The Imminent Extinction of an Australian Bat

by Stephanie Ernst · 2009-03-30 09:34:00 UTC
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From the Sydney Morning Herald:

IT WEIGHS just three grams, is half the length of a human finger and, according to conservationists, is weeks away from being the first Australian mammal to become extinct since the Tasmanian tiger.

Once widespread, the Christmas Island pipistrelle has been in such rapid decline recently that there are fewer than 20 left, said Terry Reardon, a past-president of the Australasian Bat Society.

This is the kind of major event we don't want to witness. Yet as the article quoted above warns in its headline, it's a "minute to midnight" for these tiny bats. Reardon reports that Australia's environment minister and his department were "made aware of the threat several years ago. 'Time is running out fast,' he said. 'This month, next month, there will be nothing left to save. The pipistrelle is going to crash. I'd have thought it would be a bit embarrassing for a government to stand by and have an animal [become] extinct.'"

The last hope for the bats and those desperate to save them is an emergency breeding program, which will be costly and which has yet to even be approved or begun.

Thanks to Alex Felsinger for writing about this and Twittering the alert.

Photo by Martin Schulz

Stephanie Ernst wrote the original Animal Rights blog at Change.org until December 2009. She can now be found at Animal Rights & AntiOppression.
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