This article is a special contribution from guest author Hayley Averell. If you’ve seen these birds in your back yard add your comments below because we’d love to hear about them. They are magnificent birds. Australasia’s largest owl is found right on my doorstep, in the beautiful Hunter Valley and Lake Macquarie region of New [...]
Posts under ‘Conservation’
3rd Annual ‘Save The Frogs Day’ 29th April 2011
SAVE THE FROGS! America’s first and only public charity dedicated exclusively to amphibian conservation, has declared Friday April 29th, 2011 the 3rd Annual ‘Save The Frogs Day’. Please get involved and help spread the word!
And just for fun… the Takapo!
Here on Maud Island in the Marlborough Sounds we’re very excited and a little bemused at finding what could be the world’s first takapo eggs this morning.
Are societies still dependent on the stability and resilience of nature?
People often say we have evolved beyond nature but it is our very progress and growth which has bound us closer to its fate.
Richmond Birdwing butterfly: knowledge of ecology aides recovery
The Richmond Birdwing butterfly (Ornithoptera richmondia) is one of Australia’s biggest and most spectacular butterflies. Just 100 years ago, these butterflies were abundant throughout greater Brisbane. Today they are gone. Not entirely extinct, but no longer in Brisbane. The reason is more than just building a city. It’s a story of habitat loss, isolation and invasive species.
We can give them the chance to return and we’ll explain how here.
Turtles! You are what your mum eats! POP’s passed from mother to egg to turtle
We all know marine turtles lay eggs and don’t provide any parental care for their turtle hatchlings. The mothers do leave some food for the hatchlings though, as yolk in the eggs. But how healthy is this yolk?
Mammals suckle their young and when they do, they can pass environmental pollutants from their bodies to their offspring’s. But are toxins that maternal turtles accumulate when feeding, passed on to their turtle hatchlings within the eggs? And if so, does it affect the turtle hatchlings’ chances of survival?
Meat ants, cat food and Bufo marinus: slowing down the cane toad!
When animals invade new places they either sink, swim, or just get along. Unfortunately, when an invader does well in its new land, it can have devastating consequences for the native animals and plants. Suddenly there is a new competitor or predator in the midst and the natives don’t have the skills, spines or teeth to compete or defend themselves. Evolution works over many generations and there’s rarely time to adapt. But people can help.
Understanding how animals interact may help us tip the ‘balance’ in favour of native Australian animals. Here’s one example from the ongoing battle against the invasive cane toad (Bufo marinus – a native of South America). Can meat ants and cat food slow them down?
Ecological islands on land: a first for New Zealand?
This article describes Maungatautari, a volcano that’s become a native animal refuge in a sea of dairy pasture. New Zealanders have been first at many things. They may also be the first to create ‘islands on land’. That is, ‘ecological islands’ on land, anyway.
Nothofagus: relics from Gondwana
If you’ve ever walked through a forest of ancient Southern Beech (Nothofagus spp.) you can be forgiven for believing that you have just stepped into another world. You often find these trees growing as rings of giant trunks, covered in hundreds of epiphytes and mosses. But don’t be fooled. The rings of trunks are just the one tree! It’s called coppicing; the tree sends out new shoots radially from the base of the original trunk, and these shoot eventually grow into clones of the parent tree forming a ring of tunks, all belonging to the one tree.
Nest boxes make new homes for sugar gliders
Australia is well known for it’s marsupials and many of them live in the trees. It can get windy, wet and cold living in a tree so a little hollow inside a tree makes a perfect den. Over 300 species of Australian vertebrates use tree hollows as a home for shelter, sleeping, nesting, and escaping predators! But where can they live in a new forest with few old trees?
