While attention may be focused on events elsewhere, it’s worth noting that today is Endangered Species Day.

Stopping extinctions should be something worth sharing with “friends” as Facebook becomes public on this day. From tigers to tuna, populations of rare species have declined 30% during the last forty years as the World Wildlife Fund has just reminded us in their discouraging Living Planet Report on biodiversity. The WWF director general discussed this situation in a video on their new report:

";" alt=""> WWF Living Planet Report, 2012 (credit: World Wildlife Fund)

The situation can be depressing but there is multiple good news on the US endangered species...

Most people who go to Hawaii spend their time lounging on a beach sipping a tall, cold drink. While those pursuits are pleasurable, a great alternative has been suggested by the Hawaiian conservation and restoration organization, Friends of Haleakala. Named after the famous Haleakala National Park, the Adopt-a-Nene Program allows individuals to protect endangered species and important island habitats from destruction by feral animals and alien plants.



Nene Goose

(credit:...

In the immensely popular Harry Potter book series, Harry has a magical companion, a snowy owl named Hedwig, who alerts him of pending danger.

These beautiful, white, owls with large yellow eyes normally inhabit the high Arctic where they prey on lemmings and voles. This year they have decided to make a rare visit south into our lower latitudes. The visiting owls are exciting young Harry’s, Hermione's, and any older folk who may have never seen these majestic birds of prey.

       ...

 

 

The Endangered Species Act became law on December 28, 1973. That makes the law 38 years old today and appropriate for some recognition of accomplishments over the years. The ESA was a pioneering piece of American environmental legislation.

The Endangered Species Act was signed into law by President Richard Nixon. It was designed to protect critically imperiled plant and animal species from extinction as stated in its charter as a "consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation.”

Since the Act went into effect, combined efforts by public agencies such as the Fish & Wildlife Service, private conservation foundations like the Center for Plant Conservation, numerous biological researchers, and concerned individuals have helped in the identification, designation,...

At Riled Up, we have paid close attention to the status of tigers and the demand for their body parts in China. The “lords of the jungle” continue to loose out to the Chinese mythology of their aphrodisiac properties and extinction in the wild is not un-imagined. The Diane Rehm Show focused an entire program on the problem of effective tiger conservation and the primary need for enforcement of conservation laws in Asian nations, the tigers natural range.



...

Anyone who has spent time in Australia knows the call of the Kookaburra. The name for this large kingfisher is derived from the aboriginal word for their plaintive/high-lonesome voice that almost sounds human. I would hear them calling before sunrise. The birds always reminded me of the Aussie bush and the remarkable creatures that inhabit those distant landscapes of OZ.





Laughing Kookaburra

(credit:...

I lived for many years in Southern California but never heard about Alan Mootnick, the Gibbon Man. If I had, I would have gone to see his conservation work with these rare primates-- remarkable long-armed apes from southeast Asia –near Santa Barbara where I studied environmental science at the university there. Alan Mootnick just passed away at 60. 

Gibbons are the acrobats of the primate world. With their ability to walk upright swinging long arms and lanky legs they sail through the rainforest at speeds up to 35 miles/hour high off the ground in the treetops. Gibbons are also known as the "songbirds" of primates and are the most musical of land mammals with voices that can carry up to 2 miles through dense rainforest canopies. Gibbons are found only in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Burma where deforestation and poaching is rampant.

Alan Mootnick founded...

The Imperial Woodpecker, is a large bird related the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and stands 2 feet tall. It was observed in a Mexico’s Sierra Madre Oriental mountains once by an amateur birdwatcher. The bird hasn’t been observed since the original footage was captured by Dr. William Rhein in 1956. The woodpeckers forest habitat has experienced considerable illegal logging and drug smuggling since, making the woodpecker either highly endangered or now extinct.

The original footage was finally released and re-broadcast from Science Friday here:

 





Imperial Woodpecker in Mexico, 1956 (credit: Dr. William L. Rhein)







It may never be known if the woodpecker still exists in the wild but that would be a good to think possible.



WHB

...