Policy alignment sounds dry. But think of it like this: you want to make suburbs cooler and more liveable, so you plant large trees. But then you find the trees run afoul of fire and safety provisions, and they’re cut down.
Such problems are all too common. Policies set by different government departments start with good intentions only to clash with other policies.
At present, the Albanese government is working towards stronger environmental laws, following the scathing 2020 Samuel review of the current Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The review noted planning, funding and regulatory decisions are “not well integrated or clearly directed towards achieving long-term environmental sustainability”.
Stronger laws are not a standalone answer. We must find ways to align government policies far better, so progress on one front doesn’t lead to a setback elsewhere. As the government prepares to announce once in a generation changes to our main environment laws, it must find ways to reduce these clashes.
The decade of neglect is over. The environment is back front and centre under our government – where it belongs.
All levels of government have policies aimed at increasing canopy cover and biodiversity in cities. How hard can it be to plant trees?
The problems start when you look for places to actually plant street trees. It’s common to encounter a wall of obstacles, namely, other policies and regulations. Fire prevention, human safety, visibility for road traffic and provision of footpaths and carparks are often legally binding requirements that can stymie this seemingly simple goal.
On the biodiversity front, urban sprawl is pushing many species and ecosystems to the brink of extinction.
What should we do when threatened species protection conflicts with new housing developments?Rusty Todaro/Shutterstock
Last year, conservationists rediscovered the grassland earless dragon on Melbourne’s grassy western fringes, which we had believed was extinct. Now we had a second chance to save it, in line with the Australian government’s pledge to stop extinctions.
The problem? The grasslands where the dragon was found near Bacchus Marsh, just outside Melbourne, are zoned for housing. Only 1% of the grasslands ecosystems suitable for these reptiles is still intact, and much of it has been earmarked for housing.
From a housing point of view, the continued existence of the dragon now threatens plans for 310,000 homes.
If we had better policy alignment, we would look to achieve both goals: protect the dragon and build more housing through methods such as building sustainable midrise developments in established urban areas.
Almost all the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into our oceans, triggering marine heatwaves and bleaching. If the world’s largest living structure bleaches too much, it will begin to die, threatening its rich biodiversity, cultural heritage and industries such as tourism.
On the one hand, Australia wants to protect the reef and has funded efforts to boost water quality.
A LNG carrier departs the port of Gladstone, on the southern Great Barrier Reef. The cargo it carries will, when burned, trap more heat and lead to more bleaching of the reef.Ivan Kuzkin/Shutterstock
But on the other hand, supportive government policies contribute to our recent emergence as a top exporter of liquefied natural gas, which is 85–95% comprised of the potent greenhouse gas methane. Land clearing in the catchments of rivers which flow to the reef is ongoing due to policy loopholes, which adds more smothering sediment, nutrients and pollutants to the reef’s woes.
The shipping sector only has to abide by a voluntary code to avoid invasive species arriving in the ship’s bilge water, even though they could be carrying the tissue loss disease devastating reefs in the Caribbean and Florida.
Renewables versus biodiversity
Calls to fast-track clean energy projects and stop them being held up by environmental approvals are risky. We could tackle one crisis (climate change) by making another worse (biodiversity and extinction).
Australia has destroyed nearly 40% of its forests since European colonisation, with much of the remaining native vegetation highly fragmented. Because this clearing has already happened, it should be entirely possible to build renewables without damaging the homes of native species.
In fact, we can do better – we can take degraded farmland, build solar on it and restore low-lying native vegetation around it to actually boost biodiversity. Requiring new renewable projects to be nature positive would encourage creative approaches to delivering infrastructure while benefiting nature.
relaxing new emissions rules for utes and vans conflicts with government climate efforts to rapidly reduce emissions
exotic plant species such as buffel grass are still routinely used and promoted for use in agriculture, despite the damage they do to biodiversity and their ability to fuel more severe fires, more often.
Why the lack of alignment?
