There is now an online petition to save the Australian Lungfish. Take a moment and put your name on it!
Also, it's not just the lungfish—as Monika Dieker reminded me, there's also the Mary River Turtle at risk.
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I just received a letter from Per Ahlberg, who is working as the international coordinator in a campaign to save the Australian lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri, this magnificent creature:
Unfortunately, this species is threatened, and its situation is getting worse, as its habitat is at risk of…
About 2½ years ago, I highlighted the environmental threats to the Australian lungfish, in particular the planned construction of a dam that would destroy their habitat.
To my surprise, Australian environmentalists won this battle!
The proposed $1.8 billion Traveston Dam in Queensland has been…
The story of the Australian lungfish has made this week's issue of Nature. Remember, it's not too late to keep the pressure on.
Dam project threatens living fossil
Lungfish face extinction, say environmentalists.
We are about to lose a key piece of our evolutionary history, warn biologists. They…
If you've been following the Australian lungfish saga, there's a new development, and it's an ugly one. As the Noosa Journal reports (they don't seem to have a web accessible archive, so this issue may vanish soon; here's a screenshot), the Queensland government is actively suppressing scientific…
Yes! And in addition to the Mary River turtle http://www.deh.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicspecies.pl?taxon_id=64…
there is at least one more species of exceedingly rare side-necked turtle threatened by these damns: http://aerg.canberra.edu.au/reprints/2005_Thomson_etal_Burnett_Elseya.p…
By the way, the brief news article linked by PZ mentions the astounding ability of some of these pleurodiran chelonians to stay submerged for hours to days by breathing water through their butts...for the Straight Dope on this, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/011116.html
This is Australia!
Do you realise what their ebvironmental record is?
Have you seen their alternative NAtional Anthem?
Here it is .....
Our ancestors were criminals
Sent far across the sea;
Their recreations alcohol
And bestiality;
The perfect Sheila's four foot tall,
Flat-headed,with no hair;
I rest my lager on her head -
Advance, Australia fair!
We sodomoise the bandicoot,
We rape Kaola bear;
No furry creature's safe with us -
Advance, Australia fair!
Our cultural diversity
Goes on and never stops:
We may have killed the Abos, but
We've let in Greeks and Wops;
We rule not just the swimming-pool,
Nor yet the cricket-square;
We top the melanoma leagues -
Advance, Australia fair!
We mount the duck-billed platypus,
Pork-sword Echidnas rare;
No monotreme stays virginal -
Advance, Australia fair!
Our interests intellectual
Are broad and wide and deep;
From group projectile vomiting
To buggering of sheep.
We've urbanised green coastlines, and
We've turned locations rare
Into a blight of bungaloids -
Advance, Australia fair!
We masturbate marsupials,
Screw dingoes in their lair;
The native fauna's safe with us -
Advance, Australia fair!
Now would be a good time for evolution to step into the ring, don't you think? "Survival of the fittest," isn't it? "Evolve or die."
So Jason, should the "Wollemi Pines" have been deliberately felled as soon as they were found, then?
Evolution works when NOT interfered with.
We are interferers, and we can, as Dawkins says, rebel against our selfish genes.
Now what you troll?
The Mary River Cod is also endangered by the proposed dam on the Mary. All these and more are valued for bio diversity, as is the lung fish BUT as far as we know only the lung fish is also a living fossil. A living example of the transition of life from water to land.
It should NOT be interfered with at all, ever, by anyone.