Reef In Peril

The world’s largest living reef, visible from space, is in rapid decline thanks to threats ranging from an acidifying ocean to an outbreak of coral-destroying starfish. Will the priceless natural wonder be able to recover?

Great Barrier Reef in Hot Water

Almost all of us have seen the frightening headlines scroll through our social media timelines: “Half of the Great Barrier Reef is Dead” or “The Great Barrier Reef: Bleached Beyond Repair.” These headlines are rightfully terrifying, accurately illustrating the damage the Reef has endured thanks to man’s wanton environmental disregard.

The Great Barrier Reef is in very warm water, both literally and figuratively. The headlines have done a great job of making us aware of the dire situation, but many people do not dive deep enough into the associated articles to understand that, while overwhelming, the threats facing the Reef can be mollified with united conservation efforts from both Australia and the rest of the world. It’s not too late to reverse the troubling trend and help this World Heritage Site rebound.

Blackface rabbitfish and other fish mill above a reef off Heron Island, part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

Part One: The Threats

A key means to help preserve the remaining (relatively) intact areas of the Reef is to understand the threats it faces. The fundamental cause is man’s industrialization and the resulting climate change. As energy began to be created in mass quantities by burning fossil fuels in factories, greater amounts of gases, like carbon dioxide (CO2), were released into the atmosphere. CO2 and a variety of other gases, including methane from cows and natural gas, act like a blanket over the earth, trapping solar energy as it is reflected by the earth and trapping it in the atmosphere, creating a warming, or “greenhouse effect”. As more light is trapped by the blanket of greenhouse gases, the surface of the earth warms as well as the world’s oceans.

But exactly why the Great Barrier Reef is doing so poorly in this warming world is slightly more nuanced. Logically, a warmer ocean would mean more coral reefs, incredibly diverse environments that require warm water to thrive. But the excess CO2 in the atmosphere causes the oceans to become more acidic as the ocean absorb the excess from the atmosphere. The ocean is slightly basic (pH>7) and as it acidifies and becomes more neutral in pH, coral fares as well as you would in a vat of acidified liquid.

Below a reef head during a dive off of Heron Island.

An acidifying ocean changes everything for coral, which are tiny animals related to jellyfish. They cannot easily form their calcium carbonate skeletons, which act as the bedrock for coral reefs, because less carbonate ions are available in acidic seawater. Corals are pretty much hindered from growing by ocean acidification, and will start to dissolve soon if emissions continue to rise. Outside of the chemistry of the water, temperature and light levels are key. Corals exposed to increased temperatures and increased amounts of light over a duration of time (sometimes only a couple of days) will become stressed and eventually bleach. The corals become ghost white as they are forced to expel symbiotic algae (called zooxanthellae) from their tissue as they cook under intense light and heat. The zooxanthellae are crucial to the coral, turning sunlight into energy through photosynthesis. The coral is not dead when it bleaches, but it is essentially starving. Bleaching events usually create mass coral mortality.

Small fish swim in and out of a patch of bleaching coral on Heron Island’s reef

In the Great Barrier Reef, the 1-2 threat of ocean acidification and coral bleaching have become more destructive over the last few decades as the oceans continue to warm and CO2 continues to be pumped into the atmosphere. Severe bleaching used to ravage a reef every 27 years. Since the 1980s, these events have occurred roughly every six years. The first truly severe bleaching event of the Great Barrier Reef was in 1998, but the following bleaching event, in 2002, was disastrous, bleaching over 50% of the Reef.

But the 2002 monster bleaching event was dwarfed by one in 2016, when 80% of a large protected swath of the northern Reef was killed by heat stress. Badly bleached reefs need at least 10 years to rebound, but the Great Barrier Reef barely had time to catch its breath as a similarly unprecedented bleaching event hit the reef in 2017, wiping out 20% of the total coral cover. Since the massive warming event in 2016, over half of the Reef’s coral has died, particularly devastating the northern area of the Reef.

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Attack of the Crown-of-thorns

Natural to the Great Barrier Reef, crown-of-thorn (COT) starfish are efficient coral consumers. The large, venomous spine-studded starfish love to feed on branching corals, which are the type of corals most susceptible to bleaching. In recent years the relatively scarce starfish’s population has exploded in an outbreak.

Like other threats the Reef faces, the crown-of-thorn starfish (COTS) outbreak can be tied to human impact on the oceans. The most prevalent hypothesis of what causes COTS outbreaks, which feature over 30 times the natural COTS density, is the added nutrient levels on reefs caused by nitrogen- and phosphorous-rich runoff from agriculture. The increased amount of nutrients cause blooms of phytoplankton that offer plenty of food for COTS larvae. COTS outbreaks can also be linked to the removal of the venomous starfish’s predators, such as the giant triton snail, titan triggerfish and humphead Maori wrasse from the reefs through overfishing.

COTS outbreaks can prove fatal when combined with climate change. COTS outbreaks have been found to strip 90% of a reef’s living coral tissue. A healthy reef is capable of recovering from COTS outbreak in 10-20 years, but a stressed reef in warming water may never be able to recover. Moreover, these outbreaks appear to be occurring more frequently in recent years. A variety of methods is being tested to control the ruthless corallivores, from harvesting them with divers to injecting them with compressed air, but the starfish has been able to run rampant throughout the Great Barrier Reef.

Crown-of-thorns starfish lurks below coral off of Heron Island in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef.

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Part Two: What Can Be Done

With half of the Reef’s coral dead, one of the most incredible natural wonders really seems to be heading toward the brink. Experiments are being conducted to find out ways to better equip coral to survive bleaching events. There is a dizzying variety of coral in the world’s oceans, especially in a corridor between the Pacific and Indian Oceans fittingly called the “Coral Triangle”, and not all coral’s respond to bleaching the same way. Researchers in Hawaii have researched how hardier corals react under the warm and acidic conditions they will face later this century. Depending on how well each species responds, they will be selectively bred with other resistant corals to form a sort of “super coral” through assisted evolution. Other projects have focused on trying to figure out ways to reinsert zooxanthellae into bleached corals. Some hypothesize that certain types of the symbiotic algae may be better suited in warmer water and will not be expelled from their hosts as quickly.

The hope with these projects is to engineer stronger coral and zooxanthellae that will be able to survive in the “new normal” environmental conditions caused by humans. This reactionary approach will always be similar to putting a bandaid on a wound. It will provide some level of healing but will not remedy the underlying causes. Humans everywhere need to cut back on emissions to slow the rapid change of our climate.

The reef’s edge, Heron Island.

Australia, in particular, needs to continue to fight the Carmichael coal mine, a billion dollar fossil fuel-monstrosity that could be the largest in Australia’s mining-heavy history and would be located just inland from the Reef. The mine, which was approved after a lengthy (and probably still ongoing) legal battle, plans to extract at least 25 million tons of coal per year which will result in 77 million tons of CO2 emissions. Most of the coal will be exported from Australia to India, which means transporting it over the Reef in large ships that leave pollution, sediment, and invasive species in their wake. For coral reefs to have any shot in the future, global temperature rise must be capped at around 1.5 degrees Celsius. Achieving that goal would be even more challenging as super-mines, like the Carmichael mine, continue to provide incredible amounts of fossil fuels to developing countries with huge populations like India.

The rusty skeleton of the HMAS Protector just off of Heron Island. Constructed in 1884, the battle ship saw action in the Boxer Rebellion and both World Wars before being intentionally sunk off of Heron in 1943 to act as a breakwater. Today it shelters sea turtles and hundreds of fish.

Some less staggering goals are fishing more responsibly and curbing the amount of agriculture runoff from the coast along the Great Barrier Reef. Both of these will act in tandem to limit COT outbreaks and limit the growth of algae on reefs. Algae, which thrives in nutrient-rich water, is encroaching on coral’s turf as more nutrients are flushed into the ocean and herbivorous fish that eat the algae are overfished. In the Caribbean, a die-off of herbivorous sea urchins in the 1980s led to dense thickets of algae usurping reefs throughout the area. Could the Great Barrier Reef be next?

The Great Barrier Reef is also home to an incredible diversity of marine invertebrates. Sea hares (shown here) are large sea slugs that feed on algae that grows on the shallow coral reef flats. Herbivores like sea hares are vital to maintaining the natural balance of coral vs. algae.

A variety of measures will have to be taken to address the plethora of problems ravaging the world’s largest reef. An important point that is often lost among the devastation is that we can all play a part, no matter where we live, by changing how we live. This involves being smarter about emissions and continuing to fight the creation of large fossil fuel operations, like the Carmichael mine, that not only threaten coral reefs, but everywhere on earth.

Part Three: Why Save the Reef?

 

Heron Island is a half mile-long speck of sand inhabited by thousands of birds, a small resort and a world-class coral research station.

I was lucky enough to visit the Great Barrier Reef twice during my semester abroad, including spending five days on the University Queensland’s Heron Island Research Station, which is located at the southern tip of the immense reef. This area was sheltered from the worst of the recent mass bleaching events thanks to a cyclone in Fiji that sent crucial cool water westward.

A parrotfish gorges itself on the algae covering coral.

As someone relatively new to scuba diving who hails from the Great Lakes region (Chicago) far from the tropics, the breathtaking assortment of marine animals and coral was overwhelming. The variety of coral formed a kaleidoscope of soft yellows, pinks and greens as small fish darted between the large branching coral and squat, round brain corals. Large parrotfish, whose gaudy colors reflect the coral, messily chomped on the algae growing on the coral’s surface, sending chunks flying every which way. A snowflake moray eel, splattered with bright yellow and black spots, bared its teeth at me as I drifted a little too close to its rocky crevice. Around 10 percent of the world’s fish species can be found in this one reef system.

