wildlife down under Archives - Page 2 of 3

The FWP weekly digest of wondrous wildlife happenings
and other interesting items from the natural world

Creatures to meet | Things to learn
Things to do

Lisa S. French

2-minute read

While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery amongst humans, for dolphins, believed to be the second most intelligent creatures on Earth, copying the behavior of finned friends is very much a practical matter—it’s all about upgrading fish acquisition skills.

According to new research from scientists working with the Dolphin Innovation Project at Australia’s Shark Bay Marine Reserve, the clever cetaceans are making the most of their ability to absorb and apply knowledge by forming alliances outside of their families and learning specialized tool-using techniques to increase the day’s catch.

Like many young in the animal kingdom, bottlenose dolphin calves typically pick up foraging know-how from their mothers. However, the Shark Bay study revealed that the cognitively advanced animals recognize a good idea when they see one—even if it doesn’t come from mom. The dolphins are also motivated to learn tool-based foraging innovations from social interactions with non-parental adults. This marine life mentoring has resulted in the spread of an ingenious prey capture strategy known as shelling.

By observing and imitating others, a small group of dolphins in Shark Bay have learned how to trap prey in large gastropod shells, lift the shells above water, and shake them to dislodge and devour the fishy contents. This is how they do it.

Researchers believe the dolphins may have developed the trap and shake method of foraging to adapt to environmental change. For two years following a 2011 heatwave that caused a reduction in food supply impacting their reproduction and survival, the dolphins’ shelling behavior increased by 50%. By taking advantage of opportunities to interact and learn from other adults, the Shark Bay dolphins increased their resilience to life-threatening ecosystem stressors. Who’s a super-smart, social-networking aquatic mammal!

By the way, the Shark Bay Marine Reserve is located in Useless Loop. Is there a better town name? Well, there might be, but we haven’t come across it!

If you’d like to help ensure bottlenose dolphins can keep on being their big-brained, tool-using selves, you can contribute to the mission-critical conservation of marine habitats by participating in Plastic Free July, a global movement to give up the indestructible stuff and return our oceans to their prior state of pristine. Feeling motivated to reduce your use of plastic at home, school, and work? You can get all sorts of inspiring ideas about how to cut it out from the good people at the Plastic Free Foundation.

As a powerful visual reminder of how much plastic ends up in our oceans (8 million metric tons a year!), the talented artists at Oregon’s Washed Ashore Project have created a menagerie of 80 beautiful and thought-provoking wildlife sculptures constructed from debris collected from local beaches. If you’ve ever wondered what a shark, seal, or sea turtle built from bottles, buckets, and gumboots might look like, wonder no more. You can take a peek at Washed Ashore’s current art to save the sea exhibits here.

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Lisa S. French July 15, 2020

Owl Alone

2-minute read

Just one. That’s how many Norfolk Island boobook owls (aka morepork owls) were left on the small, South Pacific territory of Australia in 1986. Decades of extensive deforestation of the large, old-growth trees the birds depended on for safe nesting had reduced the population of the small, spotted owls to a sole female survivor. With a shortage of trees to nest in and no other owls to nest with, the last Norfolk Island boobook was in reproductive dire straits—owl alone. In 1987, concerned scientists determined to ensure the world’s rarest owl wouldn’t be the end of her species’ genetic line came up with a conservation strategy for matchmaking in the wild.

When it’s a matter of preserving DNA representing thousands of years of evolutionary adaptation in a specific environment, it’s not as if any old owl would do for the lone bird’s mate. To ensure the offspring of the last Norfolk Island boobook would carry on her unique traits, Australian conservationists imported two male New Zealand boobooks, her nearest genetic relatives, for a species-saving liaison. The Norfolk Island boobook took to one of the feathered New Zealand fellows almost immediately, and the two owls produced five hybrid offspring. The population continued on an upward trajectory and by 1995 there were nine new hybrid owls resulting from the original Norfolk Island/New Zealand match up. It looked as if the assisted avian pairing had paid off. But in 2012, the birds hit another rough patch and stopped breeding for close to a decade.

