New design crayfish traps will save platypus from drowning

The Australian Platypus Conservancy (APC) has been carrying out trials on a new design of a type of crayfish trap called an opera house trap. Opera house traps are widely sold in Australia to deploy in rivers to catch crayfish for eating. Unfortunately, these same rivers are populated by air-breathing platypus that cannot escape from the traps once they have entered them and so drown. The new design is fitted with a circular escape hatch in the roof, through which platypus can find their way back out. The research, funded by the Taronga Conservation Society, involved 34 adults and 24 juvenile platypus to establish how easily the animals found the escape holes. 

Of the four animals tested during daylight hours, all escaped within one minute of being introduced to a trap. At night, 63 per cent of tested animals managed to find their own way out within one minute and 19 per cent in 1-2 minutes. All exited via the escape hatch in the roof. Given that a platypus can hold its breath for approximately two and a half minutes when active, these findings suggest that a large proportion of wild platypus are likely to escape from a modified trap before they drown.

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Alligator traps in The Villages neighborhood concerns residents

Posted: 4:23 p.m. Saturday, April 5, 2014

SUMTER COUNTY, Fla. — 

Residents in a neighborhood in The Villages are concerned after trappers showed up and set alligator traps in a lake near their homes.

Signs were posted about the alligator traps and the actual traps have pieces of meat hanging off to lure the animals.

"We've been here eight years and nothing like this has ever happened. I tried to find out and no one seems to know anything,” said resident Jody Whyman.

Whyman and others want to know why the traps were set in the lake at the The Village of Bridgeport at Lake Sumter community.

"One day they were clearing out the brush here, and the next day these traps were set,” resident Jim Paterson said.

Residents said they believe about a half dozen alligators call the lake home and they said they see the animals all the time.

"I see them swimming up and down the canal. They go back and forth, and sun on the banks,” Paterson said.

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Rangers destroy 40 active tiger snares in Sumatra's Kerinci Seblat National Park

Tiger Protection and Conservation Units hailed for their heroic efforts in this year's Great Kerinci Snare Sweep.

August 2013. In any competition there are winners and losers. But for Tiger Protection & Conservation Unit rangers taking part in this year's Great Kerinci Snare Sweep, even victory was marred by concern as the results revealed a huge rise in threat to Sumatran tigers from purpose-built snares.

Runs during Ramadan

The Great Kerinci Snare Sweep is an annual competition that began in 2011 and offers bonuses to tiger protection rangers in the long-running Fauna & Flora International (FFI) and Kerinci Seblat National Park Sumatran tiger protection and conservation programme. The snare sweep starts just before (and runs for the duration of) the holy month of Ramadan and offers bonuses to the Tiger Protection and Conservation Units (TPCUs) that find and destroy the most active snares in the national park during forest patrols.

All snares rewarded

Although the emphasis is on finding and destroying active tiger snares, points are also awarded for destroying snares targeting deer and other smaller mammals, as well as removing snares and mist nets used for capturing wild birds.

Over the course of the five week snare sweep, the six TPCUs destroyed a truly shocking 40 active tiger snares (by comparison, in the whole of 2011 a total of 11 active snares were found on three of the 91 patrols conducted) along with 564 active deer snares and 79 bird snares.

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Predatory Fungi Are Listening for Worms, Then Devouring Prey

Dec. 13, 2012 — For over 25 years, Paul Sternberg has been studying worms -- how they develop, why they sleep, and, more recently, how they communicate. Now, he has flipped the script a bit by taking a closer look at how predatory fungi may be tapping into worm conversations to gain clues about their whereabouts.

Nematodes, Sternberg's primary worm interest, are found in nearly every corner of the world and are one of the most abundant animals on the planet. Unsurprisingly, they have natural enemies, including numerous types of carnivorous fungi that build traps to catch their prey. Curious to see how nematophagous fungi might sense that a meal is present without the sensory organs -- like eyes or noses -- that most predators use, Sternberg and Yen-Ping Hsueh, a postdoctoral scholar in biology at Caltech, started with a familiar tool: ascarosides. These are the chemical cues that nematodes use to "talk" to one another.

"If we think about it from an evolutionary perspective, whatever the worms are making that can be sensed by the nematophagous fungi must be very important to the worm -- otherwise, it's not worth the risk," explains Hsueh. "I thought that ascarosides perfectly fit this hypothesis."

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121213145257.htm

Saltwater crocodile caught

A MALE saltwater crocodile, believed to have eaten a pet dog at Donkey Camp was among four huge salties caught by Parks and Wildlife Rangers in the Katherine region in the past week.

The 3.22 male croc was pulled from a trap which had been placed 4km upstream from the popular fishing spot after a Katherine man lost his dog to a crocodile in the area two weeks ago.

Rod Usher, 43, said when he found the rear half of his brother’s Kelpie cross Toni on the family property near Donkey Camp he knew “it wasn’t a barra that got the dog”.

Katherine croc catcher and senior wildlife ranger John Burke said a trap was placed into the river two weeks ago and the large crocodile was caught in it on Friday afternoon.

Two smaller salties, measuring 2.77m and 2.89m, were caught in traps at Flora River within Flora River Nature Park, 122km south-west of Katherine.

http://www.katherinetimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/monster-croc-caught-at-popular-fishing-spot/2581798.aspx