FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- Authorities in Flagstaff, Ariz., are assuring residents there are no rogue pandas roaming the city after some pranksters got creative with an electronic street sign.
The Arizona Department of Transportation-controlled sign was set up to warn drivers not to make left turns at a busy intersection. But motorists heading to work Monday morning got an entirely different message: "Rogue panda on rampage."
A passer-by reported the hacked sign to police at about 3 a.m. Monday.
Transportation Department spokeswoman Mackenzie Nuno says the sign was restored to its original message by 11 a.m. She says the agency has no suspects, but she noted the hackers would have needed specialized equipment to change the sign.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/24/ariz-street-sign-prank-warns-of-rogue-panda_n_934843.html
Showing posts with label panda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label panda. Show all posts
Friday, August 26, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Chinese pandas leave for Japan
 |
| Female panda Xian Nu looks out of the cage at Shanghai Pudong Airport in Shanghai, east China, Feb. 21, 2011. A pair of giant pandas left their home in southwest China's Sichuan Province Monday for a 10-year stay in Japan, under a joint research agreement on the endangered species. Female panda Xian Nu and male Bi Li, accompanied by two keepers from the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in Wolong, stopped in Shanghai before heading to Tokyo's Narita International Airport. They are scheduled to arrive Ueno Zoo at around 9 p.m.. (Xinhua/Chen Fei) |
Female panda Xian Nu and male Bi Li left Chengdu, Sichuan's capital, on board a Sichuan Airlines passenger flight at 7:50 a.m., said a spokesman with the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in Wolong.
The pandas, accompanied by two keepers from Wolong, stopped in Shanghai before heading to Tokyo's Narita International Airport. They are scheduled to arrive Ueno Zoo at around 9 p.m., the spokesman said.
Panda keepers prepared 80 kg of fresh bamboo and 8 kg of dim sum for the animals to eat on the 13-hour journey.
Xian Nu and Bi Li are both aged 5 years. Pandas born in captivity can live up to 25 years.
Tokyo is rolling out the red carpet for the pair's arrival.
The Ueno Zoo was closed Monday, but a giant panda poster at its entrance caught the attention of many locals.
Read more at:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-02/21/c_13741684.htm
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-02/21/c_13741684_2.htm
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-02/21/c_13741684_3.htm
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-02/21/c_13741684_4.htm
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-02/21/c_13741684_5.htm
Monday, December 6, 2010
Panda costumes used to fool four-month-old cub
Researchers at the Wolong Giant Panda Research Centre have been dressing up in panda outfits in an effort to fool a cute panda cub.
The four-month-old cub is the first to be trained for reintroduction into the wild by the Hetaoping Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan province, China.
But for the baby panda to be reintroduced successfully, the cub’s environment must have absolutely no human influence, which is where the panda outfits come in.
While these pictures may appear to be of caring panda parents, they are in fact researchers in disguise.
Researchers from the centre wear the furry panda outfits to hide their human shape when checking the cub’s progress.
The baby panda is monitored by hidden cameras, but researchers have had to handle the cub to undertake physical examinations in order to monitor weight and body temperature.
The cub now weighs 8,270 grams, and is said to be quite healthy by the research centre.
Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/849530-panda-costumes-used-to-fool-four-month-old-cub#ixzz17MK2k5r5
The four-month-old cub is the first to be trained for reintroduction into the wild by the Hetaoping Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan province, China.
But for the baby panda to be reintroduced successfully, the cub’s environment must have absolutely no human influence, which is where the panda outfits come in.
While these pictures may appear to be of caring panda parents, they are in fact researchers in disguise.
Researchers from the centre wear the furry panda outfits to hide their human shape when checking the cub’s progress.
The baby panda is monitored by hidden cameras, but researchers have had to handle the cub to undertake physical examinations in order to monitor weight and body temperature.
The cub now weighs 8,270 grams, and is said to be quite healthy by the research centre.
Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/849530-panda-costumes-used-to-fool-four-month-old-cub#ixzz17MK2k5r5
Panda costumes used to fool four-month-old cub
Researchers at the Wolong Giant Panda Research Centre have been dressing up in panda outfits in an effort to fool a cute panda cub.
The four-month-old cub is the first to be trained for reintroduction into the wild by the Hetaoping Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan province, China.
But for the baby panda to be reintroduced successfully, the cub’s environment must have absolutely no human influence, which is where the panda outfits come in.
While these pictures may appear to be of caring panda parents, they are in fact researchers in disguise.
Researchers from the centre wear the furry panda outfits to hide their human shape when checking the cub’s progress.
The baby panda is monitored by hidden cameras, but researchers have had to handle the cub to undertake physical examinations in order to monitor weight and body temperature.
The cub now weighs 8,270 grams, and is said to be quite healthy by the research centre.
Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/849530-panda-costumes-used-to-fool-four-month-old-cub#ixzz17MK2k5r5
The four-month-old cub is the first to be trained for reintroduction into the wild by the Hetaoping Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan province, China.
But for the baby panda to be reintroduced successfully, the cub’s environment must have absolutely no human influence, which is where the panda outfits come in.
While these pictures may appear to be of caring panda parents, they are in fact researchers in disguise.
Researchers from the centre wear the furry panda outfits to hide their human shape when checking the cub’s progress.
The baby panda is monitored by hidden cameras, but researchers have had to handle the cub to undertake physical examinations in order to monitor weight and body temperature.
The cub now weighs 8,270 grams, and is said to be quite healthy by the research centre.
Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/849530-panda-costumes-used-to-fool-four-month-old-cub#ixzz17MK2k5r5
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Giant panda breeding breakthrough in China (via Dawn Holloway)
A critical breakthrough has been made in efforts to save the giant panda, one that could kick-start attempts to reintroduce the animals to the wild.
Conservationists say they have perfected the difficult task of reproducing pandas, having reached their target of successfully raising 300 of the bears in captivity.
The breakthrough, mainly by scientists at the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Centre, China, should lead to the first panda being reintroduced into the wild within 15 years.
The revelation comes after documentary makers were given unprecedented access to the research centre to film captive breeding activity over two years.
Just a few thousand wild pandas survive at best, and the species is classified as being Endangered.
In a bid to protect the animal, scientists have attempted to breed captive pandas since the first such cub was born in 1963.
But many obstacles stood in the way of achieving a stable captive panda population.
The first was the very short window of opportunity provided in the panda's natural reproductive cycle.
Female pandas are only on heat for 72 hours a year, and can only actually become pregnant during a 12 to 24 hour window during this time.
In order to correctly interpret the bears' breeding potential, caring for captive female pandas required close observation including daily urine samples to monitor hormone levels.
Understanding the giant panda's natural patterns of reproduction was only the start of the challenge.
'Turned off'
Despite conservationists' best efforts to encourage mating, pandas were seemingly "turned off" by captivity.
In Chengdu, the world's most successful panda breeding centre, researchers attempted to entice male pandas with the scent of suitable females on bamboo poles, mimicking wild scent-marking behaviour.
Rare interactions between aroused pairs often ended in disappointment, however.
Male pandas have proportionately short penises meaning pairs must adopt a very exact position in order to mate.
During their observations, researchers found that pandas demonstrated poor knowledge of this position.
Researchers then employed methods ranging from sex education videos to viagra in order to stimulate natural behaviour.
Most techniques failed, and many encounters between pandas turned aggressive and violent.
Scientists therefore had to rely upon artificial insemination, but their efforts were again subject to the pandas' peculiar reproductive cycle.
Panda pregnancies can last anything from 11 weeks to 11 months and can remain undetected until shortly before birth.
So researchers had to pay close attention to pandas following insemination procedures, ready to perform a crucial intervention whenever cubs were born.
Crucial intervention
The boon in panda numbers at the Chengdu centre has largely been attributed to the innovative "twin swapping" technique.
More than half of pandas give birth to two cubs at a time but only care for one.
It is assumed that as pandas cannot store fat, they lack the milk or energy to care for more than one cub at a time.
Whenever a cub was abandoned after birth, keepers at the Chengdu centre swiftly moved it to an incubator.
Panda mothers were tricked into caring for twins as staff stealthily rotated them between their mother and the incubators.
The survival rate of cubs rose to 98% through this combination of maternal care and artificial support.
By the end of last year, the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Centre alone had raised 168 cubs since its inception in 1987.
Hopes of reintroduction
Conservationists now believe captive numbers are strong enough to seriously consider wild reintroduction programmes.
Using the profits made from loaning their pandas to zoos worldwide, pioneers have purchased precious panda habitat in the Sichuan mountains, southwestern China.
With the goal of 300 captive pandas achieved, construction has started on the country's first dedicated panda reintroduction facility.
Panda Makers is broadcast on BBC TWO at 2000 GMT, Tuesday December 7th.
By Ella Davies
Earth News reporter
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9225000/9225918.stm
Conservationists say they have perfected the difficult task of reproducing pandas, having reached their target of successfully raising 300 of the bears in captivity.
The breakthrough, mainly by scientists at the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Centre, China, should lead to the first panda being reintroduced into the wild within 15 years.
The revelation comes after documentary makers were given unprecedented access to the research centre to film captive breeding activity over two years.
Just a few thousand wild pandas survive at best, and the species is classified as being Endangered.
In a bid to protect the animal, scientists have attempted to breed captive pandas since the first such cub was born in 1963.
But many obstacles stood in the way of achieving a stable captive panda population.
The first was the very short window of opportunity provided in the panda's natural reproductive cycle.
Female pandas are only on heat for 72 hours a year, and can only actually become pregnant during a 12 to 24 hour window during this time.
In order to correctly interpret the bears' breeding potential, caring for captive female pandas required close observation including daily urine samples to monitor hormone levels.
Understanding the giant panda's natural patterns of reproduction was only the start of the challenge.
'Turned off'
Despite conservationists' best efforts to encourage mating, pandas were seemingly "turned off" by captivity.
In Chengdu, the world's most successful panda breeding centre, researchers attempted to entice male pandas with the scent of suitable females on bamboo poles, mimicking wild scent-marking behaviour.
Rare interactions between aroused pairs often ended in disappointment, however.
Male pandas have proportionately short penises meaning pairs must adopt a very exact position in order to mate.
During their observations, researchers found that pandas demonstrated poor knowledge of this position.
Researchers then employed methods ranging from sex education videos to viagra in order to stimulate natural behaviour.
Most techniques failed, and many encounters between pandas turned aggressive and violent.