To help overcome the dual pressures of invasive predators and habitat loss, avian ecologists from Australia’s Monash University added more nesting boxes and owl monitors to Norfolk Island National Park in hope of encouraging the birds to carry on. And in April of 2020, researchers made an exciting discovery—two utterly adorable hybrid owl chicks were located, putting an end to a long reproductive dry spell for a bird species perched on the edge of extinction.

Some may ask why preserving the genome of one little owl is so important in the grand scheme of things. There are many reasons to conserve species, including the right to existence, ethical considerations, and cultural significance, as well as maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Conservation interventions that protect the island bird’s forest habitat can also benefit other threatened flora and fauna.

As conservation strategies go, most researchers agree that the intentional hybridization of endangered animals is far from a perfect solution. But when there is only one isolated bird of its kind remaining, as in the case of the Norfolk Island boobook, hybridization may be the only option left to maintain its distinctive genetic traits. There’s a saying that perfect is the enemy of great, and these owl hybrids are living proof because they sure look great to us. The last little boobook just needed a bit of extra help to be owl-right!

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Lisa S. French May 28, 2020

Rescuing Coral Reefs: Cloud Brightening, Bionics, and Super Corals

3.5-minute read

If you’ve not had much mental bandwidth left to ferret out non-COVID-19 news, we totally empathize. In case you missed the story of the third mass bleaching event in five years of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, here’s a quick what’s what—along with a roundup of some inventive strategies aimed at keeping all of the world’s precious corals out of hot water.

Although some of the creature components of the natural world are currently experiencing a welcome period of rest and recovery, as a result of rising ocean temperatures, the large colonies of thousands of tiny animals that make up coral reefs are facing unprecedented heat stress that is exceeding their ability to adapt and survive. These architecturally complex living structures support beautifully biodiverse undersea communities that encompass up to 25 percent of all marine species, including 4000 types of fish and an estimated 8 million yet-to-be-discovered organisms. As critical parts of our planetary infrastructure, coral reef ecosystems contribute to the livelihoods of 500 million people in 100 countries, adding approximately 30 billion dollars to annual GDP.

Under normal environmental conditions, corals can live forever. Sadly, recurring and prolonged bleaching events caused by changes in water temperature and acidity as a result of oceans absorbing increasing levels of greenhouse gases (GHG’s) from the atmosphere have pushed corals beyond their comfort zone. During a bleaching event, stressed corals expel the symbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) embedded in their tissues, which they rely on for nutrition and which give them their often vibrant color. Without a consistent source of nourishment from their algal occupants, bleached corals slowly become weakened and may die, causing a chain reaction of equally adverse impacts for reef inhabitants. Depending on the amount of damage that occurs during a bleaching event, it can take decades for a coral reef to recover. To date, up to half of the world’s reefs have been severely damaged.

Okay, what’s the good news, you ask? Is there good news? Because we could use more of that. It’s undeniable that earth systems wait for no one, and our oceans have already been committed to a certain degree of warming. Now, one of the most important things we can do to create good news for corals and other marine wildlife is to help prevent bleaching events by reducing the GHG emissions that absorb radiation from the sun and raise ocean temperatures. As we sprint to ramp up mitigation efforts, scientists around the world from biologists to chemists to geophysicists are tackling the coral crisis from a few different angles in hope of changing the current trajectory from despair to repair. Here are some highlights from projects focused on saving our reef ecosystems from extinction:

Brightening Marine Clouds:
Earth scientists are geoengineering cloud parasols for the planet to cool waters around reefs and buy more time for corals. Through a process called marine cloud brightening, clouds are seeded with salt crystals to increase their reflectivity. These artificially enhanced bright clouds reflect solar radiation away from the earth lowering ocean temperatures in targeted reef areas. In late March, researchers at Southern Cross University in Australia conducted the first successful, small-scale cloud brightening experiment over a portion of the Great Barrier Reef. You can watch how they did it here.

Printing 3-D Bionic Corals:
Figuring out the symbiotic relationship between corals and algae will be critical for reef conservation in a warming world. To gain a better understanding of why corals expel algae under stress, bioengineers at the University of Cambridge have created bionic corals that can mimic the behavior of different coral species using biological materials and specialized 3-D printers. The Cambridge researchers also plan to construct large-scale colonies of man-made corals to grow algae for carbon capture and storage.

