Tag Archives: Endangered species

World Ranger Day

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World Ranger Dayworld ranger day 6With the death of Cecil the lion, my thoughts have turned to the magnificent job park rangers do around the world. On the 1st of July,  Cecil was shot and killed after Walter Palmer, an American recreational big-game hunter wounded him with an arrow. Cecil symbolises the many thousands of endangered wild animals who are brutally and senselessly slaughtered each year, just for fun. Cecil was lured from the comparative safety of a reserve by a corrupt ranger, but there are bad apples in every barrel. This post is in support of the vast majority of park rangers who dedicate their lives to protecting our dwindling natural world.

World ranger day 5Last Friday was World Ranger Day, a day in which we commemorate rangers killed or injured in the line of duty, and celebrate the work they do to protect the world’s wildlife. There are more than 100,000 reserves, parks and protected areas around the world, with the oldest national park being Yellowstone in the US. World Ranger Day is organised by the International Ranger Federation and was first held in 2007.

World ranger day 4Tragically, it’s estimated that over one thousand park rangers have been killed in the line of duty over the past decade – seventy five percent by commercial poachers and armed militia groups. Park rangers are generally under-equipped, underpaid, and often under-appreciated. It is highly dangerous work. To me, and many others like me, they are modern day heroes. In this post, I honour and thank them.

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Dugongs In Fiction

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sea turtle 1I’ve completed the final edits for Turtle Reef, which is due for release with Penguin on the 25th of March. Hopefully I’ll be able to reveal the cover next week. Finishing a novel always evokes mixed feelings – excitement at moving on to a new project; regret at leaving much-loved characters behind. As readers of my books will know, I have animal characters as well as human ones, and sometimes they’re the ones I miss the most. Zenandra, the wasp queen from Wasp Season; Whirlwind, the mysterious brumby mare from Brumby’s Run; Samson, the loyal German Shepherd from Currawong Creek and the charming Magpie geese goslings from Billabong Bend – these characters stay with me long after the final words are written.

Turtle Reef is no different. Set at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef, the story includes a wide range of marine animals (and horses of course). Some like Kane, the dolphin, and Einstein, the octopus, are characters in their own right. Others such as the sea turtles and dugongs fuel the narrative in more general ways.

Dugong 1Out of curiosity I decided to research the place of dugongs in fiction. It surprised me to discover that there are very few books about these unique animals, and all of them seem to be for children. Dabu Grows Up: The Tale of a Dugong is a picture book set in the tropical waters of the Torres Strait. Dabu is a young dugong whose mother is taken by hunters. Dabu learns about life, respect for the natural world, loneliness and friendship as he explores a tropical reef, finally deciding that to survive he must return to his herd. Denis, the Dugong follows the adventures of an Arabian dugong, and is enriched with details of the surrounding flora and fauna. The book is part of a series stressing the importance of conservation in the Arabian Peninsula. Dipanker the Dugong is a similar book set in India. That’s it – all I could find. Please comment if you know of any others. I’m thrilled to think that my new book Turtle Reef will help raise the profile of these enchanting and under-represented animals in fiction.

Dugongs 2Dugongs belong to the order Sirenia, named after the legendary sirens of the sea. Their closest living relatives are the manatees and they’re also distantly related to elephants. Dugongs are found throughout the Indo-pacific region, but over the past century many populations have disappeared. Australia is their last stronghold, but even here they are in dramatic decline. Threats to dugongs are all man-made: entanglements in shark and fishing nets, marine debris, loss of sea grass meadows due to dredging and agricultural run-off, traditional hunting and collisions with boats. I’ve always loved these gentle giants of the sea that have existed on earth for 45 million years. What a tragedy if after all this time they went extinct on our watch! 🙁

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The Ugly Animal Preservation Society

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Ugly Animal Preservation SocietyAn elephant is killed every fifteen minutes to supply an insatiable and unsustainable demand for ivory. A rhino is killed every eleven minutes for horns that have as much medicinal effect as my big toenail. Wild lions could be gone in fifteen years as we teeter on the brink of the world’s sixth mass extinction. But it’s not just the charismatic, iconic animals in trouble. Forget pandas – ugly animals should be protected too. The Ugly Animal Preservation Society draws attention to less adorable endangered species, and I can’t wait for the show to come to Australia!

Gob-faced squidConservation issues are usually pretty depressing, so it’s refreshing for a comedy evening to take a conservation twist – scientists dabbling in comedy and comedians dabbling in science. Each has to pick an endangered (and ugly) species, and has ten minutes to champion it. At the end the audience votes, and the winner becomes the mascot of that regional branch of the society. In London it’s the proboscis monkey. In Edinburgh, the branch’s mascot is Australia’s own gob-faced squid.  The comedians take different approaches – some try to prove that their animal is not so ugly. Others admit, “They are hideous, but you know what, some days I wake up a bit rough myself!” But the main thing is to draw attention to the plight of these rare animals. These are species people don’t know much about, yet they all play a vital part in our ecosystem.

Just because an animal is unattractive, doesn’t mean we can ignore it. Take humble earthworms for example. Without them, tonnes of rotting organic rubbish would build up within months. Fly maggots microbatperform a similar function. Micro-bats are worth billions of dollars to agriculture yearly, by eating their weight in insects each night, while fruit bats are the vital pollinators and seed-dispersers of Australia’s great forests. So spare a thought for the less sexy species. They’re important too!

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