Australia’s Wet Tropics

By headlamp, candle, and laptop monitor, field biologists process transect samples, in Australia’s wet tropics–the last shreds of rain forest (and rain forest creatures) on the Australian continent.

The species that live in this mountainous area along the northwest coast, are endemic, which means they exist nowhere else in the world: flamboyant tropical birds, lizards, frogs, possums–even a kangaroo that lives in trees.

Rising global temperatures, if they get too high, will likely drive many of these species to extinction.

I visited northeast Australia as part of an hour-long documentary on global climate change and evolution I produced for a series called the DNA Files. Listen here: [audio:http://www.dnafiles.org/sites/default/files/audio/podcast/The%20Heat%20Is%20On.mp3]

And meet the leaf-tail gecko, whose color and texture allows it to blend in to tree trunks. Even its eyes are camouflaged…