Scientists therefore had to rely upon artificial insemination, but their efforts were again subject to the pandas' peculiar reproductive cycle.
Panda pregnancies can last anything from 11 weeks to 11 months and can remain undetected until shortly before birth.
So researchers had to pay close attention to pandas following insemination procedures, ready to perform a crucial intervention whenever cubs were born.
Crucial intervention
The boon in panda numbers at the Chengdu centre has largely been attributed to the innovative "twin swapping" technique.
More than half of pandas give birth to two cubs at a time but only care for one.
It is assumed that as pandas cannot store fat, they lack the milk or energy to care for more than one cub at a time.
Whenever a cub was abandoned after birth, keepers at the Chengdu centre swiftly moved it to an incubator.
Panda mothers were tricked into caring for twins as staff stealthily rotated them between their mother and the incubators.
The survival rate of cubs rose to 98% through this combination of maternal care and artificial support.
By the end of last year, the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Centre alone had raised 168 cubs since its inception in 1987.
Hopes of reintroduction
Conservationists now believe captive numbers are strong enough to seriously consider wild reintroduction programmes.
Using the profits made from loaning their pandas to zoos worldwide, pioneers have purchased precious panda habitat in the Sichuan mountains, southwestern China.
With the goal of 300 captive pandas achieved, construction has started on the country's first dedicated panda reintroduction facility.
Panda Makers is broadcast on BBC TWO at 2000 GMT, Tuesday December 7th.
By Ella Davies
Earth News reporter
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9225000/9225918.stm
Giant panda breeding breakthrough in China (via Dawn Holloway)
A critical breakthrough has been made in efforts to save the giant panda, one that could kick-start attempts to reintroduce the animals to the wild.
Conservationists say they have perfected the difficult task of reproducing pandas, having reached their target of successfully raising 300 of the bears in captivity.
The breakthrough, mainly by scientists at the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Centre, China, should lead to the first panda being reintroduced into the wild within 15 years.
The revelation comes after documentary makers were given unprecedented access to the research centre to film captive breeding activity over two years.
Just a few thousand wild pandas survive at best, and the species is classified as being Endangered.
In a bid to protect the animal, scientists have attempted to breed captive pandas since the first such cub was born in 1963.
But many obstacles stood in the way of achieving a stable captive panda population.
The first was the very short window of opportunity provided in the panda's natural reproductive cycle.
Female pandas are only on heat for 72 hours a year, and can only actually become pregnant during a 12 to 24 hour window during this time.
In order to correctly interpret the bears' breeding potential, caring for captive female pandas required close observation including daily urine samples to monitor hormone levels.
Understanding the giant panda's natural patterns of reproduction was only the start of the challenge.
'Turned off'
Despite conservationists' best efforts to encourage mating, pandas were seemingly "turned off" by captivity.
In Chengdu, the world's most successful panda breeding centre, researchers attempted to entice male pandas with the scent of suitable females on bamboo poles, mimicking wild scent-marking behaviour.
Rare interactions between aroused pairs often ended in disappointment, however.
Male pandas have proportionately short penises meaning pairs must adopt a very exact position in order to mate.
During their observations, researchers found that pandas demonstrated poor knowledge of this position.
Researchers then employed methods ranging from sex education videos to viagra in order to stimulate natural behaviour.
Most techniques failed, and many encounters between pandas turned aggressive and violent.
Scientists therefore had to rely upon artificial insemination, but their efforts were again subject to the pandas' peculiar reproductive cycle.
Panda pregnancies can last anything from 11 weeks to 11 months and can remain undetected until shortly before birth.
So researchers had to pay close attention to pandas following insemination procedures, ready to perform a crucial intervention whenever cubs were born.
Crucial intervention
The boon in panda numbers at the Chengdu centre has largely been attributed to the innovative "twin swapping" technique.
More than half of pandas give birth to two cubs at a time but only care for one.
It is assumed that as pandas cannot store fat, they lack the milk or energy to care for more than one cub at a time.
Whenever a cub was abandoned after birth, keepers at the Chengdu centre swiftly moved it to an incubator.
Panda mothers were tricked into caring for twins as staff stealthily rotated them between their mother and the incubators.
The survival rate of cubs rose to 98% through this combination of maternal care and artificial support.
By the end of last year, the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Centre alone had raised 168 cubs since its inception in 1987.
Hopes of reintroduction
Conservationists now believe captive numbers are strong enough to seriously consider wild reintroduction programmes.
Using the profits made from loaning their pandas to zoos worldwide, pioneers have purchased precious panda habitat in the Sichuan mountains, southwestern China.
With the goal of 300 captive pandas achieved, construction has started on the country's first dedicated panda reintroduction facility.
Panda Makers is broadcast on BBC TWO at 2000 GMT, Tuesday December 7th.
By Ella Davies
Earth News reporter
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9225000/9225918.stm
Conservationists say they have perfected the difficult task of reproducing pandas, having reached their target of successfully raising 300 of the bears in captivity.
The breakthrough, mainly by scientists at the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Centre, China, should lead to the first panda being reintroduced into the wild within 15 years.
The revelation comes after documentary makers were given unprecedented access to the research centre to film captive breeding activity over two years.
Just a few thousand wild pandas survive at best, and the species is classified as being Endangered.
In a bid to protect the animal, scientists have attempted to breed captive pandas since the first such cub was born in 1963.
But many obstacles stood in the way of achieving a stable captive panda population.
The first was the very short window of opportunity provided in the panda's natural reproductive cycle.
Female pandas are only on heat for 72 hours a year, and can only actually become pregnant during a 12 to 24 hour window during this time.
In order to correctly interpret the bears' breeding potential, caring for captive female pandas required close observation including daily urine samples to monitor hormone levels.
Understanding the giant panda's natural patterns of reproduction was only the start of the challenge.
'Turned off'
Despite conservationists' best efforts to encourage mating, pandas were seemingly "turned off" by captivity.
In Chengdu, the world's most successful panda breeding centre, researchers attempted to entice male pandas with the scent of suitable females on bamboo poles, mimicking wild scent-marking behaviour.
Rare interactions between aroused pairs often ended in disappointment, however.
Male pandas have proportionately short penises meaning pairs must adopt a very exact position in order to mate.
During their observations, researchers found that pandas demonstrated poor knowledge of this position.
Researchers then employed methods ranging from sex education videos to viagra in order to stimulate natural behaviour.
Most techniques failed, and many encounters between pandas turned aggressive and violent.
Scientists therefore had to rely upon artificial insemination, but their efforts were again subject to the pandas' peculiar reproductive cycle.
Panda pregnancies can last anything from 11 weeks to 11 months and can remain undetected until shortly before birth.
So researchers had to pay close attention to pandas following insemination procedures, ready to perform a crucial intervention whenever cubs were born.
Crucial intervention
The boon in panda numbers at the Chengdu centre has largely been attributed to the innovative "twin swapping" technique.
More than half of pandas give birth to two cubs at a time but only care for one.
It is assumed that as pandas cannot store fat, they lack the milk or energy to care for more than one cub at a time.
Whenever a cub was abandoned after birth, keepers at the Chengdu centre swiftly moved it to an incubator.
Panda mothers were tricked into caring for twins as staff stealthily rotated them between their mother and the incubators.
The survival rate of cubs rose to 98% through this combination of maternal care and artificial support.
By the end of last year, the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Centre alone had raised 168 cubs since its inception in 1987.
Hopes of reintroduction
Conservationists now believe captive numbers are strong enough to seriously consider wild reintroduction programmes.
Using the profits made from loaning their pandas to zoos worldwide, pioneers have purchased precious panda habitat in the Sichuan mountains, southwestern China.
With the goal of 300 captive pandas achieved, construction has started on the country's first dedicated panda reintroduction facility.
Panda Makers is broadcast on BBC TWO at 2000 GMT, Tuesday December 7th.
By Ella Davies
Earth News reporter
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9225000/9225918.stm
Saturday, November 20, 2010
'Psychic Panda' No Match for Paul the Octopus
Paul's popularity has led to a spate of copycat "prophetic" animals, albeit with far less success.
THE GIST
A panda named Bo Si picked the nationality of the first gold medal winner of the Asian Games.
Paul the octopus, who died last month, correctly predicted game outcomes in this year's World Cup.
First there was Paul the octopus, now there's Bo Si, the "psychic" panda.
Bo Si picked a Chinese athlete to be the first gold medal winner of the Asian Games -- and Yuan Xiaochao promptly won for wushu, boosting the popularity of the 12 giant pandas at Xiangjiang Safari Park in Guangzhou.
But given China are so dominant, are favorites to finish top of the medals table and have the biggest squad at the Games, critics said it hardly proved Bo Si's telepathic powers.
And it emerged Bo Si had been given the option to pick a bamboo shoot, which represented a Chinese winner, or an apple for a foreigner. Pandas exist on a bamboo diet.
"The pandas have tended to favor Chinese athletes," said the China Daily of the 12 giant "predicting" pandas.
"The pandas are expected to help the park attract more tourists during the Asian Games," the paper quoted a park staff member as saying.
Paul the octopus shot to fame during this year's football World Cup in South Africa for his flawless record in predicting game outcomes, leading to a spate of copycat "prophetic" animals, albeit with far less success.
Paul died at an aquarium in Germany last month.
THE GIST
A panda named Bo Si picked the nationality of the first gold medal winner of the Asian Games.
Paul the octopus, who died last month, correctly predicted game outcomes in this year's World Cup.
First there was Paul the octopus, now there's Bo Si, the "psychic" panda.
Bo Si picked a Chinese athlete to be the first gold medal winner of the Asian Games -- and Yuan Xiaochao promptly won for wushu, boosting the popularity of the 12 giant pandas at Xiangjiang Safari Park in Guangzhou.
But given China are so dominant, are favorites to finish top of the medals table and have the biggest squad at the Games, critics said it hardly proved Bo Si's telepathic powers.
And it emerged Bo Si had been given the option to pick a bamboo shoot, which represented a Chinese winner, or an apple for a foreigner. Pandas exist on a bamboo diet.
"The pandas have tended to favor Chinese athletes," said the China Daily of the 12 giant "predicting" pandas.
"The pandas are expected to help the park attract more tourists during the Asian Games," the paper quoted a park staff member as saying.
Paul the octopus shot to fame during this year's football World Cup in South Africa for his flawless record in predicting game outcomes, leading to a spate of copycat "prophetic" animals, albeit with far less success.
