Endangered animals news for Last Chance To See by Douglas Adams, Mark Carwardine and Stephen Fry

Friends and colleagues -- including Terry Jones, Neil Gaiman, & Stephen Fry -- remember the man behind the Guide.

Labels: HitchhikersGuide, Stephen Fry

The news has stunned ornithologists worldwide, with some comparing the discovery to finding the dodo.

Researchers began an intense year-long search after a tip-off before finally capturing the bird on video.

The find has ignited hope that other "extinct" birds may be clinging on to survival in isolated places.

"This find is so significant that it is really difficult to describe," Alistair Gammell, of the UK's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), told BBC News. "We sadly won't rediscover the dodo, but it is almost on that level."

Labels: Dodos

For most people, the thought of hiking through cold, boggy tracks to sleep in a small tent on a steep hillside, and then to be woken four to fives times a night, doesn't sound like a holiday.
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Each night, nest-minders camp in a tent near a nest. Their job is to monitor the egg or chick whenever the mother leaves the nest, moving in with special heat pads to help the egg or chick stay warm.

"Nest-minders get woken up at all hours... from seven o'clock in the evening, right through to four o'clock, six o'clock in the morning," explains Tony Preston, a member of DOC's kakapo team.

Labels: Kakapo Parrots

Labels: HitchhikersGuide

Labels: Aye-Aye Lemurs

We need a new flag. Our old flag is, well, old. It's boring. We've seen it before, several times. Worst of all, it has historical significance, and these days historical significance just isn't on.
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Our flag could depict our outdoor activities. It could show jet boats and white water rafts. It could feature a bungy jumper, trussed and bound, leaping off a bridge. Or a cricket umpire, trussed and bound, being thrown over Huka Falls.
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Or it could emphasise our wildlife. It could show a horny kakapo fruitlessly searching for a mate. Or a possum inspecting the road surface at close proximity.

Labels: Kakapo Parrots

Labels: Aye-Aye Lemurs

Labels: Amazonian Manatees

I went to Indonesia for the spectacular Scuba diving and unexpectedly found as much wild beauty on the forested shoulders of the islands as I did among the colorful folds of their coral skirts. There are, after all, dragons on Komodo Island!

Our plans were to sail systematically down the chain of islands from Bali to Alor, diving at each likely spot along the way. Since Komodo lay right in our path, and is a favored dive location in its own right, it seemed logical to pay our respects to the island's famous inhabitants. Komodo Island, along with its immediate neighbors, is an Indonesian national park and known as one of the world's greatest wildlife regions. Like the Galapagos of Ecuador, Komodo is visited expressly for the purpose of seeing the wildlife that exists only there.

Labels: Komodo Dragons

Labels: Aye-Aye Lemurs

Douglas Adams never completed a screenplay of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. And for good reason, says his friend Michael Bywater. So what would the cult author have made of the film that premieres tonight?
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"So, next week - on 28 April, to be precise - the film of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy finally comes out, and I'll tell you what Douglas would have liked; what he would really, really have liked. He would have liked the fact that earlier this month an aye-aye - a peculiar and achingly endangered little lemur from Madagascar - was born in captivity and is doing well in Bristol Zoo. He wouldn't have liked the captivity bit, but he would have loved the born bit, and the doing well."

Labels: Douglas Adams

It's not just humans moving to Nelson to take advantage of the sunny climate and central location.

Four kakapo chicks from Codfish Island arrived in Nelson on Monday to be hand-raised at a rented house in the city.

Kakapo technical officer Daryl Eason, of Nelson, said the birds were whisked from the southern island by helicopter and caught a domestic flight to Nelson via Christchurch.
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The birds are one to four weeks old and are named Dit, Dot, Jem and Zoe. They are fed bird formula every four hours, and like human babies spend a lot of time dozing. They are kept in darkened boxes in a room kept at a constant temperature.

Labels: Kakapo Parrots

In late October 2004, I traveled to Nosy Mangabe, which is one of the best places to see wild aye-aye today. The island, forested with tropical rainforest and having a rich history involving 17th century pirates, lies close enough to the town of Maroantsetra for a day trip, though an night-time stay is crucial if you hope to see the aye-aye. There are no lodging facilities on the island for visitors (a small research station is available for visiting scientists), but there are several covered platforms where you can pitch tents as well as restrooms and showers.

Labels: Aye-Aye Lemurs

Recent reports indicate that many endangered species are dwindling because of high demand for a radioactive mineral called coltan that is used to make cellular phones, computers and other electronic devices. The main area where coltan is mined is the same area as the Kahuzi Biega National Park, home of the mountain gorilla. Gorilla habitats are becoming scarce and the miners are killing the gorillas for food. Because of this, the gorilla population has decreased more than half.