For politicians, the environment ministry is often seen as a poisoned chalice.
Within government, departments often pull in different directions. When resource and agriculture plans conflict with environmental concerns, it’s not hard to guess which side tends to win. Case in point: the recent plans to remove gas project oversight from environment minister Tanya Plibersek in favour of resources minister Madeleine King.
How can we make policies work together better for the environment? Governments should sift through all relevant policies and regulations to make sure nature-positive approaches are embedded. Requiring development proposals to benefit nature would go a long way to reducing environment-economy conflict. After all, most businesses are now looking into ways of becoming nature-positive.
Too often, environment policies are seen as opposed to those promoting the economy, jobs and industry. But they don’t have to clash.
Tremendous opportunities exist for a safer, more sustainable future, if we address current causes of friction and take a big picture approach to how we develop our policies.
Eastern Barred Bandicoot (Perameles gunnii), John Gould 1863
By Anthony Rendall (Deakin University), Amy Coetsee (The University of Melbourne), Aviya Naccarella (Deakin University) and Euan Ritchie (Deakin University).
The eastern barred bandicoot was once found in abundance across the basalt plains of western Victoria. But habitat destruction and predation by introduced red foxes drove the species to the brink of extinction on the mainland.
Establishing populations in fenced reserves was critical in providing insurance against extinction. To further increase bandicoot numbers to provide long-term security against extinction, we needed more fox-free land.
A bold plan was hatched: move the species to where the predators weren’t. Introduce them to Victoria’s fox-free Phillip and French islands.
Six years later, the bandicoot made conservation history, as the first species in Australia to be reclassified from extinct in the wild to endangered.
Why don’t we translocate all endangered species to islands? The technique can be effective, but can come with unwanted consequences.
The surprising benefits of translocation
Eastern barred bandicoots are ecosystem engineers. As they dig for their dinner of worms, beetles, bulbs, fungi and other foods, their industrious work improves soil quality, and in turn, the health of vegetation.
So when we translocate threatened species, we can get a double win – a rapid increase in their populations and restoration of lost ecosystem functions.
Australia’s landscapes look very different than they did before European colonisation around 230 years ago.
Industrialised farming, introduced predators and habitat destruction and fragmentation are driving biodiversity decline and extinctions. As species die out, ecosystems lose the vital functions wildlife perform. Without them, ecosystems might not operate as well or even collapse – a little like a poorly serviced car engine.
We feel the loss most acutely when we lose keystone species on which many other species depend, such as oysters and bees. Restoring these functions can improve biodiversity and the sustainability of food production. For instance, encouraging owls to return to farmland can cut the use of damaging rodent poisons, as owls eat thousands of mice and rats yearly.
Before colonisation, industrious digging mammals and their soil excavations were extremely widespread. Regrettably, introduced foxes and cats have made short work of many of Australia’s diggers. Six of 29 digging species are now extinct, including the lesser bilby, pig-footed bandicoot and desert rat-kangaroo. Many others are endangered.
The northern quoll is the smallest of Australia’s four quoll species. John Webb/AAP
New environments don’t necessarily need to be predator-free. The eastern barred bandicoot is thriving on Phillip and French Island, in the presence of feral and domestic cats. The key is there are no foxes.
Many islands are now being thought of as conservation arks, able to provide safe havens for several threatened species at once. Dirk Hartog Island, Western Australia’s largest, is now home to reintroduced western quolls, dibblers, mulgaras and other small mammals, as well as two translocated hare-wallaby species.
Why is translocation not more common?
The technique can work very well – but it can also backfire.
In the 1920s, conservationists undertook the first translocation in Australia by moving koalas to Phillip and French Island – the same Victorian islands now a refuge for bandicoots. While this protected koalas from hunting pressure, koala populations exploded, and the tree-dwelling marsupials ate themselves out of house and home in some areas.
