Acting the goat

I had a near miss at the Roma goat races today. I was in front of a big crowd on the racing side of the barrier in order to get a good photo. When the goats set off I trained my camera on the leaders and started clicking. They passed me halfway down the course and I turned around to watch the finish. However one stray goat came loose from the field and bore down on me. I was unaware of the threat until I turned around at the last second. I saw a rider with arms outstretched as he attempted to regain control of the goat while avoiding clattering into me with his billycart.

I just had time to lean back out of the way and the wheels went over my foot. It also went over my camera bag but somehow did not smash the lens. A little surprised ut otherwise unhurt, I turned towards the goat and rider which trundled its way back on track. The goat was feisty but hardly distressed and there was no other damage done. Yet this tale could easily be another nail in the coffin of the races, the signature event of Roma’s Easter in the Country.

Easter in the Country is a rolling four day festival with something on in town each day of the weekend. There is an Easter parade, markets, thoroughbred racing, a rodeo, drag racing, speedway, motocross, an art show, bush poets and many other events dotted through town. Easter in the Country has been going for 35 years and over time the Easter Saturday goat races have become the iconic event attracting the biggest crowd. Today the main street was closed to traffic and packed with pedestrians finding the best vantage point for the two races. There are five goats in each race and the atmosphere is good-natured and friendly.

But it may be the last of its kind in Roma. Goat racing is legal but Animal Liberation wants it stopped on grounds of cruelty. Animal Lib has been concentrating on northern NSW and has been successful in closing down three goat races. Bundarra had to end its goat race due to the adverse publicity. Lightning Ridge has also replaced its Easter goat race with a big dig for opals in the main street.

The last straw was a Today Tonight report of 21 October 2011 which was a grab of selected crashes at a NSW country meet in Woolbrook. The Channel Seven report typically appealed to “think of the children” mentality while also making itself the story. The footage showed safety and wellbeing could be improved at Woolbrook (there was no examples of pulling goats by the horns in Roma). But the report did not prove Animal Liberation’s claim it was “barbaric and cruel”.

Cruel practices to goats remain unproven in law. However the mere taint of such publicity is now affecting Roma. One of the major Easter in the Country sponsors is threatening to pull out because of the goats. This is a big deal because Easter in the Country is as a not for profit organisation. Unpaid volunteers spend 12 months getting ready for the next event and rely almost totally on sponsorship. They get little financial support from Council (mostly in kind) but bring a lot of tourist dollars to Roma and the region.

The Easter in the Country committee knows the goat races are a drawcard and believes its goats are treated safely and humanely. I saw no evidence to the contrary today (my careless moment aside). Yet they cannot deliver a festival without sponsorship and unless a generous patron can be found that does not believe goat racing is cruel, the practice is unlikely to continue in 2013.

The sponsors who don't condone goat racing are hypocrites. Animal welfare is not their primary concern. If it was they would also have objected to other Easter in the Country events such as horse racing, bull ride and rodeo. The real reason is possible negative public relations coming from the association between the company and a national media outlet story about cruelty.

Perhaps the future will prove me wrong and goat racing will go the way of bear baiting and fox hunting, despite our collective atavistic appetite for animal sports. Seeking a halfway house, Roma could perhaps take its solution from overseas. London has its annual Oxford versus Cambridge goat race, but these goats fly solo, unencumbered with carts or riders. Oxford lost last year due to its goat slowing down to do a poo. Oxford apparently gained such revenge when it won the inaugural stoat race. I hope no-one tells Animal Liberation.

New test to help crack down on illegal ivory trade

A new test to distinguish antique from modern ivory may help defeat the illegal trade in ivory. The EU allows the sale of antique ivory from before 1947, but once a tusk is carved there is no accurate way of distinguishing it from modern ivory. Until now, the only option has been to send samples to museums where experts tried to work out its age from signs such as how yellow it appeared. However this evidence would not stand up in court. A new method by an Edinburgh Zoo scientist can determine the age of ivory by looking at its level of carbon isotope. Because of nuclear testing which started in the 1950s, modern ivory has double the amount of carbon 14 than those of elephants that lived before the nuclear age. The test will now be rolled out to all European countries. (picture by wwarby)

While Europeans have killed elephants for trade since colonial times, the large-scale exploitation of elephant herds began in the 1970s. Organized gangs of poachers used automatic weapons while corrupt governments turned a blind eye. They laundered tons of elephant tusks through several African countries to destinations in the East and West. At its height, the ivory trade was driving the poaching of an estimated 100,000 African elephants a year for their tusks, as species numbers dropped from 1.3 million to 600,000.