Breeding Climate Resilient Super Corals:
To create more resilient reef systems in anticipation of future warming, scientists at the Gates Coral Lab Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology are giving nature a helping hand through the breeding of corals that have successfully adapted to environmental stressors. By selecting the hardiest corals for reproduction and replicating various conditions of acidification, pollution, and temperature over time, marine biologists hope to grow more highly stress-tolerant super corals for use in reef restoration. You can learn more about these forward-thinking cultivators of corals in Coral Whisperers: Scientists on the Brink by Irus Braverman.

If you’re concerned about coral reefs and would like to keep tabs on how they’re holding up in near real-time, there are NOAA satellites for that at Coral Reef Watch.

You can also dive in and participate in some armchair ocean conservation by playing NeMO-Net, a new video game that helps train a NASA supercomputer to map the world’s corals.

If you’d like to follow a collaborative community of earth scientists working to maintain the healthy functioning of our planet, check out EarthCube.

And because gazing at marine life is good for you, to help tide you over until you’re free to roam, the Ocean Conservancy has coral reef wallpaper for your phone and desktop. Download away!

As always, hang in, stay safe, and be well!

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Lisa S. French April 29, 2020

Wow, What a Bird!

4.0-minute read

In the midst of the oh, no, it’s officially a pandemic news cycle, we thought you could do with a little featured-creature comfort. So allow us to introduce the tawny frogmouth (Podargus strigoides) for your viewing pleasure—one of those critters you may look at and think “I don’t know what it is, but I know that I like it.” The muppet-esque night bird, while fairly common across Australia, is far from your average winged tree dweller. To get you the lowdown on the 2019 Bird of the Year second runner-up, we’ve gathered some frogmouth facts from Tawny Frogmouth (Second Edition) by double doctorate Gisela Kaplan Emeritus Professor in Animal Behavior at the University of New England in New South Wales.

If you’re gazing at the tawny frogmouth and thinking, “Wow, what a bird!” you may be surprised to learn that historically not everyone has been as enamored with what we think are its obvious charms. Starting in the 18^th century, the poor animal was saddled with rather unflattering common and scientific monikers right out of the egg and has continued to face a bit of bird bullying ever since.

The tawny frogmouth was first classified as belonging to the nocturnal order of birds Caprimulgiformes in 1758 by Swedish naturalist and botanist Carolus Linnaeus, father of the binomial nomenclature system, Systema Naturae. The name Caprimulgus, which roughly translates to “goatsucker,” originated in a primitive myth that frogmouths milked goats or sucked their blood at night. In 1801, the shambling, short-legged Australian native bird received its genus classification Podargus from the Latin for “gouty old man,” followed by the equally deflating (unless you are a frog) common name “frogmouth” in 1895.

Goat-sucking, gouty, old, frogmouth—so far-not so good. As if that sad string of descriptors weren’t enough to take the wind out of its wings, in the 1960s, the tawny frogmouth was assessed as “grotesque, ugly, weak-footed and altogether stupid and silly.” In a more recent editorial pile on, it was harshly labeled again as the “world’s most unfortunate looking bird.” While a bird by any other name may still be a stupid, silly, ugly, goatsucker according to some, bad bird reviews and unfortunate species names haven’t stopped the tawny frogmouth from becoming the second most popular feathered flier in Australia. As Dr. Kaplan illuminates in her fascinating treatise on the beloved animal, there is far more to the delightful tawny frogmouth than meets the eye. Here are some highlights:

One of 14 frogmouth species, the tawny frogmouth (TF) can only be found in Australia, where it makes its home in both arid and humid forests and woodlands, preferring the large horizontal branches of old-growth trees for nesting. Highly adaptive, the bird is comfortable dwelling around humans and will also nest in suburbs, towns, gardens, and parks. Although the tawny frogmouth may have a slightly owlish look, it is more closely related to the nightjar, which also belongs to the Caprimulgiformes or “goatsucker” order.

