Iconic platypus on the brink of extinction
Melbourne: Australia’s devastating drought, and other effects of climate change are pushing the iconic duck-billed platypus, a globally unique mammal, towards extinction, a study published on Monday warned.
Platypuses were once considered widespread across the eastern Australian mainland and Tasmania, although not a lot is known about their distribution or abundance because of the species’ secretive and nocturnal nature, according to the researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia.
Researchers, who for the first time examined the risks of extinction for this intriguing animal,
■ Platypuses were once considered widespread across Australian and Tasmania, although not a lot is known about their distribution because of its secretive and nocturnal nature
call for action to minimise the risk of the platypus vanishing due to habitat destruction, dams and weirs.
The study, published in the journal Biological Conservation, examined the potentially devastating combination of threats to platypus populations, including water resource development, land clearing, climate change and increasingly severe periods of
drought.
Lead author Gilad Bino, a researcher at the UNSW Centre for Ecosystem Science, said action must be taken now to prevent the platypus from disappearing from our waterways.
“There is an urgent need for a national risk assessment for the platypus to assess its conservation status, evaluate risks and impacts, and prioritise management in order to minimise any risk extinction,” Bino said.
The platypus is the sole living representative of its family, and genus, though a number of related species appear in the fossil record.
It is one of the five extant species of monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young.
The study estimated that under current climate conditions and due to land clearing and fragmentation by dams, platypus numbers almost halved.
This led to the extinction of local populations across about 40 per cent of the species’ range, the researchers said. of