The experimental fencing had gone up to keep the rabbits out, but the ground inside the conservation area at Yathong in central New South Wales had still been nibbled and munched bare. “It was completely denuded,” says Prof Mike Letnic. “It was like a moonscape.” The culprit? Australia’s most ubiquitous marsupial: the kangaroo. “There’s this perception […]
Tag: marsupial
Australian wildlife 20 times more likely to encounter deadly feral cats than native predators
Australia’s wildlife are at least 20 times more likely to come across a deadly feral cat than one of the country’s native predators, according to a new study. Invasive cats, which kill billions of native animals each year, form a triple threat, the study finds, by hunting with greater intensity, in broader environments and in […]
Wombats’ deadly bums: how they use their ‘skull-crushing’ rumps to fight, play and flirt
Australia is known for its strange and deadly wildlife, with plenty of attention given to venomous snakes and bird-eating spiders. But it seems one terrifying aspect of outback fauna has been thoroughly ignored: the wombat’s deadly bum. The rump of the wombat is hard as rock, used for defence, burrowing, bonding, mating and possibly violently […]
Filmmakers expose shameful kangaroo slaughter
When Australian filmmakers Mick McIntyre and Kate McIntyre Clere went out with their camera crew on a kangaroo hunt, they had to witness horrific images they can never forget. “It’s, it’s just . . . ,” Mick stammered to find the right words. “I had to experience it filming and there’s nothing good about it. […]
‘Absolute tragedy’: hundreds of koalas feared dead after NSW bushfires
Bushfires sweeping through prime koala habitat in New South Wales may have killed as many as 350 of the iconic native marsupial, conservationists say. The blaze, near Port Macquarie in northern NSW, has burned through thousands of hectares including an important koala breeding ground. On Thursday wildlife researchers visited some of the area destroyed in […]
“Part of something bigger”: the social movement around New Zealand’s Predator-Free 2050 goal
In Whāingaroa/Raglan on New Zealand’s (NZ’s) west coast, trapping for introduced mammals that prey on endangered native birds is something of a competitive sport. Karioi Project, a local conservation NGO named after the bushclad volcano that backs the small surf town and houses a significant population of endemic oi (grey-faced petrels, Pterodroma gouldi), has established […]
Saving the Atlantic Forest would cost less than ‘Titanic’
Want to save the world’s most imperiled biodiversity hotspot? You just need a down payment of $198 million. While that may sound like a lot, it’s actually less than it cost to make the film, Titanic. A new study published today in Science finds that paying private landowners to protect the almost-vanished Atlantic Forest would […]