(Image: Mark Payne-Gill/naturepl.com)
They may be the cutest World Cup mascots ever. But three-banded armadillos () from Caatinga in north-east Brazil are being crowded out of their habitat by an invasive weed. The armadillo was today described as 鈥渧ulnerable鈥� by the , which has updated its Red List of endangered species.
The rubbervine weed (), also known as devil鈥檚 claw, was originally imported from Madagascar as an ornamental plant. It has swept through the armadillo鈥檚 shrub-land home, killing native trees and smothering vast areas. Control of the weeds is doubly difficult because it rapidly forms dense thickets of vegetation, and exudes toxic sap.
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The IUCN says the armadillo has declined by more than a third over the past 10 to 15 years, because its shrub-land habitat has shrunk by 50 per cent.
To combat the weed, a research group called based in Wallingford, UK, has joined forces with Brazilian partners to develop , possibly using a fungus. In a similar project in Queensland, Australia, CABI successfully controlled a closely related rubbervine weed using a rust fungus.
Dick Shaw of CABI says that the Brazilian invasion has not yet reached its full extent, so there is still time to act. 鈥淚f no action is taken, a valuable resource and unique ecosystem will be lost to Brazil and the world,鈥� he says.
(Image: Nick Garbutt/Indri Images)
Meanwhile, in the rubbervine鈥檚 home country, the IUCN also declared that 94 per cent of lemurs are threatened with extinction. Of the 101 surviving species, 22 are critically endangered, including the large bodied indri (), the largest living lemur.
