Monday 18 October 2010

Dugong Colin threatens Labor MP via Twitter

Dugong campaigner, Colin Riddell has twittered a final offer to help save the Mulgrave Labor MP, Curtis Pitt.

"Call me if you want to keep your seat this is your only invite colin."

Somehow I doubt Curtis will reply.
In another tweet, Riddell, a former Labor member who backed Liberal Warren Entsch in the Federal election, tells followers of the Queensland Premier that he has "dumped her."

"Tell your followers how your faithfull me incleded [sic] have dumped you."

The former unionist has been campaigning for greater protection to stop the slaughter of dugongs and sea turtles in Australia.

1 comment:

Colin Riddell said...

Maybe this is why he thinks it is urgent.
Dugongs are believed to have been at the origin of mermaid legends when spotted swimming in the water from a distance. Now the remaining populations of this seemingly clumsy sea mammal, commonly known as a sea cow, are at serious risk of becoming extinct within the next 40 years.



At an international meeting this week on dugongs convened by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (UNEP/CMS) in Abu Dhabi, Governments, international and non-governmental organizations and experts discussed solutions to protect the world’s only herbivorous mammal living in marine waters.



CMS Executive Secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema said: “Simple innovative tools and new incentives for local fishermen have been presented to the signatories to the CMS dugong agreement, which might prevent this rare species from becoming extinct.”



A newly developed innovative toolbox to mitigate threats to dugongs includes incentives to replace harmful gillnets with alternative fishing gear to reduce by-catch and minimize the mortality rates.



According to an assessment undertaken in 2008, the dugong is now extinct in the Maldives, Mauritius and Taiwan, and declining in other waters in at least a third of the areas where it is found. However, at present, information on the dugongs is too limited to even assess completely the threats.



Man-made threats pose the greatest risk to the gentle sea cow. Illegal poaching, unsustainable hunting by local communities, severe injuries from ships and vanishing seagrass beds are accelerating a critical loss of habitat and threatening populations.