In 2012, conservationists began introducing Tasmanian devils to Maria Island, just off Tasmania’s east coast. They wanted to conserve a healthy population free from the contagious facial tumour which has devastated their populations. On Maria Island, the devils became too successful, wiping out the island’s penguin and shearwater populations.
You can see translocations aren’t a silver bullet. We have to carefully consider the pros and cons of any such conservation intervention. Ecosystems are complex. It’s not easy to predict what will happen to an ecosystem if we introduce a species new to the area.
The decision to translocate a species is a value judgement – it prioritises one species over the broader ecosystem. Opponents of translocation question whether we are doing the right thing in valuing efforts to conserve a single species over the innate value of the existing ecosystem.
What’s the best approach in future?
Translocation is not the end goal. Islands cannot support the vast array of threatened species in Australia.
The end goal is to establish and expand threatened species populations on the mainland in fenced reserves before eventually reintroducing them to the wild where they will encounter introduced predators.
Making sure foxes don’t repopulate Phillip Island takes constant surveillance. This photo shows a fox which evaded capture for two months in 2022. Phillip Island Nature Parks/AAP
Research is being done to explore how we can make this work, such as:
1) Predator-savvy wildlife: some native species may be able to adapt to living alongside introduced predators – with some help. For example, conservationists have exposed semi-captive bilbies to small numbers of feral cats with the aim of increasing their wariness and ultimately boosting their chances of survival. Results have been encouraging.
2) Building ecosystem resilience: we know more intact native ecosystems can reduce the chance of damage from invasive species . That means re-establishing native ecosystems could boost their resilience.
Moving a species from its home is a bold and risky decision. It’s critical local communities and First Nations groups are consulted and able to guide discussions and any eventual actions.
For their part, governments, land managers and conservationists must think more broadly about how we might best conserve species and ecosystems in a rapidly changing world.
Aside from humans, dingoes are Australia’s largest land-based predator. They are arguably our most maligned, misunderstood, and mismanaged native species.
Since colonisation, Australian governments and land managers have trapped, shot, poisoned and excluded dingoes from large parts of their Country. Policy and practices have frequently overlooked First Nations’ perspectives.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We can hear the diverse voices and values of First Nations peoples, livestock producers, ecologists, and others as we shape future policy and practices. By collaborating and drawing from both Indigenous and Western knowledge, we can find ways to live in harmony with our apex predator.
Dingoes keep kangaroo numbers in check, benefiting vegetation, other wildlife, and livestock graziers.Angus Emmott
How are dingoes currently treated?
Under federal environmental law, any species present in Australia before AD 1400, such as the dingo, is classified as native. However, dingoes are not listed nationally as a threatened species. So individual state governments make their own decisions about how to treat them.
In the Northern Territory, Queensland and Victoria, dingoes are managed as protected wildlife in National Parks and conservation areas but they’re unprotected on private land.
In Western Australia, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales, dingoes are unprotected wildlife. That means they are afforded no protection, even in conservation areas.
But state governments also list “wild dogs” as a priority pest species. That allows – even requires – them to be killed on public and private land.
The state definitions of “wild dogs” includes dingoes and dingo-dog hybrids. This is based on the mistaken belief that interbreeding between dingoes and dogs was widespread across Australia.
Macabre scenes such as this are not uncommon across rural Australia.Angus Emmott
Stark contrasts in dingo management
Stretching more than 5,600km across Australia, the dingo barrier fence is the longest continuous artificial environmental barrier in the world. It was designed to keep dingoes out of the more productive sheep grazing areas in southeastern Australia.
In South Australia, dingoes south of the “dingo fence” are declared “wild dogs” and subject to an eradication policy. North of the “dingo fence” they are unprotected wildlife.
While the Victorian population is partially protected in the Big Desert-Wyperfeld conservation reserve complex, the South Australian wilkerr population is poisoned four times a year inside Ngarkat Conservation Area.
Dingoes are regarded as pests by some and ecologically essential by others.Angus Emmott
What do dingoes mean to First Nations peoples?