The tawny frogmouth is one of the island continent’s largest nocturnal birds. Males weigh between 440 and 600 grams and females between 157 and 555. By comparison, the average song sparrow weighs about 24 grams. While the tawny frogmouth is relatively long-lived, documented at 13.75 years in the wild and 32 years in captivity, only about 30% make it to adulthood, falling victim to both predators and pesticides. Voracious carnivores, TFs eat snails, slugs, mice, and frogs, and a wide variety of insects, including poisonous invertebrates like centipedes and scorpions. The bird’s large, wide beak is especially effective at “pulping” hard-to-eat stinging wrigglers. Tawny frogmouths form loyal partnerships for life and can be observed roosting side by side on the same branch, bodies always touching. Equally dedicated co-parents, males and females build nests together and take turns incubating eggs and keeping hatched nestlings well-fed until they learn to hunt on their own and are old enough to fly.

Ten Tawny Frogmouth Features

If you’re thinking, that bird is all eyes, you are correct. The tawny frogmouth’s large, frontally positioned peepers take up 30 percent of its skull and enable the night hunters to see in very low light.
The TF can move those big eyes in opposite directions at the same time to increase its field of vision, and the bird’s iris color can change from yellow to red which is believed to indicate agitation or anger. Handy!
One of the few species of birds with obvious eyelashes, the tawny frogmouth also sports rare, feather tufts on top of its beak.
The TF’s tongue is tiny and paper-thin, and the inside of its mouth is green. That’s right, green!
Those thick layers of luxurious-looking mottled feathers insulate the frogmouth from heat, cold, rain, and insects, and provide excellent camouflage from a long list of predators including ravens, owls, falcons, lizards, snakes, cats, and foxes.
Masters of disguise, tawny frogmouths strategically nest in trees with grey-brown bark color and shingled texture similar to their plumage. To become one with the branch, the birds stretch out their bodies and heads, flatten their feathers, close their eyes to a slit, and think tree.
When camouflaging fails, the tawny frogmouth resorts to poo fighting to deter predators like lace monitor lizards and snakes. A thorough misting with show-stopping fecal spray disguises the bird’s scent, putting the slippery interlopers off their meal. They don’t call the tawny frogmouths “the skunks of the air” for nothing.
Quite chatty, TF’s communicate through a variety of vocalizations that are believed to express a range of emotions including, hunger, fear, annoyance, affection, and sadness.
One of the tawny frogmouth’s most extraordinary vocalizations and displays of emotion occurs when a nestling has lost its parents or when a juvenile is about to leave its family territory. The young bird emits a “gut wrenching” whimpering that is strikingly similar to the sound of a human infant crying in pain.
No long strolls for these birds. Fliers and sitters, known as a perch and pounce sedentary predators, tawny frogmouths rarely use their feet for walking.

As an animal behaviorist and wildlife rehabilitator who has studied, cared for, and lived alongside tawny frogmouths, Dr. Kaplan has come to know them as affectionate, gentle, and curious animals with distinct personalities. Her utterly engaging analysis makes it clear why the bird’s detractors got it all wrong. Obviously, the tawny frogmouth’s beauty is more than a few finely mottled feathers deep.

And that’s your WW creature capsule for the week. Should anyone ever ask, “Hey, do you know anything about that Australian tawny frogmouth?” now you can confidently reply, “Why, yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

Until next time, take good care and be well.

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Lisa S. French March 14, 2020

Conservation Takes Flight

2.5-minute read

With one in four species currently at risk of extinction, conservationists dedicated to maintaining the biodiversity of our big, beautiful planet are tackling an urgent to-do list—from monitoring whale health to conducting penguin counts, to planting a trillion trees. Over the last decade, scientists have added a hi-tech tool to their arsenal to help solve some of our most challenging environmental problems—the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), commonly known as the drone.

Thanks in part to rapid innovation in smartphone technologies like the miniaturization of cameras, GPS, and sensory devices, advances in the development of environmental drone applications are revolutionizing the mapping, monitoring, and recovery of the natural world. Customized drones rigged out with mission-specific gear like tracking systems, optical and thermal cameras, and seed dispersers are enabling the observation, protection, and restoration of flora and fauna in both wide-open and previously inaccessible places.

One promising new drone design developed by Macquarie University in Sydney, NSW, Australia, is helping biologists to safely assess the health of marine megafauna. Sidling up to a pod of migrating humpback whales to collect biological samples is tricky business. Now, researchers can get a snapshot of the cetaceans’ physical condition through UAV capture of whale blow without endangering the animals—or the humans. If you are wondering what in the world whale blow is, it’s the vapor that forms from warm air exhaled through the blowhole in the top of a whale’s head when it surfaces to breathe. Drones swoop in and hover over the humpbacks and collect the vapor in a remote-controlled petri dish for analysis of respiratory bacteria, lipids, hormones, and DNA. These custom-built mini sky-labs are helping researchers keep tabs on health changes of individual marine mammals resulting from increasing environmental stressors like climate change and water pollution.

