In February Ian Hutton, Andrew Denham, and John Porter were on Mount Gower for four days carrying out surveys of Little Mountain palms and Big Mountain palms as part of monitoring post rodent eradication.

Whilst on that trip they were collecting beetles for Dr Chris Reid of the Australian Museum. Chris visited later in the month for beetle surveys on Blackburn Island and he had a look at the specimens collected on Mount Gower. He was delighted to see one was in fact an endemic weevil, Howeotranes insularis, that had officially been listed as extinct, as it had not been collected since before 1918 when rats arrived on the Island.

This is another sign of the benefits to the Island’s invertebrate fauna brought about by the removal of rodents in 2019. Despite predation by rats and mice for over 100 years, these beetles had survived in very small numbers, and now are breeding well and being “rediscovered”. It is expected there will be many more examples like this as time goes on.