The platypus – Scientists say the risk of local extinctions is rising due to damaged waterways, land clearing and climate change – the Guardian reports
It is dusk beside a creek and we are instructed to look for a trail of bubbles, under which could be one of the world’s weirdest mammals.
When you’re desperate to see a platypus in the fading light, everything looks like one.
Floating logs from bank-side paperbark trees, gyrating leaves caught in a dance with the wind, and what was probably a water-rat dashing from rocks – they all make the heart briefly skip. But there’s no sign of the egg-laying, duck-billed, flat-tailed and venomous monotreme.
We did not hack through tropical undergrowth or trek for hours to get here. We turned left at a tile shop and pub in the suburbs of northern Brisbane and parked 40 metres away from Kedron Brook on a side road.
There are joggers and cyclists everywhere.
Like many of Brisbane’s waterways, platypuses were once regularly seen here, but new research has found platypuses have likely gone from Kedron Brook and four other greater Brisbane waterways: the Bremer River, Scrubby Creek, Slacks Creek and Enoggera Creek. The last confirmed sighting at this exact spot was in 2002.
A lack of long-term platypus monitoring means that as land-clearing and regulation of rivers has altered their habitat, any decline could be going unnoticed.
Australian coastal cities have grown relatively rapidly and in places such as Brisbane, platypus habitats of creek banks and waterways are now surrounded by busy suburbs.
full article at – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/09/glum-future-for-the-platypus-why-the-elusive-mammal-is-disappearing-under-our-noses?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco
