Wildlife

Missing Monarchs 2020

The number of wintering monarch butterflies along the coast of California has not recovered significantly from last year’s record low.

While about 4.5 million of the colourful monarchs fluttered through forest groves there in the 1980s, that number had plunged to about 27,000 last year and has risen by only 2,000 since.

The disappearance is being blamed on destruction of the milkweed they feed on along their migratory route, as well as agricultural use of pesticides and herbicides.

The western monarchs migrate from areas west of the Rockies to winter at more than 200 sites in coastal California each year.

Their eastern counterparts migrate to Mexico from summer habitats in eastern Canada and the northeastern United States.

Desert Survivous

Scientists are scrambling to save a species of critically endangered frog that lives in a tiny oasis of water and reeds in Chile’s otherwise parched Atacama Desert, the world’s driest.

Because pollution, habitat loss and an expanding nearby mining city threaten what few of the tiny, dark-spotted amphibians that have survived, 14 of the last remaining Lao River water frogs were airlifted to Santiago’s Metropolitan Zoo. Only one failed to survive the move.

Osvaldo Cabeza, the zoo’s herpetology supervisor, says a team will work to encourage the survivors to feed and reproduce in captivity as the species’ only chance of survival.

The range of Telmatobius dankoi is now limited to just 4 square miles of dried-up riverbed outside of the city of Calama.

Unique pink slug feared wiped out by Australia’s bushfires found alive and well

A bright pink slug species, found only on one mountain in Australia, has survived the devastating bushfires that ripped through much of its habitat. The unique, eye-catching creature only lives on the slopes of an isolated inactive volcano in New South Wales, Mount Kaputar, from which they take their name.

After recent rainfall, rangers from New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service found “about 60” Mount Kaputar slugs alive.

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