Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

neil

Protecting the integrity of Eco-accreditation

By

In what has been described as an important victory, Ecotourism Australia has been granted a number of interlocutory court orders by the Queensland Supreme Court, to protect both intellectual property and also the public from potentially misleading environmental marketing.

Ecotourism Australia found that an uncertified operator was using its ECO Certification Logo, without permission. The Eco Certification Program provides accreditation to successful eco and nature tourism applicants in Australia and is now being exported as the International Ecotourism Standard.

Uluru to be Banned from Climbing?

By

Moloch.jpg

According to Zoie Jones of ABC News, University of Western Sydney Researcher, Sarah James has found that attitudes to climbing Uluru have changed, and the time might be right to close the climb altogether.

Interesting that it has taken so long to come to such a reckoning, when Uluru – Kata Tjuta National Park became only the second property in the world to be listed as a cultural landscape in 1994.

Australia nominated the property in recognition of its cultural heritage importance and committed to manage those values in accordance with its international obligations as defined within the World Heritage Convention.

The fact that it has showcased for the world its reluctance to prohibit climbing, despite World Heritage obligations and also the stated wishes of the traditional owners, is indisputable.

Flying Foxes in the Heat of Debate

By

Spectacled.jpg

Flying foxes to wilt with climate change, by ABC Science Online’s Stephen Pincock, contends that new research shows some of Australia’s flying foxes face a grave threat from extreme temperatures expected to become more frequent with climate change.

Dr Nicola Markus, an Australian expert on their ecology and co-author of this new research, says, “It bodes extremely badly for the black flying foxes.”

In early 2002, she and an international team of researchers witnessed the deaths of more than 1,300 grey-headed and black flying foxes at Dallis Park in northern New South Wales (most of them females and their dependent young).

“On that day, what we saw was, very simply, that the flying foxes died of heat stress,” Dr Markus said. The temperatures, which exceeded 42 degrees Celsius, killed more than 1,300 of the animals. State-wide, more than 3,500 flying foxes fell to the soaring temperatures in that single heatwave.

Flying foxes are keystone species for forest environments. They have also been central to a taxonomic debate, which asks, are they really primates?

In 1986, Dr. John D. Pettigrew published his findings that all flying fox species (examined) shared the half-dozen brain pathways that were otherwise unique to primates. Under a microscope, their brain affinities with lemurs were difficult to tell apart.

Megabats and microbats had been historically grouped together because of the obvious similarities of their handwings. However, Dr. Pettigrew observed that the differences between to two groups included such things as diet, dentition, chromosomes, world geographic distribution, sperm, biochemistry, parasitology and numerous features of behavior. He also hypothesised that the two groups evolved flight separately, with the mega-chiroptera in the Tertiary era and the micro-chiroptera, much earlier, in the Cretaceous.

Lesser Sooty Owl

By

Lesser Sooty Owl.jpg

The piercing, descending shriek of the Lesser Sooty Owl Tyto multipunctata sounds much like a falling bomb, without the explosion at the end. It has enormous eyes and exceptional hearing, allowing it to hunt in almost total darkness.

It is a formidable rainforest predator of almost all the creatures I have posted at this weblog over the past few years.

Formerly classified as a sub-species of the much larger and darker Sooty Owl Tyto tenebricosa, it has since been re-classified into a distinct species that is endemic to Australia.

Fantastic phasmids

By

McLeay's Spectre.jpg

Macleay’s Spectre Extatosoma tiaratum would have to be one of the most spectacular insects in the Daintree rainforest. Males readily fly in search of mates, but much larger females are incapable of flight. First instar nymphs resemble ants.

McLeay's Spectre(juv).jpg

Phasmids are well represented in the Wet Tropics with some of the largest insects in the world. The Titan Stick Insect Acrophylla titan blends very well into the forest with its stick-like appearance and can attain a length of 250 mm.

Acrophylla titan.jpg

Praying Mantid

By

Mantid.jpg

I photographed this praying mantid last night on the flowers of a Wax Jambu Syzygium samarangense. There are around 160 described species of mantid in Australia with the greatest diversity in the tropics.

This large, robust female will produce a soft, foam-like oöthecae that hardens under atmospheric exposure. It may contain hundreds of eggs, each individually housed in a sealed compartment and a day or so after emerging, the nymphs begin to cannibalise one another.