Latest news with #AustralianReptilePark
ABC News
23-05-2025
- General
- ABC News
Largest interstate Tasmanian devil breeding program devastated by NSW floods
Dean Reid So the situation is that we've had our sister organisation, Australian Reptile Park, come up yesterday with boots on the ground to get a lot of this stuff fixed that we need to. Every time we fix one of our sanctuary fences, there's so much water pumping through it, it broke again. So we've had our breach response in traps outside, just building the fence every day. While there's water pumping through it, it's pretty safe to say that no animals got out. We had camera traps on there too, which didn't pick anything up. And now we're just sort of triaging stuff, just making sure all the animals are safe. One of our devil pens was fully flooded, so we were pulling devils out of there the other day and putting them in vet block. So, yeah, but everyone's good so far. Kylie Baxter So the devils are safe, you just had to relocate them through the mud and the rain and these terrible conditions? Dean Reid Yeah, they usually live in little burrows. They dig their own burrows or under logs and stuff like that. Just one yard is in the back corner of the sanctuary where all the breeding animals are. The ones out into the BWS, which is our big sanctuary, we have about 50 devils out there. We've done a check around and they're running around and we put food out and monitored them. So they're all OK. But yeah, we did have to move about 10 devils out of one yard and we'll just have to wait for that flooding to go down in there. Kylie Baxter And do you have to put big gloves on? Because they're not always the friendliest creatures, are they, despite what people think? Dean Reid That's true. No. If you haven't hand raised one, then no, they are a bit aggressive. But the way you handle them is basically tailing them, getting them out very quickly and putting them in traps and then locating them somewhere else. Kylie Baxter I imagine a devil bite would not be a lot of fun. Dean Reid No, it's not a lot of fun. And yeah, we have to go to hospital and get that cleaned out if we get one. I've been working with devils for 14 years now and I've, touch wood, never been bitten by one. Kylie Baxter OK, that is good news. I'm glad about that. So are you preparing for more rain or what's happening as far as the weather event? Dean Reid So I've had about 500 mls all up on the Barrington Tops. It was sunny this morning, but it's come over cloudy and it's raining again. But just it's misty rain. So we've got everything in place at the moment. We've got fences coming in tomorrow. The water levels have dropped in all the creek lines. So we have a big fence coming in tomorrow to fix that section of fence. We went out this morning and double checked it and put some tin around it just so we, you know, just make sure it's extra safe. So we're not getting anything going out and anything coming in. We don't want cats and foxes coming in, obviously. But yeah, at the moment, we're sort of triaging everything. So we've just done a big flood appeal, which are on our socials, if anyone wants to go and have a look. Kylie Baxter Dean, what about the koalas? Is there any issues there or have they just climbed up to higher ground in their trees? Dean Reid Koalas always live high up in the tree. They will come to ground and go to tree to tree, but they sort of hunker down. They're built for this kind of thing. They curl up in a ball. They've got two layers of fur, one thick and one long and one short. And so I was looking at them today. I went and tracked all the koalas and they all look really well and healthy. But with so much rain and we've had so much rain constantly, that's why we got so flooded in the last three months is just constant rain and the water's got nowhere to go. But koalas can get a thing like septicemia if they're not monitored with too much rain, too wet and things like that. But all our koalas look great. Kylie Baxter Fantastic. And any other animals that you have there that you're keeping an eye on? Dean Reid Yeah. So our eastern quoll enclosures, we've got something like 80 quolls. One side of them, unfortunately, is concreted in, not like it's got concrete base around it, but it's dirt. Unfortunately, they all flooded. So we had to pull all the eastern quolls out of that side and re-home them into other areas. So that was, you know, all the quolls were up in their nest box, nice and dry. But obviously it was fully flooded in there. So they have to stay in there. They couldn't get to the ground. So we've moved all those and all our hand-raised animals like Pippidi the palmer, we just pull them in when it's really wet because they're not used to such wet conditions and we want to make sure they're nice and safe. Kylie Baxter And what are you hearing from colleagues and friends around the state? Because we're seeing some really sad pictures of animals trapped by these floodwaters. Dean Reid Yeah, it's terrible to see. Like, you know, we've been hit pretty hard up here, but thankfully, you know, we've got lots of boots on the ground and we're doing what we need to do. But it's just terrible to see the devastation in Taree and Port Macquarie and all those places and seeing cows on beaches. But on a good note, my neighbour next door was trying to get his pump out and a platypus popped right up. So they're doing well. Kylie Baxter Oh, well, that's good to hear. Look, I'm really glad that all of your animals are safe and that you're, you know, now able to get on the ground and do what you need to do. Dean, thanks for updating us on the situation. Dean Reid No, my pleasure. Thanks for having us.