The strikingly named many-spotted sweetlips fish, one of over 1,500 species of fish on the Great Barrier Reef.

Sea turtles lazily hunkered down on top of the coral or leisurely swam by, beating their fins every so often. Six of the world’s seven sea turtle species come to the Great Barrier Reef to breed, including the endangered loggerhead sea turtle whose females hoists their bodies up on the beaches of Heron Island to nest. Many were born at this same spot. Giant cow-tailed rays, each one bigger than the last, silently glide along the seafloor as eagle rays flap their wings along the outskirts of the reef, effortlessly flying through the water. Small white-tipped reef sharks joined them there, wary of the divers that had entered their reef. The Great Barrier Reef is home to 134 species of rays and sharks, including species as iconic as the manta ray and tiger shark. Many are at risk, reflecting the global trend of shark decline.

A white-tip reef shark coasts along the outskirts of the coral reef.

The Great Barrier Reef is one of the world’s greatest natural wonders, spanning an area as big as Italy and housing thousands of species. Besides its intrinsic value as an incredible biodiversity spot, it attracts people from around the world and generates billions of dollars for the Australian government each year. Although it has been hit hard in the last few decades, the recovery of portions is still possible. We do not want to be the generation that let the world’s greatest reef erode into oblivion.

A green sea turtle off of Heron Island.

All pictures and art by Jack Tamisiea.

Sources:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/08/explore-atlas-great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching-map-climate-change/

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral_bleach.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/16/why-adanis-planned-carmichael-coalmine-matters-to-australia-and-the-world

http://www.greatbarrierreef.org/about-the-reef/great-barrier-reef-facts/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/18/a-radical-attempt-to-save-the-reefs-and-forests

New Zealand: A Bird Evolution Lab on the Brink

Only New Zealand can create a species as lovably odd as the kiwi, which is essentially a mammal masquerading as a bird.

New Zealand’s location and isolation cultivated a unique collection of birds. But the same factors that make these birds so interesting also make them susceptible to extinction, as New Zealand is overwhelmed by an invasion of mammals.

Evolution is founded in gene mutation, when some random rung of an organism’s DNA ladder is altered. This genetic change, however minor it may seem, can have a huge impact on how the actual creature looks or acts. For example, you and me as humans differ from chimpanzees in only 1.2% of our genetic material. An incredibly small amount of difference, but it has made all the difference.

So evolution, at its core, is random due to the fickleness of genetic mutation. These tiny mutations either create an advantage for an organism or damage it, which could be the difference between the longevity of s creature or its ultimate demise. If the mutation creates an effective enough trait, that may lead to a new species someday.

This is where isolation becomes the driving force that amplifies the effects of mutation. Isolation can be in the form of being geographically stranded on an island or isolated in the form of a mutated group being unable to breed with its species. Whichever form of isolation evolution chooses, it eventually leads to speciation as one group of a species goes down a different evolutionary pathway than another group on a different island or a different mountaintop.

You are probably wondering about the relation between this abbreviated high school biology lecture and New Zealand’s wild birds (which is what you came here for), but isolation is the backbone to the evolution of New Zealand’s amazing wildlife. New Zealand’s isolation for millions of years has created a living laboratory of evolution that has cooked up some wild animals. Gecko’s give live birth here, insects become large enough to eat large carrots, and you are more likely to stumble upon a bird on the ground than see one soaring above your head. Only New Zealand could be home to a 10 foot-tall ostrich on steroids, the world’s only flightless parrots, and a bird with whiskers.

Sadly, many of these creatures are already gone or teetering on the edge of extinction. New Zealand’s extinction rate for birds is incredibly high at 34%. Species like the Chatham Island snipe, fairy tern and kaki have populations with less than 150 individuals. The evolutionary processes that molded New Zealand’s incredible birds have also contributed to their demise in today’s world.

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The Antipodes

New Zealand owes a lot to its far-flung location. It is so remote, over 1,300 miles southeast of Australia resting about halfway between the equator and the South Pole, that it was one of the last places on earth to be settled by humans. The Polynesian ancestors of the Maori arrived to New Zealand in large, ocean-going canoes only around 850 years ago and dubbed it Aotearoa, “the land of the long white cloud.”

Early European explorers called New Zealand and nearby Australia the antipodes because of their existence on the opposite side of the globe from Europe. It’s not quite right, but it does sum up the otherworldly land and animals they found there.

