Cute critters crush creepy-crawlies
Sea otters are just adorable, right? Especially baby sea otters. And even though they aren’t listed as “endangered” in Canada anymore, or even “threatened” (they are a species of “special concern”), that doesn’t mean you don’t still want to eat them right up. (Squee!)
Same goes for those cute flying squirrels and burrowing owls. The trouble is, all species are unique and deserve protection—especially in the face of increasing threats to their habitats and food sources—but many of them don’t get the attention and resources required for protection because they don’t meet widely held perceptions about what constitutes “cute” or “attractive” in the animal kingdom.
We’re not lookin’ at you, reptiles and amphibians.
A recent study by the World Wildlife Fund Canada published in the open-access science journal Facets highlights the need for a reversal of those superficial attitudes, at least insofar as the extent to which public pressure on elected officials and others can have an effect on conservation efforts in this country.
The study examined 180 species of animals in Canada considered “at risk” by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife (COSEWIC) and assessed their vulnerability to 11 “threat categories” as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The threats range from residential and commercial development to energy production and mining to biological-resource use (hunting, fishing, logging) to pollution and climate change.
WWF researcher and study lead Jessica Currie (with help from analyst Valentina Marconi of the Zoological
Society of London) found that most at-risk animals were facing, on average, five of the 11 threats studied, whereas reptiles (snakes, lizards, et cetera) and amphibians (frogs, salamanders, and others) were confronted with seven.
“From logging to housing to industrial and agricultural development, the impact of humans continues to be felt by nature,” Currie said in a February 6 WWF release. “There’s still time to reverse the decline of wildlife, but we must be deliberate. As species are threatened by numerous compounding pressures, conservation action must address multiple threats at once.”
Wood turtles, threatened in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Ontario, faced nine of the 11 threat categories and were among the most besieged animals of all the 180 analyzed.
In B.C. and its coastal waters, the desert nightsnake, the leatherback sea turtle, the sharp-tailed snake, the northern leopard frog, the Oregon spotted frog, and the western tiger salamander are all endangered, the most serious category before extirpation.
Threatened B.C. reptile and amphibian species include the Great Basin gopher snake, the western yellow-bellied racer, the western rattlesnake (responsible for only one reported human death during the past 40 years), the western painted turtle, the Rocky Mountain tailed frog, and the coastal giant salamander.
The special-concern category for the province contains such examples as the northern rubber boa, the western skink, the coastal tailed frog, the wandering salamander, and the western toad.
So the next time someone asks you to sign a petition to save a cute, furry mammal, ask about the Rocky Mountain tailed frog.
And when next you see an article about threatened owls or marmots (all valid concerns, of course), send an email or post a comment requesting the same for the desert nightsnake or the western tiger salamander.