ZCZC
BFF-19
ANIMAL-ENVIRONMENT-AUSTRALIA-PLATYPUS
Future uncertain for Australia’s unique platypus: researchers
SYDNEY, Nov 29, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Australia’s unique platypus population is
shrinking under pressure from agriculture and pollution, putting the egg-
laying mammals’ future in doubt, researchers said in a report published
Thursday.
A three-year survey of the duck-billed animal suggested its numbers had
fallen by 30 percent, to around 200,000, since Europeans settled the
continent two centuries ago.
“We have great concerns about the future survival of this unique species,”
said Richard Kingsford, director of the University of New South Wales Centre
for Ecosystem Science.
Threats endangering the platypus in its eastern Australian habitats include
increased land-clearing for agriculture, pollution, dam building and fishing
nets, Kingsford said in a statement.
Kingsford and his team called on authorities to elevate the protected
status of the platypus from near-threatened to vulnerable.
They said that while population numbers varied in different regions of
eastern Australia, platypuses had already disappeared from some areas.
“We cannot afford as a world, let alone Australia, to let his animal go
extinct and we know that it’s gone extinct in some areas already,” Kingsford
told the national broadcaster ABC.
The semi-aquatic platypus, which along with four species of echidna are the
only mammals that lay eggs, is one of the world’s strangest animals, with the
bill of a duck, tail of a beaver, otter-like feet and a venomous spur on its
hind leg.
BSS/AFP/MRI/1039 hrs