Schayer’s grasshopper: Elusive species sighted in state’s North-West for first time in 35 years

It’s proven to be a slippery character but the endangered Schayer’s grasshopper has finally reared its head again in the state’s North-West after eluding experts for 35 years.

Schayer's grasshopper at Cape Portland. Picture: Supplied

An endangered species of grasshopper has been sighted in Tasmania’s North-West after eluding invertebrate experts for 35 years.

Invertebrate specialists from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the Threatened Species Section of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment (NRE Tas) undertook a survey at the Woolnorth property, near Cape Grim, in November last year and located the endangered Schayer’s grasshopper.

Former superintendent of the Van Diemens Land Company, Adolphus Schayer, collected at least three specimens of the flightless grasshopper some time between 1835 and 1841 but the species was not sighted again until 1988.

Schayer's grasshopper at Woolnorth. Picture: Supplied

Now, 35 years later, the elusive grasshopper has finally been detected in the area once more, after being sighted at Cape Portland in the state’s North-East in 2022.

Senior ecologist Jo Potter-Craven was part of the three-person team that conducted the Woolnorth survey and said the rediscovery of the grasshopper was “very exciting”.

“Just as we were heading back to the car, when we’d pretty much given up hope, Karen Richards, my colleague, spotted [a grasshopper] in the grass. And we caught it, had a close look, and Simon Grove, the entomologist from TMAG, was like, ‘I think that’s it’. And then we started looking through the grass more carefully and we found several of them,” she said.

Dr Simon Grove, of TMAG, and Dr Karen Richards, of NRE Tas, with a Schayer's grasshopper specimen. Picture: Supplied

Dr Potter-Craven said the sighting of Schayer’s grasshopper had increased ecologists’ understanding of the species and would help better protect it into the future.

“We’ve located it in a couple of different vegetation communities now, so we know that it’s in coastal grassland and heathland and areas that are fringing with coastal waters – that wasn’t known before. Now we can kind of target our survey efforts to those areas,” she said.

“We know more about it, and we’ve got good photos of it as well, so that helps with identification. When there’s proposed developments in areas, then people can go out and look for the species and we can protect it more effectively in these sorts of areas and those areas can be avoided so you don’t have impacts on the grasshoppers, which is good.”

In the department’s 2023-24 annual report, released this month, NRE Tas secretary Jason Jacobi said the survey at Woolnorth had proven “invaluable” and had confirmed the species’ “persistence” in the region.

Schayer's grasshopper. Picture: Supplied

“It is hoped that further exploration of the site will better inform the management of Schayer’s grasshopper,” he said.

The NRE Tas annual report also revealed that the endangered swamp eyebright, one of Tasmania’s rarest plants, was found still to be present in the state, despite fears it may have gone extinct.

Authorities also discovered a new population of the endemic slender pearlflower, which is also endangered, last financial year and recorded an extension of the known range of Preminghana billy buttons.

The herb is understood only to grow on the edge of basalt cliffs at Preminghana in the North-West and is thought to number less than 200 individual plants.