Lord Howe Island Stick Insect

Dryococelus australis — the Lord Howe Island stick insect, also called the 'tree lobster' — is one of the largest flightless stick insects in the world (15 cm), glossy black, with a dramatic story unique in modern conservation. The species was once abundant on Lord Howe Island, a small Australian island in the Tasman Sea. In 1918, the SS Mokambo ran aground at Lord Howe and rats escaped to shore. Within two years, the rats had wiped out the entire island's stick insect population. The species was officially declared extinct in 1920. For 81 years, it remained extinct in textbooks — until 2001, when entomologist David Priddel and rock climber Dean Hiscox checked Ball's Pyramid, a 562-meter volcanic stack 23 km southeast of Lord Howe Island. They found a colony of 24 stick insects clinging to a single Melaleuca howeana shrub, in a depression on a vertical cliff face — the entire surviving global population of the species. In 2003, two breeding pairs were brought to Melbourne Zoo. The captive population now exceeds 13,000 individuals; partner zoos in San Diego, Bristol, and Toronto also breed the species. Lord Howe Island's rat eradication program completed in 2019 cleared the way for reintroduction; the first wild releases began in 2024.