Another breakthrough in planet-preserving drone technology from U.K.-based environmental services company Dendra Systems may seriously speed up the rate of global reforestation and ecosystem restoration. Using a combination of satellite images and drone-collected data to pinpoint locations for seed dispersal, Dendra aims to plant 500 billion trees by 2060. Customized “SKAI-Tractors” capable of firing seedpods into the ground at the rate of 120 per minute will enable governments to restore forests 150 times faster and ten times cheaper than planting by hand. At a time when we are losing an estimated 27 soccer fields of forest every minute, Dendra’s technology represents a radical improvement in the speed and accuracy of reforestation.

In an effort to engineer an even faster, smarter drone, scientists at Brown University and the University of British Columbia are drawing inspiration from nature to enhance the speed and agility of the miniature flying machines by analyzing the uniquely flexible wing structure and flight dynamics of bats. Researchers believe that the stretchy skin and multi-jointed wing configuration of the furry, night fliers may hold the key to improving the lift, maneuverability, and efficiency of drones, especially when flying in challenging environments.

It’s clear that inventive upgrades in drone technologies used for reforestation, and wildlife and ecosystem monitoring and management will continue to play a pivotal role in combatting the increasing global threats to biodiversity. So, to all of you flight-tech game changers out there working to protect and preserve the natural heritage of our planet, first, thank you very much, and second, please drone on.

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Lisa S. French March 3, 2020

Woylies and Kalutas and Nabarleks, Oh My!

2-minute read

Not only is Australia home to some of the world’s most extraordinary wildlife, it’s also a top contender when it comes to delightfully distinctive creature names. If you’ve ever puzzled over the origins of some of the country’s more curious animal monikers like those given to the mini-marsupials woylie, kaluta, and nabarlek, here’s a quick look at the who and the why behind what’s in a name.

Although Europeans had their own ideas about what to call the feathered, furry and scaly they encountered when they began their settlement of Australia in 1788, the Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders who had lived alongside native species on the island continent for over 60,000 years were well ahead of the new arrivals in the animal name game. The 500 clans which made up the population of indigenous peoples of 18th-century Australia had developed over 260 distinct languages and 500 regional dialects reflective of their unique cultures, close ties to the land, and custodial relationship with nature.

While a fair number of the animal names imported by European settlers that are in use today were inspired by similar-looking creatures in other continents such as emu from the Portuguese “ema,” and goanna from the Spanish “iguana,” indigenous names were passed down through thousands of generations and based on the experience and deep understanding gained from interacting with animals in their specific ecosystems and environments. Far from haphazard, indigenous ecological knowledge systems typically identified species based on purpose, relationship to other animals, age, and gender.

The Seussian-sounding indigenous names woylie, kaluta, and nabarlek originate from three different clans and languages. The extremely rare and now critically endangered brush-tailed bettong (Bettongia penicillata), or rat-kangaroo, was first dubbed woylie by the Noongar people of South West Australia. The name of nabarlek, given to the small, nimble hopper also known as the little rock-wallaby (Petrogale concinna), comes from the endangered Aboriginal language of Kunwinjku spoken by the Bininj Kunwok people, who live in the rocky terrain of West Arnhem Land in the northern part of the country. And the little red kaluta (Dasykaluta rosamondae), an auburn colored, carnivorous species of marsupial, the male of which heroically bears the burden of dying after mating, has a hybrid name: kaluta from the language of the Nyamal tribe of north-western Australia and the Latin rosa mundi, after Rosamond, King Henry II’s red-headed mistress.

Despite the fact that many of the commonly used names of Australian animals are those adopted by the Europeans, there is growing momentum to rechristen native species with names chosen from the country’s hundreds of Aboriginal languages and dialects. Brisbane biologist Tim Low, author of Where Song Began, points out that there is also a trend to incorporate indigenous names in the official scientific classification of species in recognition of the Aboriginal peoples’ language and cultural heritage which is as richly diverse as their country’s wildlife.

