Monday Moaning

Yes, I know it’s Tuesday… deal with it! I am. I’ve got coffee.

Nature Ramble on Sunday warned of illegal pets, or transporting species from one part of the planet to another.

Here’s another issue that runs parallel to keeping turles and other unusal pets.

Hewlett-Packard ad featuring runaway iguana ‘poses threat to native wildlife’

Invasive Species Council asks company to pull ad, saying ‘Ralph the iguana’ could encourage Australians to buy the illegal pet

Hewlett-Packard’s Australian advertisement features a boy whose pet iguana is on the loose.

Hewlett-Packard has been criticised for featuring a runaway iguana in its Australian advertising, as the animal is considered an environmental threat and is illegal to own as a pet.

The Invasive Species Council has said the use of “Ralph the iguana” in HP’s marketing campaign would encourage Australians to obtain iguanas as pets, only for them to be released into the wild, where they could cause significant damage to native flora and fauna.

The HP campaign is an online effort involving the tagline #HelpFindRalph. People can look at pictures of Ralph to guess his location in order to win various HP products.

So far, Ralph has been photographed alongside camels on the beach in Broome, looking sanguine in a South Australian vineyard and looming in front of Sydney town hall. The green iguana has also been shown at the Twelve Apostles in Victoria and the Whitsunday islands in Queensland.

“We don’t want to create a new demand for this species and for people to buy them on the black market,” Andrew Cox, chief executive of the Invasive Species Council, told Guardian Australia. “These things can grow up to two metres long and then people will dump them, which causes a major threat to northern Australia.

“Hewlett-Packard should have known better. They should have done their homework. They now need to make people aware that it’s illegal to have iguanas in Australia and that they are a threat to the environment here.”

Green iguanas, which can weigh up to 9kg, are considered a pest because of their broad diet, which may include native plants, animals and bird eggs. Their burrows can also disturb the environment.

A Queensland government analysis has warned the animals are considered “high-risk” to the natural environment and are prone to spread in that state because the climate is comparable to that of their native central America.

Although they are often kept as pets, the Queensland government warns: “Adult iguanas are large, powerful animals. When threatened they can bite, cause severe scratch wounds and deliver a painful slap with their tail.”

It is illegal to import iguanas or keep them as pets but 17 animals have been seized by authorities since 1999.

“We can only guess how many are in Australia, probably hundreds,” Cox said. “We don’t want that number to increase because once they are established, it’s a hard creature to dislodge. They can camouflage themselves in the wild, after all.”

The Invasive Species Council, which recently warned of an influx of pest species into Australia, has written to HP asking the company to scrap the advertising campaign and apologise.

But an HP spokeswoman told Guardian Australia it had no plans to alter the ads and that Ralph would continue appearing next to Australian landmarks.

Source: TheGuardian

Opinion:

I realise that Ralph is an invasive species and therefore a concern, but I wonder is this making a mountain out of a molehill?

Ralph makes an endearing ambassador for HP and understandably so.

Perhaps HP should have been a little more astute in their campaign and added an educational factor into the ad, therefore actually helping the powers that be.

But there is also the responsibility of parents in educating their kids about such issues and the matter should also be dealt with in schools.

Nature Ramble

Rare songbird faces fire ant threat

 

Adult birds are black

Rain, rats and fire ants threaten the survival of the rare Tahiti monarch, despite a record best year for its conservation.

Just 10 breeding pairs remain in the wild population, which numbers fewer than 50 mature birds in total.

Efforts to save the birds won an award from conservation partnership BirdLife International.

But experts warn that poor weather and predators could dramatically affect the current breeding season.

The Tahiti monarch (Pomarea nigra) is a species of monarch flycatcher that lives in four forested valleys on the island of Tahiti in French Polynesia.

Adults are black with pale blue beaks and juveniles are a red-brown colour.

Populations of the songbirds have declined throughout the 20th Century, but a local conservation programme that has been running for the past 16 years has succeeded in boosting breeding figures.

In 2013, conservationists at Manu, the Polynesian Ornithological Society, saw a record four-fold increase in chicks compared with the previous year.

Their efforts to manage the forest home of the critically endangered monarchs won the BirdLife International People’s Choice Award, voted for by the public.

