tagged w/ International Union for Conservation of Nature
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Red-crested Tree Rat Rediscovered in Sierra Nevadas After 113 Years
Red-Crested Tree Rat
A unique guinea-pig sized rodent, not seen since 1898, has been rediscovered. The Red-crested Tree Rat (Santamartamys rufodorsalis) showed up at the front door of the ProAves' El Dorado Nature Reserve Eco-lodge in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. NPR says the rodent was presumed to be extinct.
The animal was rediscovered by Lizzie Noble and Simon McKeown - two volunteers with ProAves monitoring endangered amphibians. The tree rat stayed for about two hours and posed for pictures before heading back into the forest.
Lizzie Noble says, "He just shuffled up the handrail near where we were sitting and seemed totally unperturbed by all the excitement he was causing. We are absolutely delighted to have rediscovered such a wonderful creature after just a month of volunteering with ProAves. Clearly the El Dorado Reserve has many more exciting discoveries waiting."
ProAves says the The Red-crested Tree Rat will now likely be designated as Critically Endangered under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Red List of Threatened Species criteria.
Red-Crested Tree Rat
Photos: Lizzie Noble / proaves.orgRed-crested Tree Rat Rediscovered in Sierra Nevadas After 113 Years
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Habitat loss, hunting and other threats are driving our closest animal relatives to the brink.
The baiji dolphin is functionally extinct, orangutans are disappearing and even some species of bats—the most numerous of mammals—are dying out. A new survey of the world's 5,487 mammal species—from rodents to humans—reveals that one in four are facing imminent extinction.
"Mammal species that are just declining, not necessarily near extinction, that's 50 percent," says conservation biologist Jan Schipper of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which keeps the Red List of Threatened Species. "And 836 species—especially rodents and bats—we determined they are threatened but we don't know how threatened, because we don't know enough about them."
Schipper and more than 1,700 scientific colleagues spent the past five years surveying the state of the world's mammals. The results, published in Science to coincide with IUCN's conference on biodiversity this week, reveal that 1,139 mammals around the globe are threatened with extinction and the populations of 52 percent of all mammal species are declining.
South and Southeast Asia are home to the most threatened mammals, from monkeys to rare rats. And many mammals in the species-rich tropical Andes Mountains of South America, Africa's Cameroonian highlands and Albertine Rift as well as the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are also in trouble. Deforestation, along with hunting or gathering food are the prime causes of the rapid declines in land mammals, such as elephants in Asia; most endangered marine mammals, like the vaquita in Mexico's Gulf of California, are killed by fishing nets, ship strikes or pollution.
"Overall conservation status of mammals will likely deteriorate further unless appropriate conservation actions are put in place," the researchers warn in the report.
But the news isn't all grim: Some mammals, such as the black-footed ferret of western North America and the Hainan black-crested gibbon (found only on China's Hainan Island), have been able to rebound as the result of conservation efforts. "These are the kinds of success stories that we need to clasp onto and find out what worked," Schipper says. "Usually, it takes a lot of money."
But he cautions that any conservation success is likely temporary unless the root problems of, for example, deforestation are addressed. In the case of the Hainan gibbon, for instance, "there's not enough room for that species to go back to having a thousand individuals unless we stop deforestation and hunting," Schipper says.
There's also the clash between saving animals and curing other environmental ills such as global warming. Vast tracts of tropical rainforest have been replaced by palm oil plantations for food and biofuels, satellite imagery reveals.
But addressing climate change could also help lessen this extinction crisis as well; the loss of sea ice as a result of a warming world threatens to make life impossible for those mammals such as the polar bear and harp seal that rely on it to survive.
The "general trend is that many more mammal species are rapidly declining than we had suspected," Schipper says. "Fifty percent of species are declining and 5 percent of species are in an upward recovery—that's just not enough."Habitat loss, hunting and other threats are driving our closest animal relatives to... more
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A new iguana has been discovered in the central regions of Fiji. The colorful new species, named Brachylophus bulabula, joins only two other living Pacific iguana species, one of which is critically endangered. The scientific name bulabula is a doubling of bula, the Fijian word for ‘hello,’ offering an even more enthusiastic greeting.
Pacific iguanas have almost disappeared as the result of human presence. Two species were eaten to extinction after people arrived nearly 3,000 years ago. The three living Brachylophus iguana species face threats from loss and alteration of their habitat, as well as from feral cats, mongooses and goats that eat iguanas or their food source.
An important study finding for conservation of the genetic diversity in these iguanas is that, with only one exception, each of the 13 islands where living iguanas were sampled showed at least one distinct iguana genetic line that was not seen elsewhere.
The Fiji crested iguana, Brachylophus vitiensis, is gone from many islands it once occupied and is now listed as Critically Endangered on the “Red List” of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The IUCN is the largest global environmental network. “Unfortunately, this new study indicates that the other previously-identified Pacific iguana species, Brachyophus fasciatus, is probably critically endangered also,” Fisher said.
The mystery of how the Pacific iguanas originally arrived has long puzzled biologists and geographers. Their closest relatives are found nearly 5,000 miles away across the ocean in the New World.
“The distinctive Fijian iguanas are famous for their beauty and also their unusual occurrence in the middle of the Pacific Ocean because all of their closest relatives are in the Americas,” said Scott Keogh, an Associate Professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, and lead author of the study.
Realizing that scientists are just now describing the diversity in even such colorful and distinctive groups as Pacific iguanas is important in setting biodiversity targets for the Pacific Basin.
"This island basin is currently under attack by a number of invasive species such as the brown tree snake, various rat species and the coqui frog, which tend to reduce biodiversity," said Fisher. "Climate change may reduce coastal habitats and alter coastlines in the Pacific, further putting biodiversity at risk. A more accurate understanding of the patterns and processes that impact diversity in these unique island groups will help land managers set appropriate goals for conservation of these resources."A new iguana has been discovered in the central regions of Fiji. The colorful new... more
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