With Seattle zoo's help, villagers get jump on saving tree kangaroos

Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo has helped villagers in Papua New Guinea secure permanent protection for 187,800 acres of pristine tropical forest in the country's first-ever national conservation area. The land is owned by villagers who decided to create the refuge for the sweet-faced Matschie's tree kangaroo, an endangered species that lives nowhere else.

Keeping to itself for much of its life in the tropical treetops, the fuzzy-faced tree kangaroo doesn't seem a likely vanguard for a revolution.

But so it is in Papua New Guinea, where conservation biologists from Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo worked with residents of some 35 native villages to seal the country's first-ever conservation deal, preserving 187,800 acres of tropical forest stretching from the country's northern coast to the interior mountains.

The owners of the property are indigenous people, who committed for the first time to managing their land as a national conservation area, off-limits to hunting, mining, logging or other development.

The conservation area protects a large, pristine swath of the Huon Peninsula, the only known habitat of the wild Matschie's tree kangaroo, long hunted by the villagers as part of their subsistence economy. The small animal munches mostly tree leaves, flowers and ferns. Only about 3 feet high and weighing as much as a large sack of birdseed, it is one of 54 species of kangaroos, and can leap 60 feet to the ground from a tree without getting hurt.

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The Painting is by Benjamin William Leader

Declaring 48 Hawaiian species endangered

HONOLULU - The federal government took a new, ecosystem-based approach to the endangered species list on Tuesday, proposing an all-at-once addition of 48 species, including plants, two birds and a fly, that live only on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

The action by the Interior Department would designate about 43 square miles as critical habitat for all the species rather than considering each species' habitat separately, which has been the practice for three decades. Officials said considering the species all at once should save time and resources and would help the whole ecosystem.

The same approach is planned to help protect rare species on Oahu, the Big Island and Maui over the next several years, and it could be considered for the Arctic, big river systems of the Southwest and areas of the mountain West, according to department officials.

"For more than three decades, we've been struggling with one species at a time," said Dale Hall, Fish and Wildlife Service director, in a conference call with news media. "This gives us a chance to look at groups of species and at the same time be economical in the way we designate critical habitat."

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, in Honolulu for an island health conference, said the new "holistic approach" will benefit not only the listed species but also the rest of the ecosystem.

"By addressing the common threats that occur across these ecosystems, we can more effectively focus our conservation efforts on restoring the functions of these shared habitats," Kempthorne said.

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The painting is by Nancy Merkle

Nilgiri Tahr - They are Endangered

The Nilgiri Tahrs formerly ranged over these grasslands in large herds, but hunting and poaching in the nineteenth century reduced their population to as few as 100 animals by the early 20th century. Since that time their populations have increased somewhat, and presently number about 2000 individuals. Their range extends over 400 km from north to south, and Eravikulam National Park is home to the largest population. The other significant concentration is in the Nilgiri Hills, with smaller populations in the Anamalai Hills,Periyar National Park, Palni Hills and other pockets in the Western Ghats south of Eravikulam, almost to India's southern tip.

This photo is from Eravikulam National Park