Things improved after the African elephant was listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1989. This banned the ivory trade though it carried on illegally. And only 16 out of 35 African countries complied with the CITES system. The Born Free Foundation says thousands of elephants are still killed every year for their ivory. The British animal welfare group describes the slaughter as “horrifying”, with poachers shooting elephants with automatic weapons and hacking off their tusks with axes and chainsaws.

In November 2009 Tanzania and Zambia submitted a proposal for the relaxation of the ban to allow for the sale of 100 tonnes of stock-piled ivory to China and Japan. The proposal will be examined at an international meeting on wildlife conservation scheduled for March. There is a precedent for this. In 1997 regulations were relaxed for a one-off sale of 60 tonnes of stock-piled ivory. There was a similar sale in 2002. But Kenya has opposed the latest request for a relaxation saying it could lead to increased poaching in the region. It also wants the ban to include rhinos. Kenya’s elephant population dropped from 168,000 in 1969 to only 16,000 in 1989 when the ban was enforced. The population has now risen to 35,000 since the ban but the rhino population has decreased by a third in the same timeframe.

The Chinese market is now driving the demand for ivory. The problem has escalated in recent years as China forges more links with Africa. Chinese entrepreneurs, miners and tourists are coming to the continent in increasing numbers fuelling the illicit trade. Over 35 million tonnes of ivory has been illegally imported into China from Africa in the last 10 years and British-based wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC is working with China to educate travellers about ivory smuggling. But there are concerns the Chinese government is reacting defensively to reports of Chinese people caught in the act. After an Interpol operation seized several tonnes of ivory in November and arrested three Chinese and 62 Africans, China Daily refuted the director of a Kenyan wildlife NGO, who blamed the growing number of Chinese workers in Africa for the rise in elephant poaching in Kenya.

Ominously, ivory trade has been on the rise across the continent since 2004 but increased sharply last year according to TRAFFIC. Their latest report said the surge in 2009 suggest an increased involvement of organized crime syndicates in the trade, connecting African source countries with Asian end markets. According to its analysis of 14,364 ivory seizure records from 85 countries between January 1989 and August 2009, the adjusted trend for illicit ivory trade has risen to over 25 tonnes, the second largest after a peak of 32 tonnes in 1998. CITES will submit the report to the upcoming meeting of member countries.

Hopes for Tasmanian Devil Deadly Facial Tumour Disease cure

Hopes for a cure of the deadly facial tumour disease (DFTD) in Tasmanian Devils have grown with the breakthrough that scientists have discovered its genetic code. DFTD is a highly contagious mouth cancer unique to Tasmanian devils passed on during sex and fights. The tumour quickly spreads on the face and down to internal organs, killing the devil within nine weeks. The mysterious disease has threatened the species with extinction within 35 years. However the new discovery of the genetic composition allows scientists to develop a diagnostic test for it. The Australian and overseas-based research team hopes to be able to develop not just vaccines, but therapies as well.

University of Tasmania researchers earlier last year developed a pre-diagnostic test similar to a Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test in the detection of human prostate cancer but has not yet been scientifically validated. A diagnostic test builds on the earlier work and will be more conclusive. Scientist Greg Woods from the Hobart-based Menzies Research Institute said the identification of the nerve-protection called Schwann cells as the likely origin of DFTD was a significant step. "We are now much more confident in understanding what the tumour cell is and this will help in the development of treatments and strategies to combat this disease," he told The Australian.

DFTD is a new disease. Not a single case was found in any animal captured by wildlife biologists up to 1995. It was first diagnosed in 1996 when devils with large facial tumours started appearing. Small lumps around the mouth quickly develop into large tumours on the face and neck making it difficult for the animal to eat. If they don’t die first of starvation, the cancer kills the infected animal within nine weeks. By the end of 2009 DFTD had laid waste to 60 percent of the total devil population. In the north-east region, where signs of the disease were first reported, there has been a 95 percent decline of sightings of the animal in the decade from 1995 to 2005.

Scientists initially thought DFTD was a virus but realised it was a cancer after they compared the DNA from sick and healthy devils. They discovered that a single nerve cell gene from one devil created the disease cells and then spread to many other animals. Analyses of these cell genes and gene activity patterns indicated that the tumor cells most closely matched Schwann cells, a type of cell that forms a waxy sheath called myelin around nerve fibres.

The researchers say a protein called periaxin normally found only in Schwann cells is also present in devil facial tumor cells and might be a good diagnostic marker for the disease, the researchers report. They still don’t know how the cancerous Schwann cells became contagious in the first place. Katherine Belov, a geneticist at the University of Sydney, believes it may simply be a “freak of nature” that allowed the cancer to be stable and transmitted.

Whatever it was, its effects have been catastrophic among devil populations. In May 2009, the Australian Government raised the Tasmanian devil from “Vulnerable” to “Endangered” under national environmental law. Tasmania’s Threatened Species Act 1995 has also listed the devil as “Endangered” since May 2008. By the end of 2008, the disease had been confirmed at 64 locations, covering more than 60 percent of Tasmania. The Tasmanian government has launched a Save the Tasmanian Devil Program aimed at maintaining genetic diversity, maintaining healthy populations in the wild and managing the ecological impacts of reduced populations.

It is usually uncommon for wildlife diseases to lead directly to population extinction in the absence of other severe threats. But ominously, there had not been any evidence of a single recovery from the disease. There are fears that niches left vacant by the large carnivorous marsupial will be taken up by introduced species such as feral cats and foxes. If this occurs there could be a wider impact on Tasmania's unique wildlife. The new scientific findings represent the best hope to save the devil. It may take ten years to produce a vaccine against the disease but that will probably be enough time not only to save the animal from extinction but also avoid tipping the island into a major ecological collapse.

Report warns of mass primate extinction

Half of the world’s monkeys and apes are on the verge of extinction, according to a new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN). The Swiss-based conservation network conducted the first large-scale review in five years of the world’s 634 kinds of primates. They found that almost 50 percent are threatened to the point of being in danger of going extinct with another 20 percent considered vulnerable. The ICUN report identified habitat destruction, the hunting of primates for food and illegal wildlife trade as the major threats facing the mammals. We’ve raised concerns for years about primates being in peril,” said ICUN scientist Russell A. Mittermeier. “But now we have solid data to show the situation is far more severe than we imagined.”

Primate populations problems occur across the world. ICUN described the situation in South East Asia as “terrifying”. In Vietnam and Cambodia, approximately 90 percent of primate species are considered at risk of extinction. This represents a serious escalation of the problem in the last five years. In 2002, a previous ICUN survey found that “only” 20 percent of primates were then at risk. The numbers of gibbons, leaf monkeys, langurs and other species have dwindled due to rampant habitat loss to allow for rapidly increasing human population growth. The problems caused by the disappearance of rainforests are exacerbated by hunting for food and the wildlife trade for use as traditional Chinese medicine or pets.

Orang-utans on Sumatra and Borneo are also in grave peril. The two islands are the only natural habitat of the orang-utan. ICUN regards the Indonesian Sumatran orang-utan as “critically endangered” with five to seven thousand in the wild, while the Borneo (split between Malaysia and Indonesia) orang-utan is “endangered” with a population of 45,000 to 69,000. While habitat destruction is again the most significant threat to wild populations, the illegal domestic and international trade (especially to Thailand and Cambodia) in live animals is also significant. Many animals end up as “performers” in poorly managed theme parks and law enforcement is weak.

The problem in Africa was almost as bad with 37 percent of all African primate species considered at risk. Despite a recent small rise in numbers, the mountain gorilla remains on the critically endangered list. About 600 gorillas live in the Virunga Mountains which straddle the borders of Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC. While gorilla exportation is supposedly strictly controlled by international agreements such as CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), there is still an active, lucrative market for endangered primates. Many animals end up in zoos and private collections. Hunting and poaching are also a big problem. Gorillas are shot, speared, and trapped for their meat as well as for trophies. They are also the unsuspecting victims of snares set for smaller animals and die of infected wounds. Logging and agriculture growth associated with a human population boom is also destroying the Virunga habitat.

The ICUN report warning is already too late for other African primates. Two of the 13 species of red colobus monkey may already be extinct. There have been no confirmed sightings of the DRC’s Bouvier’s red colobus or the Ghanaian Miss Waldron’s red colobus since 1978. Researchers believe that the red colobus monkeys are more threatened than any other group of primates in Africa due to the fact they are especially sensitive to habitat degradation as well as being easy prey for hunters.