You can learn more about an ongoing project aimed at promoting indigenous knowledge of Australia’s flora and fauna from the Atlas of Living Australia. And if you’d like to read about the fascinating, sometimes comically contentious process of naming Australia’s bird species, check out Australian Bird Names: Origins and Meanings, by Ian Fraser and Jeannie Gray.

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Lisa S. French January 26, 2020

Adapting to Heartbreak

3-minute read

The rising numbers depicting the catastrophic loss and destruction caused by bushfires across Australia since September of 2019 are painfully difficult to comprehend: at least 28 people have perished, thousands have lost their homes, and an estimated one billion animals and at least 18 million acres (an area equivalent in size to the state of South Carolina) have been affected. Yet, even those heartbreaking figures fail to adequately reflect the long-term environmental impacts that may forever change the lives of many of the inhabitants of one of our most naturally beautiful and biologically rich island continents.

Australia is “megadiverse,” one of 18 countries representing 36 recognized global biodiversity hotspots and home to 600,000-700,000 species, including many which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. There are some you may have never heard of like the northern hairy-nosed wombat, spotted-tail quoll, and Julia Creek dunnart, as well as one you definitely recognize, the cuddly-looking creature most readily identified as a symbol of wildlife down under—the koala. A native resident of Australia for approximately 25 million years, the much-loved marsupial occupies the eucalyptus forests and woodlands of Queensland, Southern Australia, and two of the states hardest hit by the fires, Victoria, and New South Wales.

At the start of the 20th century, millions of koalas could be found across eastern Australia. As of 2018, the population was estimated to be somewhere between 47,000 at the low end and what is believed to be an overly optimistic 100,000. According to recent assessments, the number of koalas that have died or been injured in the 2019-2020 fires stands at approximately 30,000. The ongoing natural disaster that may have reduced the total koala population by more than one third in just a few short months has accelerated the decline of an animal species already facing urgent multiple threats to its survival.

Like many marsupials indigenous to Australia, koalas have evolved to survive the harsh environmental conditions of the arid and semi-arid landscapes of the driest inhabited continent on Earth. But rising average temperatures across Australia over the past five decades, resulting in more frequent and intense droughts and heatwaves, have severely compromised the koala’s ability to adapt. Exposure to prolonged high temperatures can lead to heat stress, dehydration and eventual death. A December heatwave in 2009 that wiped out an estimated one quarter of the koalas in the town of Gunnedah, New South Wales is just one example.

The tree-dwelling animals are primarily dependent upon various species of eucalyptus, or gum trees, for food, water and shelter. Adult Koalas eat a little over a pound of eucalyptus a day, also extracting moisture from the leaves. Because the leaves of drought-affected trees are less nutritious and produce less moisture, koalas need to eat more leaves to meet their daily dietary requirements, but habitat loss and fragmentation as a result of deforestation reduce the number of eucalyptus trees available to support populations. When forced to leave the safety of a tree-top refuge in search of food, water, or another suitable habitat as a result of climate-change-related impacts, the slow-moving marsupials also face the threat of feral dog attacks and car strikes.

In 2015, Australian researchers publishing in the National Academy of Sciences predicted that the effects of climate change will be magnified over the next few decades resulting in severe to catastrophic losses of wildlife. Just four years later, that prediction has become a reality. As the bushfires rage on, the fate of the koala and other rare and remarkable animal species hangs in the balance. By 2030, average temperatures in Australia are expected to increase by 1.5°C. The country will continue to be challenged by unprecedented physical manifestations of a warming world. Climate change mitigation, adaptation, and initiatives aimed at conserving biodiversity will continue to be critical to help ensure the wellbeing and livelihoods of the billions of people who depend upon the healthy functioning of ecosystems in Australia and around the world.

As the science of climate change evolves, we may take some comfort in its logic while making best efforts to develop adaptation strategies for ourselves and individual species, but when it comes to adapting to heartbreak, science has little to offer because there are many precious living beings on our home planet for which there are no substitutes once lost. Although we can’t reverse the irreversible or replace the irreplaceable, we continue to have hope, because hope may not point to a way back, but it can help guide the way forward. To quote author and historian Rebecca Solnit, “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency… To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable.”