BBC News
16-05-2025
- Health
- BBC News
The poison paradox: How Australia's deadliest animals save lives
With a pair of bright pink tweezers in hand, Emma Teni is delicately wrestling a large and leggy spider in a small plastic pot."He's posing," the spider-keeper jests as it rears up on its back legs. It is exactly what she's trying to achieve - that way she can suck the venom from its fangs using a small works from a tiny office known as the spider milking room. On a typical day, she milks - or extracts the venom from - 80 of these Sydney funnel-web three of the four walls there are floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked full of the arachnids, with a black curtain pulled across to keep them remaining wall is actually a window. Through it, a small child stares, both fascinated and horrified, as Ms Teni works. Little do they know that the palm-sized spider she's handling could kill them in a matter of minutes."Sydney funnel-webs are arguably the most deadly spider in the world," Emma says is famously full of such deadly animals - and this room at the Australian Reptile Park plays a critical part in a government antivenom programme, which saves lives on a continent where it's often joked that everything wants to kill you. 'Spider girl' While the quickest recorded death from a Sydney funnel-web spider was a toddler at 13 minutes, the average is closer to 76 minutes - and first aid gives you an even better chance of successful is the antivenom programme here at the Australian Reptile Park that nobody has been killed by one since it started in scheme relies, however, on members of the public either catching the spiders or collecting their egg a van plastered with a giant crocodile sticker, each week Ms Teni's team drives all over Australia's most famous city, picking up Sydney funnel-webs that have been handed in at drop-off points such as local veterinary practices. There are two reasons why these spiders are so dangerous, she explains: not only is their venom extremely potent, but they also live exclusively in a densely populated region where they're more likely to encounter Charlie Simpson is one such person. He moved into his first home with his girlfriend a few months ago, and the keen gardener has already found two Sydney funnel-webs. He took the second spider to the vet, where Ms Teni picked it up shortly after."I had gloves on at the time, but realistically I should have had leather gloves on because their fangs are so big and strong," the 26-year-old says."I [just thought] I had better catch it because I kept getting told you're meant to take them back to be milked, because it's so critical.""This is curing my fear of spiders," he Ms Teni offloads one arachnid that was delivered to her in a Vegemite jar, she stresses her team isn't telling Australians to go looking for the spiders and "throw themselves into danger". Rather, they're asking that if someone comes across one, they safely capture it rather than kill it."Saying that this is the world's most deadly spider and then [asking the public to] catch it and bring it to us does sound counter-intuitive," she says."[But] that spider there now, thanks to Charlie, will… effectively save someone's life." All of the spiders her team collects get brought back to the Australian Reptile Park where they are catalogued, sorted by sex and females that get dropped off are considered for a breeding programme, which helps supplement the number of spiders donated by the the males, which are six to seven times more toxic than the females, are used for the antivenom programme and milked every two weeks, Emma pipette she uses to remove the venom from the fangs is attached to a suction hose - crucial for collecting as much venom as possible, since each spider provides only small amounts. While a few drops is enough to kill, scientists need to milk 200 of these spiders to have enough to fill one vial of antivenom.A marine biologist by training, Emma never expected to spend her days milking spiders. In fact, she started off working with now she wouldn't have it any other way. Emma loves all things arachnid, and goes under various nicknames - spider girl, spider mama, even "weirdo", as her daughter calls her. Friends, family and neighbours rely on her for her knowledge of Australia's creepy crawlies."Some girls arrive home to flowers on their doorstep," jokes Emma. "For me it's not unusual to arrive home to a spider in a jar." The best place to be bitten? Spiders represent just one small part of what the Australian Reptile Park does. It's also been providing snake venom to the government since the to the World Health Organisation, as many as 140,000 people die across the world from snake bites every year, and three times that many are left Australia though, those numbers are far lower: between one and four people each year, thanks to its successful antivenom a King Brown snake from its storage locker, Billy Collett, the park's operations manager, brings it to the table in front of him. With his bare hands, he secures its head and puts its jaws over a shot glass covered in cling film. "They are very uninclined to bite but once they go, you just see it pouring out of the fangs," Mr Collett says, as yellow venom drips to the bottom."That is enough to kill all of us in the room five times over - maybe more."Then he switches to a more reassuring tone: "They're not looking for people to bite. We're too big for them to eat; they don't want to waste their venom on us. They just want to be left alone.""To get bitten by a venomous snake, you've got to really annoy it, provoke it," he adds, noting that bites often occur when someone is trying to kill one of the a fridge in the corner of the room where the raw venom Mr Collett is collecting is stored. It's full of vials labelled "Death Adder", "Taipan", "Tiger Snake" and "Eastern Brown". The last of these is the second-most venomous snake in the world, and the one that's most likely to bite you here, in Australia. This venom gets freeze-dried and sent to CSL Seqirus, a lab in Melbourne, where it's turned into an antidote in a process that can take up to 18 first step is to produce what's known as hyper-immune plasma. In the case of snakes, controlled doses of the venom are injected into horses, because they are larger animals with a strong immune system. The venom of Sydney funnel-web spiders goes into rabbits, which are immune to the toxins. The animals are injected with increasing doses to build up their antibodies. In some cases, that step alone can take almost a animal's supercharged plasma is removed from the blood, and then the antibodies are isolated from the plasma before they're bottled, ready to be Seqirus makes 7,000 vials a year – including snake, spider, stonefish and box jellyfish antivenoms - and they are valid for 36 months. The challenge then is to ensure everyone who needs it has supplies."It's an enormous undertaking," says Dr Jules Bayliss, who leads the antivenom development team at CSL Seqirus. "First and foremost we want to see them in major rural and remote areas that these creatures are likely to be in."Vials are distributed depending on the species in each area. Taipans, for example, are in northern parts of Australia, so there's no need for their antivenom in Tasmania. Antivenom is also given to the Royal Flying Doctors, who access some of the nation's most remote communities, as well as Australian navy and cargo ships for sailors at risk of sea snake bites. Papua New Guinea also receives about 600 vials a year. The country was once connected to Australia by a land bridge, and shares many of the same snake species, so the Australian government gives the antivenom for free – snake diplomacy, if you like."To be honest, we probably have the most impact in Papua New Guinea, more so than Australia, because of the number of snake bites and deaths they have," says CSL Seqirus executive Chris Larkin. To date, they reckon they've saved 2,000 at the park, Mr Collett jokes about the nickname of "danger noodles" that is sometimes given to his serpentine colleagues – a classic Australian trait of making light of something that gives so many visitors Collett, though, is clear: these animals should not put people off from visiting."Snakes aren't just cruising down the streets attacking Brits - it doesn't work like that," he jokes."If you're going to get bitten by a snake, Australia's the best place – we've got the best antivenom. It's free. The treatment is unreal."
