Calling citizen scientists: more data needed to protect echidnas

These masters of disguise are some of the world’s oldest surviving mammals, but they are threatened by habitat loss, traffic and feral cats – and they need our help

Alexandra Spring

Wed 21 Feb 2018 17.00 GMT Last modified on Wed 21 Feb 2018 17.02 GMT

They may be one of the world’s oldest surviving mammals – around for at least 25m years – but scientists don’t know much about echidnas. Now researchers believe the remaining Australian population may be threatened and they need citizen scientists’ help to save them. 

The short-beaked echidna is found only in Australia and Papua New Guinea. In 2015 the Kangaroo Island echidna, a once significant subspecies, was listed as endangered. While the remaining population is listed as “least concern”, researchers question the listing. As Tahlia Perry, a PhD researcher at the University of Adelaide’s Grutzner Lab, which is studying the molecular biology of echidnas, says: “When you don’t have exact numbers, it’s really hard to give something a listing.”

In September 2017, the lab, in association with the CSIRO’s Atlas of Living Australia, launched the free echidna CSI app to encourage Australians to photograph wild echidnas and collect their scat, or droppings. “What we are hoping to find out is [whether there are] other pockets of populations around the rest of the country that are in the same sort of threat level [as the Kangaroo Island species] because they face the exact same threats,” says Perry.

The main threats to echidnas are land clearing and habitat loss. This was demonstrated on Kangaroo Island when the population shrank as development increased. Echidnas can travel great distances – often several kilometres in a day – they have very large home ranges and so land clearing and rapid developments can cause problems in their ability to travel by removing viable habitat, says Perry. Other major threats include traffic, feral cats and potentially the rapidly changing climate.

Read on 

When confronted with a raging wildfire, echidnas go to sleep

Bushfires are an ever-present threat in Australia, but short-beaked echidnas have found a surprising way to survive them

By Richard Gray

14 May 2016

In the tinder-dry bush of Australia, wildfire can tear through vegetation at terrifying speeds, incinerating almost everything in its path and leaving little more than blackened desert in its wake.

Most animals have a natural, ingrained fear of fire that compels them to flee the flames. But one strange creature has a rather surprising tactic for dealing with blazes. It does nothing.

Short-beaked echidnas – odd little hedgehog-like critters that lay eggs instead of live young – can enter an inactive state known as torpor, which is used by many animals to help them conserve energy. When in torpor, echidnas reduce their metabolic rate and lower their body temperature.

This, according to research published in April 2016, gives them an uncanny knack for surviving bushfires. It might also have helped their distant ancestors survive a mass extinction.

In 2013 a catastrophic fire swept across Warrumbungle National Park in eastern Australia. Julia Nowack, then based at the University of New England in New South Wales, Australia, studied the aftermath.

Continued ....

Indonesian wildlife smuggler arrested - again

Animals were hidden in cloth sacks in modified suitcases

August 2011: A known Indonesian wildlife dealer has been caught attempting to smuggle 18 protected echidnas - rare egg-laying mammals - out of their native Papua province.

The suspect is a registered wildlife trader who was apparently attempting to send the animals on a plane to the country's capital, Jakarta, without the necessary permits.


The seizure took place at the end of last month in Merauke, Papua Province, one of the easternmost towns in Indonesia. The seizure was made by the Natural Resources Conservation Agency of Indonesia.

Pythons and lizards also seized
The shipment also included two carpet pythons, three amethyst pythons, two frilled lizards and six monitor lizards.

Echidnas and frilled lizards are fully protected in Indonesia, while the two python species may be traded under quota with permits, although none had been acquired in this case. It is unclear which monitor lizard species were seized.

The animals were packed in cloth sacks and hidden in modified compartments in two suitcases, to be checked in at the airport. However, airport officials sensed something was amiss and inspected the bags, discovering the live animals inside.

Although reptiles are often involved in such smuggling cases, the echidnas are a less frequently traded commodity. All the animals will be quarantined and released back into the wild.

Still under investigation after last offence
This is not the first time the suspect has attempted to smuggle wildlife. Indonesian press reports quote the head of Merauke District I Natural Resources Conservation office, Oktavianus Bato Tampak, as saying that the same man was arrested last June for attempting to smuggle monitor lizards and snakes, and was still under investigation for that offence.

‘Indonesia is a major source of wildlife illegally entering international trade,' said Chris Shepherd, deputy regional director of TRAFFIC Southeast Asia.

‘We encourage the authorities to investigate both the individual caught in Merauke, and also the intended recipients in Jakarta. It's the dealers based in Jakarta who are behind the large-scale smuggling of wildlife to buyers world-wide and who are responsible for Indonesia gaining its reputation as an illegal trade hub.

‘The authorities need to put the Jakarta-based dealers out of business once and for all.'

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/smuggling-echidnas.html#cr