You can help give hope to the suffering people and animals in Australia through these Charity Navigator rated organizations. And you can wear your heart on your sleeve for the land down under by purchasing a Fire Relief T-shirt for a limited time from our pals at For Love Of All Things (FLOAT). All proceeds go to support the recovery efforts of the Australia Koala Foundation.

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Lisa S. French January 14, 2020

Best Bird

It’s bird award season in the southern hemisphere–that special time in late spring when birdwatchers around the world cast their votes online for the annual “it” bird of New Zealand. On November 11, this year’s favored flapper, the endangered yellow-eyed penguin, toddled past its top rival, the charismatic kākāpō, to be crowned 2019 Bird of the Year by New Zealand’s leading independent conservation organization Forest & Bird.

The yellow-eyed penguin, also known as the hoiho, which is Maori for noise shouter, is the world’s oldest and rarest penguin species—only 225 pairs of the seabird remain on New Zealand’s mainland. With its distinctive yellow peepers, pink feet, and slate-blue back and flippers, the hoiho is an unmistakable presence in the island nation’s coastal forests. Generally a solitary, quiet bird, the yellow-eyed penguin earned its Maori moniker due to the high-pitched braying sound it makes in nesting areas.

The Bird of the Year competition was launched in 2005 to raise awareness of New Zealand’s many remarkable native bird species and the threats to their survival. Currently, 80% of New Zealand’s birds are in trouble, and one out of three are at risk of extinction, including the hoiho and the kākāpō. You can learn more about all of the 2019 Forest & Bird contestants and their conservation status here.

If viewing all of the feathered finery down-under has you suffering from a bout of birdwatcher’s envy, here are some resources, tips, and upcoming events for budding and full-blown birders up-top:

You can get facts, photos, and vocalizations for more than 600 North American bird species at Cornell Labs ultimate online ornithology resource, allaboutbirds.org.

If you’d like to get a handle on how birds in your neck of the woods will be impacted by climate change under different warming scenarios, Audubon scientists have created an amazing app for that: Survival By Degrees: 389 Bird Species on the Brink. Just type in your U.S. postal code to find out which birds in your county will be affected by increasing global temperatures and how you can help support the Audubon mission.

From December 14 through January 5, you can put your bird-by-bird watching to really good use by participating in the 120^th annual Christmas Bird Count, helping to collect data that will be used to analyze the health of bird populations across the Americas.

And because winter really is coming, here’s a zero-effort habitat gardening tip: rather than cutting back any perennials on your patch, go wild and leave seed-bearing plant tops intact as a snack station to attract winter bird fly-bys. Not tidy perhaps, but tasty, and tasty rules when it comes to keeping the feathered ones in full chirp mode.

Whether you are slogging through snow in the north or celebrating spring in the south, wherever you walk through the beauty of the world, remember to keep an ear out for the winged wonders. That’s a free Earth music download—and it’s good for you!

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Lisa S. French November 21, 2019

Pouched Pademelons

If you’ve never heard of the pademelon, you are not alone. The medium-sized marsupial hopped right under our radar as well. We like to think we’re fairly species-savvy, so when we came across this featured creature courtesy of First Dog on the Moon, initially we thought, well, he’s just making that one up because he’s a cartoon dog, and that’s what they do. As it turns out, while the pademelon (Thylogale) may sound like some newfangled, furry fruit hybrid, it’s actually a long-footed, short-forelimbed, pouched member of the Macropodidae family native to the dense coastal rainforests of Australia and New Guinea.

One of approximately 250 species of Australian marsupials, the pademelon closely resembles its larger cousins, the kangaroo, and wallaby and is also related to quokkas, tree kangaroos, and wallaroos. There are seven distinct pademelon species, ranging in size from about 17 to 20 inches and weighing between 8 and 26 pounds, with grey to dark brown coloration and varied reddish markings. Pademelons are primarily nocturnal herbivores preferring to rest and forage in the safety of dense forest undergrowth during the day, emerging in the evening to feed on leaves, shoots, berries, and ferns, typically not straying far from the forest’s edge.

