Passage III

Rescuing the Lord Howe Stick Insect

[1]

Two men ascend the face of Ball's Pyramid—a rocky island in the Tasman Sea that looks like a mountain jutting up from the waves. The men, Nicholas Carlile and Dean Hiscox, have cameras and flashlights; it is dark. They are heading for a specific melaleuca bush that is hanging 225 feet above the ocean. When they reach it, they find twenty-four enormous black insects. Wingless and up to fifteen inches long, the men see Dryococelus australis—a nocturnal species that had been believed to be extinct for over eighty years.

[2]

Dryococelus australis, also known as the Lord Howe stick insect, is native to Lord Howe Island, located less than fifteen miles to Ball's Pyramid. [A] The insects are so large that 1800s European sailors called them "tree lobsters." The animals thrived on Lord Howe Island until 1918, when a British supply ship ran aground while the ship was being repaired, rats escaped onto the island and quickly wiped out the stick insects.

[3]

By 1920, the insects were presumed to be extinct. (36) For decades, though the island's remote location and dangerous waters made a thorough search difficult, so the insects' survival wasn't confirmed until 2001. [B]

[4]

Carlile and Hiscox's find raised a question—what should be done with the rare insects? In 2003, the Australian government permitted the removal of four insects from the island in order to bring the species back in the brink of extinction. [C] Two of the insects were transported to the Melbourne Zoo, where invertebrate conservation expert Patrick Honan, took charge of it. Starting with only thirty eggs, Honan was able to activate the population of these rare insects. [D]

[5]

Though the species is now safe, the insects' fame is spreading. Some stick insects will remain at the zoo as an "insurance population," but the ultimate goal is to reintroduce the insects to their native habitat on Lord Howe Island.