Short news, endangered species edition

While browsing around on National Geographic I came across two pieces of news related to endangered species.

Guantanamo's Wild Side: Huge Boas, "Banana Rats," More

It turns out that the US military base at Guantanamo Bay is the home of a lot of wildlife, much of which is endangered, or at least threatened. They obviously don't live in the prison camp, but in the military base as a whole, specially the more remote parts.

6,000 Rare, Large River Dolphins Found in Bangladesh

A previously unknown population of Irrawaddy dolphins discovered in Bangladesh has given scientists "great hope" for the survival of the rare species, conservationists said Wednesday.

A research team estimated that 6,000 Irrawaddy dolphins thrive in the country's Sundarbans mangrove forests and nearby waters of the Bay of Bengal.

This is obviously great news as well, and we can hope it's possible to protect this population, to ensure the survival of the species.

Preventing extinction

National Geographic has a good article about how preventing extinction requires protection of habitats.

Last One

In the United States as elsewhere, stopping the countdown to extinction means preserving healthy habitats—the aim of the celebrated and scorned Endangered Species Act.

The focus of the article is the US Endangered Species Act, which is aimed at protecting the habitats of endangered species, but the problems it mentions are global.

One of the things the article mentions is that the more iconic animals are easier to protect than the less "sexy" animals. Panda bears are cute, and an icon for animals close to extinction, yet there are other animals who are as close to extinction as they are, without receiving any focus whatsoever.

A thing I would have liked the article to mention, is the role of invasive species, when it comes to driving plants and animals to extinction. One way of loosing your habitat is for someone else to take it over, and while this might not be the worst problem in the US, it has had serious impact in other countries, including Australia, where imported animals such as rabbits, foxes, rats, and cats, is a huge problem.

Many new species found in the Great Barrier Reef

Yet again we see an example of new species getting found when scientists start looking through an area systematically.

ScienceDaily has the story

Explorers Find Hundreds Of Undescribed Corals, Other Species On Familiar Australian Reefs

Hundreds of new kinds of animal species surprised international researchers systematically exploring waters off two islands on the Great Barrier Reef and a reef off northwestern Australia -- waters long familiar to divers.

As the paragraph shows, my headline was a little misleading. It's not only the Great Barrier Reef which the scientists looked at, and found new species.

Interestingly enough, these species have been under our noses all the time, we just haven't looked properly.

The effort that lead to these discoveries are part of the Census of Coral Reefs