Australian authorities are searching for a suspected platypus killer after the bodies of three animals were found dumped in New South Wales’ Albury Botanic Gardens.
Two of the animals had been decapitated and all three appeared to be at a healthy body weight when killed, suggesting they had been caught in a trap in the nearby Murray River before being dumped in the park.
The first carcass was found by a gardener early last month, while the next two were found by members of the public.
Photo: AFP
The nearest platypus habitat is about 400m from the botanic gardens, suggesting they had been carried there and dumped in a high-traffic area.
Albury Mayor Kevin Mack said he was appalled by the incident and the apparently brutal way the animals had been killed.
Cook said she believed the animals had been trapped intentionally and then taken to the gardens.
“These guys would not have got to the botanic gardens on their own,” she said.
“There’s no waterway running through there, just a council drain. We thought at first that they might have been caught accidentally by someone with illegal nets in the river, but then why take them to the gardens? Why not just throw the bodies in the river? And why take the heads? We still don’t know what they’ve done with the heads,” she added.
Cook said it was particularly distressing because the platypus keeps to itself and is quiet. They do not cause damage and are rarely spotted in the wild, despite a recent survey by the Australian Platypus Conservancy finding the platypus population in the Murray was relatively healthy.
“These are just gentle little fellas who do no harm,” Cook said. “It’s lovely to see that Australians are so upset about it — we want people to be angry.”
Cook said there had been other attacks against wildlife in the region in the past few years — kangaroos shot with bows and arrows, and birds of prey shot down over residential areas — but none as brutal as this.
In a statement, New South Wales’ National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) said it was working with WIRES, the state’s Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service, and the Albury city council to investigate the killings.
“These animals appear to have been deliberately killed in a despicable act of cruelty to one of Australia’s most loved animals,” the statement said.
“We are calling on anyone with information to please contact NPWS Tumut office on (02) 6947 7025,” it added..
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema