The Australia Letter is a weekly publication from our Australia bureau. Join to get it by electronic mail. This week’s concern is written by Natasha Frost, a reporter with the Australia bureau.
Meet an Australian supermodel for the ages: six ft tall with a sculptured visage, countless legs and piercing orange eyes.
“They’re the glamour animal for the rainforest, right here in North Queensland,” stated Justin McMahon, a land supervisor for Rainforest Rescue, an environmental nonprofit that protects and restores the Australian rainforest.
However the southern cassowary, a secretive, emu-like fowl famed for its killer kick and razor-sharp, throat-slitting talons on every foot, isn’t only a fairly face.
Because the draft of a authorities restoration plan for the species launched this week describes, the birds are what is called a “keystone species,” indicating that they play an necessary function within the ecosystem.
From an environmental perspective, maybe their most necessary attribute is their function as seed dispersers. Cassowaries use their extensive gape to gulp down entire fruits directly, and their highly effective legs to move these seeds (secure inside their bellies) far and extensive. And, weighing in at 130 kilos, they’ve spectacular appetites, permitting them to devour massive portions of fruit, in addition to anything they’ll scrounge.
(In addition they have a softer facet: Cassowary males make doting dads, sitting on the clutch of eggs for nearly two months, then taking the first parental function for the primary 9 months of their chicks’ lives.)
Southern cassowary populations have been noticed to be declining for nearly 80 years, and the species was formally listed as endangered in 2000.
On the time of that itemizing, the birds have been notably in danger from their habitat being cleared. 1 / 4-century later, they face different threats: street site visitors; canine and dingoes; “habitat fragmentation,” the place their pure rainforest is damaged up and so they can not simply transfer between areas; and local weather change.
It’s exhausting to determine fairly how threatened they’re, and even what number of there are, although estimates run from about 4,000 to 10,000 throughout northwest Queensland, the one a part of the nation that they stay in, Mr. McMahon stated. “Nobody will ever know quantity, sadly.”
That’s as a result of the southern cassowary, for all its fearsome status, is powerfully shy, and remarkably good at making itself scarce. Regardless of standing six ft tall, the birds have been identified to face inside spitting distance from vacationers with out being noticed — partly as a result of they’re so achieved at protecting very nonetheless.
Mr. McMahon describes them as being extra “emo” than “emu.” “They stay of their darkish abyss of the rainforest, and so they don’t like being seemed on the mistaken approach or talked in regards to the mistaken approach,” he stated.
Makes an attempt to trace them with geolocation trackers are inclined to fail — they are going to merely peck off something hooked up to their physique — and their solitary methods could make their behaviors exhausting to check.
However it’s clear that human beings are taking their toll on the animals. Because the variety of automobiles within the area has risen, partly the product of extra self-driving tourism, some birds have been the victims of hit-and-runs.
Local weather change has additionally had an impact — greater temperatures can result in springs and puddles drying up, creating stress for the chicks.
In hotter years, the animals’ breeding seasons are longer, permitting “homewrecker” females the chance to lure single dads away from their brood and onto a brand new clutch of eggs. The chicks, stranded and orphaned, generally strategy people as substitute dad and mom.
However whereas cassowary infants are undoubtedly cute, with placing stripes and fuzzy our bodies, they won’t be the type of creature you need to have in your house for the lengthy haul (as a Florida cassowary proprietor found in 2019, at a horrible price).
Now for the week’s tales.
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