13 hours ago
Wildlife experts say ugly endangered animals are being ignored in conservation efforts
West Australian wildlife experts say countless threatened animal species are not getting the attention and conservation efforts they deserve because they are considered ugly.
WA's South West region is synonymous with endemic, adorable marsupials, such as the vulnerable western ringtail possum or the near-threatened quenda.
In fact, the region is home to more than 144 threatened animal species, but lesser-known, uglier species are being left behind in research efforts because of their appearance.
The phenomenon is known as "conservation bias", referring to the disproportionate focus on species deemed cute by the public.
University of WA research fellow Jeremy Wilson said favouritism was limiting knowledge and leaving some species in danger of extinction.
"There's sort of a bias towards studying these groups that, to be honest, we already know a lot about, which are all the cute fluffy things," he said.
Dr Wilson's area of expertise is arachnology, the study of spiders.
In WA alone, there are more than 200 different species of identified trapdoor spiders, and the South West is a trapdoor hotspot.
"In any given area, there may be 10 different species of trapdoors and their relatives, but a lot of them we don't have the necessary information to know how to manage them," Dr Wilson said.
"They're around Bunbury, all through the South West forests and all the way up to Perth, and the shortfall of information is everywhere."
Independent ecologist Bob Bullen studies bats — a species equally undervalued in terms of public opinion.
"The issue with bats is that people just don't see them, they operate at night, and people don't know they're there," Dr Bullen said.
Dr Bullen said bats were largely insectivores, which helped to manage pest populations.
"If you have a barbecue in your backyard in summer, the sun goes down, and the mosquitoes come and swarm for 20–30 minutes and tend to disappear again, and the reason they tend to disappear is because the bats come out."
Dr Wilson said the biggest bottleneck for conservation of ugly animals was taxonomy, or the process of officially naming and classifying a species.
"We can't conserve things if we don't know where they are and how to identify them, and that's the main issue," Dr Wilson said.
Edith Cowan University wildlife ecologist Leanda Mason said finding and classifying countless unknown species was unviable.
"You can definitely conserve things without having a name to them, it's something I find really frustrating," Dr Mason said.
Dr Mason said the South West region was brimming with endemic species that needed protection.
"[The South West] has extremely high rates of endemism, which means that there are species that are only found here and are very special to this place and don't occur anywhere else in the world," they said.
Dr Mason said conservation efforts should be broadly applied to the region's key habitats, such as local cave systems.
"There are extra high rates of endemism in those areas because they're so special and so ancient and haven't changed in a long time," they said.
"Caves kind of remain the same because they go underground [where] the humidity and temperature doesn't change as much, so a lot of species retreat into cave systems and use them as bases for surviving."
