full-grown male, 6–7m from the vehicle, which for a period even held his gaze before it slipped off into the inky blackness.

“He was sopping wet…I estimated his weight, counted his stripes on his back, and I could see it was a very healthy male,” Hans recounted to the newspaper.

Given his extensive wildlife experience and expertise as a ranger, his sighting is regarded as one of the most credible of the past 40 years, with the then director of the PWS, Peter Murrell, describing it as “irrefutable and conclusive”.

It would lead to a year-long, but ultimately fruitless, search by PWS rangers in the region for any further hints of the presence of the marsupial carnivore.

“This was someone who knew Tasmanian wildlife and was unlikely to have made an error,” says Barry Brook, professor of environmental sustainability at the University of Tasmania (UTAS) in Hobart. “So no-one ever really knew what to make of that sighting.”

While Hans’s account seemed highly credible, the popular consensus on the topic of the Tasmanian tiger has been that it went extinct in the wild at some point in the decades following the demise of the last captive individual at Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart on 7 September 1936.

That date is when we observe Threatened Species Day in Australia, and the thylacine was officially declared extinct by the IUCN 50 years later, in 1986.

The thylacine’s story didn’t, however, end in 1936. Although reports of it in the wild had dwindled since the early 1920s, other credible sightings continued to be reported by fur trappers, bushmen, scientists and other reliable experts well into the 1960s.

There has been no hard evidence to corroborate all these sightings. But a new, incredibly thorough, statistical analysis of more than 1200 reported sightings and other data has, for the first time, mapped the decline and extinction of the species, concluding that the thylacine likely did survive in tiny numbers in wilderness areas until the 1980s.

The study, led by Barry and his team at UTAS – and including co-authors from the UK, USA and France – was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment in March 2023. The rigour of the work has been widely lauded by conservation scientists.

This remarkable proposal not only gives credence to Hans’s 1982 account, but also leads to an inescapable truth, that, albeit at very low numbers, the thylacine may have continued to pace a few cool, damp patches of the wilderness during the lifetimes of many people who are alive today.

“That [1982] sighting sparked a massive search. Everyone who heard it was convinced it was true, so the results of this new study seem perfectly plausible to me,” says Jack Ashby, who conducts research on Australian mammals and is the assistant director of the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology in the UK.

Jack, who was not one of the study authors, says that, until recently, remote areas of lutruwitra/Tasmania’s wilderness were largely unstudied, so could have harboured unrecorded species.

He adds, “On a personal level, the idea that I was alive, and could have been in Tasmania while the last thylacines were still alive, kind of furthers the blow of their extinction.”

A compelling case

To make the finding, Barry, UTAS research fellow Jessie Buettel and their co-authors spent five years compiling an exhaustive database of recorded thylacine sightings since 1910, when it was already becoming very rare.

Following the period from 1888 to 1909, when government bounties were offered for dead thylacines, the authors found the species’ distribution shrank very rapidly, with the final surviving subpopulation likely to have been in the island’s South West region.

The thylacine was never present at high densities on the island, and had an estimated population of just 2000–4000 animals before European colonisation.

Between the 1830s and 1920s at least 3500 were killed by hunters, illustrating the devastating impact that human persecution had.This database includes 1237 observational records and 99 physical records, such as carcasses and skins (all of which were collected before 1936).

Barry says the number of reported sightings is vast. Many of these are likely to be misidentifications or are otherwise false. “[But] with more than half of them, you can’t just wave your hand and say ‘this is nonsense’,” he says. “You have to give them some level of credibility.”

To treat the question in a rigorous and scientific manner, the team invented a new method to deal with uncertain sightings, ranking them according to their plausibility.

“A lot of science is about measuring uncertainties, trying to narrow those uncertainties,” Barry says. “It’s a matter of looking at that whole record and saying, ‘Well, some things have high probability of being the correct observation, and some things very low probabilities.’”

The relative likelihood of sightings being accurate was ranked based on factors such as the expertise and past knowledge of the observer, and the credibility of their reports; 429 of the sightings were expert sightings, with 709 other sightings assigned less weight in the analysis.

“As you move further and further away in time from people who had actually killed those things, or captured them and sold them to zoos, or sold skins during the bounty period, you’re getting more disconnected from evidence of direct contact with the species,” Barry adds.

His team used a statistical method called “uncertainty modelling” to attempt to map out the decline and eventual extinction following 1910. This initially suggested that the species met its demise in the decades after the final individual was caught, so somewhere between the 1940s and the 1970s.

But further analysis hinted at an extinction as recent as the 1980s to early 2000s, with a small possibility that the species remains in the remote South West wilderness today.

“If I had to guess, I would say the extinction was in the late 1980s,” Barry says. “But there are plausible sightings in the ’90s and some in the 2000s. So it’s hard to know for sure, but scientifically, based on the analysis, I would say the sweet spot for those probabilities is the late 1980s.”

As the authors have noted, the modelling points to the species having persisted in “the remote wilderness of the South West and central highlands regions of the island for decades after the last confirmed specimen”.

The research is also significant because it establishes a method for estimating when other rare species have gone extinct in the wild, and for predicting the future decline of animals that are in dire straits.

“[There’s] great value in the development of this model that can now be applied to other species,” Jack says. As well as the research providing “the best answer so far of when the thylacine went extinct”, it has led to the compilation of the database of sightings and other evidence, which is free to access.

Gone, but not forgotten

In addition to the 1982 sightings by Hans Naarding, the 429 sightings that the study authors regarded as highly credible also include other fascinating anecdotes.

The last confirmed direct evidence of thylacines in the wild was one captured in 1931, but from 1936 there are reports of a corpse on the beach at Wynyard in Tasmania’s north- west.

While no photographs are known to exist, Barry says that perhaps 100 people saw the body, so it’s likely to be a true account. In 1936 thylacine footprints were recorded on an expedition to the Jane River in western Tasmania.

“There continued to be credible reports, especially from fur trappers, of people coming across them through the 1940s and ’50s,” Barry says. “One of the most interesting was Herb Pearce, who had captured specimens in the 1920s and ’30s.”

In the 1950s Pearce had told a researcher who was interviewing him that he had flushed a female and cubs out from a patch of tree ferns “about five years ago”, in an area today flooded by Lake King William. He added – heartbreakingly – that “he turned his dogs on them”.

All of these reports are pretty good evidence that the thylacine persisted in small numbers throughout this period, with “the last famous one, really, of this genre”, being the 1982 sighting.

Given that the new study has changed the calculus over the estimations of until when the thylacine persisted, could it yet remain in isolated pockets of South West Tasmania today?

The team’s statistical analysis suggested a 5 per cent probability, but unfortunately scientists have a very good reason for suspecting it really has disappeared.

“That 5 per cent – that’s not nothing, is it,” says Jack. “But the reason I don’t think they are still around – and I’m sure Barry would say the same thing – is that now there are so many camera traps in Tasmania, many of which Barry put there himself.

Literally every spot in Tasmania will have been surveyed at some point. And the odds of one not turning up on a wildlife camera, or a dashcam or a smartphone, I think is pretty convincing evidence that they’re no longer around.”

Barry concurs that his team has conducted a huge amount of camera trapping as technology has improved – more than half a million “camera trap nights” across the state – “and we never saw anything like the thylacine over four years of surveying.

So again, that’s hard scientific evidence that we’ve got every other animal you can imagine that’s been recorded in Tasmania, except those things.”

But that “doesn’t stop you from imagining or dreaming about them”, adds Jack wistfully. “Anytime I’m in Tasmania, I still turn my head whenever I drive past a firebreak. It’s extraordinarily unlikely that they’re still around. But there’s nothing you can do to stop yourself looking for them.”

Back to the future

Rather than pin any hopes on finding a live thylacine, Barry’s team is now expanding the database to include all thylacine records right back to European colonisation.

They will use this to map out habitat suitability across Tasmania, which could be useful if the thylacine is ever successfully ‘de- extincted’ through future genetic technologies, and added back to a rewilded landscape.

“Even if it is extinct, and we can never bring it back, which is likely, it was still an important element of the vertebrate community that was removed,” Barry says. “And understanding the consequences of that is really important, including how resilient or otherwise Tasmanian communities might be to invasive species, such as foxes or cats, today.”

As the new study notes poignantly in its conclusion, the fate of the final remaining wild individuals of a species that is about to vanish is very rarely witnessed by people.

“This is especially true for species like the thylacine, which ranged widely but sparsely across large swathes of the Tasmanian wilderness,” the authors write.

“The last survivors were probably increasingly difficult to detect as they became ever more wary of potentially fatal interactions with people.”

The post Is the truth still out there? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Fast forward 100 years and the number of these stunning parrots has dwindled close to extinction, as have numbers of many of the peninsula’s other grassland bird species, which travelled together in great flocks, filling the sky.

Although much of the region might look ‘undeveloped’, pastoralism has significantly changed the ecosystem and caused the unravelling of this once vast bird community. Along with the parrot, that community included the buff-breasted button-quail, which was last sighted in the year William penned his field notes about the grassy plains.

The golden-shouldered parrot, also known as the antbed parrot, nests in burrows inside termite mounds. Flitting to and from its nest, the bright plumage of the golden-shouldered parrot is a flash of colour against the muted tones of the termite mounds and grassy plains.

Its unusual nesting location provides a stable temperature and humidity for developing eggs and chicks –and offers protection from fires. The dwelling also comes with domestic help from the antbed parrot moth, which eats the nestlings’ droppings, keeping the nest clean. This unusual moth is entirely dependent on the parrots’ nests; its fate hangs on the fortunes of the bird.

We will never know exactly how many parrots have been lost, but at the time of European colonisation, there were many thousands of golden-shouldered parrots across Cape York. The parrots were once part of mixed-species foraging flocks, now greatly diminished, and shared a symbiotic relationship with a mix of other grain-eating birds such as finches.

Moving over the ground, the grain-eaters flushed out insects, which black-faced woodswallows swooped down to collect. From their high vantage points, the woodswallows raised the alarm when they spotted predators, such as pied butcherbirds, prompting the flock to take wing. 

Today, there are as few as 700–1100 golden-shouldered parrots across the species’ entire range. During the past 70 years the northern boundary of the species has contracted south by 120km. Artemis station, a 1250sq.km beef cattle property halfway up Cape York Peninsula, on Kuku-Thaypan and Olkola Country, sits on the northern boundary. Even here the population declined to an estimated 300 by the 1990s and is now as low as 50–70. Artemis, named after the ancient Greek goddess of nature, is owned by pastoralists Sue and Tom Shephard. They are collaborating with not-for-profit group Conservation Partners in a dedicated project to halt the parrot’s decline. 

How did the circumstances for the golden-shouldered parrot become so dire? At the core is a story about how modern land use has transformed ecosystems.

The key habitat of the parrot and its companions was open grasslands and woodlands, which provided clear visibility of approaching predators. The birds typically occurred in run-on areas that were seasonally swampy; around the perimeters stood conical, spire-like termite mounds. Trees were kept in check by the thick grass layer and traditional burning. But today, both the grasslands and termite mounds described by William in 1922 are gone, replaced by trees (mostly broad-leaved paperbark).

When First Nations people were pushed off Country, their traditional burning stopped and cattle ate the grasses. There was nothing to prevent the trees from taking over. Although the trees are small, spindly things, they’ve emerged en masse and are efficient water pumps, drying out the flats and robbing the soil of moisture, further damaging the already stressed and dwindling layer of grasses.

“Right through Cape York Peninsula we have lost this unique ecosystem. And right through Cape York it is the same story – pastoralism reduces grasses and increases trees,” says Dr Steve Murphy, ecologist, CEO and co-founder of Conservation Partners. “The death knell is the increase in predators that comes with the trees. Without clear lines of sight, the original predators, such as pied butcherbirds and goannas, get much closer. The trees also bring new native predators, such as tree snakes and black-backed butcherbirds.”

Saving the species at Artemis could not happen without the Shephards, who have run the station since 1976. They’ve always had an interest in the parrot. “It’s such a pretty, special little parrot, and we knew it was going backwards,” Sue Shephard says.

In the 1990s she began collaborating with Professor Stephen Garnett, from Charles Darwin University, and Dr Gay Crowley, from James Cook University, on work that would prove pivotal to their current efforts – including the first detailed surveys of the vegetation and mounds at the station.

Resurveying those sites in 2019, Steve discovered paperbarks had significantly increased – and conical mounds decreased – in the intervening decades, coinciding with the parrot’s shrinking population. “We suspect that the mounds decline because of increased shade and/or something related to groundwater changes caused by the trees. But surprisingly little is known about the ecology of Australia’s termites,” Steve says.

With help from Conservation Partners, Sue and Tom Shephard are working hard to restore habitat around the remaining termite mounds. “Just reinstating traditional fire patterns isn’t enough to remove the trees once they’re established, because they just keep resprouting high up,” Steve says.“We had to physically remove trees, and that required permission under the Queensland Vegetation Management Act, which is designed to stop rampant clearing of native vegetation.

“What enabled us to get the approvals, and also gave us confidence that clearing the trees was the right thing to do, was being able to provide that survey evidence of exactly how the landscape had changed. So far, we’ve treated 60ha of habitat, spread over a large number of parrot-breeding territories. And when the trees are finally out, we can use fire, which replicates traditional burning, to maintain the landscape. It’s really important to prevent overgrazing in the recovering grasslands, especially after fire, or we will re-create the original problem,” he says.

From an ecological point of view, completely removing cattle from the station is ideal – so far, the Shephards have permanently destocked cattle from 2200ha. 

“The only thing better than saving the parrot is saving the parrot and having a viable cattle business, so we are working with the Shephards to test when, and how much, grazing can be allowed into the treated areas,” says Steve.

“The important thing is doing continuous monitoring of the parrots and their habitat, so we can see when we are on the right track – or when we need to make adjustments.”

In the treated areas, parrot food has increased and new termite mounds are growing. There’s also been a reduction in butcherbird activity – but predators such as goannas and feral cats are still taking too big a toll. “Last year we were monitoring 10 nests and were devastated when each one failed because of predators,” Steve says. “When you only have 50 parrots, every chick is really important. So we searched out six more nests and trialled small electric fences around their bases to keep out the predators. It was hugely successful, because all of those nests survived.

“That single action has given us so much more confidence in our ability to achieve a population increase,” he adds. “This is a numbers game, and before that we just seemed to be going backwards. But now, knowing we can get these babies successfully out of the nest has been such a morale booster for our team.” 

They are now fundraising to protect 20 nests in the May–July breeding season. Because there are about five eggs per nest, that could result in an extra 100 parrots in the population in just one year – more than doubling the population at Artemis.

“Long term, we can’t go around protecting every nest. But while their numbers are so critically low, it’s worth it,” says Steve.

Our national conservation strategies must consider privately managed land, according to Biodiversity Council member Professor Martine Maron, from The University of Queensland’s School of the Environment. “To have any chance of halting biodiversity declines, we have to think about biodiversity across all land tenures,” Martine says. “Conservation can’t just be a Noah’s Ark approach, ensuring every species occurs in at least one national park somewhere. We need healthy, functioning biodiversity right across our landscapes, to provide all the ecosystem services that we benefit from.”

Like most farmers, Sue and Tom care deeply about the ecology of their property. But after a long day of mustering, it’s difficult to have the bandwidth to think about vegetation monitoring and management, or how to increase parrot recruitment rates. Sue likes the collaborative approach with Conservation Partners “because they come along and help organise everything needed for us to look after the parrots”. 

Steve agrees. “Our model is about bringing real capacity to support private land managers in their conservation of threatened species, and other important natural values on their property. 

“We bring scientific expertise,” he says, “a trained conservation workforce, and we help fundraise for the activities, but we make all the decisions together. And I think this model is the only way we’re going to get real traction on private land conservation in Australia, especially on these big holdings.”

While challenges persist, the recent successes at Artemis offer hope. Combining conservation action with ongoing monitoring and fundraising will be essential for the parrot’s long-term survival. Looking ahead, collaboration with First Nations people, national parks, and other farmers offers new possibilities for widespread conservation efforts to re-establish these magical little birds throughout their former range.

Jaana Dielenberg is communication manager of the Biodiversity Council.

Help protect golden-shouldered parrot chicks

The Australian Geographic Society is supporting a project, being run by not-for-profit group Conservation Partners at Artemis station on the Cape York Peninsula, to protect 20 nests from predators during the May–July breeding season.

Your donations will be used to buy, install and maintain mini-electric fences around the bases of termite mounds where the parrots nest.

Please make a tax deductible donation today.

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Scientists previously believed baleen whales (Mysticeti), such as the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), evolved to an enormous size about 3 million years ago at the beginning of the Ice Age in the Northern Hemisphere.

The new findings from the Museums Victoria Research Institute reveal that this evolutionary leap in size happened as early as 20 million years ago – and in the Southern Hemisphere.

Palaeontologists Dr James Rule of Monash University and Natural History Museum London and Dr Erich Fitzgerald of Museums Victoria Research Institute co-authored the paper ‘Giant baleen whales emerged from a cold southern cradle’, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The fossil – the front end of the lower jaw of an unusually large and ancient whale aged between 21 and 16 million years old – went unrecognised in the museum’s collection until about a decade ago when Dr Fitzgerald realised its significance as the largest baleen whale known to be alive during the Early Miocene period (between 23.3 and 16.3 million years ago).

Related: 22 years and counting – the two whale sharks calling Ningaloo home

According to Dr Fitzgerald, the new findings underscore the importance of Southern Hemisphere fossil records for understanding whale evolution, with previous ruling hypotheses being based on fossils primarily found in the Northern Hemisphere.

“A lot of what we know about the evolution of animals is based on fossils from the Northern Hemisphere, and what we are finding is that if you include just one fossil from the Southern Hemisphere, it completely ruins some of the long-held theories and stories,” he said.

“The Southern Hemisphere, and Australia in particular, have always been over-looked frontiers for fossil whale discovery. Fossil whale finds in the South, like the Murray River whale, are shaking up the evolution of whales into a more accurate, truly global picture of what was going on in the oceans long ago.

“This fossil from Australia, as well as some fossils from Peru and other parts of South America, show us that whenever you get a large whale on the fossil record, it was always in the Southern Hemisphere, and it wasn’t until later in the evolution that whales became big in the Northern Hemisphere.”

Through their research, Dr Rule and Dr Fitzgerald discovered that the tip of the baleen whale’s jaw is scalable with its body size, which is how they estimated the length of their fossil baleen whale to be about nine metres.

“The largest whales alive today, such as the blue whale, reach the length of a basketball court,” Dr Rule said. “Around 19 million years ago, the Murray River whale, at nine metres long, was already a third of this length. So, baleen whales were well on their way to evolving into ocean giants.”

Dr Rule said the next step is understanding why baleen whales evolved to their colossal size in the Southern Hemisphere.

“Our results don’t directly reveal the answers to that, but we can make some educated speculations,” he said. “We know that the Southern Ocean is the most productive part of the world’s oceans and is therefore home to the greatest biomass of what we call ‘marine megafauna’.”

According to Dr Rule, this productivity is driven by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which creates a supercooled and salty environment, allowing an upwelling of nutrients and, therefore, the emergence of potential prey such as krill.

“Whales have perhaps evolved to be huge to enable them to get to those hugely productive patches of plankton and then evolve larger and larger in size to consume vast quantities of krill and other zooplankton efficiently,” he explained.

Related: 10 of the best Australian wildlife experiences

The post Australian fossil findings result in deep dive of whale evolution appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Following the fires, the sub-species did persist in fire scars within the Flinders Chase National Park and in the large unburnt North West Conservation Alliance, according to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC). However, the group says that with so much competition in the western woodlands’ minimal remaining habitat, and despite supplementary feeding from local ecologists, the birds slowly moved away from the western side of KI and eventually disappeared. The last time any individuals were seen in this habitat was just a few months after the fires. Their national conservation status was uplisted to endangered shortly after.

The core range of the KI western whipbird (Psophodes nigrogularis lashmari) has now been incorporated into the Western River Refuge – a 369ha feral predator-free refuge established in response to the devastating fires by the AWC, Terrain Ecology, and Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife with support from local landholders Jamie Lib and Andy Doube.

Related: Kangaroo Island wildlife bouncing back two years after bushfires

Camera trap breakthrough

A team led by Pat Hodgens, Terrain Ecology’s principal ecologist, deployed 28 camera traps to monitor the status of threatened and endangered animals in the area, specifically to monitor the KI dunnart (Sminthopsis aitkeni) and southern brown bandicoot (Isoodon obesulus).

It was one of these camera traps that captured footage of the elusive whipbird.

 “We were flicking through a few thousand camera trap images, and by chance, there was a pair of whipbirds in two of the images,” Pat said. “It was like finding a needle in a haystack – a chance encounter.”

Recovery of vegetation in the area now means there is enough habitat for the whipbird to thrive, Pat explained, and the added safety of the refuge fencing means the species, which forages among leaves on the ground, is protected from predation by feral cats.

Refuge protection

“This pair is currently living in Western River Refuge, the only cat-free area on Kangaroo Island,” Pat said. “We’re hoping they will stay and breed up within the safety of the haven.

“It has been a waiting game to see how long it will take for the species to recolonise the fire zone at this site, and although it has taken a little longer than expected, it looks like they are slowly making their way back.”

Related: ‘We’ll come back from this’: spirit of Kangaroo Island residents unbroken

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When British Antarctic survey scientist Peter Fretwell spoke at the SCAR biology symposium in Christchurch, New Zealand, in July–August 2023, his words drew gasps of despair that later rippled around the world. SCAR – the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research – represents scientists working on research involving Earth’s great frozen southern continent. The Christchurch gathering was their first face-to-face conference since the COVID pandemic began. Peter, a cartographer renowned for monitoring wildlife at the planet’s remote poles by using high-resolution satellite imagery, was there to present some alarming news – evidence of catastrophic breeding failure in emperor penguins on the Antarctic Peninsula due to record low levels of sea ice.

Sea ice is frozen sea water, and it forms, metres deep, around Antarctica each winter. It floats on top of the ocean, clinging to the continent’s edge while stretching across the water for many kilometres. It retreats in summer, although never completely, and its seasonal fluctuations influence the global climate. It also profoundly and directly affects the Antarctic environment, where it influences ocean circulation, weather and the local climate. The rhythmic coming and going of sea ice is critical to all Antarctic life, from crabeater, Weddell and leopard seals, to humpback whales, Adélie and chinstrap penguins, and Antarctic skuas. But it’s particularly important to emperor penguins because it’s the place where most of them breed.

In the depths of winter, when the sea ice is at its greatest, these penguins congregate in their hundreds or thousands in noisy colonies, buffeted by the coldest and strongest winds on the planet. Here they find partners, court, mate, and produce no more than one chick per pair each year. The fluffy down of the chicks isn’t waterproof, but the sleek plumage of adult penguins is, allowing them to ‘fly’ at extraordinary speeds with great agility through freezing waters, hunting prey such as fish and the tiny prawn-like crustaceans called krill. About 60 emperor colonies form on Antarctic sea ice every year.

The extreme remoteness and conditions mean satellite imagery is often the only way of locating these colonies and estimating emperor numbers. “Peter got up [at the SCAR meeting] and put up these satellite images [from the 2022 winter] and said, ‘Well, this colony went, and this colony, and this one’,” recalls Professor Dana Bergstrom, the former lead of Biodiversity Conservation with the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), who was in attendance to deliver a keynote address. “The whole room was stricken, and our hearts just sank collectively.”

Everyone knew what the distant imagery would have meant for penguin life at sea level. And that, says Dr Barbara Wienecke, a seabird ecologist with AAD and one of the world’s leading emperor penguin experts, would have been fluffy chicks tumbling en masse into the water. “They wouldn’t have had any chance of surviving,” she says. “Their breeding platform didn’t exist anymore. This event happened when the chicks were not yet waterproof, so when they fell into the water, they might have been able to swim but their plumage would have got waterlogged and they all would have died – thousands of them – of hypothermia.”

Related: An ocean like no other: the Southern Ocean’s ecological richness and significance for global climate

The grim observations made by Peter and his team were published weeks later in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment, bringing them to the world’s attention. The despair they generated at the Christchurch conference spread across the planet – notably in the Northern Hemisphere, which only has the Galápagos penguin, just north of the Equator – indicating the global appeal of these seabirds.

“Our addiction to fossil fuels is killing baby penguins,” lamented The Japan Times.
“Shocking! Low ice levels leads to the death of thousands of emperor penguin chicks,” cried The Times of India.
“Record sea-ice melt in Antarctica doomed thousands of penguin chicks to a watery grave,” wailed the Los Angeles Times.

There have been isolated reports of emperor penguin colonies collapsing during the past decade: the notoriously dynamic and ever-changing Antarctic environment is, after all, one of the toughest places in which to survive on the planet. So this hardy seabird species has probably been dealing with colony losses for millennia. But the total collapse of so many colonies at one time that was documented by Peter seems unprecedented. It was the most confronting of many accounts of recent change in Antarctica presented at the 2023 SCAR conference, and it prompted the drafting of the “Christchurch Communique”. That document, signed by hundreds of scientists from 20 different countries, called for urgent and immediate action to stem what’s occurring at Earth’s remote, most southerly region.

“Antarctica,” it begins, “is currently experiencing dramatic changes at unprecedented rates, marked by repeated extreme events. These include circum-Antarctic heatwaves and an autumn heatwave last year [2022], with temperatures soaring up to 40ºC above the average…both last summer and this winter, sea-ice extent has reached record lows. These changes have happened even faster than scientists predicted.

“This,” the SCAR scientists warned the world as they delivered the communique, “is a critical moment, impacting our wellbeing, future generations and ecosystems globally. Confronted by this evidence, we urgently call on nations to intensify and exceed their current commitments to greenhouse gas emissions reductions.”

Ringing alarm bells

It’s not as if the current situation in Antarctica hasn’t been predicted. The continent has been like the proverbial canary in the coalmine for more than the past decade, making alarm chirps that have seen the world’s climate scientists becoming increasingly concerned.

When it comes to metaphors though, it now seems the canary is close to falling off its perch. Dana is a member of a growing group that now likens Antarctica to a charging grey rhino. It’s been poked and prodded so much that it’s not just showing warning signs, but has turned around to rage right back at the rest of the planet.

Antarctica might be many thousands of kilometres from most countries, but it affects us all like none of the other six continents do. What happens in Antarctica doesn’t stay in Antarctica.

Related: The ‘moss forests’ of Antarctica are dying

Most significantly, the continent is a key driver of the planet’s climate. A warming of waters around the continent in the Southern Ocean, for example, will slow ocean circulation globally and can drive extreme weather events, not only in its neighbouring continent of Australia, but also at the planet’s other end. Likewise, melting Antarctic ice will raise sea levels globally. And we’re not talking now about sea ice, but the massive Antarctic ice sheet that covers the continent.

At 14 million square kilometres in area and holding some 30 million cubic kilometres of fresh water – 30 per cent of the planet’s fresh water – it’s easy to comprehend how the melting of this massive ice block, Earth’s largest, would raise sea levels globally. And that’s exactly what appears to be happening.

The dynamics of this huge chunk of ice are complex. It grows with each winter snowfall and diminishes with summer melts. But surveys have now confirmed that the amount of bulk it’s losing outweighs the snowfall that replenishes it. Put simply, the Antarctic ice sheet is becoming thinner, and has been for several decades. The upshot of that, of course, is rising sea levels – globally.

Melting ice issues

Undoubtably caused by the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet is another worrying phenomenon that’s recently been documented by a team led by Dr Kathy Gunn, an oceanographer and climate scientist with CSIRO. In a landmark paper published in May 2023, in Nature Climate Change, Kathy and her team reported that the circulation of what’s known as Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) has slowed down significantly, “by as much as 30 per cent since the 1990s,” Kathy says. “This slowdown locks in decades of impacts.”

What’s the significance of this? AABW is rich in oxygen and very salty, which makes it dense and heavy. There’s a massive amount of it – about 250 trillion tonnes – and it sinks through the ocean near Antarctica each year. This sinking process ultimately drives ocean currents worldwide. In this way, AABW acts like a lung, breathing oxygen and nutrients deep into all the oceans – the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic – because, of course, all the world’s oceans are connected.

What’s thought to be happening is that the meltwater coming off the Antarctic ice sheet, which is fresh water, is effectively diluting, deoxygenating and lightening AABW so it’s sinking more slowly. This slowdown of AABW circulation will starve the deep ocean everywhere of oxygen and nutrients. No-one is sure what the flow-on effects will be in the upper ocean and on land. But, bearing in mind that it’s such a fundamental physical process of the planet, the consequences are likely to be huge. This AABW circulation slowdown had been predicted by scientists. But what we’re seeing now wasn’t expected to happen for decades, until 2050.

Problems with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) are also potent signs that things are not as they should be on the southern continent. This is the fastest-moving current in the world and it wraps around Antarctica like a strong, broad pressure bandage, extending from the surface of the ocean to the bottom. It’s created by strong westerly winds across the Southern Ocean, combined with the impact created by the difference in water surface temperature between the Equator and the South Pole.

The ACC keeps Antarctica frozen by locking in the icy water that circulates around the continent and keeping out warm water. But the mechanism is leaking. At the time of going to press, CSIRO’s massive oceangoing deep-sea research vessel RV Investigator (see Delivered from the deep, AG 175) was heading south with a team of oceanographers and climate scientists to try to understand what exactly is going on with the ACC, and why it’s happening.

The return of the ozone hole

The environmental assault on Antarctica, which the continent is now redirecting back at the rest of the planet, isn’t only coming from the waters that surround it, but also from overhead. High up in the sky, the hole in the ozone layer has returned.

When this potentially catastrophic ‘tear’ in the planet’s stratosphere, more than 10km above Antarctica, was discovered by scientists in 1985, it quickly set global alarm bells ringing.

Ozone is a gas that forms a kind of atmospheric ‘blanket’ around Earth to keep out much of the sun’s UV radiation. Without it, life as we know it would never have evolved on this planet. The hole over Antarctica quickly became recognised as the most extreme sign of a phenomenon scientists began finding evidence for, worldwide, during the 1980s: stratospheric ozone was being destroyed across the planet by human-produced gaseous chemicals, notably chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were used as propellants in aerosols and as highly effective refrigerants in refrigerators and air conditioners. It was feared the destruction of Earth’s ozone layer would mean we’d be bombarded during the 21st century by such high levels of cancer-causing UV radiation that life outdoors would be almost impossible for our species – and, of course, for most other species on the planet.

But just as it seemed that humans had done irreversible damage to the planet’s atmosphere, there were signs the hole was slowly healing, due to the gradual phasing out of CFCs after the introduction of the international treaty known as the Montreal Protocol. Early this decade, scientists finally confirmed that long-term recovery of the hole was underway. It was hailed as one of humanity’s greatest environmental success stories, and showed what could be done with a unified global geopolitical effort.

Now, however, new research led by an atmospheric scientist at New Zealand’s University of Otago, Hannah Kessenich, reports that the ozone hole is again increasing in size and it’s unlikely to be because of CFC use. “The past three years (2020–2022) have witnessed the re-emergence of large, long-lived ozone holes over Antarctica,” Hannah’s team reported in November 2023 in the journal Nature Communications. “The recent deep and long-lived ozone holes have already resulted in extreme UV levels over Antarctica,” the paper explained. “Beyond local UV effects, Antarctic ozone is intrinsically linked to the climate and dynamics of the Southern Hemisphere; changes in stratospheric ozone levels drive circulation changes across the entire hemisphere…”

An issue of geopolitics

All these problems besetting the Antarctic continent could be slowed down – even eventually halted – with a global reduction in carbon emissions. Prevent what’s causing climate change and you’ll slow the charge of Antarctica’s proverbial rhino, although much change is already locked in.

But that’s a geopolitical decision that’s beyond the scope of the public servants and scientists who both manage, and try to protect, Antarctic ecosystems. In the meantime, there are things that can be, and are being, done on the ground in Antarctica.

Despite all these large, threatening processes, much of Antarctica remains free from human impact. “Most of the continent is untouched, primarily due to its remoteness and because it’s covered in ice,” says Queensland University of Technology’s Dr Justine Shaw, a conservation scientist and Antarctic ecologist, who’s worked extensively during the past two decades with the Antarctic science programs of both South Africa and Australia. “Most of the continent is still wilderness and the world needs to understand that’s what we’re impacting in Antarctica – a wilderness. There’s no mining, no agriculture, no cities, and yet it’s still vulnerable – on a massive scale – to all these global threats. That vulnerability is a really powerful story for the world to hear.”

Like many scientists working in the Antarctic, Justine thinks protected areas are one of the most important local management tools presently available for the conservation of the continent’s wildlife. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are particularly valuable, because most Antarctic wildlife are connected to the sea for most, if not all, of their lives.

Major decisions about managing Antarctica tend to be protracted, multilateral processes. That’s because they need to proceed within the terms of the Antarctic Treaty, which was enacted near the end of the Cold War and set the continent aside for peace and science.

The treaty came into effect in 1961, after being signed in 1959 by the 12 countries whose scientists had, at that time, been active in and around Antarctica. This included Australia and six other countries that have territorial claims. Since then, 44 other countries have agreed to the treaty, but only 29, including Australia, are Consultative Parties that can make decisions about the continent – including what areas deserve special protection.

Declaring an MPA in Antarctica is always potentially controversial, mostly because of lucrative fishing interests and because consensus among all parties is required. Antarctica’s first was the South Orkney Islands Southern Shelf MPA, established in 2009, followed by the massive Ross Sea region MPA in 2016, which took 10 years of negotiations to get over the line. Three proposals currently under consideration would protect areas of the East Antarctic, Weddell Sea and Antarctic Peninsula.

“Through these large areas we’re protecting entire ecosystems, and all the processes and species that occur within them,” Justine says. “And there are spill-over benefits to the waters surrounding and beyond protected area boundaries.”

Related: The bizarre marine creatures of Antarctica

All of Antarctica is protected under the treaty, but, she says, more could be done on land to identify and protect at-risk areas with unique values. Antarctica doesn’t have national parks, but it does have 75 sites that are Antarctic Specially Protected Areas, managed in different areas by different governments.

But more could be done to protect the environments, ecosystems and species, Justine adds. “Most of the biodiversity on land is restricted to the ice-free areas,” she says. “Not much of Antarctica is ice-free, so there are tiny [pockets] of ice-free land…that are really valuable, because that’s where everything is.”

Bird flu: an existential crisis 

The one threat that presently has everyone with an interest in Antarctic wildlife on tenterhooks is bird flu. This pathogen, also known as avian influenza, has been around for decades. But a new highly pathogenic and contagious strain – HPAI H5N1 – has emerged. And it’s not just infecting and killing birds en masse, it’s jumped into mammals and is having the same devastating impact.

Scientists have been tracking its spread down the west coast of South America for several months. At the time of going to press, it had reached South Georgia, a subantarctic island just north of the Antarctic mainland, where it was recorded in Antarctic skuas and southern elephant seals.

“Bird flu is absolutely terrifying because it’s so deadly and it doesn’t just affect birds,” Dana says.

Everyone is now bracing for its arrival in Antarctica this summer and reluctantly, but realistically, anticipating a massive loss of life among wildlife. “All the seabird researchers are feeling like an existential crisis is bearing down on us and our study ecosystems,” says AAD seabird ecologist Dr Louise Emmerson. “We’re all incredibly attached to our study species, and it feels horrendous that there’s very little we can do apart from monitor the impacts, avoid spreading it [bird flu] further, and maintain the resilience of the wildlife through other management actions.”

Emily Grilly, WWF-Australia’s Antarctic conservation manager, agrees this upcoming summer in Antarctica is likely to be devastating for wildlife because of bird flu. “I think we’re going to see some haunting images,” she says. “And it’s the last thing that Antarctic wildlife needs right now, when it’s trying to adapt to this changing climate.”

Hope for the wilderness at the bottom of the planet

Despite all the despair, there’s an overwhelming feeling of hope among the experts that Antarctic wildlife will be able to adapt and survive. It has, after all, been adapting and surviving for millennia in one of the most volatile and harsh environments on the planet. But it’s the rapid pace of change that has scientists worried. The answer to that, most Antarctic experts agree, lies in the hands of everyday people worldwide. And they’ve been buoyed by the empathetic way the world responded to the mass death of emperor penguin chicks.

Dana, who is now mainly affiliated with the University of Wollongong, recently launched the Pure Antarctica Foundation, a not-for-profit that draws attention to the wonders of Antarctica and the human-induced perils it’s now facing. The foundation is planning to connect with the grief the world showed for the emperor penguin chicks by staging a worldwide Penguin Vigil.

“I want people to come together and express their sadness,” she says. The vigil is planned to begin in Sydney on the winter solstice – 21 June – and then spread around the globe. The timing of the vigil will coincide with the period when emperors begin arriving in Antarctica to form their breeding colonies.

“Yes, it’s a tough time for the wildlife in Antarctica at the moment,” Louise agrees. “They’ve got avian influenza bearing down on them, they’ve got fisheries expanding, they’ve got climate change – and the unknown impacts from that on the food web they rely on. I mean, Antarctic wildlife is incredibly good at responding to environmental change – they’ve been doing it for many thousands of years, and that’s why they are there. But when we keep pushing them over the edge, there’s a limit to how much they can respond or adapt to.

“I’m still trying to be as optimistic as I can, that there’s something we can do, but the signals are alarming. Now is a critical time for us to pull out of our back pocket whatever we can to help support that ecosystem. I believe we have a moral responsibility to do that.”

Justine says it’s vital people understand that, as far away as Antarctica seems, whatever they can do to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their own backyards will help.

“If you explain that to people and ask if they hope their grandchildren get to live with penguins in their lives, I see them respond,” she says. “And I ask, ‘Do you want your grandchildren to know that there is a wilderness at the bottom of the planet, where whales come every summer to feed, and there are leopard seals and all these amazing animals?’”

And most people, she says, reply with an emphatic, “Yes.”

Related: Australia’s emissions policies savaged by experts ahead of COP28 climate summit

The post Antarctica: a continent in crisis appeared first on Australian Geographic.

“It’s just devastating to see,” says Australian Seabird and Turtle Rescue volunteer and photographer Silke Stuckenbrock.

Silke says over the last month, every time she has walked on the beach, she has encountered dozens upon dozens of dead seabirds, mostly short-tailed shearwaters, all emaciated.

“Some clearly have been washed ashore dead, or have drowned in the surf, while others look like they have crash-landed on the beach,” she says.

What’s happening?

Although it’s not uncommon for exhausted migratory birds to be found dead on Australian beaches, the scale of these wrecks is not usually of this magnitude. This has prompted plenty of speculation as to why so many birds are dying this season – not just in Australia, but worldwide.

Although these events have been poorly documented in the past, Adrift Lab marine scientist Jennifer Lavers says the scientific community is seeing a correlation with climate change.

“As a whole, it does appear that these events are becoming more frequent…in line with the frequency of marine heatwaves,” Jennifer says. “…We have seen some pretty significant mass-mortality events just in the last decade, which also suggests that the severity of the events is rising.”

These ‘seabird wrecks' occurred over the last month at One Mile Beach, NSW. Image credits: Silke Stuckenbrock

Marine heatwaves to blame

According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, a marine heatwave occurs when ocean temperatures are warmer than usual over a long period, slowing the growth of certain fish species, stressing other creatures – prompting them to move elsewhere – and affecting habitats. Put simply, warmer water can lead to fewer fish, which can lead to starving birds. 

With an ‘off the scale’ marine heatwave forecast for Australia this summer, and significant losses of sea life predicted, Jennifer says this month’s wrecks could be just the beginning. “We are still getting fresh birds washing up…which suggests that this is ongoing, and the prediction is for it to be ongoing,” she says.

Other theories 

Short-tailed shearwaters (Ardenna tenuirostris) aren’t the only species being found dead on our shores; albatross and raptors are also being reported but Jennifer says it doesn’t mean their deaths are also linked to this marine heatwave. “Across the huge number of people who are reporting, and the thousands of kilometres of beach that are being searched, we would expect to see a variety of species,” she explains.

When it comes to other wreck theories, some people are quick to blame wild weather, however Jennifer says this isn’t the reason the birds are dying, because they have evolved to take advantage of windy conditions. What people might see is that the wind has pushed already deceased and frail birds ashore. “To get to a condition where they are so weak that they can’t even really thrive in their natural habitat requires weeks of being deprived of the things that they need. Not days, weeks.”

Death by plastic consumption has also been ruled out as causing these wrecks. Jennifer says that adult birds don’t accumulate large amounts of plastic in the way fledglings and chicks do. “Right now the birds that are dying on beaches are 100 percent adult birds, so plastic – we can’t say it plays no role, but it is unlikely to play a driving or major role.”

The majority of seabirds being found dead are short-tailed shearwaters (Ardenna tenuirostris), like these photographed at Curl Curl Beach, NSW. Image credits: Silke Stuckenbrock

How you can help

Australia doesn’t have a national reporting system for seabird wrecks, which is why everyday beachgoers are important for compiling information. 

“Citizen science plays a key role in these massively widespread events,” Silke says. “We are the eyes and the boots on the ground.”

Silke describes public observations as pieces of a giant puzzle, with the information collected helping current and future studies. “In this case, our observations provide a snapshot of what’s happening along the entirety of the East Coast of Australia; that is impossible for a handful of scientists to do by themselves.”

So, whether you’re simply walking your dog along your local beach or heading out for a weekend surf, if you see a dead shearwater you can report it to Adrift Lab. 

“These days, with mobile phones in pockets, it’s extremely easy to take images and make notes of distances walked. Even GPS locations are embedded in the photos,” says Silke.

And even if you don’t see any birds, scientists still want to hear about it.

“It’s just as important for me to know that citizen scientists walked a beach and saw zero dead shearwaters as it is to know that they saw three, or nine,” Jennifer says. She adds that, without such reports, she wouldn’t know if people haven’t come across the birds or they simply haven’t documented them. She also asks for people to keep reporting all summer, and you can do that by following these instructions:

How to report dead seabirds

Record:

• The name of the beach.
• The date you visited.
• Approximately how far you walked.
• How many people are counting with you.
• The number of birds you found.
• Photos to help with species identification.
  

Contact Adrift Lab:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Website

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Image credit: Silke Stuckenbrock

What not to do

It’s important that if you see a dead bird you don’t touch it. Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), or Avian flu, is an issue of great concern in the Northern Hemisphere, and there are concerns of when, not if, there will be outbreaks in Australia. Because of this, do not handle any dead seabirds, and do not let dogs approach them; HPAI can cross species. If you find a bird that is alive and you want to take it to a carer, wear protective clothing, use a towel to pick it up and transport it in the boot of your car. It’s also wise not to take it into your house.

Related: Trouble in paradise for Lord Howe Island’s shearwaters

The post Why are we seeing so many ‘seabird wrecks’? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

In today’s special issue of the journal Austral Ecology, 55 authors present the latest research on Australian freshwater turtles.

Along with other biologists, we have contributed to a series of research papers to inform ecology and conservation of freshwater turtles.

Spy wear and other turtle tech

In one study researchers compared data from underwater video cameras to traditional trapping surveys and achieved similar results. They detected 83 turtles from 52  hours of footage and identified all species in the study area.

Overall, baited remote underwater videos proved to be a “useful, time effective, non-invasive technique to collect relative abundance and species richness estimates for freshwater turtles”.

Another study provided the first vision of a wild saw-shelled turtle attempting to court a mate. The male sought affection from the female turtle by waving his feet and pressing his nose into her face.

Meanwhile, a different male was observed trying to mount a larger male. This was the first case of same-sex mounting seen in this species.

We are continuing to unravel curious turtle behaviour known as nocturnal basking. During the day, many reptiles regulate their body temperature by sunning themselves. But some freshwater turtles (and crocodiles) also emerge from the water and bask on logs at night.

To find out why, scientists in Queensland measured the preferred temperature of Krefft’s river turtles and watched them bask more when the water was hot. So it seems they do this to stay cool in hot weather.

Over in desert country, we recaptured Cooper Creek turtles after two decades. While we were there, the site became surrounded with floodwater – this provided a rare opportunity to find turtles moving onto the floodplain to find food.

We also found lots of baby turtles. This is in contrast to most places around Australia, which have ongoing problems with foxes eating turtle nests.

Related: Mary River turtle added to world’s most endangered list

Conservation success stories

Foxes target freshwater turtle nests across Australia, reducing breeding success. Researchers are experimenting with measures to protect nests from predators.

In the New England Tablelands, temporary electric fences served to protect turtle nests from foxes over three breeding spring-summer seasons from 2019 to 2022. But in the Murray River, plastic mesh over individual nests only protected some of them.

Nest protection supports conservation of the endangered Mary River turtle. Over 22 years, more than 100 members of the local community in the Mary River Catchment have led initiatives to protect Mary River turtles. Working with communities has dual benefits – for research and for the people involved, who enjoy connecting to nature.

These collaborations have helped improve river management, informing delivery of water for the environment and improving the quality of river habitats for turtles.

November is Turtle Month for the 1 Million turtles campaign, a national citizen science program bringing together scientists and the community, to support freshwater turtle conservation initiatives.

Through the free TurtleSAT app, people can do more than just report turtle sightings. They can actively contribute to data-driven turtle management.

The app provides real-time data visualisation. The program website also provides education, helping citizen scientists protect nests, establish predator-free turtle sanctuaries, engage in national experiments, and deepen their understanding of turtles and wetlands.

With more than 18,000 records logged, 1,200 turtles saved from road hazards and 500 nests protected, this initiative is crucial in light of the growing threats faced by freshwater turtle species.

Challenges and solutions

Of Australia’s 25 freshwater turtle species, 12 are so poorly known their national conservation status could not be assessed during this 2022 review. Many of these lesser-known species occur in northern Australia.

Of the 15 species or subspecies assessed, we recommended listing a higher level of threat for eight. This included western saw-shelled turtles, which were recently uplisted from vulnerable to endangered.

Threats include habitat loss, being eaten by foxes or feral pigs, disease, fire, and moving species into new areas where they breed with existing turtle species. To manage these threats, we need to move beyond engagement to an integrated approach, where conservation advice is co-determined by First Nations people who are closely involved in implementing recovery plans and action plans.

There is immense value in establishing long-term studies to track these long-lived species. And technology continues to provide new opportunities to learn more.

Future conservation and management will require working with communities to learn more about turtles and protect them. If one million people each save one turtle, collectively we will have made a big difference.

Deborah Bower, Associate Professor in Zoology and Ecology, University of New England; Donald McKnight, , James Cook University; Eric Nordberg, Senior Lecturer (Applied Ecology and Landscape Management), University of New England; James Van Dyke, Associate Professor in Biomedical Sciences, La Trobe University; Michael B Thompson, Emeritus Professor in Zoology, University of Sydney, and Ricky Spencer, Associate Professor of Ecology, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related: Bum-breathing turtle discovered in Queensland river

The post Moonlight basking and queer courting: The secret lives of freshwater turtles appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Three red imported fire ant nests were found in South Murwillumbah, 13km from the Queensland border in the state’s northeast on Saturday, the NSW Department of Primary Industries confirmed.

“This is the first fire ant detection in northern NSW and presumed to be the most southern report of fire ants from the Queensland infestation,” the department said in a statement.

Crews are on site working to chemically eradicate the infestation across a radius of 200 metres from the nests.

An emergency biosecurity control order dictates all businesses and residents within a 5km radius of the South Murwillumbah site must restrict the movement of mulch, woodchips, compost, sand, gravel, soil, hay and other baled products.

Related: True damage of feral species revealed in landmark report. What can we do to stop the decimation?

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said the Queensland and NSW governments were working to eradicate the detection and monitor surrounding areas.

“This is the first fire ant detection in northern NSW but not the first detection outside southeast Queensland, with isolated detections having previously been eradicated in Gladstone, the Port of Botany and the Port of Fremantle,” he said in a statement.

NSW Department of Primary Industries officers and detection dogs were working to determine the extent and origin of the infestation.

Fines for breaches of the biosecurity order can reach up to $1.1 million for an individual and up to $2.2 million for a corporation.

The NSW Farmers Association said the latest incursion posed a threat to agricultural production and the natural environment and called on authorities to act quickly to stem the spread.

“The ants can damage agricultural equipment, sting livestock and damage the natural environment,” the association said.

NSW Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty said the government was prepared for the discovery of fire ants in northern NSW and had immediately implemented the response plan, part of an almost $600 million national eradication program.

She said the government had committed $95 million towards the National Fire Ant Eradication Program.

But Conservation Officer for the Invasive Species Council Reece Pianta said the $592 million allocated until 2027 would not be enough.

“Fire ants are one of the world’s worst super pests and, if they are allowed to spread across the continent, their impact will be greater than cane toads, rabbits, feral cats and foxes combined,” he said.

“They will devastate Australia’s environment and agriculture, cost our economy billions annually and we could see over 140,000 extra medical visits every year.”

Mr Pianta said the spread into NSW should be a wakeup call for the Victorian, Western Australian and South Australian governments yet to commit to their share of funding for eradication.

NSW Nationals leader Dugald Saunders said it was a case of too little too late.

“What we’ve seen from the state and federal governments so far is a complete lack of urgency, and it’s taken the detection of these ants in NSW to trigger an eradication response,” he said.

A recent review of the National Red Imported Fire Ant Eradication program warned all hopes would be “lost forever” if the ant moved across the Queensland border into NSW.

Related: Australia’s least wanted – 8 alien species and diseases we must keep out of our island home

The post Fire ants jump Queensland border into NSW appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The research, supported by WWF-Australia funding, investigated the effects of pollution on the development of green sea turtles at Heron Island, QLD.

“We discovered that the presence of contaminants tended to be associated with producing females,” explained lead researcher Dr Arthur Barraza, a marine ecotoxicologist from Griffith University’s Australian Rivers Institute.

Turtles already at risk

Sand temperature usually determines a sea turtle’s sex.

More females hatch from eggs laid in warmer sand: cooler sand produces more males.

With temperatures increasing under climate change, parts of the species range – which is worldwide in tropical waters – are already experiencing higher than usual ratios of female hatchlings due to an increase in ambient sand temperature.

In the northern Great Barrier Reef, hundreds of females are born for every male, lead researcher Dr Barraza explained to Australian Geographic.

“As temperatures keep rising under climate change, there will be more and more females and fewer males,” he said. “With such high competition to find a male mate, sea turtles are at risk of decline if this problem isn’t addressed or studied further.”

Accumulating woes

Now green sea turtle populations face the added possibility that pollutants may also contribute to more eggs producing female hatchlings.

Contamination builds up in food chains, and Dr Barraza said pollutants accumulate in turtles over time as they eat contaminated plants and invertebrates.

“Specific pollutants, including heavy metals like cadmium and antimony, can then mimic oestrogen, the female sex hormone, or bind to receptors on the oestrogen molecules,” he said.

Dr Barraza said the contaminants send a false signal throughout the unhatched turtle’s body, which may shift it towards becoming female.

Sea turtles face a range of other threats, including poaching, collisions with boats, habitat destruction and accidental capture in fishing gear. All seven species of sea turtle are listed as endangered or critically endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Solutions for turtles

Sea turtles collect contaminants from many places, not just at the beaches where they return to nest.

Dr Barraza explained that much of the heavy metal pollution in the ocean comes from human activity, including industry, mining, agricultural runoff and general urban waste.

“The best way to support turtles is to develop more comprehensive policies. We need to ensure that we reduce pollution in the ocean,” he said.

Dr Barraza said the subtle effects of contaminants on the environment can be more profound than we realise, and it was critical to understand these further.

“This study has shown that contaminants may affect the sex of green sea turtles and now we need to explore this in more detail.”

Related: Alarming green turtle baby boom an all-female affair

The post Pollution and climate change are making it harder to be male . . . if you’re a sea turtle appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Because it’s so rarely observed, there’s never been a study on the biology of this pipefish species. But my background offers a devastating rush of knowledge that allows me to conclude this would have to be the last few weeks of life for this wonderful pair of fish. Their bleached coral home is likely to imminently succumb to heat stress, another loss caused by ocean warming. 

Drifting over expansive fields of corals in a gentle current has always been one of my most treasured underwater experiences. With each exhaled breath clouds of bright orange anthias and silvery fusilier damselfish dart from the blue waters above the reef, where they’re feeding on plankton, into the safe confines of the protective coral fortress. For me these reefs are like forests, but more tangible and immediate, where life’s bounty is all around. In a jungle you might hear a distant bird or capture a fleeting glimpse of a lizard scurrying across the path in front of you, but on a healthy coral reef you’re engulfed by life. Thousands of fishes, of many species, flit around in the water column and many more creatures are hidden in the reef below. 

When I began diving, the conspicuous and colourful fishes drew my attention almost to the point of being overwhelming. Thousands of dives later, my focus is now on the small habitat specialists that live in a close and often obligatory association with another species. This focus on the reef’s diminutive life led to my doctoral research on pygmy seahorses living with soft gorgonian corals. Two of the eight pygmy species spend their entire adult lives on the surface of a single gorgonian coral. Another lives only on soft coral in shallow water. These seahorses, which each barely stretch across a 10 cent coin, revealed to me a new world of tiny creatures that live intimately with the reef’s structural organisms.

I recently returned, after 15 years, to the remote, pristine Milne Bay in south-east Papua New Guinea (PNG). It’s so remote that just before my visit, on one of the islands outside the bay, ornithologists rediscovered the black-naped pigeon pheasant which hadn’t been recorded for 140 years. Just beyond this island we began our exploration in the Conflict Islands, an even more remote coral atoll cluster to the bay’s east. Surveys have revealed these reefs harbour more than half of all the world’s coral species, which, in turn, support a huge array of other species. 

We were excited preparing to dive these reefs so few have explored. As we rolled back into the clear blue waters the sight that revealed itself was unimaginable. Pure white corals stretched into the distance like an abstract scene from the European Alps. I estimated that up to 90 per cent of the corals were bleached pure white. My gut response was to get out of the water quickly, as if that might change things. In hindsight my reaction might have represented the first stage of grief: denial.

Mass bleaching of coral reefs clearly isn’t isolated to this corner of PNG. The same devastation has been unfolding on the Great Barrier Reef and across the world’s tropical oceans since the first recorded global coral bleaching in 1998. During the six weeks we dived Milne Bay’s reefs, corals went from bleached to dead, a carpet of fine filamentous algae ultimately cloaking the white skeletons. It happened before our eyes, including to individual coral colonies we’d come to recognise. “The more you know, the more you suffer” parable seems fitting when diving coral reefs in the 21st century. 

At Milne Bay I saw many specialist coral-living species losing homes or food sources. Butterflyfishes are a diverse group of coral-eaters common on healthy tropical reefs. These crucial marine habitats are so biodiverse it can be a real headache for scientists to get a good estimate of how many species a particular reef might support. Counting the abundance and diversity of the relatively few conspicuous butterflyfishes on a certain reef gives a simple and reliable relative indication of the total species number the reef supports. Each fish has mouthparts precisely adapted to feeding on particular corals. The presence of a certain butterflyfish species shows that the particular corals it feeds upon must be present. As such, butterflyfishes are indicator species: the more a reef has, the more corals there must be and the more species the reef supports.

As the bleaching unfolded before us, what seemed like panic set in for the butterflyfishes. No doubt this is anthropomorphism, a cardinal sin for a behavioural biologist, but in the face of death we project our own fears and emotions. I’m sure the butterflyfishes had no frame of reference for what these events ultimately mean for their home, but I did. Specialist species such as these, which rely on a specific relationship for their survival, rarely have a Plan B when it comes to simply shifting to an alternate food source. 

My imagination led to the next stages of grief: anger, because we’ve reached the point where anthropogenic climate change is warming the oceans and making coral bleaching events much more severe and frequent; and then bargaining, for the animal’s lives as the heat slowly cooks and kills their living larder.

The scale of degradation bleaching causes isn’t immediate. Initially when heat stress causes corals to bleach the zooxanthellae, symbiotic algae within the coral’s cells, leave. Suddenly the coral becomes transparent without pigments from the algae. 

At this point the term ‘bleached’ refers to the white skeleton seen beneath the tissue. In fact, there is also a phenomenon of ‘colourful bleaching’ where the bleached coral produces neon pigments that act as a kind of sunscreen to reduce sun damage. The pigments produced vary both within and between species, some are neon yellow, others blue and some corals even turn bright pink. These pigments may allow the coral to recover if the heat stress isn’t too extreme in duration or severity.

Perversely, witnessing a mass bleaching event is morbidly beautiful. Pure ghostly white is an unnatural colour underwater, or above, for that matter. It is like an otherworldly snow day. It seems even more unworldly when contrasted with the bold and beautiful colours of many coral reef fishes. Of course, the large-scale bleaching like we were seeing doesn’t bode well for most tropical coral reefs. If the heat stress doesn’t soon reduce, allowing recovery of the coral and reinfection by algal symbionts, then sadly the next step after bleaching is the death of the coral. 

After about three weeks of our expedition we began to see the tissues melt off the coral skeletons. The layer of tissue is so thin that this stage can easily go unnoticed. Soon, the more noticeable process of filamentous algae settling on the exposed skeleton becomes apparent. The coral regains its beige colour, but, of course, these algae are growing directly on the skeleton and not symbiotically within the coral’s tissues. So, although the reef looks much more normal again, it is anything but.

For many species that live on the reef, life continues as normal at first. Those lost at this stage are the ones that rely directly on living coral, such as the harlequin filefish and butterflyfishes that feed on coral polyps. The Braun’s pughead pipefish, coral blennies and stunning pinkeye gobies are lost too. They all require tissue-covered healthy corals with branches, between which they can evade predators, breed and feed. Most habitat specialists can’t relocate to another host once they have settled as a fry or larva, so their fate is inextricably tied to that of their specific host. It’s heartbreaking to watch these animals in the face of this large-scale loss of their homes. This is where grief rears its ugly head again, and depression sets in. Not only will these coral gobies flitting around in the coral in front of me have days or weeks remaining, but all other colonies on this reef or the neighbouring reef, for as far as this patch of warm waters reaches, will suffer the same fate. 

After the corals die and filamentous algae settle, the physical structure of the reef initially remains. For many reef inhabitants, it’s primarily this structure and complexity they rely on. The damselfishes that feed on plankton, and the groupers that feed on the damselfishes, can continue survive…for now. With time, however, the stone skeletons of the corals begin to degrade and break down. Depending on the exposure of the site, this may take several years. The coral rubble that results even offers a home to fishes such as gobies, flasher and fairy wrasses, but again only fleetingly before the rubble, too, becomes gravel and the flattening of the reef is complete. In the Caribbean, where some reefs have already degraded to the point of flattening, studies have shown how this can affect species that reefs support. The greatest reduction in species richness happens as a reef loses its structural complexity beyond an intermediary level. Ultimately, there are few winners as a reef flattens.

In recent years, there have been clickbait stories around the spectacular recovery of coral reefs after bleaching. As always for such stories, the devil is in the detail. After a mass bleaching, suddenly large areas of coral skeleton are exposed for new organisms to settle. Initially, filamentous algae may arrive, sponges and pioneering corals, too, are eager to cover the primed surfaces. These early corals tend to be among few weedy species that can settle and grow quickly. 

Much like an area of newly overturned ground in a garden, or a recently felled old growth forest, weedy species will rapidly arrive and cover any exposed soil within months. Usually these will be just a few species of fast-growing plants that can outcompete others trying to grow. If your only metric is ground cover, the new patch of weeds offers the same cover as your old growth forest. However, clearly the number of species that an old growth forest can accommodate is astronomically higher than a weed patch can support. Over time, the weed community may develop, and in at least a centuries’ time, the weed patch could become a forest. 

Just like an old growth forest, long-established coral reefs foster hundreds of coral species, each supporting their own specialist species, and it is here that the incredible diversity of coral reefs lies. As far as I’ve seen, no reef that’s experienced a mass bleaching event is yet to recover to its former glory. 

There are famously five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. When it comes to coral reefs and their gradual decline due to human-induced warming, I think I’ve experienced all but the last. I don’t believe we should ever accept that such an incredible ecosystem can vanish without us making every effort to avert its loss. 

If 2023 taught us anything, it is that there is no longer any denying the world is changing. Australia experienced its warmest winter on record, the last remnant of Floridian reefs were largely lost to record-breaking water temperatures, and Canada’s forests burned en masse. 

With an El Niño summer on its way, the coral reefs of Australasia face an uncertain few months. 

Scientific evidence points to the reef’s best hope being the immediate reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to avoid a continued escalation of climatic heating that coral reefs, as we know them, simply will not endure. 

Dr Richard Smith is an underwater photographer, author and marine conservationist. A marine biologist by trade, Richard’s research on the biology and conservation of pygmy seahorses led to the first PhD on these enigmatic fishes. He’s the author of the bestselling The World Beneath: The Life and Times of Unknown Sea Creatures and Coral Reefs (Apollo Publishers, 2019).

Related: ‘Heat-proofing’ coral: Aussie discovery throws a lifeline to world’s dying reefs

The post Little lives lost appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Let’s face it. Too many of us know very little about frogs. We might notice one croaking in a drainpipe, in the garden, or out in the bush now and then after it rains. But we don’t really notice them or understand them, and if we do see one, it’s highly likely that we wouldn’t have a clue what species of frog it was. Is it a striped rocket frog? Or a green tree frog? A bleating, moaning, humming or barking frog? Then there’s the motorbike frog, wrinkled toadlet, stuttering, and trilling frogs. 

In fact, Australia has 249 known species of frog, almost all of which are found nowhere else in the world. Some species, like the striped marsh frog are flourishing, but the numbers of others have been declining for four decades or so, due to habitat loss, disease and climate change.

Sadly, at least four species of frogs found in Australia are now extinct and one in five existing species are on the brink. Frogs are a key indicator of the health of our waterways and wetlands and they play a crucial role in several ecosystems.

Now is the the time to begin a love affair with frogs, by being a part of FrogID Week.

Up for the count with FrogID

FrogID Week is a national citizen science project, owned and managed by the Australian Museum. Australia does not have enough frog scientists or specialist biologists to study frog populations alone. Australia is huge, which means many potentially significant locations cannot be reached in time after rainfall. Enter the cavalry… the citizen scientists of Australia – that’s you and your family.

This important project helps scientists and land managers to learn more about what is happening to Australia’s frogs. Dr Jodi Rowley, Lead Scientist of FrogID, says “People right across Australia have become part of the mission to help better understand and conserve frogs using the FrogID app to record frog calls. Since our launch in 2017, together we’ve changed the face of frog conservation across Australia, producing more than 20 scientific publications and literally putting frogs on the map across Australia.

“We’ve helped discover frog species new to science, built up the FrogID database to include 88 per cent of all known Australian species, and found some in areas we’d previously thought they had disappeared from!

“But there are still gaps: in the Top End, the far southwestern point of Western Australia, and remote parts of South Australia to name a few. And we’re still looking for the missing Peppered Tree Frog on the New England Tablelands of New South Wales and a rare sub-species of the Giant Burrowing Frog from south of Sydney, too. We hope as we count down to one million frog recordings, one of our citizen scientists will discover these.”

The time is now

Most of Australia’s frog species are active in November – that’s why FrogID Week is held in this month as it is the best time to record as many calls as possible.

In 2023, FrogID Week will run from 3-12 November. It is hoped that the numbers of calls recorded will continue to rise, as they did in 2021 and 2022. The last two years were particularly successful, seeing a more than double year-on-year increase in FrogID app downloads. This year, Dr Rowley and her team want more people in regional areas of Australia to ‘jump’ on board, as many of these areas have no frog calls recorded. Having data on which frogs live in which region, is a source of vital information to help frog conservation in Australia.

If you live in a regional area, you can help our tailless amphibian friends!

What do you have to do? It is easy. Just download the free FrogID app on your smartphone, register an account and record as many frog calls as you can. A dedicated team of experts at the Australian Museum will then review your recording and identify the species for you.

This innovative and free FrogID app relies on frog calls to identify species as each frog has a unique sound. It is quite ingenious, as it is very difficult to tell a frog species by appearance, and it is also quite intrusive to go clumping through a frog’s habitat to get close enough to see or photograph it. This way, you just need to record the croak, chirrup or ribbit of a frog in your area. Each recording is time-stamped and geo-referenced to provide very specific data, and help scientists to understand and conserve Australia’s unique frog species.

Hop to it

The first thing to do is go to the FrogID website and download the free FrogID mobile app. Have a look at it and use the ‘Near Me’ filter on the app to learn more about local frog species, their habitats, and breeding patterns. This will help you understand what sort of frogs might be in your neighbourhood.

Then head out and explore your nearest creek, water source or wetland, and record and submit frog calls using the ‘Record’ section of the app. You can submit them anywhere, anytime, without needing to get too close or disturb their habitat.

Kids love frogs, so this is a wonderful opportunity for the whole family to get involved. Together you can explore frog habitats, record their sounds, submit them, and then be happy that you and your family have played a part in helping with frog conservation. And because frogs are such great indicators of environmental health, being highly sensitive to their surroundings, each FrogID submission provides insights into the overall health of our environment.

A positive, strong, and vital message for the adults of the future.

Download the app today.

This article was brought to you by the Australian Museum.

The post Heed the call of frogs appeared first on Australian Geographic.

If you remained still and quiet, the elusive creature (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) may have dabbled on the water’s surface for a few minutes before diving to continue foraging for food on the bottom of the stream.

So, imagine how we felt seeing a white platypus, its pale fur standing in stark contrast to the classic brown appearance we’re familiar with.

A fascinating discovery

As turtle researchers, we frequently encounter platypus during our fieldwork, which is always a delightful experience.

However, in 2021, while conducting surveys for endangered freshwater turtles along a tributary of the Gwydir River in the New England Tablelands, my team and I made a fascinating discovery.

A white platypus surfaced right alongside us!

It stayed on the surface just long enough for us to capture a short video before disappearing with a splash.

We stared at each other in disbelief before erupting with excitement.

The animal’s fur was bright white, but its feet and bill were dark, suggesting the animal is a leucistic form, with reduced pigmentation, rather than an albino, which would lack pigmentation altogether.

Repeated sightings

We have now sighted the white platypus on 10 different occasions, during the past two years.

This intrigues us because intuitively such a conspicuous animal may not survive long in the wild because it’s so easily spotted by potential predators such as foxes, cats, and birds of prey.

To appreciate the rarity of our observation, we conducted an extensive search of historical and scientific records dating as far back as 1803 and found only 12 documented instances of white or albino platypus.

We documented our observations of the white platypus, along with photos and videos of this rare colour morph in an article published this week in Australian Mammalogy.

Platypuses are incredibly unique animals and we feel privileged to have the opportunity to observe them in the wild.

But we feel especially fortunate to have encountered such an unusual colour morph.

Louise Streeting is a zoology PhD student at the University of New England, in NSW.

Related: Hobart community rallies around rivulet platypus

The post Rare white platypus spotted in northern NSW appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Scalloped hammerheads – one of ten species in the hammerhead family – prefer warm waters. But they have become regular visitors to the waters off Perth in summer, now the southernmost part of their range. The sharks are not considered dangerous to humans.

These iconic sharks are among the world’s most threatened species due to over-fishing. And incredibly they are still legally fished in Australia, despite their populations falling by 80% in just 55 years.

They are in danger unless we protect them.

What’s special about these oceanic wayfarers?

Scalloped hammerheads are named for the dents on their hammer-shaped head or cephalofoil. They’re skilled long-distance swimmers and exceptional free divers, able to hunt in the dark waters 500 metres below the surface. They grow slowly and live for up to 55 years.

They’re a challenging species to study because they cover long distances and spend lots of time down deep. Finding a place where these sharks regularly aggregate offers us a remarkable opportunity to learn more about these oceanic wayfarers.

How did we find them?

Small commercial drones are revolutionising the way we study marine wildlife – especially sharks. The aerial perspective lets us see things we couldn’t see before. Drones have shed light on elusive behaviours we have otherwise been unable to verify. Footage can also be used to identify, count and measure animals.

We heard surf lifesavers had observed hammerhead sharks off Perth beaches during their helicopter shark patrols. We began our search at the Shoalwater Islands Marine Park, off the coast from Rockingham, in Perth’s southern suburbs.

Over two successive summers, we used drones to successfully spot and then track scalloped hammerheads as they aggregated inside the marine park.

What did we learn?

We learned many things. First, the scalloped hammerheads aggregating at the marine park were juveniles, not adults.

We only found them in a small area of the marine park. They were present with the full moon.

Once aggregated, they would swim in formation, moving in winding patterns through the shallow waters of the marine park.

In terms of what were they doing, our study suggest they’re seeking a place to rest and recover. Sharks often hunt more on the nights with a full moon, taking advantage of better light to see prey.

That would mean these juveniles are tired after a night’s hunting. Now they need to rest and digest. Gathering in a group could also provide some degree of protection from other predators in the area.

It’s likely, therefore, these shallow waters are important shelter for scalloped hammerheads.

How can we protect them?

Our research points to the urgent need to strengthen protection of scalloped hammerheads in the popular Shoalwater Islands Marine Park.

We need a code of conduct to prevent water users such as boaters, kayakers, and swimmers from disturbing the animals, similar to those protecting whale sharks and humpback whales. Boat speed limits and bans on chasing animals are essential if we are to protect these endangered animals.

Stopping fishing at the aggregation site is vitally important. Hammerheads are extremely vulnerable to any capture and are unlikely to survive “catch and release” fishing. The marine park should be a safe spot for the sharks to shelter and rest.

We need to strengthen protections in the marine park, shifting from multiple use status – which allows fishing – to highly protected, which prohibits fishing.

Right now, the federal government is reviewing the status of these sharks. Given ongoing fishing pressure, there are clear reasons to assess them as endangered rather than their unclear status as “conservation dependent”.

Australia is fortunate to host remarkable and endangered species such as hammerhead sharks. As our understanding grows, so does our responsibility. There are simple steps available to the state and federal government to safeguard the future of this threatened species and maintain healthy marine ecosystems.

Naima Andrea López, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia and Jessica Meeuwig, Wen Family Chair in Conservation, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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“Fortunately for me – but not so fortunately for the python being consumed, it took around 15 minutes from when I first witnessed the initial constriction to the python finishing its meal and returning to its burrow which was only about 10 feet away,” says the Sanctuary’s manager, Nick Stock. “This gave me plenty of time to get a camera and document the event.”  

“It was a surprise at first, but I feel really fortunate to witness such an event,” he adds.

This wasn’t the first time Nick has had a front-row seat to such grisly events.

“I have previously witnessed black-headed pythons eating an eastern brown snake and a yellow-spotted monitor, however, this was the first time I witnessed a black-headed python eating another black-headed python.”

How common is python cannibalism?

Black-headed pythons have been known to eat one another occasionally in captivity, but witnessing and documenting a cannibalism event in the wild is rare, says AWC Wildlife Ecologist Dr Helena Stokes.

“Getting images or footage of such an event in the wild is quite unusual and lucky,” explains Helena.

“Black-headed pythons prefer to eat reptiles over mammals, and are known to eat larger reptiles, including goannas – and even venomous snakes – so I’m not surprised that they would consume another python if the opportunity arose,” she adds.

“And by consuming other individuals, they are also reducing competition for resources in the area.”

The post Snake cannibalism caught on camera appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Published in PLOS One, our new study of dingoes buried alongside First Nations people in ancient times has provided crucial clues to this mystery. Our findings may help change the way we think about the connections between dingoes and people.

Related: Dingo culling: a sanctioned killing of native animals

Living alongside people

When outsiders observed traditional First Peoples’ societies in the 19th and 20th centuries throughout mainland Australia, they noticed many took dingo pups from wild dens and raised them to keep as companions and for a variety of other purposes including as guards, hunting aids and living “blankets”.

However, these dingoes always returned to the bush to find a mate after reaching about a year of age, seemingly never to return. This is quite unlike our domestic dogs – they may wander, but ultimately tend to stay with their human families in the long term.

The fact most dingoes live without any reliance on people is one of the main reasons scientific opinion differs over whether dingoes should be thought of as domestic animals or not.

But is it possible different arrangements between dingoes and Australia’s First Peoples existed before traditional ways of life were disrupted by colonial violence, displacement and disease? Answers might be found in the bones of dingoes that lived with people and were buried after death.

There are historical accounts of funerary and burial rituals of deceased tamed dingoes. Skeletons of dingoes or dogs have been found alongside First Peoples’ burials in many areas of Australia from Arnhem Land to the Murray-Darling basin, but to date there’s been no comprehensive study of this important cultural practice.

In a search of historical records and findings of dingo burials, we found they were concentrated in the Murray-Darling Basin and on the southern coastlines of New South Wales and Victoria. A secondary, more recent cluster was located in north-western Australia.

Buried alongside people

Historical records and archaeological evidence both show that when dingoes were buried, it was invariably in the manner in which people were buried in the same region. Often, dingoes were buried alongside people.

The act of burial implies a degree of care and belonging to a community. Some archaeologists argue animal burial is a fundamental sign of domestication. But by examining the skeletons of buried dingoes we can further investigate the life histories of these important animals.

The archaeological site of Curracurrang, a rock shelter in the Royal National Park just south of Sydney, was excavated in the 1960s. The excavations found First People were buried there over many centuries.

But our new primary investigations of previously unstudied animal bones reveal the site also contained the skeletons of several dingoes. Radiocarbon dates taken from their bones found the earliest of these were buried around 2,300–2,000 years ago. Dingo burials continued here until the colonial era.

Some of the dingoes were adults, at least six to eight years old – well past the age at which they’d be expected to return to the wild to breed. They had severely worn teeth, indicating a diet heavy in large bones, likely from the scraps of human meals.

In addition, one dingo showed signs of suffering from an aggressive, mobility-restricting form of cancer in the last weeks of its life. It was likely looked after by people during its decline.

Several other burials were pups, less than a month or two in age. Since dingoes of breeding age were also found at Curracurrang, it is entirely probable some of these pups were born there but did not survive long, and were buried soon after. These individuals are the first known evidence of dingo pup burial in Australia.

Related: The cultural history of the dingo

A previously obscured relationship

Dingo burials reveal aspects of the relationship between Australia’s First Peoples and their dingo companions which had been, until now, obscured.

At Curracurrang, tame dingoes lived to advanced ages alongside people. They ate the same foods and possibly even bore litters of pups within human camps. While traditional views of domestication involve dramatic transformations in appearance and human control over animal reproduction, newer perspectives focus on long-lasting relationships between people and animals.

The evidence from Curracurrang suggests some dingoes, at least in certain settings, were domesticated in ancient times. This doesn’t mean all dingoes were domesticated, nor does it conclusively indicate they originate from domestic dogs.

Most dingoes were, and still are, wild animals with various adaptations to life independent of people in Australian environments.

However, the new findings do mark an important development in our understanding of the deep antiquity and closeness of the connection between Australia’s First Peoples and their native dogs. It attests to long-lasting relationships beyond the transient, temporary associations recorded during the colonial era.

Acknowledgments: we are grateful to the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council and community for their permission to undertake research on the Curracurrang dingo remains. We also give thanks to the Australian Museum for facilitating access to these materials.

Loukas Koungoulos, Postdoctoral research fellow, Australian National University; Jane Balme, Professor Emerita of Archaeology, The University of Western Australia; Shane Ingrey, Postdoctoral research fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH), UNSW Sydney, and Sue O’Connor, Distinguished Professor, School of Culture, History & Language, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related: Outcast: the plight of the dingo

The post Did Australia’s First Nations people domesticate dingoes? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

For some time there have been clues that Roth’s tree frog may be more than one species. Firstly, the species has a huge distribution, spanning over 1.5 million square kilometers across Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland, and crossing many different biogeographic barriers, which is rather rare for frog species. Secondly, the call of the species in the western part of its range sounded noticeably different to the call of the species in the east. This became even more obvious as thousands of calls of the species were submitted to the Australian Museum’s FrogID project.

Because of these clues, we decided to determine once and for all if Roth’s tree frog really was a single species. To do so, we examined the genetics, appearance, and call of the species from across its range. Before the FrogID project, we wouldn’t have had enough recordings of the species to understand how its call varied across its range, but thanks to people across Australia using the FrogID app, we were able to harness the enormous database of over 8,000 recordings of Roth’s tree frog to find calls from across the range of the species to analyse. The natural history collections held in Australian museums were vital in determining their genetic relationships.

Related: Two new ‘loud’ frog species have been found along the east coast of Australia

After analyzing all of these data, we concluded that Roth’s tree frog was not one, but two species! Roth’s tree frog is actually restricted to Queensland, the eastern Northern Territory in Australia and southern Papua New Guinea, and another species, until now scientifically unnamed, occurs in western Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. We scientifically named the second species the western laughing tree frog (Litoria ridibunda). Unexpectedly, we found that these two species weren’t even each other’s closest relative, with Roth’s tree frog being more closely related to Everett’s tree frog (Litoria everetti) from Indonesia than it was to the new species!

With the help of the FrogID project, we confirmed that the western laughing tree frog had a longer ‘laugh’ (9-18 notes) compared to Roth’s tree frog (5-10 notes). Interestingly, this difference was most obvious in western Queensland where the two species overlap – possibly a strategy to help ensure they don’t get each other confused when it comes to finding a mate.

In appearance, the two species are very similar. However, we found that the colour and pattern on the back of the thigh was the best way to tell the species apart. In Roth’s tree frog, the thighs are more boldly patterned with glossy black and yellow, while the new species sports a less distinct dull black and yellowish patterning on the back of the thighs.

FrogID submissions helped reveal the breeding biology of the western laughing frog. The new species is most commonly recorded in suburban backyards and rural areas (>60% of FrogID records of the species) and most records of the species were from ponds and flooded areas rather than streams or creeks. The peak calling season for the species is the summer wet season from October to February (>84% of all FrogID records of the species).

The western laughing frog is the 248th species of native frog known from Australia. It may seem surprising that a large, commonly encountered frog species can be “hidden” in plain sight for so long, but it just goes to show how much we still have to learn about frogs. Our research also demonstrates the power of citizen science. Recordings from the FrogID project were important in distinguishing this species and learning more about its biology, and future recordings submitted to the FrogID project will continue to contribute to our understanding of Australia’s frogs, including the western laughing frog.

This article was originally published by the Australian Museum and reproduced with permission.

Related: Citizen scientists huge help in creating Australian Frog Atlas: reveals true distributions of our frogs

The post Funnier than the original: Laughing frog found to be two separate species appeared first on Australian Geographic.

“It’s been a while since a ‘never recorded anywhere before’ fish has been described from the Great Barrier Reef,” says Leaf to Reef project marine biologist Dr Chris Dudgeon.

“The last completely new species to be described was a grouper found in the deep sea in 2019, which is where most new discoveries come from. 

“To find a new fish species in the shallows on a reef in plain sight is unique.”

The Lady Elliot shrimp goby (Tomiyamichthys elliotensis) is small and white with brown spots, yellow-orange bands and a large sail-like first dorsal fin.

Scientists believe it may be present throughout the whole Great Barrier Reef. 

Researchers are now wondering how many more marine creatures are waiting to be discovered in the Reef. 

They hope to identify up to seven other new species – including dwarf and pygmy gobies as well as damselfish – that have been unearthed by the survey.

Scientists have begun the complicated and lengthy process of confirming the discoveries, which involves consultation with global experts.

The majority of the potential new species uncovered at Lady Elliot Island were gobies which are frequently overlooked by divers and marine scientists due to their small size.

There are currently more than 100 recognised species of shrimp gobies in the Indo-West Pacific region.

They often live in the same burrows as shrimps, acting as a lookout for predators. 

At a time when marine life is disappearing from the world’s oceans, University of the Sunshine Coast Professor Kathy Townsend says the new discovery highlights the importance of the Leaf to Reef project that she leads.

The project is part of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation’s Reef Islands Initiative which aims to protect critical habitats in the world’s largest coral system.

Related: Master of camouflage: new gecko species found living among rocks on remote Queensland island

The post New Great Barrier Reef fish species discovered living ‘in plain sight’ appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The diversity of species Brian is listening for means there’s a huge volume of information to deal with. Sorting through it is a massive task. “We’ve now amassed a collection of more than 100,000 hours of recordings from the Antarctic, but we’ve always been constrained by our ability to process these data efficiently,” he says. Listening to all these recordings would take decades. As well as being monotonous to do, that’s simply too slow for the conservation action needed to save threatened species. A time-saving solution has been for Brian’s team to apply AI algorithms to the task. “It’s a fantastic time to be marrying up AI, or machine-learning techniques to be more specific, with conservation work, and it fits particularly well with acoustics,” Brian says. 

During the past decade, the growing sophistication of AI algorithms has rapidly accelerated scientists’ ability to process information. And it couldn’t come at a better time. With eco-systems on the brink of collapse around the world, the race is on to fix environmental problems before it’s too late. It’s one of the greatest challenges humans have ever faced, and the actions we take all hinge on how well we understand different environments. 

“Nature is not more complicated than you think, it is more complicated than you can think,” American ecologist Frank Edwin Egler wrote in 1977 in an attempt to describe the complexity of nature. Is it a little insulting? Yes. But it’s also true. Even the ‘simplest’ of environments is still extremely complex and almost impossible to fully understand. Conservation researchers often need to spend hours, days and years trawling through the environmental data they’ve collected and recorded. This hugely time-consuming process limits the progress researchers can make. But with new technologies doing the ‘thinking’ for us, that could be about to change.

Using computers to process data isn’t new to conservation research, but in the past, they’ve been limited in what they can accomplish. “Classical algorithms,” as Brian calls them, are coded to look for specific patterns in data that can be useful, but they start to struggle when the data gets more complicated. “The more data and the more variability you throw into them, their performance just won’t get any better, and sometimes it can get actually become much worse,” Brian says.

In comparison, AI programs can learn and improve their ability to interpret data. But, just like humans, these programs need to be trained. For Brian’s team, this involves marine acoustics experts labelling audio files and feeding them into a program. Once the program is ready, it can process data that would take a research team months to finish, in a matter of hours. In some cases, machine-learning algorithms are more accurate than their human counterparts, and the algorithms only improve with time as they gather more and more training data. “I’m training AIs to listen to the ocean for me so I don’t have to listen to 50 years of ocean noise to pick out the moans and drones of critically endangered baleen whales in the Antarctic,” Brian says.

Of course, the human element can never be entirely removed from research, and Brian stresses how important it is to have the right collaboration of experts contributing to the programs. “It’s people who have that biological experience working closely with people who have AI experience, and that ability to tweak the code and make the algorithm smarter…I think that’s a pretty good recipe for success,” Brian says. His project has been so successful the AAD is now also implementing AI algorithms to look at whale diving behaviour, using video footage from 360-degree cameras mounted on ships. 

Perhaps the best thing about the use of AI in conservation is that it lets researchers focus on what’s important. “This frees us up to think about the bigger picture problems. It frees us up to think about designing better studies to focus on the analysis, to focus on the gaps…it really is a revolution,” Brian says. “I suspect with this really disruptive technology, this is going to be the tip of the iceberg, and I hope it continues. My prediction would be that this is going to become much more widespread across science in general.”

Looking at conservation science in Australia, it seems Brian’s predictions are already coming true. AI programs are being used in a rapidly growing variety of ways across Australia to aid conservation efforts. In Tasmania, researchers using AI image analysis can now quickly and easily identify the signs of Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) from camera-trap photos. DFTD is one of the only known forms of transmissible cancer, and it has been decimating Tasmanian devil populations. Advanced knowledge of how this disease spreads may help to save this iconic Australian species. 

At the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), the Australian Acoustic Observatory is using AI algorithms to sort through millions of hours of audio recording from a national network to identify the calls of endangered Australian birds. The information provided by AI will help shape conservation management of environments across Australia. 

Meanwhile, researchers from Monash University are using AI to analyse satellite imagery of Australian forests. A program is being designed to automatically measure the light reflected from forest canopies and process that data to accurately identify areas of high evaporation and dryness. The plan is to create a system that can provide early warning about areas of high bushfire risk. All of these projects are, as Brian says, “the tip of the iceberg”, with conservation scientists applying AI technology in many creative and diverse ways. 

Professor Grant Hamilton, the founding director of QUT’s Conservation AI Network believes AI technologies can empower more than just researchers. He thinks the advantages of AI should be placed in the hands of those who do on-the-ground conservation. “People in universities are very good at writing papers and developing methodologies, but we’re not necessarily the ones who are going to go out and count koalas or pull weeds. The Conservation AI Network is an attempt to bridge that gap,” Grant says. “One of the really exciting projects we have at the moment is with Landcare Australia and Wildlife Rescue NSW. We’re training landcare groups on how to fly drones and find koalas. They’ll supply us with the data, and we use the artificial intelligence algorithms we developed to spot those koalas through hours and hours of thermal imagery and return the results [to Landcare and Wildlife Rescue] so they can manage in the most appropriate way for the area they’re in.” Koala populations along Australia’s east coast were hit hard by the 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires. By using AI, landcare groups have the information they need to make decisions about koala conservation as soon as possible. 

That’s only one small part of the Conservation AI Network’s goals. Grant believes immediate widespread action is needed to save global biodiversity. “And I hope everybody else wants to save the world, frankly,” Grant says. “Biodiversity is literally in crisis…we’re looking at some important thresholds being reached in maybe 10 years. So, the question is not really about research, the question is about how we can take the research and translate it so that it can help with biodiversity.”

He believes that, if we are to stand a chance of preserving biodiversity, AI-informed conservation management must work in partnership with strong environmental laws and informed policy. “I think, in a lot of circumstances, it [AI] is a really effective tool, but it’s not a silver bullet, and there is no one silver bullet to be able to do this,” Grant says. “This is a serious issue, and it needs to be dealt with [now], not in 20 years time – because that’s too long.”

Related: AI discovers bushfire-ravaged native species are bouncing back

The post Conservation meets machine learning appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Over six years, we monitored a population of around 130 eastern grey kangaroos near Wollar in New South Wales to see how their relationships changed over time. Keeping tabs on individual roos led to some surprising results.

We found that kangaroo mothers become more social when caring for joeys (which is the opposite of what we previously thought). We also uncovered new evidence that indicates kangaroos could potentially form long-term relationships.

This research, published in Animal Behaviour, sheds new light on the behaviour of Australia’s most iconic animal.

How to watch kangaroos

Eastern grey kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) are found throughout the eastern third of Australia, and they are extremely social animals.

If you’re lucky enough to have some living near you, you’ll notice they are rarely alone. What you might not notice is how often their small groups (called mobs) fluctuate throughout the day.

Kangaroos have a loose “fission–fusion” social structure, which means mobs often split and reform. Knowing this, we wanted to see just how strong kangaroo relationships actually are, and how these relationships changed over several years.

To find out, we spent a few days each year taking photographs of every single kangaroo in our study population. We then used these photographs (all 3,546 of them!) to individually identify each kangaroo.

The best way to tell kangaroos apart (for humans) is the unique shape of their ears, because both the outline of the ears and the inner ear tufts remain very similar throughout the years. New scars can change the overall ear shape, but we were careful to watch out for those.

Using this method, we identified 130 individual kangaroos. We then looked at which kangaroos appeared next to each other in the same photograph to get an idea of what their social groups looked like.

We also gave each kangaroo a social score based on how many other kangaroos they associated with and how “popular” these associates were.

Suprising sociability

There are usually a couple of difficulties in this sort of long-term animal study, such as identifying individual animals and being able to follow the same population over several years. These problems are easily avoided with kangaroos, as our photographic survey let us identify animals without invasive tagging, and they tend to return to the same place every day.

We could easily look at the short-term and long-term relationships of each kangaroo, as well as how these relationships varied with sex, age and reproduction.

Looking at sociability on an individual level produced some surprising results.

We discovered some kangaroos were just more social than others. In some this was consistent, and in others it changed from year to year.

In fact, we found female kangaroos tended to be much more social in years when they had joeys. This is quite different from earlier research, which suggested kangaroos actually tend to isolate from the rest of the population when they become mothers.

What we think is happening here is that, while mothers tend to spend time in smaller groups (which is what other studies have shown), those groups change often. As a result, mothers associate with more other kangaroos in total – which would account for their high social scores.

So kangaroos’ loose social structure allows them to adjust their sociability with their reproductive state.

Related: Did you know kangaroos have three vaginas?

Long-term friendships?

However, the fact the social structure is loose doesn’t mean it is simple. We found kangaroo relationships might be far more complex than previously thought.

Some of our kangaroos maintained friendships across multiple years, a phenomenon that was particularly common among females. Kangaroos that were more “popular” – as determined by the social score we calculated – were far more likely to have these friendships.

This is the first evidence for long-term relationships in macropods (the animal family that includes kangaroos as well as wallabies, quokkas and others). However, long-term relationships are common in other large, social herbivores such as elephants, giraffes and ibex.

We only looked at the kangaroos for a short time each year. To find out whether they really do form long-term relationships, we will need to do more research. However, we have shown such relationships are a possibility, which is itself a very exciting development in the study of kangaroo behaviour.

Related: What to do if you find a joey

The importance of social organisation

So what’s next? The study of animal behaviour is constantly changing and there’s always lots more we can learn.

We have shown the benefits of looking at animal populations on an individual level, not just a species level. With this in mind, future research should investigate the existence of long-term relationships in kangaroos, as well as why female kangaroos might deliberately increase their sociability when they become mothers.

We often underestimate the importance of social organisation in animals. Further research into kangaroo behaviour can help us better appreciate the intelligence and social complexity of our favourite marsupials.

Nora Campbell is a PhD Candidate at UNSW Sydney.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Do kangaroos form mothers groups? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The council analysed the Palaszczuk government’s regional housing plan, released in August, saying it allowed for only the “bare minimum” of koala habitat protection.

The blueprint unlocked housing supply to allow the construction of 900,000 homes by 2046. 

However, the council fears almost six per cent of bushland will be lost to make way for 2.2 million extra residents expected to call the region home. 

Deputy Premier Steven Miles said Queensland must plan for the population boom. 

“More housing is needed than ever before, and we need a plan that ensures homes are delivered when and where they need to be, while also protecting Queensland’s great lifestyle,” Mr Miles said. 

“This plan doesn’t mean growth everywhere – it plans for growth in the suburbs that can cater for growth.” 

Related: Unbearable loss: our koalas are endangered

However, the council has spent weeks analysing the blueprint and says it ramps up pressure on the region’s threatened koala population. 

“Southeast Queensland is an ecological treasure trove of rainforests, bushland and internationally listed wetlands and iconic species like the koala,” director Dave Copeman said.

“All of that is at risk, with the new ShapingSEQ regional plan opening up more bushland and native habitat to urban sprawl and development.” 

If the region’s animals and plants are to have any hope not only to survive but to thrive, at least 40 per cent of the area needs to be covered by native bushland and natural ecosystems, the council said. 

“Southeast Queensland sits at 35 per cent bushland cover,” Mr Copeman said.

“This plan earmarks a further six per cent of southeast Queensland bushland for new housing, putting the region at risk of falling below the globally recognised minimum of 30 per cent bushland cover.” 

He said natural disasters and ongoing development threatened the koala habitat.

“Rather than nurturing critical koala habitat, the ShapingSEQ plan could be another series of attacks, putting the species at further risk of extinction,” Mr Copeman said.

“We can’t afford to lose a single hectare if we want to save the species.”

A spokesperson for the deputy premier said the conservation council was consulted and supported the plan’s release.

The plan took into account critical koala habitats and was focused on increasing housing density in areas that could accommodate it.

“We know we can’t rely on traditional models and greenfield development, because it has negative impacts on the environment and we know already developed areas are largely where Queenslanders want to live,” the spokesperson said.

The council said the government was moving in the right direction but must do more to ensure koala habitat protection.

Related: Landlocked: Kangaroos trapped by urban sprawl have nowhere left to go

The post Warning of dire threat to koalas from urban sprawl appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The North Central Catchment Management Authority resolved to get the freshwater fish, dubbed “zombie fish”, thriving again after the find.

A program to breed an “insurance” population of the endangered fish, in partnership with Melbourne’s SEA LIFE aquarium, was declared a success after the first eggs hatched on New Year’s Day.

Nine months on, breeders released the fish into McLartys Lagoon, a natural wetland on the mid-Goulburn River in Victoria.

The fish are small and purplish-brown to yellowish-brown, with a rounded head and a small mouth.

“Now that the (young) have developed to around 2cm to 3cm long, we have returned them into pest-free ‘surrogate’ sites in the wild to expand the population,” aquarium curatorial supervisor Samuel Fawke said.

It is the first time SEA LIFE Melbourne has bred and released native fish into the wild.

Other populations of the zombie fish have been released in different wetlands in Victoria.

Southern purple-spotted gudgeon fry are about 15mm in size, although they can reach 12cm.

They feed off live and pre-made foods and like to live in dense reeds.

The aquarium worked with the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority and the North Central authority for the release, which happened ahead of National Threatened Species Day on Thursday.

Visitors and locals to Melbourne can see the southern purple-spotted gudgeon at the SEA LIFE aquarium.

The post Once-extinct ‘zombie fish’ are back for a wild time appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Over four years, 86 expert authors from 49 countries gathered the latest scientific evidence and Indigenous and local knowledge on invasive alien species. The report draws on more than 13,000 references, including governmental reports. We were among the authors. Here are some of the key insights for Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

Hope in the face of increasing threats

In 2019, IPBES released a global biodiversity assessment that placed invasive alien species in the top five drivers of biodiversity loss – alongside changing land- and sea-use, over-exploitation of natural resources, climate change, and pollution.

This triggered further assessment to determine the current global state of biological invasions, the effectiveness of our existing responses, and recommended management and policy options.

The result, released today, is the most comprehensive overarching policy-relevant report on biological invasions to date.

It promises to help us meet our international obligations under the recently adopted UN Convention on Biological Diversity. In particular, one of the targets in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is to “eliminate, minimise, reduce and/or mitigate the impacts of invasive alien species on biodiversity and ecosystem services”.

The world faces increasing biosecurity threats, but effective management can prevent or lessen the extent of subsequent biological invasions. Ambitious progress can be achieved with an integrated approach.

The experience in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

Australia already has close to 3,000 introduced alien species. Aotearoa New Zealand has almost 900.

Globally, we observe around 200 new alien species every year, and many of these species (>10%) have negative impacts, including threats to native species, the health of natural vegetation, or the way ecosystems work.

Australian examples include foxes, red imported fire ants and gamba grass.

Aotearoa New Zealand suffers from invasive Australian possums. And the Māori cultural icon the Kauri tree is under siege from a deadly dieback disease.

The assessment reveals that invasive alien species have contributed to 60% of global extinctions, and have been the sole driver of 16% of recorded extinctions.

Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand have among the highest modern global native species extinction rates. Australia is the worst in the world for mammals, while Aotearoa New Zealand has experienced tragic loss in endemic birds, largely due to invasive species.

The economies of both countries rely heavily on agriculture, trade and eco-tourism. These sectors are highly susceptible to threats from invasive alien species. The cost to Australia is A$24.5 billion a year out of an estimated global cost of $654 billion (US$423 billion a year).

The cost of biological invasions is quadrupling every decade, but stringent biosecurity policies and practices can protect our environment and economies. They also safeguard our wellbeing and cultural and social livelihoods.

Continued cooperation and investment across our region is paramount to preventing future impacts from increasing threats. These include foot and mouth disease and avian influenza.

At the same time, already established invasive alien species can supercharge environmental disasters. For example, the wildfire-promoting properties of introduced African pasture grasses exacerbated bushfires in Hawaii this year.

Coordinate, consult and prioritise

An effective biosecurity system can mitigate the threats from invasive species. But to do so, we’ll need coherent policy across primary production and logistic sectors, better education and greater public awareness.

We need to coordinate and prioritise our efforts, from offshore ports to border control and quarantine, through to eradication or containment of any new pests and weeds.

Government-industry partnerships are leading to trusted “green-lane” trade supply chains. This cuts red tape for businesses that manage import risks and produce pre-costed and co-designed emergency response agreements.

Prevention will not stop arrivals altogether. We will still have to contend with blow-ins on storm winds, ocean waves and boat hulls. There’s also the $23 billion a year illegal pet trade.

Biosecurity tools work best alongside strong public support, regulation and governance. We share a proud history of effective biological control programs for many weeds and pests. Australia’s approach to rabbit control using a virus was a world-first and it remains in use 70 years later. This has delivered benefits worth more than $70 billion.

Despite strong biosecurity measures, highly engaged primary industries agricultural industries, excellent research infrastructure and a high level of public awareness, invasive alien species continue to slip through our borders and multiply.

We tried to defend our countries against recent invasions from the fall armyworm, myrtle rust and the varroa mite. But they have still managed to establish.

Related: Bound, gagged, posted: investigating Australia’s cruel and corrupt illegal wildlife trade

One world, ‘One Biosecurity’

The rising pressure of trade will likely outpace the resourcing dedicated to biosecurity measures. Frequent interceptions of pests, weeds, and diseases at our border highlight the pressure we are under. We will have to simply become smarter, more effective, and better coordinated across the human, animal, plant and ecosystem health sectors.

We encourage governments to recognise the threats invasive alien pests pose and mobilise their resources and capability to combat these threats – in regions where a species is first recognised as going rogue, rather than simply monitoring its progressive global spread. This is the One Biosecurity concept.

Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand can play a much stronger leadership role in managing biosecurity risks in the Pacific. After all, lax border protocols in our neighbourhood help pests and diseases end up on our doorstep.

Related: Australian feral cats wreak the most damage

Andy Sheppard, Research Director CSIRO Health & Biosecurity, CSIRO; Melodie McGeoch, Professor, La Trobe University; Philip Hulme, Distinguished Professor in Pest Management and Conservation, Lincoln University, New Zealand, and Phill Cassey, Australian Research Council Industry Laureate Fellow, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post True damage of feral species revealed in landmark report. What can we do to stop the decimation? appeared first on Australian Geographic.

“It mostly happens at night, mostly… around midnight,” Brad says, “which is why the majority of people have no clue about it.”

So what is disrupting the midnight silence?

“During their spring breeding season, male koalas bellow loudly to advertise themselves to females and other males,” Brad says. “While koalas can bellow at any time of the day, remote recorders deployed in forest have revealed they most often do so in the hours around midnight when most people are in deep sleep and so they commonly go unheard.”

                                                            _________________

Australia’s wildlife produces an array of wonderful sounds and, according to Brad, those sounds are becoming increasingly useful for ecologists. And new technology is helping capture and process much of this information, leading to an improved understanding of otherwise difficult-to-see animals. “This technology is turning out to be a game changer in helping us monitor the changing status of many of our unique species,” Brad says.

“The method of recording and identifying wildlife sounds is often referred to as ‘passive acoustics’ and it’s a rapidly evolving field. While the approach has been in use for many years with bats and frogs, it is increasingly being used for other taxa.

“In the past 10 years or so, hardware that can be programmed with unique recording schedules for extended field deployments has become readily accessible. The biggest challenge today is processing the vast quantities of data that are recorded.”

Automated identification of targeted species is key, says Brad, and using artificial intelligence (AI) is currently the most promising approach for recognising sounds produced by different species.

“This involves collating extensive training data from different regions and testing in real-world situations. It’s a similar approach to human-speech recognition, but for speech you don’t have the difficulty of all the background environmental sounds and, of course, there are millions of examples available for training algorithms.”

Cue the northern NSW koalas. The study of these populations is a great example of how passive acoustics is now being used to improve knowledge of a threatened species.

“Since 2015, our acoustic surveys in the hinterland forests of north-east NSW have revealed koalas remain widespread in these often difficult to access areas. By repeating these surveys each year, we have built up an enormous dataset of many thousands of hours of recordings across 224 sites in the region.

“Using an AI algorithm or recogniser for the koala bellow, we have scanned all of our recordings and, importantly, used humans to validate the presence of bellows.”

All of these data allowed Brad and his team to track the trend in the regional koala population over time, with recent analyses having revealed some good news – the koalas in this region have stable, albeit with declines in numbers at badly burnt sites during the Black Summer fires of 2019.

“These fires were the major factor influencing koalas in this region, but declines in numbers were mostly restricted to areas burnt by the worst fires – those with the highest severity. Koalas generally persisted where fires were less intense or where there was a mosaic of severity, and with good rain after the fires, most forests in north-east NSW have recovered well.”

The extensive acoustic datasets that these results are based upon are now being analysed for other iconic forest species, such as gliders and forest owls, many of which are listed as threatened. The first step in the process is training AI algorithms for these additional forest species. Many of these species are cryptic and there are limited examples of their calls available for training, yet an extensive library (the more the better, but preferably hundreds of calls) is needed from a variety of sites and regions to produce a reliable recogniser. Luckily, our acoustic archive has many calls from a range of species that we have identified during our koala work, along with some additional targeted recordings for some species (e.g. masked and barking owls).

“Our team has now trained recognisers for 10 species,” Brad says. “Using these AI recognisers to analyse our acoustic archive is a work in progress, but it’s clear, going forward, that acoustics will be a powerful addition to methods available for monitoring wildlife.”

Until our analyses from the last seven years of recording are completed, look and listen to this amazing variety of sounds from several of our less easily seen forest species. They range from the loud bellowing of a koala to dog-like yapping of the sugar glider, the falling bomb of the sooty owl and the deep woo-hoo of the powerful owl.

The post Training AI to listen to Aussie wildlife is a bellow and a hoot appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Well.

Grew up in Canberra: “Had a reserve out the back of our place, and we had cubby houses up in trees, with nailed-in planks as ladders, to make steps. There were several trees that leant themselves to these grandiose cubbies we built up there.”

But that wasn’t real climbing, he says.

Three years ago, Rob Blakers, then aged 62, decided to learn how to climb trees, specifically the very tall and straight Tasmanian blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus). A pretty big community of tree-climbers in Tasmania, some he knew: they were happy to help.

A highly technical business, really. No mad clambering and hoping for the best. Rob learnt how to use ropes and a harness and how to get up and move about, 15–25 metres in the air, standing on branches, looking for a comfortable nook to nestle into, a place to feel secure, be it raining or not. A truer sense of security comes from checking and re-checking your procedures (as a pilot does before take-off) because to fail, and to fall, is to die. All of this he took to heart and mind. And so, for the last three summers Rob has stood up in the branches of blue gums, holding a camera with a lens the size of a rocket launcher. It was possible to swing around on a harness, to get a better position, but sitting in a harness for eight hours at a time is hard on the body and, really, you’re in better stead when holding on to that tree.  

The point of this exercise was to photograph the world’s fastest parrot. How many people have even heard of such a thing? They’ve been clocked, the swift parrot, at nearly 90 kilometres an hour, the escape velocity of a car leaving the city and finding the open road.

Plenty of cars out there. So many cars.

Not so many swift parrots, less than 1000 remaining in the wild.

It’s a common story (species decline) that flares up in the public imagination too rarely and ineffectually: species edged out of, or suffering the destruction of, the kind of country it evolved from, where it once best fit. Habitat. It’s about as bad for the swift parrot as it can get without its genetics forever winking out as yet: officially listed as critically endangered. Critical condition like you hear about in car crashes. Doesn’t make the news as often. 

It is possible that you have seen or heard in the winter a swift parrot in southern or central Victoria, or eastern New South Wales. They’re loud and busy. You can hear them above a chainsaw. Rob has a recording of a forestry chainsaw starting up and an insistent swift parrot very quickly registering its disquiet, dismay, distress: if only the parrot could speak for itself.

In the last weeks of winter the swift parrot heads south, crossing the high-reaching waters of Bass Strait, to breed among the flowering blue gums, over spring and into summer in the south-west or Eastern Tiers of Tasmania.

Beyond that, they exist nowhere else in the world.

All young men tend to fall in love, sooner or later, and Rob fell in love with the alpine region, notably Mount Kosciuszko. At the tail-end of a science degree, he elected to do a Honours project on the Bogong moth. Perhaps because they liked the alpine regions too. This was 44 years ago.

Back then, in the spring, billions of these moths flowered from beneath the soil of the floodplains in western NSW and southern Queensland, and undertook long migrations to shelter in the cool air of the alps. Some of these journeys were more than 1000km, and so spectacular in scale as to block out the moon and smother Parliament House. 

The Rob Blakers project was mapping the moths’ aestivation sites. Aestivating is a neat trick: where the breeding cycle of a species is retarded to ensure they don’t breed in hostile conditions. For the Bogong moth, this means waiting out the summer. That’s the point of the migration. During the heat, the moths inhabit the high-country caves and the cracks in the granite outcrops.

“They just hang there, billions of them, like tiles: pull one at the bottom and two hundred will come down,” says Rob.

“On fine evenings, a portion will come out and whirl around your head for 20 minutes, banging into your head, and then they return to their caves. They’re not feeding. No one knows why they do it.”

Related: Persistent logging greatest threat to swift parrot, scientists find

For 2000 years, Indigenous people ate and toasted the Bogong moth, which was full of fat and protein. They might continue to feed the mountain pygmy possum if both creatures weren’t in such deep trouble. The latter is red listed as critically endangered (same as the swift parrot and orange-bellied parrot). The Bogong moth too has declined to the point of invisibility. In December 2021, it was listed as endangered on the global red list of threatened species. It was among 124 new entries on the list for Australian wildlife. It was thought that 99.5 per cent of the Bogong population had winked out three years before, due to pesticides, drought and light pollution.

In fact, numbers began to fall in the 1980s, soon after Rob had lived among the moths in beautiful summer.

“When I got to know them, they weren’t a conservation issue,” he says. “What’s happened to them since is the biggest bloody tragedy in the universe: they’ll be extinct in the wild in a matter of years. It just breaks my heart. These are the trends now, for shorebirds, most birds and wildlife: all those forces that are smashing shorebirds or Bogong moths aren’t stopping.”

And now here he is, witness to another (deleted) tragedy, climbing trees to photograph swift parrots in the canopy and at the nest, documenting the bird’s loud and joyful breeding ecology in areas of forest that were slated to be logged. These often intimate photographs were then published in a book, along with photographs of the inherent catastrophe of many Tasmanian blue gums chopped down and the ugly emptiness of what’s left behind. The idea was to use the book to lobby for an end to logging of these trees that the parrots rely on for their ongoing survival. Taken together it’s obviously depressing and, even sadder to say, probably futile.

But the time spent with the swift parrots was beautiful. As it was with the Bogong moth four decades ago, Rob got to know the swift parrots, and to some extent, always partially concealing themselves behind a curtain of leaves, the parrots got to know him. At the least they got to know he was there and weren’t obviously fussed.

“They are aware of me,” he says. “But I’m 20m away from the nest, so I’m not close at all. But with a long lens it’s not an issue,” and then:

 “If you spend time watching wildlife you get to know them and detect patterns and behaviours. They’re very social birds and quite voluble when flying around tchu! tchu! tchu! But when they come to nest, you might hear them a 100m away but then they go silent. They’ll jump or fly silently to the top of a nearby branch, silently hop down the branch, then regurgitate and feed the mate or the chicks, and then fly away silently.

“In the second half of the summer, I was looking at a breeding pair and the behaviours as the offspring went from eggs to tiny young to fledglings and then out. The two adults, their behaviour changes through that time. Initially the female sits on the eggs and the male is the one getting the food, and will come and perch on a nearby branch or else go into the nest and regurgitate the food into the female (sitting on the eggs at that time).

“Then once the chicks have hatched the male will go into the nest and regurgitate (the nectar) and feed the chicks. Once the chicks get a little bit bigger they’ll start coming out to the edge of the nest and the male will perch on the edge of the nest and regurgitate – at that point both male and female will be out getting food.

“And one place last summer where I got most of the photos from wasn’t even a nest, it was a wooden spar, a dead spar coming out the top of a living tree, extending above the canopy. I think they used it as a hangout and a lookout. And when they’re wet, it’s a place to dry off. They come and sit on this spar (somewhat like cormorants do) and preen themselves like crazy for 20 minutes and disappear again. It happened repeatedly in the rain.”

Rob Blakers is one of four siblings and it’s been a long time since they sat in those cubby houses, yet they all retain an interest in nature, and all love bushwalking. Margaret Blakers OAM, the eldest of the four, is credited for establishing the Victorian Greens and the national environmental policy of the Australian Greens, was an adviser to Senator Bob Brown, worked on the first Australian bird atlas, and continues on as a champion for forests. She, too, like her brothers, used to explore the nature reserve at the back of the Blakers family home in Canberra. This was in the 1960s. The idea of finding such an array of bird and plant and insect species on one’s suburban doorstep today is laughable if you’re prone to dark humour. It was beautiful while it lasted. 

“The neighbourhood kids would all go there,” says Rob, “roaming around the woodland. It was fantastic.”

But how do you go from frolicking as a child to giving your life over to a cause?

“My parents were really good people. Mother was a teacher, Father a senior public servant. And in those days it was old-style service. My father wasn’t out there to make a big career. He got quite high (in the public service) but that wasn’t his intention: he just dedicated his whole life to service. That’s what it was then.”

Young Rob Blakers thought he was following the same path: he was applying for jobs in the department of statistics. “My whole mindset was pretty conventional,” he say, “trusting of governments.”

Before following this desk-bound calling in earnest, he went to Tasmania for a three-week holiday. “I’d just finished university, I was 22 years old and I was free.”

He’d planned to spend the time cross-country skiing. “But there was no snow. So I wandered into the Wilderness Society and became politicised. This was a couple of years leading up to the blockade (of the proposed Franklin River dam). So I was caught in this vortex. Three weeks got extended to a month, two months and a year later I realised I was living in Tassie with this amazing bunch of young people. It turned me my whole framework around. I was working with Bob Brown and took on his approach. There was this whole gang of 15 people, Bob was a bit older, all on the dole, all working 16-hour days, doing nothing else, and we didn’t know that we were up against everything, all levels of government, media, unions and half of the public in Tassie. We sort of went ahead because we knew it was right. I think something like 1500 went to jail. But they turned it around. It was a miracle.”

Rob, who made his name as a landscape photographer during the Franklin campaign, was one of the people jailed. It was a big deal then, being arrested and jailed for a cause. It was even a bigger deal that the campaign worked, the Franklin was saved. “Our experience was that you do a campaign and it works. Over the next 30 years I’ve done so many campaigns that haven’t worked: losing forests to mines or logging in particular.”

In late June, the Bob Brown Foundation put out a press release. It began:

“One of Tasmania’s most renowned wilderness photographers, Rob Blakers, has been arrested by police after refusing to leave an area of critically endangered swift parrot habitat being destroyed in Tasmania’s Eastern Tiers.”

Where’s the outrage? Where is the media interest?

By then, Rob’s book of photographs was published. He’d been hoping to meet politicians and bureaucrats, do some lobbying. A couple of weeks before he was arrested, he told Australian Geographic:

“My job and our job is to bring pressure: they can’t sweep this under the rug because the bird will go extinct.”

Cute and deadly

Chainsaws and the loss of breeding habitat aren’t only cause of ruination for swift parrots. While the parrots carefully choose a snug-fitting tree hollow for nesting, to keep out predators, the cute but deadly sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps), a species introduced into Tasmania in the 19th Century, manages to work its way into the hole, trapping, killing and eating the mother and eggs.

“The consequence,” says Rob Blakers, “is an imbalance in the sex of the swift parrot population: there are far more males and far fewer females, which is exacerbating the decline.”

Further, the sugar gliders essentially work in tandem with logging. “The biggest predictor of sugar glider predation and nest mortality,” says Rob, “is the integrity of the forest.” 

In other words, if the forest is fragmented or compromised, via logging, the gliders tend to do better. “They feed on insects and nectar and not just swift parrots.”

Pro-logging governments have somewhat opportunistically highlighted the glider threat, intimating it as the main cause of swift parrot decline.  

In 2018, the Office of the Premier of Tasmania, put out a press release advising:

“It is estimated that up to 85 per cent of the critically endangered swift parrot population is at potential risk each season of being killed by sugar gliders.

“Research has shown that sugar gliders can have a devastating impact on swift parrot breeding success, with statistics showing 79 per cent of nests and 65 per cent of breeding females on mainland Tasmania can fall victim to sugar gliders each year.

“Following this revelation, the Commonwealth Government changed the listing of the swift parrot from ‘endangered’ to ‘critically endangered’ in 2016.”

This was part of an announcement that $150,000 would be spent trapping sugar gliders in 80 nesting boxes in Tasmania, “effectively creating safe zones for swift parrots to breed”.

There was no mention of limiting or ceasing the logging of Tasmanian blue gums.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Related: Less than 300 swift parrots remain in the wild

The post Out on a limb: Here’s why we need to act swiftly to save this colourful character appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Unfortunately, mass stranding events are common for pilot whales – both the long-finned (Globicephala melaena) and short-finned (Globicephala macrorhynchus) species. While scientists have many theories, no one really knows exactly why they do it. 

But this latest stranding presented scientists with some possible clues.

For the first time, the behaviour of the pilot whales in the time leading up to their stranding was witnessed, and captured by drone cameras. 

The animals were seen huddling together in a tight group and swimming very close to shore.  

“The fact they were in one area, very huddled and doing really interesting behaviours and looking around at times suggests something else is going on that we just don’t know,” said Macquarie University wildlife scientist Vanessa Pirotta at the time. 

Experts speculated the whales could have been ill, or suffering stress caused by loud underwater noise.

Now, these theories are being tested. 

Marine scientists at Perth’s Curtin University are using micro CT scanning technology to assess the inner ears of three of the deceased whales.

These CT scan images will be compared to existing CT scan data from the ears of healthy pilot whales to look for any damage to the hearing or echolocation structures. 

But first, the team will scan the entire bodies of the whales to rule out illness or injury as causes for the stranding. 

“We have received three of the whales that died in the stranding, of differing sexes and ages,” explains Dr Chong Wei, a marine bioacoustic specialist at Curtin’s Centre for Marine Science and Technology. 

“First, we will scan the whole of the pilot whales and check for any significant sicknesses or injuries to the internal bodies of the animals… because medical CT scans can check the whole body, but micro CT scans provides a much higher resolution.”

The focus will then move to the ears.

“Then we will do the dissection and do a micro CT scan of the ears to see if there is damage,” says Dr Wei. 

“If we find any evidence of ear damage we will be able to assess how this damage was caused. 

“Sometimes, when an animal is exposed to a very intense sound [either once or over a period of time] that can cause some damage.”

Dr Wei has previously researched the effects of seismic testing on the ears of fish. 

‘We’ve done some research before In our lab about how seismic survey signals cause damage to fish ears and we found if a seismic survey uses very high intensity pulses and fish ears are exposed to this high intensity sound for a period of time, we found small holes and blisterings in the membrane of the ears, so we want to know if this has a similar effect on whales.”

“These are vital clues that may indicate whether some form of inner-ear damage played a role in the devastating mass stranding of the whales on WA’s south coast.”

3D acoustic models of the deceased whale’s ears will then be created using the  information from the micro CT scans.

“We can build acoustic models that simulate sound production, as well as the propagation and reception processes that occur inside the animal’s head,” explains Dr Wei.

“In particular, we want to know if there could be interference to the whales’ echolocation system.

“Pilot whales are toothed whales, and toothed whales rely heavily on their echolocation – for navigation, pretty much for everything.

“So we want to see if [interference with their echolocation systems] could have potentially caused them to lose their sense of direction or anything else that caused the stranding.”

Dr Wei says he expects to be able to share some results from the research within several months.

The post Scientists begin studying bodies of whales from recent WA mass stranding   appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Young albatross, embarking on their first journey, can spend up to five years at sea without ever touching land.

Yet not all albatross are the same. Across the world’s oceans there exist 22 species, with many sharing an overlapping range around the Southern Ocean — a region synonymous with cold, roaring winds and towering waves.

Our new research shows how albatross species evolved different beak shapes to make the most of the ocean’s food resources. These species have adapted to different seafood diets.

Move over, Darwin’s finches!

In 1835 Charles Darwin discovered the finches of the Galápagos Islands and noted their beaks varied in shape and size to suit different diets. This observation became a centrepiece for the theory of evolution, showing how species adapt to different ways of life.

From a single common ancestor, Darwin’s finches diversified. Some birds have thick beaks for feeding on seeds and nuts, while others have pointed beaks for eating insects. This variation allows species to specialise, helping them to share available food sources and limit competition.

Albatross have fascinating beaks. Unlike most other birds, they have a “compound” beak made of multiple pieces of keratin. Albatross spend most of their lives at sea, so they have adapted to drink seawater. They use a special gland to remove salt from the seawater and their beaks contain tube-like passages that excrete the salty liquid.

By studying the shape of albatross beaks in three dimensions (3D), our new research shows that, just like Darwin’s finches, albatross beaks vary in size and shape to adapt to different diets.

The 3D scanning revolution

Wildlife research is undergoing a revolution as scientists use new 3D scanning and modelling techniques to compare the anatomy of animals. This gives fresh insights into their ecology and evolution.

Using museum specimens, we made 3D digital models of beaks for 61 birds from 12 different albatross species. We compared the size and shape of different species’ beaks. We tested if closely-related species had similar beaks. Alternatively, beaks might be more alike between species that are distantly related but consume similar food. Such a pattern would be an example of convergent evolution.

We found beak size and shape varied between albatross species, making it a useful tool for identifying species that otherwise look similar.

Beaks also varied between species that eat either invertebrate prey, fish, or a mixture of both. Even in species that have similarly shaped beaks and diets, variations in beak size enable them to focus on prey of different sizes within the same category, such as small versus large fish.

The variation is most obvious in changes in the length and thickness of the beaks, but they can also vary in how the separate keratin pieces come together to make up the whole shape of the beak. These differences help albatross species to avoid competition with each other as they forage together over the open ocean.

A future for albatross?

This research was made possible by the large collection of more than 750 albatross specimens preserved at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

Almost all of these specimens came to the museum after being caught as bycatch in past longline fisheries, where bird carcasses were collected to identify which species were being captured on hooks.

Fortunately, improved fishing methods have reduced albatross bycatch, but this collection now remains as a valuable resource for new research like this into the biology of these birds.

Sadly, fisheries are not the only threat these extraordinary birds face. The first European record of an albatross from 1593 tells us how the bird was captured, killed and eaten. Today, of the 22 albatross species, two are considered critically endangered, seven species are endangered, and a further six species are considered vulnerable.

Albatross are still frequent victims of fisheries bycatch, plastic pollution, and introduced predators on their breeding islands.

Like most wildlife species, the persistent threat of climate change looms large, as the world’s oceans warm and alter their habitat and the abundance of their prey.

Despite their evolutionary marvels and remarkable adaptations to the harshest ocean on Earth, the albatross serves as a poignant reminder of nature’s fragility. It is our duty to ensure their wings continue to soar above our oceans for generations to come.

Jane Younger, Lecturer, Southern Ocean Vertebrate Ecology, University of Tasmania; David Hocking, Adjunct Research Associate, Monash University, and Josh Tyler, Postgraduate Research Student, Department of Life Sciences, University of Bath

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related: Artificial nests are having a positive impact on Tasmanian shy albatross populations

The post Thick ones, pointy ones – how albatross beaks evolved to match their prey appeared first on Australian Geographic.

“On three separate occasions, with three different cats, they approached the feather boas, eyeing them off, clearly identifying they weren’t an animal, and then proceeding to grab the feather boa and kick it, do the bunny kick, regardless!”

Alexandra saw these scenes play out in sequences of photographs captured with camera traps she had planted in the Tasmanian wilderness: 

“Although we need to remember, feral cats in Australia – while they are very different behaviourally to pet cats in most senses, they’ve never seen a human before and they’re terrified of our presence – they are still at the end of the day the same species of cats we have at home, so they’re going to play when they have the opportunity,” Alexandra says.

So, why did she plant these camera traps? Let’s start from the beginning.

Last year, Alexandra set out to discover which lures are most effective at attracting feral cats to walk in front of camera traps.

Images captured by these camera traps are used by land managers to count the number of cats in an area. These numbers are used to monitor whether control measures are working. 

“So you can use technology like camera traps to get an idea of how many individuals you have; it’s really useful technology,” says Alexandra.

But, of course, for camera traps to work, the cats actually need to walk in front of them. So lures are used to attract the cats.

“I don’t want land managers who are busy trying to fix the cat problem wasting their time putting out lures that aren’t going to work. So I started this experiment for that purpose.” 

Alexandra set 64 traps across four different grid locations within Tasmania’s southeastern rainforests, rotating four different types of lure:

• Food lure: a cage of meat (wallaby organs) 
• Smell lure: tuna oil
• Visual lure: a feather boa
• Null lure: just an empty post

“Lo and behold the feather boas were actually the most effective,” Alexandra says.

“I didn’t really think the feather lures would be that effective. I didn’t think the cats would care.

“And I thought they had better things to do than be playing with feathers!”

Crunching the numbers 

With the four-month experiment completed, and the data now analysed, Alexandra confirms the odds of detecting a cat at a camera trap “increased fivefold when using feather boas as compared to using no lure, and fourfold for food as compared to using no lure”.

“However, if Tasmanian devil activity increased as a result of that food lure, then the odds of detecting a cat at a site halved as compared to if we had used no lure.”

This is where it gets even more interesting…

Trickier in Tasmania 

Alexandra explains that, while the feather boas were most effective in Tasmania at attracting feral cats, a meat lure could be just as effective on the mainland.

“They [meat lures] can work in arid parts of Australia but it gets a little trickier in Tasmania because we also have native carnivores, including the amazing scavenger, the Tasmanian devil,” she says.

“There’s research out of the University of Tasmania that cats and devils avoid each other – so if we start putting meat in front of our cameras to lure cats to see if they are there, could we actually be shooting ourselves in the foot because devils are far better at finding meat than cats are, so what if we’re actually just attracting devils, and in that sense, deterring cats?

“So, it’s a bit trickier than the mainland.”

Other animals, including eastern and spotted-tailed quolls, rats and Tasmanian devils were drawn to the meat lures.

Curious natives 

While the focus of the experiment was on feral cats, some native species provided Alexandra with some light entertainment along the way.

“Pademelons weren’t included in my analysis… but I couldn’t help but enjoy going through all the images of them playing with the feather boas. They were insatiably curious. None of the other macropods did that.”

Alexandra shares a particular story that really tugs at the heartstrings: 

“There was one pademelon that every night for a week came back and played and cuddled with the feather boa. Then you see an image of me coming in and removing the feather boa, and there’s a little sequence of the pademelon back the next night looking around really disarrayed because its toy is gone!”

The besotted pademelon. 

A wedge-tailed eagle also interacted with the feather boa.

“Where these cameras were deployed is mostly dense canopy cover, but there was one lure I put out in an open space,” explains Alexandra.

“The images showed a juvenile wedge-tailed eagle come down in front of the camera, attack the feather boa, then he stomps around the site and peers into the camera. It’s almost like he’s seen the camera and is saying ‘is this a joke to you? I’m trying to find food!’”

The frustrated wedge-tailed eagle.

Alexandra says capturing these images of native wildlife was not just fun, but will also be helpful to science.

“It’s so useful. At the end of the day we’re removing cats from the environment to protect our native wildlife.

“So if we can also, as a by-product of this experiment, find ways to better monitor our natives as well, and get more pictures of them to measure their recovery or how their populations are changing in response to all the hard work we’re doing, then all the better!”

Related: AI discovers bushfire-ravaged native species are bouncing back

The post Feather boas lure feral cats, study finds appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Of the island’s 1570sq.km, 85 per cent is national park. Its human population of 400 is far outnumbered by birdlife, with many of the approximately 130 avian species found here declared endangered or vulnerable nationally.

While their mainland counterparts have fallen victim to introduced mammals and marsupials (chick and egg-eating types such as possums, stoats and ferrets) Stewart Island provides a haven from these feral predators, allowing birdlife to thrive.

Above, we showcase just some of the remarkable species thriving on Rakiura.

Read the full story:

Related: A birding paradise in the South Pacific

The post Birds of Rakiura appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The 240-million-year-old fossil was found in the early 1990s by chicken farmer, Mihail Mihaildis, on the New South Wales Central Coast. Mihail had bought a 1.6-tonne sandstone slab to fix a broken retaining wall at his home but as he sliced through the stone’s outer layers, the outline of an unknown creature revealed itself. The Australian Museum’s (AM) former Head of Palaeontology, Dr Alex Ritchie, persuaded Mihail to donate the fossil to the museum, where it was included in a travelling dinosaur exhibition at Darling Harbour.

It was here that a young Lachlan saw the fossil, spoke to AM staff and decided to be a palaeontologist. Twenty-five years on, Lachlan, who holds joint roles with the Australian Museum and UNSW Science, is doing his PhD on this very fossil, and has just had his first paper published.

“I was obsessed with dinosaurs… and so 12-year-old me saw that fossil on display back in 1997. And then 25 years later it became part of my PhD, which is insane,” Lachlan says.

The fossil, named Arenaepeton supinatus, meaning ‘supine sand creeper’ – shows nearly the entire skeleton, and remarkably, the outlines of its skin. Less than 10 fossils of the lizard-like species have been identified globally. And Lachlan says the discovery may “rewrite the evolution of amphibians in Australia”.

“This fossil is a unique example of a group of extinct animals known as temnospondyls, which lived before and during the time of the dinosaurs,” says Lachlan.

“It’s got the head and the body attached, and the fossilisation of the creature’s skin and fatty tissues around the outside of its body – all of that makes this a really rare find.”

Arenaerpeton inhabited freshwater rivers in what is now known as the Sydney Basin during the Triassic period, 240 million years ago. Lachlan says it most likely hunted other ancient fish such as Cleithrolepis, but apart from that, there is not much evidence that tells us about the other animals which shared the land and waters with Arenaepeton.

“Superficially, Arenaerpeton looks a lot like the modern Chinese giant salamander, especially in the shape of its head,” Lachlan says.

“However, from the size of the ribs and the soft tissue outline preserved on the fossil we can see that it was considerably more heavyset than its living descendants. It also had some pretty gnarly teeth, including a pair of fang-like tusks on the roof of its mouth.”

Related: Australia’s living fossils

Lachlan says what is exciting about the discovery is that Arenaerpeton is large – estimated to be about 1.2m from head to tail – when most other closely related animals that lived at the same time were small.

“The last of the temnospondyls were in Australia 120 million years after Arenaerpeton, and some grew to massive sizes. The fossil record of temnospondyls spans across two mass extinction events, so perhaps this evolution of increased size aided in their longevity.”

Dr Matthew McCurry, Curator of Palaeontology at the Australian Museum and Senior Lecturer in UNSW’s School of BEES said the fossil is a significant find in Australian paleo history.

“This is one of the most important fossils found in NSW in the past 30 years, so it is exciting to formally describe it,” says Matthew, who is also a co-author on the study. “It represents a key part of Australia’s fossil heritage.”

The study has been published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, and the fossil will be on display at the Australian Museum, Sydney, later this year.

Related: All that glitters: the fossils of Lightning Ridge

The post Ancient mystery solved: Lizard-like creature found in retaining wall has ‘hart’ appeared first on Australian Geographic.

The vid shows a turtle with butterflies on its head, wearing a fluttering crown, and was accompanied by a claim that the insects were drinking the reptile’s tears.

Ever curious and with fact-checking as part of our DNA, we sought out an expert for explanation.

“Yes the phenomenon is real,” says Dr Andrew Mitchell, Senior Research Scientist, Entomology at the Australian Museum Research Institute.

“It’s been documented many times in Central and South America with butterflies feeding on turtle and alligator tears. People have hypothesised that they’re obtaining salts and/or proteins.”

According to Andrew, this behaviour appears to be opportunistic rather than a symbiotic relationship, as suggested in the comments on the video, but not much research has been done on it.  

“Whether the turtle benefits is not known, even though someone has commented that it gets it’s eyes cleaned,” says Andrew. “The phenomenon is probably not as common in Australia – I haven’t personally heard reports of it here.”

It’s a similar behaviour, he says, to the better-known practice of “puddling”, where butterflies congregate at puddles or even on faeces and again are thought to be deriving salts.

“Some moths feed on cattle’s tears for the same reason, others are known to probe open wounds on mammals for blood and some even pierce the skin to sip their blood – they’re known as vampire moths!”

Now before you go weaving a wreath of garlic to wear around your neck, here’s the lowdown: while the common name refers to their habit of drinking blood from vertebrates, including humans (Calyptra thalictri), studies have shown the moths are not thought to cause any threat to us. Phew!

Related: How butterflies conquered the world

The post Blood suckers and tear drinkers: The secret(ion) lives of butterflies and moths appeared first on Australian Geographic.

“Deep-diving seals like Weddell and elephant seals provide us with a wealth of information on the structure of the ocean floor,” says Dr Clive McMahon, lead author of the new study published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment.

Based at the Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS), Clive leads the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) Animal Tagging sub-Facility. He also leads the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (ACEAS) elephant seal tagging project out of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) at the University of Tasmania.

Related: A guide to Australia’s seals and sea lions

“Given the remote and inhospitable nature of Antarctica and the surrounding Southern Ocean, only a small part of the Antarctic continental shelf was surveyed by ships in the past, so the information available about this area is sparse,” he says.

For the seal tagging project, scientists attached small satellite-linked devices to seals, which measure temperature, salinity and depth as they swim. The study focused on more than 500,000 individual seal dives beneath the East Antarctic continental shelf, where seals have been equipped with satellite-linked devices since 2004.

“The information we’re receiving via seal dives is enormously valuable, to improve our understanding of the oceanographic processes that affect Antarctica’s role in global climate,” says co-author Professor Mark Hindell, from ACEAS and IMAS.

“We found in some regions that more than 25 per cent of previous estimates of the ocean depths were wrong.

“We only know this now because the seals were diving hundreds of metres below those depths. In the most extreme case, they were diving 1000m deeper than what we thought was the ‘ocean floor’.”

The data from the dives also revealed new underwater features, including troughs off the Shackleton Ice Shelf and Underwood Glacier, and a deep canyon near the Vanderford Glacier. This deep canyon, the Mirounga-Nuyina Canyon, was confirmed by a recent multi-beam echo sounder survey from Australia’s new icebreaker, the RSV Nuyina.

“The observations we collect from the seals help us better understand the shape of the ocean floor, especially where there are channels for warm water to access ice shelf cavities,” Clive says. “This knowledge is essential for scientists trying to measure icesheet melt rates.”

The East Antarctic ice sheet is particularly important as it locks in more than 52 metres of global sea level rise.

“As the climate changes, greater intrusions of warm water into the shelf cavities are more likely,” Mark says.

“So if we can find out exactly where the water accesses the underside of the shelves, we’ll also be much better placed to quantify melt rates, fresh water input into the ocean and other variables that affect our future oceans and climate.”

The post How deep is the sea? These clever seals know and are happily sharing their secrets appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Famous for their abundance of birdlife, the islands are also home to two land mammals – the bush rat (Rattus fuscipes) and the star of this story, the tammar wallaby (Notamacropus eugenii).

Fast facts

Common name: Tammar wallaby

Scientific name: Notamacropus eugenii

Description: A mixed colouring of brown, white, black and grey. An off-white belly and white cheek stripes. Strong hind feet and large ears

Body length: 55–70 cm

Tail length: 33–45 cm

Weight: 4–10 kg

Diet: Herbivores, eating grasses and shrubs.

Habitat: Scrub

Distribution: Coastal southwest Western Australia and WA offshore islands, and South Australian offshore islands.

Threats: Habitat destruction and feral predators

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Image credit: Susan Flashman/shutterstock

Found throughout the southwest coastal region of Western Australia, and on some South Australian offshore islands, the tammar wallabies residing on the Abrolhos Islands have evolved a behaviour exclusive to their tiny population – the ability to drink seawater. 

“The Abrolhos are off Geraldton, which is the farthest north the tammar wallabies go, so it’s the northern extremity of the species range,” explains macropod expert, Dr Mark Eldridge, Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Museum.

“So I suspect that may have something to do with it, being the hottest area they live in.”

While there is some freshwater on the islands, as well as vegetation from which the wallabies can draw water, the hot and dry conditions – especially in summer – cause these water sources to become scarce.

Scientists believe this is why the wallabies turned to the ocean.

The first time the wallabies were seen drinking from the ocean surrounding the Abrolhos Islands was in the late 1960s, when the behaviour was also first recorded in a scientific publication.

Today, tammar wallabies are still seen drinking seawater.

But while, at first, this ability seems like a neat party trick, it comes with a significant physiological toll on the wallabies.

The energy that it requires to process the excess salt impedes many other bodily functions.

“There’s a whole lot of things you have to do if you’re going to drink seawater because you’re taking on board a whole heap of extra salts, so you need to then get rid of them somehow,” says Mark.

He explains that this can be done in a few ways, “either by excreting it in the urine – making the urine super concentrated so that you don’t lose a whole lot of water with it, or by secreting the salt through glands and pores.” 

“So they can do it but there’s a metabolic and energetic cost associated with it, they often lose condition and there’s other negative impacts. So they only probably do it when they’re desperate.”

But in a world of survival of the fittest this ability is, ultimately, impressive.

“Yes, it’s a desperate measure, but it’s probably the difference between surviving and not,” says Mark.

“It’s pretty amazing. I think they’re the only macropods that have ever been recorded doing this.

“They’re tough little things.”

Related: Australia's new national park: the Houtman Abrolhos Islands

The post The wallaby that drinks seawater appeared first on Australian Geographic.

Those opposed to feeding wild birds cite a plethora of reasons:

• the spread of diseases (well-documented in the US and UK)
• poor nutrition as a result of an unbalanced diet
• advantaging already abundant species
• changing community structure (birds that visit feeders prosper at the cost of those that don’t)
• even altering migration patterns.

These impacts occur everywhere wild birds are fed and are potentially serious.

On the other hand, engaging with wild birds in this way is now recognised as one of the most effective ways people can connect with nature. There is strong evidence that spending time in natural settings is good for people’s wellbeing and mental health. This becomes increasingly important as more and more of the world’s people live in large cities.

These trends mean the simple, common practice of attracting birds to your garden by feeding them is taking on much greater significance for the welfare of both birds and people.

Related: Magpies, curlews, peregrine falcons: how birds adapt to our cities, bringing wonder, joy and conflict

What did the study look at?

Previous studies documented a global increase in birdwatching during lockdowns. We wondered whether interest in feeding birds might have increased similarly as well. That usually means buying seed mixes and providing a feeder. To be included in our study, some cost was required; discarded food scraps were not counted as feeding.

It was important to go beyond the countries where we already knew feeding was common. We wanted to compare the interest levels for more than 100 countries during and after lockdowns. We also examined whether the level of interest in bird feeding was related to the diversity of birds in each country, a measure known as “species richness”.

We assessed the weekly frequency of search terms, including “bird feeder”, “bird food” and “bird bath”, using Google Trends for all countries with sufficient search volumes from January 1 2019 to May 31 2020. We wanted to see if these searches increased during each country’s specific lockdown period (generally around February-April 2020). We drew on bird species richness data for each nation from the BirdLife International database.

Comparing the interest volume for 52 weeks leading up to the lockdown with the week immediately before, we found no discernible change. Within only two weeks, however, the frequency of searches showed a surge in bird feeding interest during the general lockdown period across 115 of the countries surveyed. This happened in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

What explains the change?

There are several possible reasons for this change. People throughout the world were forced to remain close to home. The backyard or nearby park became the focus of attention, perhaps for the first time.

Lockdowns were a time of high anxiety and stress. Aspects of life that seemed to be carrying on regardless, such as birds arriving each day to be fed, may have been a course of comfort and reassurance.

Feeding birds has been found to enhance feelings of personal worth and peace. Presumably, it’s because of the relative intimacy associated with being able to attract wild, unrestrained creatures to visit by simply providing some food.

Bird feeding is also cheap, simple and available to virtually everyone. Birds will visit a feeder in a private garden, a public park or even a balcony on a residential tower.

Related: Feathered geniuses: birds are much smarter than we think

And what difference does bird diversity make?

We found a clear association between the level of interest in feeding and species diversity. Countries that lacked bird-related search interest had an average of 294 bird species. In contrast, those countries with clear interest had an average of 511 species.

This clear difference suggests that having a greater variety of species prompts more bird feeding. It may also mean places with more species have a larger number of bird types living in their cities (where most feeders live). This remains to be be investigated. We do know that feeding birds leads to more birds overall, but not more species.

Because we used Google searches as the proxy measurement for bird-feeding interest, bird-feeding practices in countries with lower income or less internet access may not have been adequately captured. Nonetheless, our method was able to detect a surge of interest in bird feeding in countries such as Pakistan and Kenya.

The COVID-19 lockdowns seemed to encourage people all over the world to seek connection and interaction with their local birds. We hope future studies can further analyse the global extent of bird feeding and capture more data in previously understudied countries.

Feeding birds is obviously very popular. For people. But it can lead to problems for the birds. To minimise the risks, keep in mind some simple rules:

• keep the feeder extremely clean (disease is always a concern)
• don’t put out too much food (they don’t need it)
• provide food that is appropriate for the species (never human food – buy wild bird food from pet food companies).

Darryl Jones, Deputy Director of Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related: OPINION: Yes, it’s okay to feed wild birds in your garden

The post Wild bird feeding surged during lockdowns. That’s good for people, but not necessarily for birds appeared first on Australian Geographic.

UniSC researcher and project lead Dr Kate Mounsey said there was optimism about the success of repurposing a drug currently used to control fleas and ticks to treat infected wombats, but more evidence was needed to assess the dosage, delivery, target activity in the mite, and ecological impact of the drug.

Kate, who has two decades of experience in researching scabies in humans, said sarcoptic mange in wombats was caused by a similar microscopic, parasitic mite.

“It results in severe skin crusting, scratching, hair loss and death due to malnutrition or secondary infections if left untreated,” Kate said.

“It is a serious welfare issue for bare-nosed wombats in south-eastern Australia, with high prevalence in many areas of New South Wales.”

Kate, UniSC Professor of Pathophysiology Robert Harvey and PhD student Kotaro Takano said participating in fieldwork had shown them the severe distress of infected wombats and the challenges faced by wildlife carers trying to treat the animals in the wild.

In a publication in the International Journal for Parasitology, the UniSC team outlined the extent of the problem and the challenges of current treatments.

“We are working to better understand the genetics of the drug receptor genes in the scabies mite and their specific interactions with current treatments,” Kate said.

Related: On the frontlines of mange, this is one wombat rescuer’s story

The $120,000 grant was awarded by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service ‘Curb Wombat Mange’ research program.

“With this project, in partnership with the University of Canberra and two wombat rescue organisations, we will closely monitor treatments in severely infected wombats that are being rehabilitated,” Kate said.

“This will include clinical and behavioural assessments of the wombats.

“We will also address concerns around the development of drug resistance by measuring the mite-killing activity of treatments and test the success of different drug delivery formulations on mites.”

The project builds on a recent national study funded by the Australian Research Council and led by the University of Tasmania. The ultimate goal is to prevent the spread of sarcoptic mange in one of Australia’s most iconic marsupials.

Related: Video of wombats mating sideways offers rare glimpse into underground sex lives

The post Fighting the skin disease killing Australia’s wombats appeared first on Australian Geographic.

These tall timber structures, with timber cross arms near the top, give gliders a way to cross big roads. They can shimmy up a pole on one side of the road and then leap to another (and another) to get to the other side.

After witnessing the earliest experiments with glide poles decades ago, it’s heartening to see the design refined and replicated up and down the east coast.

Watch squirrel gliders getting used to their new road crossing device in Forster, New South Wales, in 2022:

The world’s largest gliding marsupial, the greater glider, was listed nationally as endangered a year ago this month. That’s because their populations had declined by 80 per cent in just 20 years.

As land-clearing and bushfires continue to destroy old growth forests with tall trees and hollows, gliders need all the help they can get.

Related: Greater glider one step closer to extinction

Biomimicry with wooden poles

From the match-box sized feathertail glider to the small cat-sized greater glider, Australia’s 11 species each have a gliding membrane, or patagium. This a thin area of skin stretching from the ankles to the wrists or hands.

When a glider leaps from a tree (or glide pole), it extends its front and hind limbs, stretching out its patagium, which allows it to glide.

In 1993 Ross Goldingay, one of Australia’s leading glider ecologists, came up with the idea of using tall wooden power poles (without wires) as road-crossing stepping-stones for gliders. The glide poles would act as substitutes for tall trees, so it was a very simple and elegant form of what’s known as “biomimicry”.

Ross directed the placement of glide poles on either side of a powerline easement at Bomaderry Creek near Nowra in southern New South Wales. The trial aimed to ensure yellow-bellied gliders could still cross the easement if it was developed into a local road.