Dingoes hold strong cultural significance for First Nations peoples across Australia. They are considered loved and respected family members that have always been by their sides. A healthy dingo population is seen as essential for healthy Country and healthy people.
Despite the harms of colonisation on dingoes and First Nations, Indigenous people continue to feel and nurture this connection to dingoes. Maintaining their culture means fulfilling the general cultural obligation and rights of First Nations peoples to protect this sacred animal.
This was reinforced at the National Inaugural First Nations Dingo Forum in Cairns last month (September 15–16). The forum produced a powerful statement signed by more than 20 Nations.
The national dingo declaration is clear: First Nations peoples want an immediate end to the “genocide” (deliberate killing) of dingoes on Country. Lethal control of dingoes is not acceptable, nor justified.
We join the call for an end to the use of the term “wild dog”, because it’s misleading and disrespectful. Pure dingoes, not feral or hybrid wild dogs, are predominately being killed.
First Nations people want to see the dingo reinstated as “the boss of Country”. They call on governments at all levels to involve First Nations peoples in decisions relating to dingo management, to implement and support educational programs across a variety of platforms and organisations, and to see dingoes protected under legislation.
Firstly, these methods have not been consistently effective in eliminating livestock losses. In some cases they have exacerbated the problem, possibly due to killing and loss of older individuals, which can change the social cohesion of dingo populations, breeding, their movements and how territorial they are. It may also alter how successful they are at hunting kangaroos, causing more attacks on livestock.
Secondly, they have been associated with adverse consequences for biodiversity. In some cases, having dingoes around can be beneficial for graziers by reducing the total grazing pressure of kangaroos, feral goats, and other herbivores, and in some cases the impacts of feral pigs too. Increasing numbers of landholders are recognising this.
Lastly, there is growing consensus these lethal approaches are not aligned with the values of the general public, particularly First Nations peoples.
Healthy Country and people requires dingoes.Angus Emmott
Non-lethal approaches to managing dingoes are gaining prominence as they are more environmentally sustainable and compassionate. These approaches prioritise coexistence by reducing conflict between dingoes and human interests while allowing dingoes to persist in landscapes.
One of the most promising non-lethal methods involves guardian animals, such as livestock-guarding dogs, llamas, and donkeys. These guardian animals establish protective bonds with livestock and effectively deter dingoes from approaching, reducing livestock losses for graziers.
Additionally, there is growing interest in developing innovative dingo deterrents, such as electric fencing and devices that emit loud noises, smells or visual stimuli, to discourage interaction between livestock and dingoes.
Initiatives promoting best practices for animal husbandry, including secure fencing, corralling, shepherding, and reducing access to resources (such as water and carcasses), play a crucial role in diminishing the attractiveness of livestock as prey to dingoes.
Working and walking together
By promoting coexistence and exploring and investing in innovative non-lethal solutions, we can strike a balance between safeguarding human interests, preserving the vital ecological role that dingoes perform, and respecting First Nations’ culture. In doing so, it is our hope that communities will be more united than divided.
We would like to acknowledge retired graziers Angus and Karen Emmott and family from far North Queensland. Their personal story about dingoes at Noonbah Station in Queensland’s Channel Country helped inform our article, and we consider Angus a co-author.
The undersigned wish to provide expert opinion concerning recent scientific advances in our understanding of the identity and ancestry of dingoes and the implications this has for public policy relating to ‘wild dogs’ and dingoes in Victoria.
We urge the Victorian Government to:
Revoke (and not renew) the Order in Council unprotecting dingoes on private land and on publicland within 3 km of private land boundaries (Ecosystem Decline Inquiry recommendation 28) which is contrary to the listing of dingoes as a threatened species in Victoria. It is significant that when the Victorian Scientific Advisory Committee recommended the listing of the dingo as a threatened taxon, under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act in 2007, they identified that “…wild dog control programs, (including baiting and other control measures) …” have the potential to result in a “decline of remnant dingo populations and recruitment to those populations”. Dingoes should be protected on all public land.