In contrast to egg-laying mammals (monotremes) like the platypus and spiny anteater, or placental mammals (eutherians) like dingoes and bats which give birth to well-developed offspring, marsupial mammals complete their development in a special maternal pouch following a short gestation period. After just thirty days in the womb, pademelon young are born blind and hairless but with functional forelimbs and mouth, which enable them to crawl into the pouch and attach to the mother to obtain milk. Newborn pademelons, called joeys like their kangaroo cousins, remain inside the pouch for approximately 200 days before being weaned at six to eight months and officially entering the world as independent hoppers.

So why pouches? While some theories suggest that both egg-laying and pouch-percolating mammals represent progressive steps in the evolution toward the eutherian stage of producing well-developed young, researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) offer an alternative explanation: that the marsupial’s unique reproductive ability is not an evolutionary step but instead an advantageous adaptation in response to uncertain and adverse environmental conditions, which has helped them to adjust to the climate of the driest inhabited continent in the world. The ANU scientists believe that the marsupial pouch may play a critical role in the survival of the species by providing developing young with an anti-bacterial, temperature-controlled environment, as well as protection from predators while their mothers forage for food.

Although the pouched ones are more plentiful in Australia than in any other place on the planet and the continent’s dominant species, many marsupials are on the decline due to habitat loss, and impacts of global heating, including bushfires. Changes in the distribution of food, water, and shelter in Australia’s fifteen biodiversity hotspots as a result of reduced rainfall and increased drought frequency will continue to threaten their survival. Currently, four of seven species of pademelon are listed as endangered or vulnerable, as are other little known marsupials including the bilby, bettong, and potoroo.

If you would like to read a special WWF Earth Hour report on how a warming world will affect unique Australian wildlife like the pademelon, you can check it out here.

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Lisa S. French November 12, 2019

Precious Parrots

Standing almost two feet tall and weighing in at approximately nine pounds, the moss-green kākāpō is the world’s largest and only flightless parrot. It is also one of the most critically endangered. Known as the “owl-parrot” due to its large eyes and head, this charmingly chubby forest inhabitant was common in its native New Zealand where it evolved over 30 million years, free from the threat of natural predators. Over the past few hundred years with only the minimal protection offered by its mottled, camouflaging feathers, the defenseless, ground-dwelling kākāpō was hunted to the brink of extinction by both humans and the invasive species introduced by European settlers. Habitat loss from forest conversion to farm-land also contributed to the parrots’ plummeting numbers, and by 1977 the solitary, nocturnal kākāpō had been reduced to a tiny population of just 18 birds. Although kākāpōs rebounded slightly to 51 individuals in the 1990’s, their future looked decidedly grim.

The plight of the kākāpō is further complicated by infrequent breeding. The parrots only mate every two to four years when native coniferous rimu trees bear the vitamin D rich fruit which they feed their young. And because females are solely responsible for incubating, parenting and foraging for food, eggs and fledglings are extremely vulnerable to predators when out of necessity they are left alone in the nest. Factoring in a loss of genetic diversity which helped to ensure the survival of chicks, the kākāpō was in desperate need of some avian assistance.

Fast-forward three decades, thanks to the intensive and innovative management of the critically endangered parrots by scientists at the New Zealand Department of Conservation, as of 2017, the kākāpō count was at 154. Following the transfer of the entire population of birds to three remote predator-free islands, Whenua Hou, Anchor, and Hauturu, the kākāpō recovery programme began monitoring the birds through every stage of development pitching in with nest protection, supplementary feeding and the hand raising of chicks. As a result of around the clock intensive care, this year the kākāpōs had a record-breaking breeding season resulting in 76 hatchlings. Scientists expect that about 60 of the young birds will make it to adulthood. While the kākāpō population is on the upswing, conservationists won’t breathe easier until their numbers get closer to 500. In the meantime, preservation of these precious parrots continues with international efforts aimed at ensuring their survival, including genome sequencing, drone-supported artificial insemination and the world’s first successful bird brain surgery. In honor of Endangered Species Day on May 17, we tip our wings to the captivating kākāpō and the dedicated scientists who continue to work tirelessly to save this rare species–bird by bird.

Update:

Following a tremendously successful 2018/2019 breeding season, and the unprecedented survival of 71 chicks to juvenile age, as of September 2019, the critically endangered kākāpō population has reached a record high of 213! You can read more about the ground-dwelling parrot progress here.

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Lisa S. French May 16, 2019