ICUN identified the need for reforestation as the key to stopping primate extinction. Two threatened Brazilian breeds of lion tamarins are recovering after three decades of sustained conservation efforts. While they are no longer in immediate danger of extinction, their populations remain very small and they require new habitat for their long-term survival. Anthony Rylands, the deputy chair of the IUCN Primate Specialist Group said the lion tamarin projects show the value in conserving forest fragments and reforesting to create corridors that connect the populations. “If you have forests, you can save primates,” he said.

But this is a rare success. Human acquisitive instincts are causing an ever more rapid evolutionary holocaust. These instincts can’t tell humans when to stop, until something we never intended to harm is fatally deprived of something it needs. As Alan Weisman said, “We don’t actually have to shoot songbirds to remove them from the sky. Take away enough of their home or sustenance, and they fall dead on their own.”

Bats: A secret success story

Californian authorities say that eight people have died in five years in accidents in the state’s 47,000 abandoned mines. Now state authorities are determined to make them some of them safer while providing a novel ecological niche for bats. Sited due east of San Francisco, the small town of Tracy is the home of several long-abandoned coal mining caves. Vandals recently made one of them unsafe by burning the beams supporting the entrance. Now authorities have barred off with a gate. It is the first step in a program to keep prying humans out and provide an ideal habitat for bats. The slates are wide enough for Townsend's big-eared bats and pallid bats to fly through. Both species hibernate and roost in the dank humidity of the Californian caves.

Cave colonies can become very large with many bats loving the stable microclimate. It is not unknown for colonies of hundreds of thousands of different species to share a cave site. Young bats congregate to in thick clusters to form crèches of 3,000 square meters. In Winter time hibernating bats reduce their body temperature to within a couple of degrees of the site temperature and live on their accumulated body fat. They cannot stand on their legs and so hang upside down, held in place with no effort by the clinging shape of the tendons of the foot.

The reason they cannot stand on their legs is that they have evolved into wings. The scientific name for bats is Chiroptera. The word is Latin for “hand wing” and describes the bats’ fingers which are connected by a stretchy membrane which make up the wings. The fragile nature of bats has not left much data in the fossil record so science does not give a good accounting of how the only flying mammals evolved. The likeliest explanation is that they were originally insect-eating tree creatures who scurried around on all fours until they became airborne. However the theory does not explain how partially successful fliers could survive well enough to produce another generation yet incredible this unlikely event happened twice.

The fact remains that the two types of bats evolved separately. The majority are the mostly insectivorous microbats and the rest are mostly fruit-eating megabats (or fruit bats). Megabats range in size from the Indian giant flying fox with a human-sized wingspan of 1.8 metres to the petite Malaysian flower bat with its 21cm wingspan. The splendidly named false vampire of American tropics (so called because they prefer to bite the prey's head and crush its skull rather than suck its blood) is the largest of the microbats with a 1 metre span which dwarfs the rare and tiny 1.5 gram Thai bumblebee bat, possibly the world’s smallest mammal. The microbats evolved from shrews possibly in a period of global warming 50 million years ago and the megabats evolved later either from microbats, or, more controversially, from early primates.

One of the shrew’s lesser known characteristics is echolocation which they passed on to the microbats. When Britain successfully developed radar in World War II, some scientists were scathing when it was suggested that nature had already beaten them to it. But by 1944, Donald Griffin at Harvard proved bat echolocation existed. Bats send bursts of high-pitched sounds as they fly. These sounds emerge from the larynx and are mostly emitted by mouth. The Egyptian rousette bat clicks its tongue whereas others such as horseshoe bats emit the noise through a complex noseleaf around the nostril that focuses the beam of sound.

Whatever way they are emitted, the sounds travel as air waves until they strike an object. Some of the energy in the sound wave is returned as an echo and the amount returned depends on such factors as distance, durability of the object and whether the object is moving or not. Bats quickly analyse the returned data and identify the object. In order to catch prey they need to locate the target precisely in three dimensions and they do this by measuring the time delay between signal emission and echo reception As it closes in, the bat increases the pulse rate of sound to track it down using the Doppler shift. At the point of contact, the calls are so fast they are known as a “feeding buzz”. Some bats can make an incredible 200 calls per second at the feeding buzz.

Megabats don’t use echolocation but contrary to the ‘blind as a bat’ myth, they have large well developed eyes for night vision and can see as well as owls or cats. In Australia, flying fox colonies are enormous and the animals are highly sociable. Bats can also claim to be the most successful mammals, representing a fifth of all mammalian species. As Sue Churchill says about them in “Australian Bats” they live in a dimension so different from human experience that “we cannot escape a sense of wonder of the precision of even the simplest aspect of their biology”.