31) Return to Currumbin

We returned to our local wildlife sanctuary, Currumbin, to see more of our furry, feathery, scaly co-inhabitants of this vast landscape. As wonderfully designed to recreate habitats and really care for the animals it is easy to experience a strange melancholy here. Many of these animals are getting slammed by development, drought, habitat destruction - many will exist only in zoos in our lifetime. A recent report in Science by International Union for the Conservation of Nature in Gland, Switzerland, estimates that 1 in 4 mammal species is at risk of extinction (no time frame specified). It's sadly ironic that while advertiser's shamelessly exploits animals for marketing and keeping all good consumers busily buying "stuff", we're experiencing a mass extinction of our animals and birds through habitat destruction and pollution. We learned that habitat of koalas, the icon of Australia, is predicted to be destroyed through development by 2015. That's seven years from now! Zoos and wildlife sanctuaries are harboring what animals they can, until small population genetics take over.


Our local neighborhood is indicative of the problem - our immediate neighbors are quite thrilled to use a leaf blower - gasoline powered - to clean their deck and driveway 2-3 time A WEEK! (usually quite early). Climate change? - it's only a little engine. Oil prices? drill off the US coast, drill in ANWR - I need a leaf free driveway damn it! and its too much work to use a broom! We look at office buildings with a majority of office lights blazing away - at 11 pm (no one home - not a car in the lot). Need more power to keep those lights on? - just build another coal fired plant (AU has enormous coal reserves) How can other species survive when we are mining and logging, drilling, building and chopping every bit of habitat into little bits?


Tree kangaroos - tails are longer than their bodies!



















Azure kingfisher







































Olive python - BIG guy!

1/3 of the houses in AU supposedly have a python in living in/under the house!













This is one the the most ferocious and aggressive species in AU! (actually - too many people let their cats run free - decimating the bird population. On Steven's Island off the coast of NZ an entire species of flightless wren (filling the ecological nitche of ... mice!) was discovered.. and made extinct in the same year....

...by the light house keepers cat......

[btw - this cat stays indoors - she would get carried away by the Currawongs!]






The biggest "saltie" in captivity. They only fed him once today (thus no footage) because they are worried about him having "too much weight in his hindquarters" (you have got to be kidding me! He only gets one chicken because he has a big butt?). And this after him not being fed *at all* for the last 6 months!

It was a most impressive lunge though...

[a Queensland man was recently "taken by" a croc up north (a normall 'shy and retiring croc' mind you!). Another man was pulled from a canoe in 2005....]

...stay away from the water.. stay away from the water...







Green Wing Macaw (Thanks, Callie for the correct id!)--from the Amazon? Another bird not long for this world.
















Many babies in evidence - but no place for them to go out in the wild.....












Nancy and Helene the common wombat. These guys are part of a captive breeding program - wombats are really hard to breed in captivity and development and habitat destruction are taking a toll on the Northern Hairy nosed wombat- the "species is restricted to a single population on Epping Forest National Park (Scientific) near Clermont in central Queensland. The population was estimated to contain 113 individuals in 2000, of which as few as 25 may be breeding females (Banks et al. in press)."
What they learn here may help that population (but genetic inbreeding seems inevitable)

Listen to the recording of a chiming wedge-bill. This bird was in a row of fight cages housing birds in a captive bird breeding program. We're wondering if the success of the program may be limited due to this bird driving his pen mates bonkers with his (momentarily) charming repetitive broken record call. Or maybe he's already driven himself bonkers and this is why he keeps calling with no hope of locating a female who finds him attractive...

Also here's a black breasted buzzard, birds known for their talent for using a rock as a tool to acquire dinner from other birds' eggs. They pick up and drop the rock onto an egg (e.g. an emu egg) until it breaks open. The claim is that this is a 'hard-wired' ( as opposed to learned) behavior - give a young buzzard an egg and a rock and they just do this!