Paul died at an aquarium in Germany last month.
'Psychic Panda' No Match for Paul the Octopus
Paul's popularity has led to a spate of copycat "prophetic" animals, albeit with far less success.
THE GIST
A panda named Bo Si picked the nationality of the first gold medal winner of the Asian Games.
Paul the octopus, who died last month, correctly predicted game outcomes in this year's World Cup.
First there was Paul the octopus, now there's Bo Si, the "psychic" panda.
Bo Si picked a Chinese athlete to be the first gold medal winner of the Asian Games -- and Yuan Xiaochao promptly won for wushu, boosting the popularity of the 12 giant pandas at Xiangjiang Safari Park in Guangzhou.
But given China are so dominant, are favorites to finish top of the medals table and have the biggest squad at the Games, critics said it hardly proved Bo Si's telepathic powers.
And it emerged Bo Si had been given the option to pick a bamboo shoot, which represented a Chinese winner, or an apple for a foreigner. Pandas exist on a bamboo diet.
"The pandas have tended to favor Chinese athletes," said the China Daily of the 12 giant "predicting" pandas.
"The pandas are expected to help the park attract more tourists during the Asian Games," the paper quoted a park staff member as saying.
Paul the octopus shot to fame during this year's football World Cup in South Africa for his flawless record in predicting game outcomes, leading to a spate of copycat "prophetic" animals, albeit with far less success.
Paul died at an aquarium in Germany last month.
THE GIST
A panda named Bo Si picked the nationality of the first gold medal winner of the Asian Games.
Paul the octopus, who died last month, correctly predicted game outcomes in this year's World Cup.
First there was Paul the octopus, now there's Bo Si, the "psychic" panda.
Bo Si picked a Chinese athlete to be the first gold medal winner of the Asian Games -- and Yuan Xiaochao promptly won for wushu, boosting the popularity of the 12 giant pandas at Xiangjiang Safari Park in Guangzhou.
But given China are so dominant, are favorites to finish top of the medals table and have the biggest squad at the Games, critics said it hardly proved Bo Si's telepathic powers.
And it emerged Bo Si had been given the option to pick a bamboo shoot, which represented a Chinese winner, or an apple for a foreigner. Pandas exist on a bamboo diet.
"The pandas have tended to favor Chinese athletes," said the China Daily of the 12 giant "predicting" pandas.
"The pandas are expected to help the park attract more tourists during the Asian Games," the paper quoted a park staff member as saying.
Paul the octopus shot to fame during this year's football World Cup in South Africa for his flawless record in predicting game outcomes, leading to a spate of copycat "prophetic" animals, albeit with far less success.
Paul died at an aquarium in Germany last month.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Panda-keeper contest attracts thousands
More than 17,000 candidates seek to be panda keepers for a month in China
By AFP
Published Friday, August 27, 2010
More than 17,000 people from around the world have entered a contest to become a panda keeper for a month in China, organisers said Friday, less than two weeks after the competition was launched.
"Project Panda," launched by the Chengdu Panda Base in the southwestern province of Sichuan and the WWF, aims to give the contest's six winners a chance to study panda behaviour for one month.
The keepers will witness the birth of baby pandas and trek in the mountains around Chengdu, Sichuan's capital, to study wild pandas.
They will also have to keep a blog about their experiences, to help raise awareness of the endangered animal's plight.
According to pandahome.com, the website where animal lovers can apply for the position, a total of 17,114 people have so far entered the contest, ahead of the September 6 deadline.
A panel of experts will select 12 finalists, which they will then whittle down to six winners at the end of September.
Videos posted on the website by applicants who want the position show they come from countries such as the Netherlands, South Africa and Japan -- as well as China.
There are just 1,600 pandas left in the wild and nearly 300 others are in captive-bred programmes worldwide, mainly in China, according to official reports.
http://www.emirates247.com/offbeat/this-is-life/panda-keeper-contest-attracts-thousands-2010-08-27-1.284303
By AFP
Published Friday, August 27, 2010
More than 17,000 people from around the world have entered a contest to become a panda keeper for a month in China, organisers said Friday, less than two weeks after the competition was launched.
"Project Panda," launched by the Chengdu Panda Base in the southwestern province of Sichuan and the WWF, aims to give the contest's six winners a chance to study panda behaviour for one month.
The keepers will witness the birth of baby pandas and trek in the mountains around Chengdu, Sichuan's capital, to study wild pandas.
They will also have to keep a blog about their experiences, to help raise awareness of the endangered animal's plight.
According to pandahome.com, the website where animal lovers can apply for the position, a total of 17,114 people have so far entered the contest, ahead of the September 6 deadline.
A panel of experts will select 12 finalists, which they will then whittle down to six winners at the end of September.
Videos posted on the website by applicants who want the position show they come from countries such as the Netherlands, South Africa and Japan -- as well as China.
There are just 1,600 pandas left in the wild and nearly 300 others are in captive-bred programmes worldwide, mainly in China, according to official reports.
http://www.emirates247.com/offbeat/this-is-life/panda-keeper-contest-attracts-thousands-2010-08-27-1.284303
Friday, July 16, 2010
Giant panda holds newborn cub in mouth, cub lives
Ted Thornhill - 15th July, 2010A giant panda caused pandemonium when she grabbed her pink and hairless baby in her mouth – but luckily she was just showing motherly love.
Mummy panda Zhuyun gave birth to the cub this year at a breeding centre in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, after mating with a male named Lingling.
The little fella weighs a very cute 159.5 grams and measures an adorable 14.8cm. Awwwww.
(Writer pauses for a moment and sighs at the sheer cuteness of it all).
Workers panicked for a few moments when he was grabbed by mother, but all was well.
The baby won’t be named for another 100 days, which is a tradition in China.
His birth makes Zhuyun’s family four-strong, as she also has a little girl, Minmin.
Zhuyun and Lingling are part of the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center.
Pandas are one of the world’s most endangered animals, with just 1,590 in the wild - mostly in the mountains of Sichuan - and 210 in captivity.
The Panda Research Center, founded in 1963, sits in a 200,000-hectare nature reserve and houses around 150 pandas. Most of them were moved to the Ya’an reserve when the centre was damaged by the huge earthquake of May 2008.
The centre is currently being rebuilt.
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/835199-giant-panda-holds-newborn-cub-in-mouth-cub-lives
Monday, May 31, 2010
Chinese Pandas To Go To Survival School
3:32pm UK, Sunday May 30, 2010
Tim Hewage, Sky News Online
China has started to build a school to teach captive pandas to survive in the wild.
Head of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, Zhang Zhihe, said the 60m million yuan (£6m) centre will be located in Sichuan province's Dujiangyan city.
Bears brought into the centre will be kept in cages for the first few years before being moved to caves where they will be taught foraging skills.
They will still receive frequent checkups and participate in artificial breeding.
Then the pandas will be moved to the more natural forested area with less human contact.
Finally they will be introduced to a nature reserve where it is hoped they will then be able to fend for themselves.
The naturalisation process can take as long as 15 years to complete.
Giant pandas are among the world's most endangered species.
Over 300 pandas are raised in captivity in China while only 1600 remain in the wild.
See video at: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/China-Starts-To-Build-A-Centre-For-Training-Captive-Pandas-To-Survive-In-The-Wild/Article/201005415640681?f=rss
Tim Hewage, Sky News Online
China has started to build a school to teach captive pandas to survive in the wild.
Head of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, Zhang Zhihe, said the 60m million yuan (£6m) centre will be located in Sichuan province's Dujiangyan city.
Bears brought into the centre will be kept in cages for the first few years before being moved to caves where they will be taught foraging skills.
They will still receive frequent checkups and participate in artificial breeding.
Then the pandas will be moved to the more natural forested area with less human contact.
Finally they will be introduced to a nature reserve where it is hoped they will then be able to fend for themselves.
The naturalisation process can take as long as 15 years to complete.
Giant pandas are among the world's most endangered species.
Over 300 pandas are raised in captivity in China while only 1600 remain in the wild.
See video at: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/China-Starts-To-Build-A-Centre-For-Training-Captive-Pandas-To-Survive-In-The-Wild/Article/201005415640681?f=rss
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Hungry Panda Swipes Bones From Pig Pen
1:20pm UK, Sunday February 28, 2010Huw Borland, Sky News Online
A hungry wild panda broke into a villager's pig pen to chew on bones, China's Central Television has reported.
The black and white beast was first spotted in a field, but later found gnawing on the animal remains left in the enclosure, in Shandong Province.
The panda appeared to be eating bone sections only, spitting meat parts away, the TV channel added.
It had apparently come down from the mountains in search of food.
After eating its fill, the panda quietly left.
Scientists believe there are around 1,590 giant pandas living in the wild in China, most in the mountains of the southwest regions.
The endangered species, which normally eats bamboo, is considered a national icon in China.
The animals are often used to bolster foreign relations, coining the term "panda diplomacy".
See video at: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Strange-News/Panda-Hungry-Bear-Breaks-Into-Pig-Pen-In-Chinese-Village-To-Chew-On-Bones/Article/201002415562101?f=rss
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Baby Panda Shows His Bounce Back Ability
10:21am UK, Friday January 08, 2010
Angela Barnes, Sky News Online
San Diego Zoo's newest baby panda, Yun Zi, made his media debut by showing off his bounce back ability.
The five month old giant panda cub climbed a tree branch, fell off, and promptly climbed back on.
The zoo's senior keeper, Kathy Hawk, said: "It's all part of the learning process."
She added it would help Yun Zi help get his "climbing legs going."
The cub's mother, Bai Yun, was equally unpeturbed.
She looked on proudly as her bubbly baby boy performed for the cameras.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Strange-News/The-San-Diego-Zoos-Newest-Panda-Cub-Frolics-Falls-And-Bounces-Back-During-His-Media-Debut/Article/201001215516952?f=rss
Angela Barnes, Sky News Online
San Diego Zoo's newest baby panda, Yun Zi, made his media debut by showing off his bounce back ability.
The five month old giant panda cub climbed a tree branch, fell off, and promptly climbed back on.
The zoo's senior keeper, Kathy Hawk, said: "It's all part of the learning process."
She added it would help Yun Zi help get his "climbing legs going."
The cub's mother, Bai Yun, was equally unpeturbed.
