Goobang Mice

[den]

The Goobang is a stretch of hilly country that runs from just south of Dubbo to Parkes. It is covered in scrubby cypress, stringy grasses, rocks and sandy soil. It's useless for farmland and no one wanted it, so 10 years ago it was turned into a National Park.

A couple of years ago a survey of animals turned up a new species. At first the scientists thought the park was full of house mice, but a closer examination and DNA testing revealed it to be an entirely different species. The goobang mouse is the same size and colour as a house mouse, but its belly is a pale cream colour. It is a native rodent, and one of the few native utherians in the country.

And there's millions of them. They are everywhere in the Park. And here's the problem: The goobang mouse is quite common in The Goobang but they are found nowhere else.

Is it Rare, Common or Vulnerable?

But The Goobang National Park is burning. Strong winds rose last night and the fires burning yesterday are even more out of control today. From where I sit the southern horizon fades into a thick blue haze. Great billows of smoke reach high into the air. As they pass through the thermal layer they turn onto white clouds indistinguishable from normal clouds except for the long black columns anchoring them to the ground.

As of last night 200 square kilometres had burned. Latest reports say that much again will burn before they can get it under control.

Today's weather (3pm AEDT)

Temp....40C
Wind....22kph
W/Dir...NW
Humid...20%
Bar.....1003mm (falling)

It might rain. It has to.

Comments

[elynne.livejournal.com]

I'd be surprised if it hasn't burned before. I'd be very surprised if there aren't some plants that require the burning to propagate - there are plenty of them in other arid areas. It's a hard lesson, especially for the people who build houses in it, like in the Oakland Hills, or who have to try to contain it, like at Yosemite - but scrubland must, occasionally, burn.

The problems are twofold: 1) there's much more human encroachment around areas that have been left wild, so that when the wild area burns, animals in danger can't escape; they're trapped in the burning parks. 2) when the park managers effectively prevent the burns for years and years, they guarantee that when the burn finally does happen, it'll be a firestorm, instead of the brushfires that might have been milder in comparison.

Summer before last, Bax and I drove out to Colorado and back... and on the way back, we just narrowly missed being caught in several fires, which ended up scorching most of the northwest quarter of the US, and quite a bit of the southwest too. Virtually the entire states of Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and some others were seared.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Much of California's woody vegetations (with exceptions including the high sierra and the rain forest) requires regular fire to stay healthy.

In fact, even the rain forest requires fire and/or flood. Though redwoods clone themselves, their seeds can only sprout on bare mineral soil, which appears after fire or flood.

But I bet battyden knows that.

Even though I know it about California, part of me whimpers for the animals dying.

What they said...

[peaberry.livejournal.com]

.... and you do only need a few mice to make a lot more mice.

But I hope it rains soon.