Extirpation: Local Extinction

Congratulations to the winners of the People's Choice Award and Professionals' Choice Award for 2017!

The winner of the People's Choice Award was Jeanette Muirhead with "Dasyurus maculatus".

The winner of the Professionals' Choice Award was Sharyn Leach with "Feisty yet Shy, Tiger Quoll (Dasyurus maculatus) Part 2".

A big thank you to all of the artists who were involved in last night's event!

Our ninth artist profile is Di Mortimer (Dianne Mortimer)! You can read about her below:

For more than two decades Di has been exhibiting her paintings regularly throughout the ACT and surrounding regions, both in group exhibitions and as a member of local art organisations. She became an active member of the Wildlife and Botanical Artists group shortly after its inception and over the years has been privileged to hold a number of executive positions within this active group of nature loving artists.

Over a number of years Di has sought to develop design concepts and extend skills in a range of art mediums. In more recent times her focus has been on representing and interpreting aspects of nature largely in two dimensional mediums, employing techniques in drawing, watercolour, pastel, acrylics, printing and collage as well as combinations of these in mixed media paintings.

Di constantly finds the beauty of Australia’s natural environment a source of great pleasure and an excellent resource to draw upon for works. Weekly bushwalks and photography with members of the Australian Native Plant Society into the many reserves in and around the ACT continue to inspire and arouse her awareness of the wonderful heritage we have to appreciate and must strive to preserve.

WABA: http://waba.net.au/d-mortimer-profile/

Meet the Smoky Mouse (Pseudomys fumeus)! The species is listed as critically endangered in NSW, and endangered in the ACT and nationally.

The Smoky Mouse may look like a household pest but they are actually native and endemic to the ACT, NSW, and Victoria.

Their size is similar to that of a small rat, with an average adult weight of 52g. Their fur is pale-grey to bluish-grey in colour, with a grey to white belly, and a dark ring around their eye.

The Smoky Mouse lives in small groups around patches of heath, sometimes with one male and up to five females. They live in a large complex burrow system with several nesting chambers.

The Smoky Mouse is found only in a small number of fragmented sites. This, along with predation from foxes and feral and domestic cats, makes them vulnerable.

Sources:
http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/threatenedspeciesapp/profile.aspx?id=10686
http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicspecies.pl?taxon_id=88
http://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:lsid:biodiversity.org.au:afd.taxon:c8ba3449-d6f3-405a-9c8a-7b4db471c52a
http://www.environment.gov.au/resource/smoky-mouse-pseudomys-fumeus
http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/determinations/smokymouseFD.htm