She looked on proudly as her bubbly baby boy performed for the cameras.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Strange-News/The-San-Diego-Zoos-Newest-Panda-Cub-Frolics-Falls-And-Bounces-Back-During-His-Media-Debut/Article/201001215516952?f=rss
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Photographs capture baby panda as it tries to escape playpen
These pictures show a baby panda trying – and failing – to make a clean getaway from her playpen in the Sichuan Province, China.
Published: 8:14AM GMT 31 Dec 2009
The images of Wen Li and her twin sister Ya Li were taken at the Chengdu Giant Panda Research Institute.
They show Wen Li struggling up the side of her playpen, before losing her balance and toppling over the side. Fortunately the panda cub was caught by one of her handlers before hitting the floor.
Wen Li and Ya Li were born on July 19, 2009. Just two other pandas were born at the institute in the same year, compared to 18 born in 2008.
Researches have argued that mothers at the institute were simply too “exhausted” to have any more babies.
The institute was set up 1987 with six pandas rescued from the wild. Just over two decades later it is home to 83 giant pandas, about a third of the total pandas kept in captivity in China.
They are a source of national pride in China and their dwindling numbers have become a countrywide concern. They are the rarest type of bears and, with fewer than 3,000 still in the wild, are considered to be among the world’s most endangered species.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6914996/Photographs-capture-baby-panda-as-it-tries-to-escape-playpen.html
Published: 8:14AM GMT 31 Dec 2009
The images of Wen Li and her twin sister Ya Li were taken at the Chengdu Giant Panda Research Institute.
They show Wen Li struggling up the side of her playpen, before losing her balance and toppling over the side. Fortunately the panda cub was caught by one of her handlers before hitting the floor.
Wen Li and Ya Li were born on July 19, 2009. Just two other pandas were born at the institute in the same year, compared to 18 born in 2008.
Researches have argued that mothers at the institute were simply too “exhausted” to have any more babies.
The institute was set up 1987 with six pandas rescued from the wild. Just over two decades later it is home to 83 giant pandas, about a third of the total pandas kept in captivity in China.
They are a source of national pride in China and their dwindling numbers have become a countrywide concern. They are the rarest type of bears and, with fewer than 3,000 still in the wild, are considered to be among the world’s most endangered species.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6914996/Photographs-capture-baby-panda-as-it-tries-to-escape-playpen.html
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Panda poo gets gardeners' thumbs-up
Tue Dec 1, 2009A predicted $600 million-plus tourism boom from Adelaide Zoo's new giant pandas will see no marketing opportunity go to waste, including capitalising on Wang Wang and Funi's waste.
They say in life you only get out what you put in and in the case of giant pandas, that is almost literally true.
Adelaide Zoo CEO Chris West explains.
"That's right. Panda poo rather looks like strained chopped bamboo," he said.
"It's very undigested."
Panda passings are low in nutrients but high in micro-organisms.
Television gardening expert Malcolm Campbell thinks it is a great product.
"Dig it in and the micro-organisms start to work on locked up nutrients in your soil. Great benefit," he said.
Adelaide Zoo has long marketed other animals' droppings and will now add them to those from the giant pandas to boost the nutritional value.
There are other ways to turn the dung into treasure too.
Poo statues
In Thailand, panda poo is used to produce paper.
In Chengdu in China, where Wang Wang and Funi were from, they even turn the droppings into statues.
And they are not as 'on the nose' as might be expected.
"The oils in the bamboo are released and if you crumble up a fresh piece of panda poo I think it's quite a sweet smell," Mr West said.
The marketing opportunities pandas provide are nothing to sneeze at.
The Zoo has the copyright on the names Wang Wang and Funi and cartoon images of the pandas.
Proceeds from official merchandise will go towards conservation efforts.
Adelaide already has a broad range of official products available but has some way to go to match overseas zoos, which market everything from panda-branded food and drink to cigarettes.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/01/2758068.htm
Panda poo gets gardeners' thumbs-up
Tue Dec 1, 2009A predicted $600 million-plus tourism boom from Adelaide Zoo's new giant pandas will see no marketing opportunity go to waste, including capitalising on Wang Wang and Funi's waste.
They say in life you only get out what you put in and in the case of giant pandas, that is almost literally true.
Adelaide Zoo CEO Chris West explains.
"That's right. Panda poo rather looks like strained chopped bamboo," he said.
"It's very undigested."
Panda passings are low in nutrients but high in micro-organisms.
Television gardening expert Malcolm Campbell thinks it is a great product.
"Dig it in and the micro-organisms start to work on locked up nutrients in your soil. Great benefit," he said.
Adelaide Zoo has long marketed other animals' droppings and will now add them to those from the giant pandas to boost the nutritional value.
There are other ways to turn the dung into treasure too.
Poo statues
In Thailand, panda poo is used to produce paper.
In Chengdu in China, where Wang Wang and Funi were from, they even turn the droppings into statues.
And they are not as 'on the nose' as might be expected.
"The oils in the bamboo are released and if you crumble up a fresh piece of panda poo I think it's quite a sweet smell," Mr West said.
The marketing opportunities pandas provide are nothing to sneeze at.
The Zoo has the copyright on the names Wang Wang and Funi and cartoon images of the pandas.
Proceeds from official merchandise will go towards conservation efforts.
Adelaide already has a broad range of official products available but has some way to go to match overseas zoos, which market everything from panda-branded food and drink to cigarettes.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/01/2758068.htm
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The koala wars
It's cute and it's cuddly. And in 30 years, campaigners say, the koala will be extinct. But this emblematic animal has a curious history – and its fate is mired in politics.
Gideon Haigh
The Guardian, Monday 23 November 2009
When south-eastern Australia was consumed by bushfires in February, one image shut out all others. Nearly 200 humans might have perished, but a koala had been saved: videoed in a blackened landscape imbibing thirstily from the water bottle of a volunteer firefighter, Sam featured in newspapers from the New York Times to the Sun, and became a hit on CNN, YouTube and a website created by her veterinary carers.
According to the Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, she was the subject of widespread comment at the G20 summit in London in April this year, and he issued a personal tribute to this "symbol of hope" when Sam died six months later. "It's tragic that Sam the koala is no longer with us," Rudd said, just restraining himself from decreeing a state funeral.
Political leaders, however, appropriate symbols at their peril. A fortnight ago in Canberra, representatives of the Australian Koala Foundation (AKF) took a long and determined campaign for better protection of the creature to the government's "threatened species scientific committee", following a request for a review of the animal's status by environment minister Peter Garrett. The foundation presented what they say is definitive evidence of a sharp decline in koala numbers due to habitat destruction and disease. Its message was stark: the koala would be extinct "within 30 years". Hits on its website instantly doubled, and concerns were expressed about the impact on Australia's tourist industry: polls consistently show the koala to be the country's most popular animal with visitors.
In the AKF's chief executive Deborah Tabart, meanwhile, Rudd faces an implacable and outspoken critic, one who will now be dogging his steps at next month's Copenhagen climate change conference. Rudd may have been nice about Sam the koala, but Tabart does not think Rudd is doing enough for the species; she describes him as a "bureaucrat who hides behind policy and writing documents". The koala, she mutters darkly, "has many powerful enemies".
It has certainly had its detractors. The koala features in fossil records as far back as 25 million years ago, and has an honoured place in aboriginal creation myths, but when Gerald Durrell described it as "the most boring of all animals", he was far from the first to do so.
The koala is assuredly a creature of leisure. It has the smallest brain proportionally of any mammal, sleeps most of the day, and dedicates much of the rest to chewing gum leaves. The first description published in England 200 years ago, in fact, introduced the koala as the "New Holland Sloth". In his Arcana; or The Museum of Natural History (1881), the naturalist George Perry was severely censorious of the koala's "sluggishness and inactivity", and thought its "clumsy appearance" was "void of elegance".
"We are at a loss to imagine for what particular scale of usefulness or happiness such an animal could by the great Author of Nature possibly be destined," concluded Perry, although his respect for that particular author compelled him to concede: "As Nature however provides nothing vain, we may suppose that even these torpid, senseless creatures are wisely intended to fill up one of the great links of the chain of animated nature, and to shew forth the extensive variety of the created beings which GOD has, in his wisdom, constructed."
Nor was the koala then prized for cuddliness, being widely hunted for its fur from the 1870s, and provoking relatively little interest overseas. The first specimen to make it to England met an untimely end in the office of the superintendent of the Zoological Society, asphyxiated by the lid of a washing-stand that fell on its head.
Cuddly anthropomorphism
The koala's installation in national favour owes much to eager exercises in anthropomorphism in the early 20th century, first in cartoons published in the legendary nationalist periodical the Bulletin, then in children's tales such as Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding (1918) and Dorothy Wall's Blinky Bill (1933).
Lindsay offered Bunyip Bluegum as a koala of culture, with boater, bowtie and walking stick, while Wall's Blinky was a marsupial of mischief, dressed in knickerbockers and bearing a knapsack, although sufficiently patriotic to join the army during the second world war.
If it was considered inadequately industrious for the 19th century, the koala was exquisitely suited to the cuteness-conscious 20th. Indeed, it is appropriate that the AKF's case is accented to the environmental pressures the koala faces in Rudd's home state of Queensland, where it is the faunal emblem, and has always had political claws.
It was in Queensland that the koala was the subject of Australia's first concerted environmental campaign after the state Labor government, in response to pressure from trappers who had denuded koala populations to the south, proclaimed an open season on the animal in August 1927.
Resistance orchestrated by the Queensland Naturalists Club and the Nature Lovers' League inspired one newspaper to print an edition bordered in black, and flushed out celebrity apologists including the writer Vance Palmer. "The shooting of our harmless and lovable native bear is nothing less than barbarous," he thundered. "There is not a social vice that can be put down to his account . . . He affords no sport to the gunman . . . and he has been almost been blotted out already in some areas."
The trappers had their way, slaughtering and skinning no fewer than a million koalas, but the Labor government paid the price, being swept from power at the next election. Australia's first three fauna parks, set up in the late 1920s, were then dedicated to koalas.
Researching all this for his book Koala: The Origins of an Icon (2007), biologist Dr Stephen Jackson was astonished by the ardour he encountered. "You read now what was being published then, and you think: 'Wow! These people really went off.' It's almost the beginning of the conservation movement in Australia, because it mobilised people as never before." And although nobody has since posited a Queensland koala equivalent of the Curse of Gnome, there is some evidence for it.