This geographical isolation from the rest of the world was due to processes deep within the earth. New Zealand, along with the rest of the Southern Hemisphere, was once part of the supercontinent Gondwana. The most fateful moment in the evolutionary history of New Zealand is when it broke off from this massive landmass to do its own thing 85 million years ago. This breakup was caused by the phenomenon of plate tectonics, or the shifting and colliding of continental plates on the earth’s mantle. As the continental plates that formed Gondwana began to shift apart, New Zealand was essentially along for the ride, drifting farther and farther away from Australia. New Zealand’s islands are actually still drifting, with Christchurch in the South Island (on the Pacific plate) moving away from Auckland and the North Island (on the Australian plate) at about 4 meters every century.

New Zealand’s existence far from any other major landmass effectively cut it off from the rest of the planet, letting evolution run its course without outside interference. That all changed when the Maori hauled their canoes up onto the black sand beaches of New Zealand.

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The tui is one of New Zealand’s more interesting-looking birds, sporting distinctive white tufts under their throat. The aggressive and noisy bird plays a key role in New Zealand forests as a pollinator and seed disperser. This picture was taken at the Kiwi Birdlife Park in Queenstown, New Zealand.

The Avian Ark

When New Zealand set out on its ‘continental drift’ odyssey, dinosaurs were its main inhabitants on land and large seagoing reptiles dominated the surrounding waters. Essentially missing from the drifting landmass were mammals, who were still toward the bottom of the biological pecking order during the Cretaceous Period. After non-avian dinosaurs and giant sea reptiles were wiped out following the last mass-extinction 65 million years ago, their evolutionary offspring, avian birds, took over a landmass unlike anywhere else on earth. It had no land-based mammals, save for three species of tiny bats.

This offered birds the incredible advantage of returning to the ground. With no land-based predators, wings began to become almost frivolous ornaments for birds who had nothing to fear on the ground. Even the native species of bats walked on the ground, using the elbows of their wings to scamper about. Evolutionarily speaking, the ability to fly is very energy intensive, and since there was nothing to eat you while on the ground, flying lost its evolutionary advantage. Many birds on the island have lost the ability to fly well, while many have even lost the ability to fly altogether.

Here are a few of the most interesting avian oddities cooked up in New Zealand’s wonky evolutionary lab:

A stuffed kakapo at Auckland’s War Memorial Museum.

• One prime example of complete flightlessness is the kakapo, a large nocturnal parrot that resides on the ground full-time. Besides being the only species of flightless parrot, the kakapo is also the world’s heaviest parrot at a hefty five to nine pounds. Without the presence of predators, the kakapo was able to pack on the pounds and lose the ability to fly. The wings are not quite vestigial, or functionless, as the stocky parrot uses them to balance while it ambles and climbs through the forest.

• Another remarkable bird from the “Land of the long white cloud” was the huia. The largest of the five wattlebird species native to New Zealand, this songbird had the most striking example of beak sexual dimorphism of all birds. Male and female huia have completely different beak structures, with the female sporting a longer, curved beak and the male possessing a shorter, heavier straight beak. Attached at the base of each of their beaks were bright, fleshy orange wattles that contrasted against the dark black of its feathers which would sheen green and blue when light danced on them. Like many of their fellow New Zealanders, the huia seemed to have been a reluctant flier, preferring to hop along low branches and the forest floor. Huias were reportedly the first birds to call in the morning, with each sex calling and responding with unique calls, answering one another during the day’s first light.

The two distinct beak shapes of the huia bird, the most extreme example of beak sexual dimorphism in all of birds.

• The most famous and strangest of all of New Zealand’s birds is the kiwi. The species is so beloved, it has become a national symbol. New Zealanders have proudly called themselves kiwis since 1917. The shaggy flightless national icon evolved from birds that flew to New Zealand millions of years ago. Like many other New Zealand birds, the absence of mammals not only allowed the kiwi’s ancestors to feel safe enough to leave the sky for the ground, but also offered many empty ecological niches that were filled by mammals elsewhere. Today there are five species of kiwis, all around the size of a chicken, with the aptly named little spotted kiwi and great spotted kiwi bookending the size spectrum.

The kiwi bird examines some kiwi fruit. Also known as Chinese gooseberry, the fruit is usually called kiwifruit in New Zealand to help Kiwis avoid confusion between the fruit and the kiwi bird.

Kiwis specifically are a great illustration of the evolutionary power of isolation. Although there are only five kiwi species today, over the last million years there have been at least 11 lineages of kiwis. The rapid evolution into different forms and possibly into distinct species is reminiscent of Darwin’s Galapagos finches who diversified when spreading to new islands with diverse food sources.

But instead of being isolated on different islands, the kiwis were isolated by glaciers throughout New Zealand, which have expanded and retracted numerous times over the last 800,000 years. Over this period of extreme cycles of glaciation, the kiwis diversified five times faster than usual according to a 2016 study. At that rate, they were diversifying faster than even the Galapagos finches!