Adopt recommendations 8 and 28 of the Victorian Inquiry into Ecosystem Decline to:
Trial the reintroduction (or re-establishment) of dingoes as apex predators into suitable Victorian ecosystems. This would be consistent with the Victorian Labor 2018 Policy Platform, which committed to “…identify and recognise the ecological function of dingoes as part of biodiversity programs and management initiatives…”.
Revise fund and implement the threatened species Dingo Action Statement (no. 248).
Update terminology in Victorian policy to refer to dingoes versus feral dogs to reflect the identity of wild canines accurately and transparently in Victoria.
Grant wildlife status to dingo backcrosses. Animals with predominately dingo DNA hold conservation and cultural value. The characterisation of dingo backcrosses as ‘wild dogs’ is not evidence based. Granting wildlife status to dingo backcrosses is consistent with the Victorian Labor 2022 Policy Platform, which commits to the protection of “… native apex land predator populations (Canis dingo) in Victorian ecosystems including through recognition of dingo dominant hybrids as wildlife…”.
These changes in Victorian policy are justified based on genetic research by Cairns et al. (2023) that demonstrates:
Nearly all of the “wild dogs” DNA tested in Victoria were dingoes with no evidence of dog ancestry. Most of the remaining animals carried more than 93% dingo ancestry. No first- cross dingo-dog hybrids or feral dogs were found in the study. Previous genetic surveys of ‘wild dogs’ also found that first-cross hybrids and feral dogs were extremely rare in Australia.
Previous DNA testing methods misidentified pure dingoes as being mixed. All previous genetic surveys of wild dingo populations have used a low resolution 23-marker DNA test. This now outdated method is still used by NSW DPI, which DNA tests samples from AgVIC, Arthur Rylah Institute and other state government agencies. Comparisons between the advanced DNA testing method and the outdated 23-marker DNA test, found that the latter frequently misidentified animals as carrying dog ancestry when they did not. Therefore, the existing departmental understanding of dingo ancestry across Victoria is incorrect; policy needs to be based on updated genetic surveys.
There are multiple dingo populations in Australia. High-density genomic data identified more than four wild dingo populations in Australia. In Victoria there are at least two dingo populations present: South and Big Desert. The South dingo population was observed in eastern Victoria whilst the Big Desert population was found in western Victoria around Big Desert and Wyperfield and extends into Ngarkat Conservation Area in South Australia.
Dingo populations in Victoria are challenged by low genetic variability. Preliminary evidence from high density genomic testing of dingoes in western and eastern Victoria found evidence of limited genetic variability, which could be a serious conservation concern. Dingoes in western Victoria, in particular, had extremely low levels of genetic variability and no evidence of gene flow with other dingo populations demonstrating their effective isolation. This preliminary evidence suggests that the western Victoria (Big Desert) dingo population is especially threatened by inbreeding and genetic isolation. Additional information is urgently needed on the genetic health of Victorian dingo populations to develop an evidence-based dingo conservation policy. Continued lethal control of Victorian dingo populations could exacerbate the low levels of genetic variability and further challenge the survival of these populations.
It is important to emphasise the importance of dingoes in Victorian ecosystems. Dingoes are the sole non-human land-based top predator on the Australian mainland. Their importance to the ecological health and resilience of Australian ecosystems cannot be overstated, from regulating wild herbivore abundance (e.g. various kangaroo species), to reducing the impacts of feral mesopredators (cats, foxes) on native marsupials (Johnson & VanDerWal 2009; Wallach et al. 2010; Brook et al. 2012; Letnic et al. 2012; Letnic et al. 2013; Davis et al. 2015; Newsome et al. 2015; Morris & Letnic 2017; Geary et al. 2018; Thompson et al. 2022). Current Victorian public policy concerning dingoes effectively ignores this ecological reality.