Seventy years after that pioneering koala campaign, for example, federal tourism minister John Brown famously dismissed the animals as "flea-ridden, piddling, stinking, scratching, rotten little things"; he left politics soon after following allegations he had misled parliament over a tender submitted by a contractor.
The 1995 state election was then dominated by a Labor government plan to drive a major roadway through a key koala habitat. An apparently unassailable majority dwindled unsustainably when Labor lost what became known as the "koala seats" in Brisbane Bayside. Oddly, Rudd – then chief-of-staff to the premier of Queensland – was mixed up in the row over that koala habitat.
In the end, those koalas probably did Rudd a favour – and now Tabart thinks it is payback time. She is an unpredictable political opponent. An entrant 40 years ago in the Miss Australia pageant, she explains her failure candidly: "I didn't sleep with one of the judges, so I didn't win."
Tabart has made a particular target of Professor Bob Beeton of the University of Queensland, the chairman of the aforementioned threatened species scientific committee, which four years ago rejected an AKF application for listing of the koala as "vulnerable". "That determination sits on my desk to this day, and it outrages me," she says. To Beeton's statements that his committee might take up to a year to report back to environment minister Peter Garrett, she retorts: "The minister doesn't have that time – and nor does the koala."
Beeton has a droll line or two as well. While naturalists describe the koala as representative of "charismatic megafauna", Beeton is unmoved by charisma: under pressure from a television interviewer last week, he responded that his committee would grant protection of the koala as much consideration as protection of the death adder – the subject of another recent determination. Asked about advocacy groups in general, and the proposition that no such group has ever prospered from buoyant pronouncements of abundance, he invokes Francis Urquhart in House of Cards: "You might well think that. I couldn't possibly comment."
Threatened by disease
Far from being new, Beeton observes, disease is a perennial problem in the koala community. The Chlamydia organism, which finally carried off Sam, may be present in as many as half of Australia's koalas – just as it is also present in about a third of humans.
Another spectre cited in recent publicity concerning the koala is a newly identified but little understood retrovirus, originally given the acronym KoRV, but now more catchily abbreviated as Kids (Koala Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Beeton believes that a great deal more needs to be known about the condition: "It's very hard for a single disease to kill a species. We couldn't kill rabbits in Australia with myxomatosis."
There is clearly much argy-bargy to come. The AKF's prospects will depend on its ability to use global concerns to influence domestic policies; for Australians, the koala reposes, at least at the moment, on a list of "things-to-be-concerned-about-had-I-the-time".
So far, it has made its case with only a broad brush. Because of her suspicions of the Species Committee, Tabart says that the foundation is unprepared as yet to divulge full details of its data, on grounds that earlier data presented to the Species Committee was "used against the koala". She will say only that it results from the examination of 80,000 trees at 2,000 field sites and concludes that the population may be as low as 43,000, compared with previously assumed figures comfortably in six figures. This leaves the foundation open to criticism because, as Jackson points out, koala numbers depend quite heavily on where you look: "If you talk to biologists [in Victoria], they'll tell you: 'Koalas are falling out of the trees down here. We don't know what to do with them.'"
Statistics that are public, however, include those of widespread land clearing in Queensland until its cessation in January 2007, after a decade in which up to 700,000 hectares of habitat was being destroyed annually under the influence of property developers and resources companies – a reckless abandon whose environmental effects are still little understood.
In this sense, Sam the koala was an ironic representative of her species, survivor of a calamity amply publicised and readily understood; far greater ecological damage on Australia has been inflicted by easy government acquiescence.
Gideon Haigh is one of Australia's leading cricket writers.
Chew leaves – sleep for 18 hours The life of a koala
When a koala dies, a new occupant won't move into its home range for about a year – the time it takes for scratches on the trees and scent markings to disappear. Then, as long as they are not disturbed, koalas keep their home ranges (a group of several trees that they regularly visit) throughout their lives – up to 18 years.
Often called koala bears because of their cuddly teddy-bear appearance, they are of course marsupials – and can be aggressive. They breed once a year (koalas usually only produce a single cub, or joey, though occasionally give birth to twins), and once a cub is born – 2cm long, blind and hairless after a gestation period of 35 days – it relies on its sense of smell and touch to crawl into its mother's pouch, where it stays for the next six months, feeding on milk. After it emerges, the cub will remain with its mother until it is a year old, riding on her back or clinging to her belly.
The adult koala's days are filled with sleeping and eating. They survive on a diet of predominantly eucalyptus leaves and bark – to most animals, eucalyptus leaves are incredibly poisonous, but the koala's digestive system has evolved to manage the toxins. It is often said that eucalyptus makes koalas "stoned" – probably because they sleep for up to 18 hours a day, wedged between branches of eucalyptus trees – but this isn't true: their high-fibre, low-nutrition diet means they have to sleep to conserve energy.
They also don't tend to drink, getting almost all the water they need from leaves. In fact, the name koala is thought to come from a name in one Aboriginal language meaning "doesn't drink". Emine Saner
Going, going . . . Endangered flagship species
Giant panda
The poster-bear of the wildlife conservation movement and symbol of the WWF since 1961. "Charismatic or flagship species tend to be larger animals that take up a larger space," says Amanda Nickson, director of its international species programme. "By conserving these, you help to conserve everything smaller that shares their habitat. Pandas were one of the earliest species that people became aware were threatened; they show we can bring species back from the brink of extinction." There is still much work to do, though: only 1,600 pandas are left in the wild in southern and eastern China.
Tiger
In the last 100 years, the tiger population has decreased by 95%, three sub-species have become extinct and a fourth has not been spotted in the wild for 25 years. There are thought to be around 3,200 tigers left in the wild in south and east Asia, but they are endangered by poaching for the trade in tiger body parts (used in traditional Chinese medicine) and their skins, loss of prey and the more long-term threat of habitat loss. "The global community needs to take action now," says Nickson.
African elephant
Elephants losing their habitat as human populations encroach is a relatively recent threat, but while the global ban on illegal ivory in 1989 helped, poaching remains a problem. It is thought the population of around 600,000 is decreasing by 38,000 every year, and one recent estimate suggested large groups could be extinct by 2020. "Elephants are still being slaughtered daily to supply the illegal trade in ivory," says Robbie Marsland, UK Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Blue whale
Before the extensive whaling of the 20th century – in 1931, 29,000 blue whales were killed in one season alone – it is thought there were around 250,000 blue whales at any one time. By 1966, when the International Whaling Commission banned blue whale hunting, they were almost extinct; now there are around 2,300. "Despite our best efforts, their numbers aren't recovering as well as we would hope," says Nickson. "Blue whales are a symbol of why we can't allow species to become too endangered. We allowed their numbers to get too low, and we need to learn lessons." ES
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/23/koala-extinction-australia-political-war
Gideon Haigh
The Guardian, Monday 23 November 2009
When south-eastern Australia was consumed by bushfires in February, one image shut out all others. Nearly 200 humans might have perished, but a koala had been saved: videoed in a blackened landscape imbibing thirstily from the water bottle of a volunteer firefighter, Sam featured in newspapers from the New York Times to the Sun, and became a hit on CNN, YouTube and a website created by her veterinary carers.
According to the Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, she was the subject of widespread comment at the G20 summit in London in April this year, and he issued a personal tribute to this "symbol of hope" when Sam died six months later. "It's tragic that Sam the koala is no longer with us," Rudd said, just restraining himself from decreeing a state funeral.
Political leaders, however, appropriate symbols at their peril. A fortnight ago in Canberra, representatives of the Australian Koala Foundation (AKF) took a long and determined campaign for better protection of the creature to the government's "threatened species scientific committee", following a request for a review of the animal's status by environment minister Peter Garrett. The foundation presented what they say is definitive evidence of a sharp decline in koala numbers due to habitat destruction and disease. Its message was stark: the koala would be extinct "within 30 years". Hits on its website instantly doubled, and concerns were expressed about the impact on Australia's tourist industry: polls consistently show the koala to be the country's most popular animal with visitors.
In the AKF's chief executive Deborah Tabart, meanwhile, Rudd faces an implacable and outspoken critic, one who will now be dogging his steps at next month's Copenhagen climate change conference. Rudd may have been nice about Sam the koala, but Tabart does not think Rudd is doing enough for the species; she describes him as a "bureaucrat who hides behind policy and writing documents". The koala, she mutters darkly, "has many powerful enemies".
It has certainly had its detractors. The koala features in fossil records as far back as 25 million years ago, and has an honoured place in aboriginal creation myths, but when Gerald Durrell described it as "the most boring of all animals", he was far from the first to do so.
The koala is assuredly a creature of leisure. It has the smallest brain proportionally of any mammal, sleeps most of the day, and dedicates much of the rest to chewing gum leaves. The first description published in England 200 years ago, in fact, introduced the koala as the "New Holland Sloth". In his Arcana; or The Museum of Natural History (1881), the naturalist George Perry was severely censorious of the koala's "sluggishness and inactivity", and thought its "clumsy appearance" was "void of elegance".
"We are at a loss to imagine for what particular scale of usefulness or happiness such an animal could by the great Author of Nature possibly be destined," concluded Perry, although his respect for that particular author compelled him to concede: "As Nature however provides nothing vain, we may suppose that even these torpid, senseless creatures are wisely intended to fill up one of the great links of the chain of animated nature, and to shew forth the extensive variety of the created beings which GOD has, in his wisdom, constructed."
Nor was the koala then prized for cuddliness, being widely hunted for its fur from the 1870s, and provoking relatively little interest overseas. The first specimen to make it to England met an untimely end in the office of the superintendent of the Zoological Society, asphyxiated by the lid of a washing-stand that fell on its head.
Cuddly anthropomorphism
The koala's installation in national favour owes much to eager exercises in anthropomorphism in the early 20th century, first in cartoons published in the legendary nationalist periodical the Bulletin, then in children's tales such as Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding (1918) and Dorothy Wall's Blinky Bill (1933).
Lindsay offered Bunyip Bluegum as a koala of culture, with boater, bowtie and walking stick, while Wall's Blinky was a marsupial of mischief, dressed in knickerbockers and bearing a knapsack, although sufficiently patriotic to join the army during the second world war.
If it was considered inadequately industrious for the 19th century, the koala was exquisitely suited to the cuteness-conscious 20th. Indeed, it is appropriate that the AKF's case is accented to the environmental pressures the koala faces in Rudd's home state of Queensland, where it is the faunal emblem, and has always had political claws.