Kiwis today are nocturnal, passing the day away sleeping in hollow logs and burrows. At night, kiwis forage for insects, berries and seeds along the forest floor with their impeccable sense of smell. They are, in fact, the only birds with nostrils on top of their long, slender beaks. At the base of their beak are cat-like whiskers that help them feel through the dark. In fact, the kiwi has many similar mammalian traits, including the lowest body temperature of any bird at a mammal-like 100 degrees Fahrenheit, well-developed hearing, and two ovaries (most birds have one).

While on the topic of ovaries, the kiwi’s egg is incredibly large compared to their body size, sometimes accounting for up to 20% of the females weight (the same as a 120-lb woman giving birth to a 24-lb baby)! A benefit of the egg being so large is that baby kiwis are very developed when they hatch, which is vital because by that point, the parents are gone.

A female kiwi and her massive egg at Auckland’s War Memorial Museum.

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Lost in all the hubbub about moas and kiwis is the recently discovered Kumimanu biceae, the world’s second largest penguin ever. Living 55 million years ago, only 10 million years after the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, this penguin was massive, packing 220 pounds into a 6 foot frame (the largest species today tops out at 4.3 feet tall). The name reflects its impressive size: Kumimanu is a combination of the Maori words for “monster” and “bird”.

Gigantism vs. Dwarfism - What Gives?

The birds of New Zealand are very strange today thanks to being isolated from mammals. But the mere fact of being isolated on an island kicks evolution into overdrive as populations are isolated by large swaths of water. Islands have the ability to create giant and dwarf-sized species, and one of the best examples of this occurred on New Zealand.

Moas were a collection of ostrich-like, flightless birds that included the tallest species of bird ever, which stood as tall as a basketball hoop and weighed around 550 pounds. The smallest of the nine confirmed species was about the size of a turkey, tiny compared to its immense brethren but still a large bird in its own right.

Although large moas, like the South Island giant moa, may have looked intimidating, they were chiefly grazers and browsers, eating fruit, seeds and grasses. They are also the only flightless bird to not have wing bones, which shrouds their arrival to New Zealand in mystery. Growth rings in leg bones have led researchers to believe moas grew at incredibly slow-rates, taking ten years to stretch into the trees.

But why were moas so much larger than similar species from the mainland, like ostriches and emus? Gigantism on islands has been a phenomenon observed since at least 1964 when biologist J. Bristol Foster made some interesting general observations while looking at mammals on North American islands. He concluded that small animals, like rodents, tended to grow larger on islands, and bigger animals like deer (and, in one case off of California, mammoths) tended to shrink on islands. This became known as the “island rule.”

But this rule is not so cut and dry, as one island may have giants of a species while the same animal is dwarfed on a nearby island. The particulars of what spurs gigantism or dwarfism on islands is still hazy, but we can look at the moa example to figure out why the bird became so giant on New Zealand.

Having the benefit of not being hunted on New Zealand promoted larger size, as well as the general rule that larger animals can exploit a wider range of resources, which leads to healthier individuals and healthier (and larger) offspring. Being so large also helped moas survive drought and famine because of their larger stores of energy and water. Ultimately, the circumstance in New Zealand was perfect for moas to become gigantic. On New Zealand there were no other large land animals after the demise of the dinosaurs, leaving the large herbivore ecological niche wide-open and moas evolved to fill it, eventually dwarfing flightless birds almost everywhere else.*

New Zealand’s mighty moas.

New Zealand’s most fearsome bird evolved to prey on these mammoth moas. The Haast eagle was the largest eagle ever and was equipped with talons as large as tiger claws. Both the Haast eagle and the moas had to deal with periods of glaciation over the last million years of New Zealand, and bigger body size probably helped them survive the cold.

Haast eagles were perfectly evolved to target even the largest moas on New Zealand’s island. It would dive down on top of the massive bird, knocking it down with its large feet before crushing its skull. Ancient Maori stories tell of giant birds called “pouakai”, which were probably Haast eagles. Terrifyingly, these stories tell of the giant birds sweeping in and taking the occasional child for dinner, which is no exaggeration when considering the size of these eagles.

*While the Southern Island giant moa was the world’s tallest bird, the heaviest bird was the elephant bird from the island of Madagascar. Elephant bird eggs are the only thing capable dwarfing a moa egg with a volume equal to over 150 chicken eggs!

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The morepork is New Zealand’s only species of owl. It gets its name from its call, which actually sounds like the owl is asking for “more pork”. Although considered not threatened, small mammals like possums raid morepork nests to steal eggs. Picture taken at the Kiwi Birdlife Park in Queenstown, New Zealand.

The Mammalian Invasion Threatens to Topple the Avian Ark

Unfortunately, these two magnificent birds are extinct, disappearing a few hundred years after the arrival of humans. The moa was most certainly hunted to extinction by early settlers. A 2014 study of the bones from 281 moas found no DNA evidence for genetic decline before the arrival of humans, with the population looking remarkably healthy before the first Polynesians arrived. Moas were over hunted to extinction by the late 1600s. With the disappearance of its food sources, the Haast eagle faded into extinction with the moa, denying us the ability to see one of the most spectacular hunts in our planet’s history.