Over the past two decades, ecological research in Australian ecosystems, and elsewhere in the world, has increasingly demonstrated the importance of conserving medium to large-sized predators for ecosystem health and the preservation of biodiversity. Diminishing predator populations tend to be associated with ecosystem instability and native species decline. The extinction of a diverse suite of large carnivorous marsupials thousands of years ago (and the more recent local and functional extinctions of quoll species across much of Australia) has already simplified the structure of wildlife communities in Australia. The dingo is a keystone species that benefits small animals and plant communities by suppressing and changing the behaviours of mammalian herbivores and smaller predators (including introduced foxes and feral cats) (Johnson & VanDerWal 2009; Wallach et al. 2010; Brook et al. 2012; Letnic et al. 2012; Letnic et al. 2013; Davis et al. 2015; Newsome et al. 2015; Morris & Letnic 2017; Geary et al. 2018; Thompson et al. 2022). Their presence adds a stabilising influence and provides ecosystem resilience for species only found in Australia.
Dingoes are listed as Threatened under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 (Victoria) and are protected wildlife under the Wildlife Act 1975 (Victoria). However, under an Order by Council renewed on 18 September 2018, dingoes are unprotected on all private land in Victoria, and public land within 3 km of any private land boundary, within certain areas of the state. Even so, lethal control extends far beyond 3 kms in some areas, especially considering that 1080 fox baits are lethal to dingoes. We underline the need for significantly improved protection of dingoes within Victorian ecosystems. Dingoes are threatened by low genetic variability, habitat loss, increased frequency and intensity of bushfires and ongoing lethal control programs, which breaks down pack structure and may increase the risk of hybridisation with domestic dogs.
We also wish to clarify that the terminology ‘wild dog’ is not appropriate when discussing wild canids in Victoria, or more generally in Australia. In Victoria, Cairns et al. 2023 have shown that of their Victorian DNA tested samples nearly 90% were dingoes with no evidence of dog ancestry. Furthermore, the few dingoes found to be carrying dog ancestry all had more than 85% dingo DNA. Continued use of the terminology ‘wild dog’ is misleading and promotes confusion regarding the use of lethal control to target a threatened native predator in Victoria. Additionally, use of the term ‘wild dog’ fails to acknowledge and respect the value dingoes hold for many First Nations people in Victoria.
Existing Victorian Government policy is incompatible with the conservation of dingoes and their ecological function and in conflict with their listing as a threatened species.
In this context, we strongly emphasise the following points:
The negative ecological consequences of lethal control of dingoes could seriously harm the biodiversity, resilience and health of Victoria’s ecosystems.
Non-lethal forms of farm stock protection (e.g. the use of guardian dogs and strategic fencing) have not been adequately supported and trialled as analternative to lethal control. Alternative methods like the use of livestock guardian dogs have provenhighly successful overseas and where trialled in Australia, see van Bommel and Johnson (2012, 2023). Other measures include improved livestock fencing, husbandry, adopt predator smart deterrents and protection measures on private land should be the primary aim of policy (Boronyak et al. 2023). Funds currently spent on dingo control should be allocated to investment in non-lethal management strategies and training for primary producers.
Continued lethal control of dingoes is likely to facilitate increases in mesopredator (cat and fox) and herbivore (kangaroos, wallabies, feral goats, and potentially deer) populations that are currently managed as pests. This will in turn threaten livestock production through the spread of disease by cats (e.g. toxoplasmosis, which can cause abortion in livestock), increased fox populations (which pose a significant risk to lambs), overgrazing by non-stock animals (e.g. kangaroos), and suppress populations of native, threatened species.
The extent and intensity of lethal control are disproportionate to the relatively small scale of the threat dingoes pose to farm stock in Victoria. Landholders should be supported to seek new measures ofstock protection including electric fencing, livestock guardian animals, changes to animal husbandry, etc. before resorting to lethal control (Boronyak and Jacobs 2023).