It was in Queensland that the koala was the subject of Australia's first concerted environmental campaign after the state Labor government, in response to pressure from trappers who had denuded koala populations to the south, proclaimed an open season on the animal in August 1927.
Resistance orchestrated by the Queensland Naturalists Club and the Nature Lovers' League inspired one newspaper to print an edition bordered in black, and flushed out celebrity apologists including the writer Vance Palmer. "The shooting of our harmless and lovable native bear is nothing less than barbarous," he thundered. "There is not a social vice that can be put down to his account . . . He affords no sport to the gunman . . . and he has been almost been blotted out already in some areas."
The trappers had their way, slaughtering and skinning no fewer than a million koalas, but the Labor government paid the price, being swept from power at the next election. Australia's first three fauna parks, set up in the late 1920s, were then dedicated to koalas.
Researching all this for his book Koala: The Origins of an Icon (2007), biologist Dr Stephen Jackson was astonished by the ardour he encountered. "You read now what was being published then, and you think: 'Wow! These people really went off.' It's almost the beginning of the conservation movement in Australia, because it mobilised people as never before." And although nobody has since posited a Queensland koala equivalent of the Curse of Gnome, there is some evidence for it.
Seventy years after that pioneering koala campaign, for example, federal tourism minister John Brown famously dismissed the animals as "flea-ridden, piddling, stinking, scratching, rotten little things"; he left politics soon after following allegations he had misled parliament over a tender submitted by a contractor.
The 1995 state election was then dominated by a Labor government plan to drive a major roadway through a key koala habitat. An apparently unassailable majority dwindled unsustainably when Labor lost what became known as the "koala seats" in Brisbane Bayside. Oddly, Rudd – then chief-of-staff to the premier of Queensland – was mixed up in the row over that koala habitat.
In the end, those koalas probably did Rudd a favour – and now Tabart thinks it is payback time. She is an unpredictable political opponent. An entrant 40 years ago in the Miss Australia pageant, she explains her failure candidly: "I didn't sleep with one of the judges, so I didn't win."
Tabart has made a particular target of Professor Bob Beeton of the University of Queensland, the chairman of the aforementioned threatened species scientific committee, which four years ago rejected an AKF application for listing of the koala as "vulnerable". "That determination sits on my desk to this day, and it outrages me," she says. To Beeton's statements that his committee might take up to a year to report back to environment minister Peter Garrett, she retorts: "The minister doesn't have that time – and nor does the koala."
Beeton has a droll line or two as well. While naturalists describe the koala as representative of "charismatic megafauna", Beeton is unmoved by charisma: under pressure from a television interviewer last week, he responded that his committee would grant protection of the koala as much consideration as protection of the death adder – the subject of another recent determination. Asked about advocacy groups in general, and the proposition that no such group has ever prospered from buoyant pronouncements of abundance, he invokes Francis Urquhart in House of Cards: "You might well think that. I couldn't possibly comment."
Threatened by disease
Far from being new, Beeton observes, disease is a perennial problem in the koala community. The Chlamydia organism, which finally carried off Sam, may be present in as many as half of Australia's koalas – just as it is also present in about a third of humans.
Another spectre cited in recent publicity concerning the koala is a newly identified but little understood retrovirus, originally given the acronym KoRV, but now more catchily abbreviated as Kids (Koala Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Beeton believes that a great deal more needs to be known about the condition: "It's very hard for a single disease to kill a species. We couldn't kill rabbits in Australia with myxomatosis."
There is clearly much argy-bargy to come. The AKF's prospects will depend on its ability to use global concerns to influence domestic policies; for Australians, the koala reposes, at least at the moment, on a list of "things-to-be-concerned-about-had-I-the-time".
So far, it has made its case with only a broad brush. Because of her suspicions of the Species Committee, Tabart says that the foundation is unprepared as yet to divulge full details of its data, on grounds that earlier data presented to the Species Committee was "used against the koala". She will say only that it results from the examination of 80,000 trees at 2,000 field sites and concludes that the population may be as low as 43,000, compared with previously assumed figures comfortably in six figures. This leaves the foundation open to criticism because, as Jackson points out, koala numbers depend quite heavily on where you look: "If you talk to biologists [in Victoria], they'll tell you: 'Koalas are falling out of the trees down here. We don't know what to do with them.'"
Statistics that are public, however, include those of widespread land clearing in Queensland until its cessation in January 2007, after a decade in which up to 700,000 hectares of habitat was being destroyed annually under the influence of property developers and resources companies – a reckless abandon whose environmental effects are still little understood.
In this sense, Sam the koala was an ironic representative of her species, survivor of a calamity amply publicised and readily understood; far greater ecological damage on Australia has been inflicted by easy government acquiescence.
Gideon Haigh is one of Australia's leading cricket writers.
Chew leaves – sleep for 18 hours The life of a koala
When a koala dies, a new occupant won't move into its home range for about a year – the time it takes for scratches on the trees and scent markings to disappear. Then, as long as they are not disturbed, koalas keep their home ranges (a group of several trees that they regularly visit) throughout their lives – up to 18 years.
Often called koala bears because of their cuddly teddy-bear appearance, they are of course marsupials – and can be aggressive. They breed once a year (koalas usually only produce a single cub, or joey, though occasionally give birth to twins), and once a cub is born – 2cm long, blind and hairless after a gestation period of 35 days – it relies on its sense of smell and touch to crawl into its mother's pouch, where it stays for the next six months, feeding on milk. After it emerges, the cub will remain with its mother until it is a year old, riding on her back or clinging to her belly.
The adult koala's days are filled with sleeping and eating. They survive on a diet of predominantly eucalyptus leaves and bark – to most animals, eucalyptus leaves are incredibly poisonous, but the koala's digestive system has evolved to manage the toxins. It is often said that eucalyptus makes koalas "stoned" – probably because they sleep for up to 18 hours a day, wedged between branches of eucalyptus trees – but this isn't true: their high-fibre, low-nutrition diet means they have to sleep to conserve energy.
They also don't tend to drink, getting almost all the water they need from leaves. In fact, the name koala is thought to come from a name in one Aboriginal language meaning "doesn't drink". Emine Saner
Going, going . . . Endangered flagship species
Giant panda
The poster-bear of the wildlife conservation movement and symbol of the WWF since 1961. "Charismatic or flagship species tend to be larger animals that take up a larger space," says Amanda Nickson, director of its international species programme. "By conserving these, you help to conserve everything smaller that shares their habitat. Pandas were one of the earliest species that people became aware were threatened; they show we can bring species back from the brink of extinction." There is still much work to do, though: only 1,600 pandas are left in the wild in southern and eastern China.
Tiger
In the last 100 years, the tiger population has decreased by 95%, three sub-species have become extinct and a fourth has not been spotted in the wild for 25 years. There are thought to be around 3,200 tigers left in the wild in south and east Asia, but they are endangered by poaching for the trade in tiger body parts (used in traditional Chinese medicine) and their skins, loss of prey and the more long-term threat of habitat loss. "The global community needs to take action now," says Nickson.
African elephant
Elephants losing their habitat as human populations encroach is a relatively recent threat, but while the global ban on illegal ivory in 1989 helped, poaching remains a problem. It is thought the population of around 600,000 is decreasing by 38,000 every year, and one recent estimate suggested large groups could be extinct by 2020. "Elephants are still being slaughtered daily to supply the illegal trade in ivory," says Robbie Marsland, UK Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Blue whale
Before the extensive whaling of the 20th century – in 1931, 29,000 blue whales were killed in one season alone – it is thought there were around 250,000 blue whales at any one time. By 1966, when the International Whaling Commission banned blue whale hunting, they were almost extinct; now there are around 2,300. "Despite our best efforts, their numbers aren't recovering as well as we would hope," says Nickson. "Blue whales are a symbol of why we can't allow species to become too endangered. We allowed their numbers to get too low, and we need to learn lessons." ES
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/23/koala-extinction-australia-political-war
The koala wars
It's cute and it's cuddly. And in 30 years, campaigners say, the koala will be extinct. But this emblematic animal has a curious history – and its fate is mired in politics.
Gideon Haigh
The Guardian, Monday 23 November 2009
When south-eastern Australia was consumed by bushfires in February, one image shut out all others. Nearly 200 humans might have perished, but a koala had been saved: videoed in a blackened landscape imbibing thirstily from the water bottle of a volunteer firefighter, Sam featured in newspapers from the New York Times to the Sun, and became a hit on CNN, YouTube and a website created by her veterinary carers.
According to the Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, she was the subject of widespread comment at the G20 summit in London in April this year, and he issued a personal tribute to this "symbol of hope" when Sam died six months later. "It's tragic that Sam the koala is no longer with us," Rudd said, just restraining himself from decreeing a state funeral.
Political leaders, however, appropriate symbols at their peril. A fortnight ago in Canberra, representatives of the Australian Koala Foundation (AKF) took a long and determined campaign for better protection of the creature to the government's "threatened species scientific committee", following a request for a review of the animal's status by environment minister Peter Garrett. The foundation presented what they say is definitive evidence of a sharp decline in koala numbers due to habitat destruction and disease. Its message was stark: the koala would be extinct "within 30 years". Hits on its website instantly doubled, and concerns were expressed about the impact on Australia's tourist industry: polls consistently show the koala to be the country's most popular animal with visitors.
In the AKF's chief executive Deborah Tabart, meanwhile, Rudd faces an implacable and outspoken critic, one who will now be dogging his steps at next month's Copenhagen climate change conference. Rudd may have been nice about Sam the koala, but Tabart does not think Rudd is doing enough for the species; she describes him as a "bureaucrat who hides behind policy and writing documents". The koala, she mutters darkly, "has many powerful enemies".
It has certainly had its detractors. The koala features in fossil records as far back as 25 million years ago, and has an honoured place in aboriginal creation myths, but when Gerald Durrell described it as "the most boring of all animals", he was far from the first to do so.
The koala is assuredly a creature of leisure. It has the smallest brain proportionally of any mammal, sleeps most of the day, and dedicates much of the rest to chewing gum leaves. The first description published in England 200 years ago, in fact, introduced the koala as the "New Holland Sloth". In his Arcana; or The Museum of Natural History (1881), the naturalist George Perry was severely censorious of the koala's "sluggishness and inactivity", and thought its "clumsy appearance" was "void of elegance".
