Bid to save rare mammals from extinction
ALOK JHA
SOME OF the planet's rarest and most unusual animals will be the focus of an ambitious conservation project launched recently by British scientists.
The plan will focus on animals traditionally overlooked by conservationists, and will allow the public to track and donate to individual projects via a new website.
Genetically unique
Led by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the Edge project has identified 100 species of mammals that have the fewest relatives left alive in the wild, making them the world's most genetically-unique mammals. The10 most endangered, including the Yanghtze river dolphin and bumblebee bat, will be the focus of the first year's work.
Jonathan Baillie of ZSL said the aim was to prevent hundreds of unique species from sliding unnoticed towards extinction.
Yangtze river dolphin
The almost-blind Yanghtze river dolphin is at the top of the list. "It's extremely threatened, a team was recently out there looking for it and could not find one — they truly are on the verge of extinction," said Dr. Baillie.
Others include the egg-laying long-beaked echidna; the mouse-like long-eared jerboa which has the largest ear to body ratio of any mammal; and the world's smallest mammal, the bumblebee bat.
Selection process
In selecting the Edge list scientists first highlighted those mammals with the fewest close relatives, in order to work out which animals had evolved independently for the longest period of time.
The results were cross-referenced with the International Conservation Union's official list of endangered species to identify the 10 priority animals.
"When species have few close relatives there could be a number of reasons — they could have evolved for a long time and not created new species or their close relatives could have died off.
Either way, they represent entire lineages," said Dr Baillie.
For healthy ecosystems
Conserving the animals on the Edge list would be important for keeping ecosystems healthy — the more different types of species that exist in the wild the more they can adapt to changing environmental conditions, he said.
Many of the animals on the Edge list have been overlooked because they come from poorly-explored regions or species groups where scientists had had little interest.
— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007
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