Lethal control should be targeted, evidence-based, and balanced against the need to maintain ecological resilience and animal welfare. Further, there is considerable evidence that haphazard,broad-scale baiting can actually make conflict with livestock producers worse (Allen & Gonzalez 1998; Allen 2015).
Pre- and post-baiting monitoring should be done to document the effect of 1080 aerial baiting in Victorian ecosystems and allow assessment of whether baiting programs are effective at reducing livestock predation, and hence, what the overall return on investment is.
Continued use of the terminology ‘wild dog’ is not justified because wild canids in Australia are dingoes and dingo backcrosses, not feral domestic dogs. The current policy distinction between dingoes and ‘wild dogs’ is based on an ecologically unproven distinction between ‘pure’ dingoes and ecologically functional ‘dingo backcrosses’. The weight of scientific evidence is that there is no valid ecological distinction to be made.
Lethal control programs may impact on the genetic viability of persisting dingo populations by compounding low genetic variability with reduced gene flow, resulting in genetic bottlenecking.
The “wild dog” bounty should be discontinued as it is not targeted to locations where there may belegitimate stock loss concern, is not evidence-based and it encourages the recreational killing of a listed threatened species.
The Australian public expects lethal control to be a last resort measure in attempting to solve human-wildlife conflicts.
Given the low number of sheep lost in Victoria to dingo predation, relative to the total Victorian sheep flock (100-200 sheep per million sheep annually), scarce public funds would be more cost-effectively spent on trialling financial compensation of landholders for verified stock loss, as an alternative to lethal control.
Lethal control of dingoes should not be undertaken without culturally appropriate consultation with the First Nations peoples of Victoria, some of whom consider dingoes to be a totem animal.
Aerial baiting programs pose direct risks to dingoes as well as other native fauna including Spot-tailed Quolls. It is not known what impact 1080 aerial baiting has on spot- tailed quoll populations in terms of sub-lethal effects to fertility, longevity and fitness, particularly if their population density is very low, as in Victoria. Aerial baiting programs suppress the dingo population which releases mesopredators such as feral cats andred foxes and large herbivores including feral pigs, deer and goats. The impacts of feral cats and red foxeson species like Spot-tailed Quolls is likely to be amplified in disturbed ecosystems that are subjected to 1080 baiting. Indiscriminate and non-target specific lethal management should not be implemented if there is a risk to the persistence of threatened native fauna, which includes both dingoes and Spot-tailed Quolls.
We strongly urge the Minister to revoke the Order in Council unprotecting dingoes in Victoria, cease the ‘wilddog’ bounty in Victoria and to reconsider the use of 1080 baiting for canids that will kill dingoes, including through aerial baiting. We also urge the Minister to affirm endorsement of the dingo as ‘a threatened species of conservation priority’ and direct the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) to develop a conservation strategy in Victoria that maximises the preservation and protection of dingoes in the Victorian landscape. On the balance of scientific evidence, ethical reasoning and society-wide expectations, protection of dingoes should be enhanced rather than diminished. We would also urge the Victorian Government to consult with dingo conservation organisations, scientists and First Nations people more widely during the development of Victorian State Government policy concerning dingoes.