"We are at a loss to imagine for what particular scale of usefulness or happiness such an animal could by the great Author of Nature possibly be destined," concluded Perry, although his respect for that particular author compelled him to concede: "As Nature however provides nothing vain, we may suppose that even these torpid, senseless creatures are wisely intended to fill up one of the great links of the chain of animated nature, and to shew forth the extensive variety of the created beings which GOD has, in his wisdom, constructed."
Nor was the koala then prized for cuddliness, being widely hunted for its fur from the 1870s, and provoking relatively little interest overseas. The first specimen to make it to England met an untimely end in the office of the superintendent of the Zoological Society, asphyxiated by the lid of a washing-stand that fell on its head.
Cuddly anthropomorphism
The koala's installation in national favour owes much to eager exercises in anthropomorphism in the early 20th century, first in cartoons published in the legendary nationalist periodical the Bulletin, then in children's tales such as Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding (1918) and Dorothy Wall's Blinky Bill (1933).
Lindsay offered Bunyip Bluegum as a koala of culture, with boater, bowtie and walking stick, while Wall's Blinky was a marsupial of mischief, dressed in knickerbockers and bearing a knapsack, although sufficiently patriotic to join the army during the second world war.
If it was considered inadequately industrious for the 19th century, the koala was exquisitely suited to the cuteness-conscious 20th. Indeed, it is appropriate that the AKF's case is accented to the environmental pressures the koala faces in Rudd's home state of Queensland, where it is the faunal emblem, and has always had political claws.
It was in Queensland that the koala was the subject of Australia's first concerted environmental campaign after the state Labor government, in response to pressure from trappers who had denuded koala populations to the south, proclaimed an open season on the animal in August 1927.
Resistance orchestrated by the Queensland Naturalists Club and the Nature Lovers' League inspired one newspaper to print an edition bordered in black, and flushed out celebrity apologists including the writer Vance Palmer. "The shooting of our harmless and lovable native bear is nothing less than barbarous," he thundered. "There is not a social vice that can be put down to his account . . . He affords no sport to the gunman . . . and he has been almost been blotted out already in some areas."
The trappers had their way, slaughtering and skinning no fewer than a million koalas, but the Labor government paid the price, being swept from power at the next election. Australia's first three fauna parks, set up in the late 1920s, were then dedicated to koalas.
Researching all this for his book Koala: The Origins of an Icon (2007), biologist Dr Stephen Jackson was astonished by the ardour he encountered. "You read now what was being published then, and you think: 'Wow! These people really went off.' It's almost the beginning of the conservation movement in Australia, because it mobilised people as never before." And although nobody has since posited a Queensland koala equivalent of the Curse of Gnome, there is some evidence for it.
Seventy years after that pioneering koala campaign, for example, federal tourism minister John Brown famously dismissed the animals as "flea-ridden, piddling, stinking, scratching, rotten little things"; he left politics soon after following allegations he had misled parliament over a tender submitted by a contractor.
The 1995 state election was then dominated by a Labor government plan to drive a major roadway through a key koala habitat. An apparently unassailable majority dwindled unsustainably when Labor lost what became known as the "koala seats" in Brisbane Bayside. Oddly, Rudd – then chief-of-staff to the premier of Queensland – was mixed up in the row over that koala habitat.
In the end, those koalas probably did Rudd a favour – and now Tabart thinks it is payback time. She is an unpredictable political opponent. An entrant 40 years ago in the Miss Australia pageant, she explains her failure candidly: "I didn't sleep with one of the judges, so I didn't win."
Tabart has made a particular target of Professor Bob Beeton of the University of Queensland, the chairman of the aforementioned threatened species scientific committee, which four years ago rejected an AKF application for listing of the koala as "vulnerable". "That determination sits on my desk to this day, and it outrages me," she says. To Beeton's statements that his committee might take up to a year to report back to environment minister Peter Garrett, she retorts: "The minister doesn't have that time – and nor does the koala."
Beeton has a droll line or two as well. While naturalists describe the koala as representative of "charismatic megafauna", Beeton is unmoved by charisma: under pressure from a television interviewer last week, he responded that his committee would grant protection of the koala as much consideration as protection of the death adder – the subject of another recent determination. Asked about advocacy groups in general, and the proposition that no such group has ever prospered from buoyant pronouncements of abundance, he invokes Francis Urquhart in House of Cards: "You might well think that. I couldn't possibly comment."
Threatened by disease
Far from being new, Beeton observes, disease is a perennial problem in the koala community. The Chlamydia organism, which finally carried off Sam, may be present in as many as half of Australia's koalas – just as it is also present in about a third of humans.
Another spectre cited in recent publicity concerning the koala is a newly identified but little understood retrovirus, originally given the acronym KoRV, but now more catchily abbreviated as Kids (Koala Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Beeton believes that a great deal more needs to be known about the condition: "It's very hard for a single disease to kill a species. We couldn't kill rabbits in Australia with myxomatosis."
There is clearly much argy-bargy to come. The AKF's prospects will depend on its ability to use global concerns to influence domestic policies; for Australians, the koala reposes, at least at the moment, on a list of "things-to-be-concerned-about-had-I-the-time".
So far, it has made its case with only a broad brush. Because of her suspicions of the Species Committee, Tabart says that the foundation is unprepared as yet to divulge full details of its data, on grounds that earlier data presented to the Species Committee was "used against the koala". She will say only that it results from the examination of 80,000 trees at 2,000 field sites and concludes that the population may be as low as 43,000, compared with previously assumed figures comfortably in six figures. This leaves the foundation open to criticism because, as Jackson points out, koala numbers depend quite heavily on where you look: "If you talk to biologists [in Victoria], they'll tell you: 'Koalas are falling out of the trees down here. We don't know what to do with them.'"
Statistics that are public, however, include those of widespread land clearing in Queensland until its cessation in January 2007, after a decade in which up to 700,000 hectares of habitat was being destroyed annually under the influence of property developers and resources companies – a reckless abandon whose environmental effects are still little understood.
In this sense, Sam the koala was an ironic representative of her species, survivor of a calamity amply publicised and readily understood; far greater ecological damage on Australia has been inflicted by easy government acquiescence.
Gideon Haigh is one of Australia's leading cricket writers.
Chew leaves – sleep for 18 hours The life of a koala
When a koala dies, a new occupant won't move into its home range for about a year – the time it takes for scratches on the trees and scent markings to disappear. Then, as long as they are not disturbed, koalas keep their home ranges (a group of several trees that they regularly visit) throughout their lives – up to 18 years.
Often called koala bears because of their cuddly teddy-bear appearance, they are of course marsupials – and can be aggressive. They breed once a year (koalas usually only produce a single cub, or joey, though occasionally give birth to twins), and once a cub is born – 2cm long, blind and hairless after a gestation period of 35 days – it relies on its sense of smell and touch to crawl into its mother's pouch, where it stays for the next six months, feeding on milk. After it emerges, the cub will remain with its mother until it is a year old, riding on her back or clinging to her belly.
The adult koala's days are filled with sleeping and eating. They survive on a diet of predominantly eucalyptus leaves and bark – to most animals, eucalyptus leaves are incredibly poisonous, but the koala's digestive system has evolved to manage the toxins. It is often said that eucalyptus makes koalas "stoned" – probably because they sleep for up to 18 hours a day, wedged between branches of eucalyptus trees – but this isn't true: their high-fibre, low-nutrition diet means they have to sleep to conserve energy.
They also don't tend to drink, getting almost all the water they need from leaves. In fact, the name koala is thought to come from a name in one Aboriginal language meaning "doesn't drink". Emine Saner
Going, going . . . Endangered flagship species
Giant panda
The poster-bear of the wildlife conservation movement and symbol of the WWF since 1961. "Charismatic or flagship species tend to be larger animals that take up a larger space," says Amanda Nickson, director of its international species programme. "By conserving these, you help to conserve everything smaller that shares their habitat. Pandas were one of the earliest species that people became aware were threatened; they show we can bring species back from the brink of extinction." There is still much work to do, though: only 1,600 pandas are left in the wild in southern and eastern China.
Tiger
In the last 100 years, the tiger population has decreased by 95%, three sub-species have become extinct and a fourth has not been spotted in the wild for 25 years. There are thought to be around 3,200 tigers left in the wild in south and east Asia, but they are endangered by poaching for the trade in tiger body parts (used in traditional Chinese medicine) and their skins, loss of prey and the more long-term threat of habitat loss. "The global community needs to take action now," says Nickson.
African elephant
Elephants losing their habitat as human populations encroach is a relatively recent threat, but while the global ban on illegal ivory in 1989 helped, poaching remains a problem. It is thought the population of around 600,000 is decreasing by 38,000 every year, and one recent estimate suggested large groups could be extinct by 2020. "Elephants are still being slaughtered daily to supply the illegal trade in ivory," says Robbie Marsland, UK Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Blue whale
Before the extensive whaling of the 20th century – in 1931, 29,000 blue whales were killed in one season alone – it is thought there were around 250,000 blue whales at any one time. By 1966, when the International Whaling Commission banned blue whale hunting, they were almost extinct; now there are around 2,300. "Despite our best efforts, their numbers aren't recovering as well as we would hope," says Nickson. "Blue whales are a symbol of why we can't allow species to become too endangered. We allowed their numbers to get too low, and we need to learn lessons." ES
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/23/koala-extinction-australia-political-war
Gideon Haigh
The Guardian, Monday 23 November 2009
When south-eastern Australia was consumed by bushfires in February, one image shut out all others. Nearly 200 humans might have perished, but a koala had been saved: videoed in a blackened landscape imbibing thirstily from the water bottle of a volunteer firefighter, Sam featured in newspapers from the New York Times to the Sun, and became a hit on CNN, YouTube and a website created by her veterinary carers.
According to the Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, she was the subject of widespread comment at the G20 summit in London in April this year, and he issued a personal tribute to this "symbol of hope" when Sam died six months later. "It's tragic that Sam the koala is no longer with us," Rudd said, just restraining himself from decreeing a state funeral.
Political leaders, however, appropriate symbols at their peril. A fortnight ago in Canberra, representatives of the Australian Koala Foundation (AKF) took a long and determined campaign for better protection of the creature to the government's "threatened species scientific committee", following a request for a review of the animal's status by environment minister Peter Garrett. The foundation presented what they say is definitive evidence of a sharp decline in koala numbers due to habitat destruction and disease. Its message was stark: the koala would be extinct "within 30 years". Hits on its website instantly doubled, and concerns were expressed about the impact on Australia's tourist industry: polls consistently show the koala to be the country's most popular animal with visitors.
In the AKF's chief executive Deborah Tabart, meanwhile, Rudd faces an implacable and outspoken critic, one who will now be dogging his steps at next month's Copenhagen climate change conference. Rudd may have been nice about Sam the koala, but Tabart does not think Rudd is doing enough for the species; she describes him as a "bureaucrat who hides behind policy and writing documents". The koala, she mutters darkly, "has many powerful enemies".
It has certainly had its detractors. The koala features in fossil records as far back as 25 million years ago, and has an honoured place in aboriginal creation myths, but when Gerald Durrell described it as "the most boring of all animals", he was far from the first to do so.
The koala is assuredly a creature of leisure. It has the smallest brain proportionally of any mammal, sleeps most of the day, and dedicates much of the rest to chewing gum leaves. The first description published in England 200 years ago, in fact, introduced the koala as the "New Holland Sloth". In his Arcana; or The Museum of Natural History (1881), the naturalist George Perry was severely censorious of the koala's "sluggishness and inactivity", and thought its "clumsy appearance" was "void of elegance".
"We are at a loss to imagine for what particular scale of usefulness or happiness such an animal could by the great Author of Nature possibly be destined," concluded Perry, although his respect for that particular author compelled him to concede: "As Nature however provides nothing vain, we may suppose that even these torpid, senseless creatures are wisely intended to fill up one of the great links of the chain of animated nature, and to shew forth the extensive variety of the created beings which GOD has, in his wisdom, constructed."
Nor was the koala then prized for cuddliness, being widely hunted for its fur from the 1870s, and provoking relatively little interest overseas. The first specimen to make it to England met an untimely end in the office of the superintendent of the Zoological Society, asphyxiated by the lid of a washing-stand that fell on its head.
Cuddly anthropomorphism
The koala's installation in national favour owes much to eager exercises in anthropomorphism in the early 20th century, first in cartoons published in the legendary nationalist periodical the Bulletin, then in children's tales such as Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding (1918) and Dorothy Wall's Blinky Bill (1933).
Lindsay offered Bunyip Bluegum as a koala of culture, with boater, bowtie and walking stick, while Wall's Blinky was a marsupial of mischief, dressed in knickerbockers and bearing a knapsack, although sufficiently patriotic to join the army during the second world war.
If it was considered inadequately industrious for the 19th century, the koala was exquisitely suited to the cuteness-conscious 20th. Indeed, it is appropriate that the AKF's case is accented to the environmental pressures the koala faces in Rudd's home state of Queensland, where it is the faunal emblem, and has always had political claws.
It was in Queensland that the koala was the subject of Australia's first concerted environmental campaign after the state Labor government, in response to pressure from trappers who had denuded koala populations to the south, proclaimed an open season on the animal in August 1927.
Resistance orchestrated by the Queensland Naturalists Club and the Nature Lovers' League inspired one newspaper to print an edition bordered in black, and flushed out celebrity apologists including the writer Vance Palmer. "The shooting of our harmless and lovable native bear is nothing less than barbarous," he thundered. "There is not a social vice that can be put down to his account . . . He affords no sport to the gunman . . . and he has been almost been blotted out already in some areas."
The trappers had their way, slaughtering and skinning no fewer than a million koalas, but the Labor government paid the price, being swept from power at the next election. Australia's first three fauna parks, set up in the late 1920s, were then dedicated to koalas.
Researching all this for his book Koala: The Origins of an Icon (2007), biologist Dr Stephen Jackson was astonished by the ardour he encountered. "You read now what was being published then, and you think: 'Wow! These people really went off.' It's almost the beginning of the conservation movement in Australia, because it mobilised people as never before." And although nobody has since posited a Queensland koala equivalent of the Curse of Gnome, there is some evidence for it.
Seventy years after that pioneering koala campaign, for example, federal tourism minister John Brown famously dismissed the animals as "flea-ridden, piddling, stinking, scratching, rotten little things"; he left politics soon after following allegations he had misled parliament over a tender submitted by a contractor.
The 1995 state election was then dominated by a Labor government plan to drive a major roadway through a key koala habitat. An apparently unassailable majority dwindled unsustainably when Labor lost what became known as the "koala seats" in Brisbane Bayside. Oddly, Rudd – then chief-of-staff to the premier of Queensland – was mixed up in the row over that koala habitat.
In the end, those koalas probably did Rudd a favour – and now Tabart thinks it is payback time. She is an unpredictable political opponent. An entrant 40 years ago in the Miss Australia pageant, she explains her failure candidly: "I didn't sleep with one of the judges, so I didn't win."
Tabart has made a particular target of Professor Bob Beeton of the University of Queensland, the chairman of the aforementioned threatened species scientific committee, which four years ago rejected an AKF application for listing of the koala as "vulnerable". "That determination sits on my desk to this day, and it outrages me," she says. To Beeton's statements that his committee might take up to a year to report back to environment minister Peter Garrett, she retorts: "The minister doesn't have that time – and nor does the koala."
Beeton has a droll line or two as well. While naturalists describe the koala as representative of "charismatic megafauna", Beeton is unmoved by charisma: under pressure from a television interviewer last week, he responded that his committee would grant protection of the koala as much consideration as protection of the death adder – the subject of another recent determination. Asked about advocacy groups in general, and the proposition that no such group has ever prospered from buoyant pronouncements of abundance, he invokes Francis Urquhart in House of Cards: "You might well think that. I couldn't possibly comment."
Threatened by disease
Far from being new, Beeton observes, disease is a perennial problem in the koala community. The Chlamydia organism, which finally carried off Sam, may be present in as many as half of Australia's koalas – just as it is also present in about a third of humans.
Another spectre cited in recent publicity concerning the koala is a newly identified but little understood retrovirus, originally given the acronym KoRV, but now more catchily abbreviated as Kids (Koala Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Beeton believes that a great deal more needs to be known about the condition: "It's very hard for a single disease to kill a species. We couldn't kill rabbits in Australia with myxomatosis."
There is clearly much argy-bargy to come. The AKF's prospects will depend on its ability to use global concerns to influence domestic policies; for Australians, the koala reposes, at least at the moment, on a list of "things-to-be-concerned-about-had-I-the-time".
So far, it has made its case with only a broad brush. Because of her suspicions of the Species Committee, Tabart says that the foundation is unprepared as yet to divulge full details of its data, on grounds that earlier data presented to the Species Committee was "used against the koala". She will say only that it results from the examination of 80,000 trees at 2,000 field sites and concludes that the population may be as low as 43,000, compared with previously assumed figures comfortably in six figures. This leaves the foundation open to criticism because, as Jackson points out, koala numbers depend quite heavily on where you look: "If you talk to biologists [in Victoria], they'll tell you: 'Koalas are falling out of the trees down here. We don't know what to do with them.'"
Statistics that are public, however, include those of widespread land clearing in Queensland until its cessation in January 2007, after a decade in which up to 700,000 hectares of habitat was being destroyed annually under the influence of property developers and resources companies – a reckless abandon whose environmental effects are still little understood.
In this sense, Sam the koala was an ironic representative of her species, survivor of a calamity amply publicised and readily understood; far greater ecological damage on Australia has been inflicted by easy government acquiescence.
Gideon Haigh is one of Australia's leading cricket writers.
Chew leaves – sleep for 18 hours The life of a koala
When a koala dies, a new occupant won't move into its home range for about a year – the time it takes for scratches on the trees and scent markings to disappear. Then, as long as they are not disturbed, koalas keep their home ranges (a group of several trees that they regularly visit) throughout their lives – up to 18 years.
Often called koala bears because of their cuddly teddy-bear appearance, they are of course marsupials – and can be aggressive. They breed once a year (koalas usually only produce a single cub, or joey, though occasionally give birth to twins), and once a cub is born – 2cm long, blind and hairless after a gestation period of 35 days – it relies on its sense of smell and touch to crawl into its mother's pouch, where it stays for the next six months, feeding on milk. After it emerges, the cub will remain with its mother until it is a year old, riding on her back or clinging to her belly.
The adult koala's days are filled with sleeping and eating. They survive on a diet of predominantly eucalyptus leaves and bark – to most animals, eucalyptus leaves are incredibly poisonous, but the koala's digestive system has evolved to manage the toxins. It is often said that eucalyptus makes koalas "stoned" – probably because they sleep for up to 18 hours a day, wedged between branches of eucalyptus trees – but this isn't true: their high-fibre, low-nutrition diet means they have to sleep to conserve energy.
They also don't tend to drink, getting almost all the water they need from leaves. In fact, the name koala is thought to come from a name in one Aboriginal language meaning "doesn't drink". Emine Saner
Going, going . . . Endangered flagship species
Giant panda
The poster-bear of the wildlife conservation movement and symbol of the WWF since 1961. "Charismatic or flagship species tend to be larger animals that take up a larger space," says Amanda Nickson, director of its international species programme. "By conserving these, you help to conserve everything smaller that shares their habitat. Pandas were one of the earliest species that people became aware were threatened; they show we can bring species back from the brink of extinction." There is still much work to do, though: only 1,600 pandas are left in the wild in southern and eastern China.
Tiger
In the last 100 years, the tiger population has decreased by 95%, three sub-species have become extinct and a fourth has not been spotted in the wild for 25 years. There are thought to be around 3,200 tigers left in the wild in south and east Asia, but they are endangered by poaching for the trade in tiger body parts (used in traditional Chinese medicine) and their skins, loss of prey and the more long-term threat of habitat loss. "The global community needs to take action now," says Nickson.
African elephant
Elephants losing their habitat as human populations encroach is a relatively recent threat, but while the global ban on illegal ivory in 1989 helped, poaching remains a problem. It is thought the population of around 600,000 is decreasing by 38,000 every year, and one recent estimate suggested large groups could be extinct by 2020. "Elephants are still being slaughtered daily to supply the illegal trade in ivory," says Robbie Marsland, UK Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Blue whale
Before the extensive whaling of the 20th century – in 1931, 29,000 blue whales were killed in one season alone – it is thought there were around 250,000 blue whales at any one time. By 1966, when the International Whaling Commission banned blue whale hunting, they were almost extinct; now there are around 2,300. "Despite our best efforts, their numbers aren't recovering as well as we would hope," says Nickson. "Blue whales are a symbol of why we can't allow species to become too endangered. We allowed their numbers to get too low, and we need to learn lessons." ES
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/23/koala-extinction-australia-political-war
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