But for most species of New Zealand birds, the most dangerous thing about the arrival of humans was not the humans themselves but what they brought with them. For millions of years, New Zealand offered a safe haven for birds to evolve and adapt without the presence of mammals. The arrival of the Maori 850 years ago, followed by European settlement 600 years later, threw a wrench into the bird evolutionary eden by introducing a plethora of mammals that outcompeted and ate these marvelous birds. Sheep, elk and cattle were brought in to graze upon the fields that were once forests. Rabbits, rats and mice also found their way over, outcompeting smaller birds and eating their eggs.

Brushtail possums were brought across the Tasman Sea from Australia to jumpstart an ultimately fruitless fur trade in the 1850s. Today the possum population is at an astounding 30 million and the cute marsupials wreak havoc on native New Zealand forests, chewing through trees never adapted to such an efficient omnivore. Their presence causes trees hundreds, if not thousands, of years old to collapse. Like rats, they also outcompete native birds and eat their eggs.

Early attempts to solve the invasive mammal problem only exacerbated it. The weasel-like stoat was brought over to control the exploding rabbit population. The predator soon found the naive ground-dwelling birds to be much easier prey than rabbits, which led to a spike in stoat populations and little effect on the rabbit population. Similar to Australia, the cats and foxes brought over as pets and for sport have proved to be the most damaging, as the small, flightless birds are the optimal prey size for the ruthless and efficient predators.

The ruthless and invasive stoat, bane to New Zealand’s birds.

All of these introduced mammals have greatly damaged the populations of New Zealand’s birds, who evolved in their absence for millions of years. The huia is no longer the first bird to sing at dawn, having disappeared in 1907.

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The whio, or blue duck, is an endemic species to New Zealand threatened with extinction. Its current population is estimated to be around 3,000. The duck prefers to live in clean, fast-flowing mountain streams which have become degraded and lost as New Zealand’s human population has grown. Like many of New Zealand’s birds, they are also hunted by invasive mammals, such as stoats. This individual resides at the Auckland Zoo.

Restoring the Embattled Birds

Many of New Zealand’s birds are incredibly close to joining the huia, moa and Haast eagle in the finality of extinction. According to New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, there are only 142 kakapos left today, up from 51 in the mid 1990s. The large, awkward parrot has been hit particularly hard by the introduction of cats and stoats because it has very slow reproductive rates, only breeding every two to four years. When they do breed, 1/2 of the eggs are infertile due to low genetic diversity among the surviving kakapos.

All of the kakapos have been relocated to three predator-free islands off New Zealand’s coast, which has become commonplace for conservation in New Zealand. Small island’s offer easier confined spaces to eradicate pests, making them the final refuge for several species of embattled native birds.

Luckily, 2019 is looking like a record year for the kakapo as 52 live chicks were produced from 218 eggs laid since last December. This record-setting number of viable kakapo offspring is due to the help of cutting-edge conservation technology such as transmitters tracking which individuals have mated and 3D-printed eggs being swapped with actual eggs to allow the eggs to be hatched in captivity while not disturbing the mother’s incubation instincts. The recent sequencing of each remaining kakapo’s genome has even allowed a drone to inseminate willing kakapo females with semen from genetically-viable males, which is wild to picture.

Even the beloved kiwi has been knocked to the edge of extinction. New Zealand’s national icon had been decimated by stoats, cats and dogs for decades by 2016, when only 68,000 kiwis remained. Kiwi chicks already face long survival odds because they are abandoned when they hatch. Introduced predators effectively wipe out almost all of these fledglings. In addition to harvesting kiwi eggs in the wild and rearing them in captivity, an expensive and strenuous process, New Zealand has made a goal to become predator-free by 2050. This ambitious goal is key to restoring New Zealand as a bird haven.

But the only way to accomplish this is by conservationists getting their hands dirty, setting traps for stoats and cats where accessible and using cyanide-like poison called 1080 to target these predators in remote areas. Poisoning of feral cats in Australia has caused uproar from animal rights activists, but wide-scale poison is the only way to reduce the staggering numbers of these destructive predators. There is a choice between eliminating the pests or allowing native wildlife to disappear. In New Zealand, where 80% of bird species are at risk of extinction, this should not even be a discussion.

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I was lucky enough to come across this kea in Fiordland National Park on the way to Milford Sound. The inquisitive bird was enamored with this red car, continually trying to pick rubber off of the windows and the tires.

