r/geography • u/ISwallowedABug412 • 2d ago

Question Anyone been the the beautiful Australian island paradise called Lord Howe Island off the coast of eastern Australia? Looks so inviting. Should I put this on my bucket list?

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u/kearsargeII Physical Geography 2d ago edited 2d ago

Place has some fascinating native wildlife. The Lord Howe Island Stick Insect is extinct in the wild there, but was once common The survival of the species is crazy, The population of the insects on the main island was wiped out by rats in the early 1900s and believed extinct. A survey of marginal vegetation on the sides of Balls Pyramid not far from Lord Howe Island found a tiny colony of the insects there in 2001. From that population of a couple dozen induviduals living on the side of a sheer cliff, feeding on a single shrub, zoos were able to breed the species back to hundreds, though they have yet to be reintroduced to Lord Howe Island.

In the Pleistocene, Lord Howe Island was much bigger and supported turtles that looked like minature ankylosaurs, with tail spikes, and horned heads.

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u/ISwallowedABug412 2d ago

That was very interesting! Thanks!

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u/chubbycatchaser 1d ago

Sir David Attenborough did a fascinating segment on the Providence petrels living there: if you make strange bird calls, they’ll fall down from the sky!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UgHch5Bg9Jg