School children have been replanting native trees

“Rats are not supposed to be on Tahiti, they arrived on boats and have killed thousands of birds,” said Ms Blanvillain.

“And now there are fire ants on the edge of the valley. If the ants reach the nest they will eat the chicks and adults in minutes.”

Little fire ants, also known as electric ants because of their stinging bite, were first discovered in Tahiti in 2004 and have since colonised large areas of the island.

The predatory ants are native to South and Central America and are considered a pest species elsewhere in the world where they disturb the native ecology.

“Alien invasive species are the second biggest threat to birds,” said Mr Fowlie.

“Across the Pacific, we know a lot of birds have gone extinct because of introduced species,” he said citing destructive animals such as pigs, through plants that provide unsuitable nest sites, down to mosquitoes that can spread alien diseases.

Manu have installed hundreds of rat trapping stations throughout the forest and recruited local school children to help plant native trees in an effort to restore the birds’ natural habitat.

“This is a bird that evolved for this particular island and this particular habitat. It’s always difficult to say what would happen if the species went extinct, we just don’t know,” said Mr Fowlie.

“But it’s one part of a complex fabric of ecosystem and as you start to lose bits the whole thing can unravel. It’s important to keep everything in place.”

Make you Fink on Friday

Here we go again!

Once again man has acted before thinking through the consequences.

Invasive ladybirds wage ‘biological war’ on natives

The Asian Ladybird or harlequin has overpowered native species across Europe

German researchers have discovered the biological keys to the success of an invasive species, wreaking havoc across Europe and the US,

The Asian ladybird was originally brought in to control aphids in greenhouses.

But it has escaped and is increasing uncontrollably across Europe, wiping out native species.

The alien is winning, say scientists, because its body fluid contains a parasite toxic to other insects.

The research is published in the Journal, Science.

Sometimes called the harlequin, the Asian ladybird (Harmonia axyridis) can devour over two hundred aphids a day.

They are seen as a natural and effective solution to the problems posed by these pests in greenhouses.

Killer bugs

But in recent years these imported ladybirds have escaped and rapidly established themselves across Europe and North America at the expense of native species.

In Autumn, the Asian invaders can be a nuisance as they congregate in large groups searching for sheltered locations to hibernate.

They can sometimes cause serious allergic reactions in humans.

The larvae of the Asian ladybird can poison any native who eats it

In this new research, scientists have shown that it is the biological system of the Asian ladybird that gives it the edge when it comes to competing with native species.

The invader has an extremely powerful immune system.

The body fluid of the insect contains a strong antibiotic compound called harmonine as well as antimicrobial peptides. These allow the invasive to fight off pathogens more effectively than natives.

So powerful are the antibiotic elements in the ladybird, that the researchers say they may prove to be promising targets for drug development.

But the most powerful aspects of the ladybird’s biological armoury are tiny fungi called microsporidia.

“They keep them inactive in their own blood, we don’t understand how they do it yet,” said Dr Heiko Vogel from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology,

“But when the other ladybird beetles start to attack the invader’s eggs and larvae, they become active and kill the native ones.”

The ladybird’s immune systems have strong antimicrobial properties

Several studies in recent years have shown the harlequin conquering other ladybirds across Europe. In the UK scientists found that seven of the eight native British species have declined. Similar problems have been encountered in Belgium and Switzerland.

In the UK, researchers are very keen for people to report any sightings of the harlequin. They have just launched a smartphone app that helps people record details of the ladybirds.

Dr Helen Roy from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology near Wallingford, UK, said the German research was “fascinating”. The outlook for native species, however, remained grim.

“The two-spot ladybird, a historically common and widespread species in Britain is suffering the most and experiencing dramatic and rapid declines,” she said.

And the German scientists agree that the Asian ladybird is set to conquer most of the world.

“I don’t see any which way to stop them now – it’s too late in my opinion,”…

 

Read more

Opinion:

Man is too adept at trying to change the course of nature without considering the consequences.

Whether is is well-meaning or just straight ignorance we have to stop meddling with the natural order of things.

If there is money involved, then the consequences don’t even matter, just plough ahead and face the music if necessary.