The Plight of the Kea

It is important to understand what could be lost when thinking about conservation. New Zealand has so many amazing bird species sculpted by its remote location and predator-devoid ecosystems. One of these species is the world’s only alpine parrot, the kea, which has been completely eradicated from the North Island. Today, it soars through the icy pinnacles of the South Island’s mountains, its last refuge. In 2018, the incredibly smart parrot, which is called “Clown of the mountain” for its antics involving stealing tourist’s keys and picking rubber off of cars, was listed by the IUCN as endangered. The personable birds are at increased danger as their inquisitive nature leads to humans feeding them junk food and accidentally striking them with their cars. Most egregiously, a bounty was even placed on the bird’s head for attacking sheep until 1971, when 150,000 keas were killed, mostly by sheep farmers. Today there are only 6,000 left.

Only in New Zealand will you find a parrot flying through snowy mountains, capable of solving puzzles and willing to walk up and pose for humans. New Zealand’s incredible environments, from the high mountains where the kia lives to the forrest floor where kiwis and kakapos sift through the dark, and lack of predators offered an incredible space for birds to rapidly diversify into several strange and wonderful forms. But these very adaptations that helped them persist across New Zealand, from the keas curiosity to the kakapos bulk, have increased their chances of going extinct. Losing the moa was an incredible loss, and New Zealand needs to increase conservation efforts to save the kiwi and several other species from the same fate.

Check out more pictures of the kea and New Zealand birds at the Natural Curios Instagram page. Click on the icon at the bottom of the page!

All artwork and photography by Jack Tamisiea

Related Articles:

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/animal/moa

http://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/haasts-eagle

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/gigantism-and-dwarfism-islands/

https://www.kiwisforkiwi.org/about-kiwi/kiwi-facts-characteristics/honorary-mammals/

https://www.livescience.com/57813-kiwi-facts.html

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/08/rise-of-kiwi-bird-new-zealand/

http://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/huia

https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-animals/birds/birds-a-z/kakapo/behaviour/

https://www.doc.govt.nz/ourbirds

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/03/endangered-kapako-breeding-technology/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37538170

https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/pests-and-threats/methods-of-control/1080/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1fHbsOPb4gIVRh0rCh3AXgwzEAAYASAAEgJD6vD_BwE

https://www.birdlife.org/worldwide/news/curiosity-shouldn’t-kill-kea-we-need-stop-giving-parrot-junk-food

The Plight of the Sage Grouse

Save the Sage Grouse!

The Trump administration’s decision to ease Obama-era sage grouse protections make the peculiar bird an unlikely conservation symbol at a crucial time. Will it be a fatal blow for the sage grouse?

On March 15, 2019, President Trump finalized plans to greatly reduce sage grouse habitat across 10 western states, a plan in the works since December. The decision will slash sage grouse protective habitats by almost nine million acres, making that land more accessible for oil and gas drilling. Environmentalists widely panned the move, labeling it a handout to oil companies. Slightly lost among the outrage over slashing protected areas for drilling was the grim fate of the sage grouse.

The greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) may not look like the most graceful birds, with its spiky tail feathers and scarf of fluffy white feathers adorning its head, but they do know how to “woo” potential mates. Every spring, male sage grouses gather along the plains and strut their stuff in their unique and elaborate courting display. Male sage grouse inflate the two large yellow air sacs hanging over their white stomach and then pop them, making a bizarre noise similar to the sound of a rubber ball bouncing off a wall. Over 70 sage grouses may gather at this festival, proudly inflating and popping their air sacs, filling the sagebrush plains with strange, rubbery sounds.

Unfortunately this spectacular occurrence is becoming less and less frequent as the birds’ habitat continues to dwindle. These birds only live on the sagebrush plains of the western United States, which happen to be some of the richest oil sites in the country. The sage grouse has been involved in land disputes over oil for more than a decade. Sage grouses once numbered in the millions but are now restricted to only 56% of their natural range according to the Audubon society. The bird’s population currently sits at a meager 200,000-500,000 birds as the sagebrush ocean around them disappears.

In 2015, the sage grouse was denied listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) because it was believed that federal and state protections were enough to help protect the bird and alleviate the environmental pressures its dwindling population was facing. In 2015, these protections were surprisingly robust thanks to organizations like the Audubon Society and an ambitious sage grouse protection plan implemented by the Obama administration. That plan banned oil and gas drilling in 10.7 million acres where the remarkable birds resided. The protected area was marked as “sagebrush focal areas” and these spaces would provide a safe haven for the birds and their ecosystems.

The decision reached last week will turn over all but 1.8 million acres of that plan to the oil and gas companies. Environmentalists claim that this will destroy the birds’ nesting areas, further devastating a population in decline. A possible mitigation from this massive loss of habitat would be to list the sage grouse as endangered under the ESA now that federal efforts to help the bird are gone. But that will be fraught with political discord and endangered species status may not be as valuable as it used to be. The actual ESA is threatened by former oil lobbyist David Bernhardt, who now runs the Interior Department. His goal is to weaken the law, which has existed since the Nixon administration in 1973, by making the economic repercussions of listing a species come into play during the listing process. Currently, only scientific proof of a species’ decline is needed for listing.

