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Edges

The theme of this issue is Edges, but it's been a season of extremes. As we prepare for press, the Brisbane Convention Centre is buzzing with 800 people from 86 countries sharing information and ideas at the 29th Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation (see 'Thermometers in the sand', WAM 45/4).

At the same time, the news is filled with Victorian bushfire stories. Fire is part of many Australian landscapes; plant and animal species have evolved with fire; and many people choose to live in or near the bush, understanding the dangers as well as the beauty, and are prepared to cope – but how could anyone prepare for such a complexity of conditions and an overwhelming situation?

Meanwhile, parts of Queensland are awash with heavy rainfall and flooding. Joanne Isaac introduces us to Australia’s microhylids – small frogs which survive only in very limited areas of mist and high rainfall in little pockets of north Queensland rainforest.

In a land of edges, there’s always something to discover.

By Ingar Vandyke

Biodiversity Team Leader Mike Stevens and I stare out from a rocky platform, over a deep valley to a cliff pockmarked with crevasses, rocky ledges and caves. 'Our release site for the brush-tailed rock-wallabies,' he announces.

By 1999, Victoria's wild brush-tailed rock-wallaby population was so depleted that the last known female was captured to secure her genetic input to a captive breeding program. Based at Tidbinbilla, Snowy, shown in the cover, is part of that program. As of late 2008, some of the program’s offspring are now roaming free in the southern Grampians, in a careful plan to return the endangered species to parts of its former Victorian range.

By Joanne Isaac

Microhylids survive in small pockets of rainforest in north Queensland. These rare and unique characteristics make microhylids very interesting to study. Unfortunately, research also shows that species which are both rare and specialised will be most at risk from climate change impacts.

'The potential threat of climate change was the primary factor for upgrading the conservation status of many microhylid species a few years ago. I think the same consensus would still apply,' says Dr Luke Shoo, a conservation biologist based at the Centre of Tropical Biodiversity and Climate Change.

By Lynne Kelly

Once it was a web of fear; now it’s a web of intrigue. I was an arachnophobe, often screaming in the night as long, hairy legs carried surreal monsters across my bed into my sleep. I loved the bush, observing mammals and birds, identifying the occasional reptile and making a start on the invertebrates.

I was in my mid-30s when arachnophobia began really interfering with my life. The time had come to tackle the issue. I started safe. I let the small spiders on the other side of the window keep their webs and I watched them. Named them. Got to know their habits as individuals.

By Damon Ramsey

Our global ocean is enormous. Few humans experience more than just the edges, but even then, there’s a wealth of action to explore.

Most of us only ever experience the edges, where the sea has close contact with sunlight, air and, sometimes, land. This interface is home to fish that fly and birds that swim. It is also home to some of the world’s smallest animals (those that make up the plankton), some of the largest (the whales), as well as some of the most amazing shapes, spectacular behaviours, most wide-ranging migrators and the biggest and best fliers on earth.

By Steve G Wilson

In rural Australia, many communities exist in relative harmony with an array of wildlife. Perhaps one contributing factor is that these settlements have tended to establish as close to reliable water sources as possible.

The township of Longreach, with its population of around 4000, sits adjacent to the Thomson River in western Queensland. The diversity of surrounding landscapes includes a town common of 17,000 acres with a stretch of the river and connecting creeks, vast flood plains, waterholes, classic Channel country and open Mitchell grass downs.

'Perhaps ... we can illuminate the tropical rainforests as the birthplace of a genuine Australian ecology concerned not only with material development and how ecosystems work, but also with what tropical organisms and their life forms really are and mean to us. And this is surely a scientific function, which amplifies earlier Aboriginal myths, to establish our place and destiny in the world.'

Dr Len Webb – an ecologist who looked beyond the forest and whose belief in the importance of scientific research in understanding ourselves as part of the natural world continues to guide the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland which he helped to establish.

For a superb and succinct outline of Dr Len Webb’s contribution to the foundation and directions of WPSQ, see the WPSQ Historical Paper 'Heart and Mind: WPSQ Finding Direction in the 60s'.

By Lee K Curtis and Michael Cermak

Not including sea snakes, Australia is home to more than 100 species of snakes in five families: Typhlopidae (blind snakes), Acrochordidae (file snakes), Boidae (pythons), Colubridae and Elapidae (venomous land snakes). All Australian snakes capture live prey, ranging from insects to fish, frogs, reptiles, birds and small- to medium-sized mammals. Snakes occur in all parts of Australia, with a greater diversity in warmer tropical or sub-tropical regions.

You can also download [498kb PDF] the Six Species Series poster on Snakes.

• Victorian Spiders
• NOAA Ocean Explorer Youtube
• Invasive Species Council

Editorial, City Animal, Trekabout Photography, NatureWatch, Books Reviews, Autumn Skies, Young and Wild, Scratchings and Rustlings, WPSQ in Action, Swamp Cartoon and our regular environmental crossword.

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