Rainforest Live '97 Journals from Queensland, Australia

  From the week ending March 14, 1997

Cassowary Sighting!
by Melissa Barker

To help with our cassowary studies we took a trip to Mission Beach, which is on the Coast of Queensland, south of Cairns. Mission Beach has the highest known density of cassowaries in Queensland. We worked with Joan Bentrupperbaumer, a local authority on cassowaries. She has been studying cassowaries for the past ten years.

On the last morning of our trip to Mission Beach, we took a hike through a known cassowary habitat. After hiking for about a half hour four of us, who were at the front of the group, stopped suddenly. We saw a large black shadow in the distance. Slowly and quietly we continued to walk along the path. Suddenly, a cassowary crossed right in front of us. We were frozen in amazement. The bird was jet black with brilliant red and blue on its neck. It stood about five feet five inches tall. It walked slowly across the path and disappeared back into the forest. We quietly hurried along to try and get another glimpse, but the bird was gone. It turned out that we were the only four students to see a casowarry on that hike. It was thrilling to actually see this bird that we have been learning about for the past two weeks.  

 

Trapped!
by Allison Santoro

This week we were busy with field lectures. We were introduced to a new type of forest, Wet Sclerophyll. This type of forest is more sparse than the rainforest and is filled mostly with Eucalyptus trees. The forest can be five kilometers across in some areas and consist of only one tree in some areas.. These forests are interesting because things that you would expect to be destructive, like fire for example, are actually vital to the survival of the forest.

These forests need fire to burn the understory of the forest. This promotes new growth on trees and eliminates encroaching rainforest species. The way in which these forests encourage fire is to store oil in their leaves and to shed their bark in long, stringy strands. Without this fire control of the Wet Sclerophyll, it would be taken over by rainforest plants and endangered species like the Yellowed Bellied Glider would lose their habitat and become extinct.

Another interesting field exercise that we have completed is learning how to set traps and catch animals for census and study. We went out to the corridor that we planted the second day we were here. We set pit fall traps for small lizards and insects, and we set box traps for small mammals. The pit fall traps were set up by digging a short, mesh fence into the ground so that the animal would walk along it trying to get around the fence, consequently falling into the pit. The mammal traps were set by putting a ball of oats, peanut butter, and vanilla in the back of a steel trap. When the animal enters to get the food, SNAP! they are caught. The next morning we returned to the site to collect data and release the animals back into their habitat. Living in the wilderness you learn something new everyday.

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