Conservationists yesterday re-vealed the wildlife “stars” of two decades of a programme to survey some of the world’s most remote wildernesses.
Creatures ranging from the Pinocchio frog, with its long nose, to the ET salamander with its similarities to Steven Spielberg’s alien, have been uncovered by Conservation International’s rapid assessment programme.
The conservation organisation is celebrating 20 years of the scheme with a book detailing expeditions that uncovered some 1,300 new or rarely seen species.
The 80 surveys conducted in the past two decades, in which biologists make an assessment of an ecosystem in a matter of weeks to encourage conservation action, have turned up a wealth of new species in wildlife “hotspots”.
CI has drawn up a list of its top 20 species newly discovered or spotted by experts in the surveys, which include the Satanic leaf-tailed gecko in Madagascar, the Yoda bat, which resembles the Star Wars guru, in Papua New Guinea, and the walking shark found in Indonesia.
The Pinocchio frog was new to science when it was found in Papua New Guinea, as was the ET salamander discovered in Ecuador.
A chinchilla tree rat in Peru was among the other animals discovered for the first time by RAP experts in their trips around the world, while ants, spiders, fish and a bright-blue “emperor” scorpion all make the list of top 20 RAP “stars”.
Leeanne Alonso, director of the rapid assessment programme, said: “Despite the pressures we put on nature, it continues to mystify, inspire and teach us with a wealth of hidden treasures and ecosystem services that people rely on, and that we’re still only beginning to understand.”
She added: “Species are the building blocks of all our natural ecosystems.
“We know so little about each species still, and the roles they play in keeping our planet healthy and functional, from filtering fresh water to dispersing seeds, controlling pests, pollinating crops, inspiring engineering and providing many life-saving medicines we rely on.”
Conservation International said the assessment programme, in addition to discovering new species, had assisted with the creation, expansion or improved management of around 81,000 square miles of protected habitat and drawn up distribution data records for 400 threatened species.
The US-based organisation also said it had invested millions of dollars into local communities, trained experts in developing nations and helped indigenous people establish community conservation areas in countries including China and Peru.