For the last few years, the sage grouse has repeatedly become a symbol for conservation vs. fossil fuel extraction. It pits one species’ survival against the extraction of energy sources that could potentially put us all in danger due to emissions. But the sage grouse doesn’t care about the potential ramifications down the line. It is in grave danger now as over 80 percent of its protected land from the 2015 plan has been opened up to drilling. We are facing the sobering reality of a loss of not only a strange bird, but an iconic western landscape altogether. In a few years there could be no rubbery popping sounds filling the sagebrush with life. The groups of strange, beautiful birds strutting around, puffing out their chests could be gone. All that will be left are silent oil derricks, extracting the life from the sagebrush.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/climate/trump-sage-grouse.html

https://www.audubon.org/news/whats-greater-sage-grouse

Flying-Foxes Struggling in the Heat of the Moment

Climate Change is Throwing Queensland’s Flying Foxes Straight Into the Fire

Brisbane’s black flying-foxes shortly after sunset

As someone who is new to the continent of Australia, I was taken aback one night when I witnessed the procession of flying-foxes parading over the Brisbane River. The colony of bats initially appeared to be just another flock of birds meandering across the blue-tinted dusk sky, soaring as they bobbed in between one another. However, as the specks of black approached my balcony, I noticed their leathery wings beating against the cool night air.

Flying-foxes, of the Pteropus genus, are one of the largest species of bats in the world, with some species growing as long as 1.5 meters from wing tip to wing tip. They inhabit the tropics and subtropics of Asia, Australia and parts of Africa, also going by the moniker of fruit bats. Unlike some other species of bats, they must use sight to make up for their lack of echolocation. As a result, their wide-eyes have become their trademark and have helped them take on cultural significance with many indigenous groups of people. Their teeth have even been used as currency for some odd reason. 

I have never been to an area where flying-foxes are found, which is why their appearance over Brisbane was so exciting to me, although the locals may barely take notice of such a sighting. Unfortunately, thanks to recent climate events, the existence of one species of flying-fox in northern Queensland may become much more rare. 

During a heatwave in the northern Australian city of Cairns in November 2018, hundreds of flying-foxes were dropping out of the sky due to record temperatures. Over 4,000 spectacled flying-foxes were seared when temperatures soared to 42.6 C (108.7 F).

Flying-foxes at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

What makes this tragic extreme weather event even more dismal is that spectacled flying-foxes, named after the light patches of fur surrounding their huge eyes, were struggling well before this grueling heat wave. The Australian government lists the species as endangered, having experienced a 78 percent population drop-off between the years 1985 and 2000 due to habitat loss and paralysis caused by the Australian paralysis tick, among other factors. The environmental stress caused by extreme weather events like the recent heatwave is fast becoming this species’ greatest threat. 

Although spectacled flying-foxes have not dealt with a heatwave of this magnitude in recent memory, other species of flying-foxes have been similarly decimated in the not too distant past. In 2004, a heatwave even warmer than the 2018 one killed between 5,000 and 7,000 Grey-headed flying-foxes. Most of these bats were less than 4 months of age, wreaking havoc on the whole population. 

Cyclones are another extreme weather event that threatens the existence of flying-foxes, destroying the trees that offer the bats the fruit that sustains them. Their fancy for fruit has also led them into conflict with the humans that run fruit orchards. The spectacled flying-foxes are often culled because of their reputations as fruit thieves. And what flying animal isn’t exempt from electrocution from power lines?

The larger theme is the threat of extreme weather events on flying-foxes because they have the ability to drastically diminish the size of a bat population within a matters of days. These events are even more detrimental when they involve an endangered species like the spectacled flying-fox. Our changing climate is continuing to cook up these extreme weather events, and species like the spectacled flying-fox are paying the price. 

According to Dr. Sean Maxwell, of the University of Queensland’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more intense, spelling doom for not only spectacled flying-foxes, but also hundreds of other species. A recent study he conducted on the responses of different species after extreme weather events found 31 different cases of local species’ extinction after such extreme weather events throughout the world. 

Although climate change is a long-term trend, it is easy to recognize the immediate effects in weather around the world as the world warms. Because of the swift intensity of events like a cyclone or a heatwave, wildlife populations are ill-equipped to survive it, as the thousands of dead flying-foxes in northern Queensland demonstrate. All it took was one heatwave to eliminate almost a third of the population of spectacled flying-foxes. What will happen to these bats, and countless other species around the world, when the storms and heatwaves keep coming, each one stronger than the last?

Sources: 

https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2018/12/wildlife-struggle-cope-extreme-weather

http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicspecies.pl?taxon_id=185

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/30/queensland-flying-fox-species-decimated-by-record-heatwave