Cell phones contain many toxic substances, such as arsenic and cobalt. In landfills, toxins often escape into the environment, contaminating natural resources and polluting wildlife habitat. These poisons can travel through animal and human food chains causing birth defects, neurological damage and cancer.

The Philadelphia Zoo receives cash back on all recycled cell phones, some of which are re-used as emergency phones for victims of domestic abuse or redistributed into developing markets such as Latin America for first-time, low-income users.

Labels: Mountain Gorillas

Labels: Google, Mountain Gorillas

Kintana is also only the second aye-aye to be hand-reared in the world.

The zoo is hailing his birth as a key development in the long-term survival of aye-ayes, which are classified an endangered species.

Labels: Aye-Aye Lemurs

Labels: Mountain Gorillas

The zoo's "Dragons" exhibit, complete with a variety of live species and fantastical displays, cost $200,000 and has been a year in the making - though some of the zoo's curators have been anticipating it for almost a decade.
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"It's the only animal I know that just stares you down, like you're a potential meal. It has no fear at all," said Andy Odum, curator of reptiles, looking as though he'd like to reach out and pet the beast, which is being rented from the Fort Worth Zoo for the summer.

Labels: Komodo Dragons

The funding is part of the Government's Budget 2005 package. Mr Carter made the announcement on Codfish Island (Whenua Hou), off the coast of Stewart Island, yesterday where six kakapo chicks have hatched in the past month, lifting the kakapo population to its highest level in 30 years.

"I am confident (the Budget 2005 funding) will help ensure the kakapo population continues to grow," he said.

Labels: Kakapo Parrots

The curiosity of a huge stuffed kakapo being sold by the New Zealand High Commission in London began with a cultural question mark and ended with queries over misleading advertising.

The kakapo - a 60cm 19th century bird which sold last month for about 9000 GBP ($23,700) - mentioned the New Zealand High Commission in London in the promotional catalogue.
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Maori Party cultural affairs spokeswoman Atareta Poananga who said such "taonga", or treasures, should not be used for profiteering.

If they were to be moved at all, they should be repatriated to New Zealand.

Labels: Kakapo Parrots

Chester Zoo is offering opportunities for people to become a Zoo Keeper for the day. And people are snapping up the chance to get up close and personal with some of the most exotic creatures on the planet. Selena O'Donnell found out more.

As I'm led into the bat house by an enthusiastic Chris I'm struck by the lack of smell.

Chris explained: 'We've had all the wood chipping changed recently so the smell from the bat's urine isn't as strong as it was.'

As the hundreds of Seba and Rodrigues Fruit bats wait for their meal, Chris and I deal out their pungent breakfast by sliding feeding trays into wire holders dotted about the exhibit.

'You need to keep the trays as spread out as possible, otherwise dominant males will leave everyone else hungry,' said Chris.

Labels: Rodrigues Fruit Bats

Madagascar hopes the upcoming DreamWorks Animation SKG film "Madagascar" will do for its tourism industry what "Out of Africa" did for Kenya's, tourism officials said Tuesday. DreamWorks is hoping for another hit with "Madagascar," a computer-animated film about four urban-dwelling animals who escape from a New York zoo.

The Earth's most successful primates - humans - are on the brink of killing off nearly a quarter of their 625 cousin species, a report has said.

Of the four global regions inhabited by primates, the worst hit is Madagascar, where loss of habitat to traditional slash-and-burn agriculture has left some lemur species, such as Perrier's sifaka, stranded in tiny areas of the forest.

More than half of Madagascar's lemurs are on the verge of extinction.
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"Amazingly, we've managed to get through the 20th Century without any primate species going extinct," Dr Mittermeier said. "I'd like to think this is partly because of better conservation efforts."

Labels: Aye-Aye Lemurs

Don Merton's grandmother's canary has a lot to answer for. His fascination with the bird from the age of five led him into a 48-year career helping some of the country's most endangered birds, including the Chatham Islands robin, North Island saddleback and kakapo, to avoid extinction.

Now he has decided it is time to retire.

Labels: Kakapo Parrots

Labels: Aye-Aye Lemurs

Scientists have discovered female kakapo that mate twice in a season have a higher chance of producing fertile eggs. That was thought to be because of the "very poor quality" of male kakapo sperm, Mr Jansen said.

"The majority of kakapo sperm is rubbish. Even productive birds have poor sperm because of past inbreeding," he said.

"They’re so inbred that if they were humans, they’d probably have six fingers and be playing a guitar."

Labels: Kakapo Parrots, Paul Jansen