Signed
Dr Kylie M Cairns, Research Fellow School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences University of New South Wales
Professor Mike Letnic Ecology and Conservation Biology School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences University of New South Wales
Dr Bradley Smith, Senior Lecturer Scientific Director, Australian Dingo Foundation School of Health,Medical and Applied Sciences Central Queensland University
Mr Rob Appleby Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security Griffith University
Ms Zali Jestrimski School of Life and Environmental Sciences University of Sydney
Mr Kevin D Newman Quantitative and Applied Ecology Group, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, University of Melbourne
Dr Barry Traill AM, Independent Zoologist
Dr Jack Tatler East Coast Ecology
Associate Professor Justin W Adams, Director, 3D Innovation and Design (3DID) Studio Head, Integrated Morphology and Palaeontology (IMAP) Laboratory Centre for Human Anatomy Education, Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Monash University
Dr Daniel Hunter The Natural History Unit
Associate Professor Melanie Fillios Director of Place Based Education and Research School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, University of New England
Dr Loukas Koungoulos, College of Asia and the Pacific Australian National University
Professor Euan Ritchie, Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University
Associate Professor Georgette Leah Burns School of Environment and Science, Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security Griffith University
Professor Chris Johnson, Professor of Wildlife Conservation School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania
Dr Holly Sitters, Honorary Research Fellow School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, University of Melbourne
Professor Chris Dickman FAA, FRZS Desert Ecology Research Group, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney
Professor Corey J A Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology Global Ecology | Partuyarta Ngadluku Wardli Kuu, College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University
Dr Neil Jordan, Senior Lecturer & Deputy Director (Research) Centre for Ecosystem Science School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales
Associate Professor Mathew Crowther, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney
Dr Louise Boronyak, Associate Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney
Dr Gabriel Conroy, Senior Lecturer, School of Science, Technology and Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast
Dr Damian Morrant, CEO & Principal Ecologist, Biosphere Environmental Consultants Pty Ltd
Dr Angela Wardell-Johnson, Environmental Sociologist, Editorial Board for Conservation Biology, Living in the lands of the Djiringanj & Thaua of the Yuin Nation, Merimbula, NSW
Dr Linda Van Brommel, School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania
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As wildlife ecologists and conservation scientists, we are deeply concerned about plans announced last month that would intensify land clearing.
Accelerating habitat loss would all but guarantee failure of the Australian government’s zero extinctions plan, notwithstanding the fact many of the species placed in harm’s way by fracking and farming are yet to be discovered.
Rather than relaxing regulation to support development, we need to urgently overhaul Australia’s grossly inadequate environmental laws and safeguards, which also lack enforcement.
Earlier this year (2023), the ABC investigated suspicious land clearing in the NT.
Land clearing leaves wildlife homeless
When we think of unregulated land clearing and habitat loss in the tropics, impoverished countries in tropical South America, Africa and Asia spring to mind. Not a relatively rich, developed country like Australia.
But across Australia’s tropical north, landscapes are afforded little protection. Land clearing leads to habitat loss, erosion and pollution of waterways.
First Nations Peoples, environmental scientists, conservation groups, and other members of the public fear the push to develop cotton in the NT will mean clearing a further 100,000 ha. That stems from the 2019 NT Farmers Association business case for the construction of a cotton processing facility in the NT, which is nearing completion.
Proponents of pastoral land clearing projects almost never refer their projects to the Australian government for assessment, even if their projects are set to deplete thousands of hectares of habitat within the known range of threatened species.
This means the potential impacts on threatened species and other natural values supposedly protected by national environmental laws, are never assessed by experts. And there is no mechanism for anyone else to refer the development for assessment.
On one occasion the proponent referred an application to the NT Environment Protection Agency. But it was deemed clearing the 10,000ha would not have a significant impact. So there was no environmental impact assessment required.
Some of the most notable examples of recent uncontrolled land clearing, without any assessment of biodiversity impacts, were for cotton on pastoral land in the NT.
Finally, the current regulatory system covers single development proposals. It is poorly equipped to consider the cumulative impacts of successive individual clearing events.
This runs counter to warnings from the world’s climate scientists that we must rapidly move away from a reliance on fossil fuels if we are to meet ambitions to keep global warming below 1.5°C.
For northern Australia, climate change means more severe storms, coral bleaching, death of mangroves, more intense and extended dry seasons (with less water for wildlife), and increased fire risk and severity.
Threats may compound upon each other, as invasive gamba and buffel grass that favour and promote fire would be even more likely to thrive and expand.
A better future for Australia’s tropical savannas
To protect Australia’s tropical savannas from uncontrolled land clearing and gas extraction, we need:
Stronger national environment protection legislation. The federal government is in the process of reviewing the EPBC Act. This is a perfect opportunity to recognise and protect our tropical savannas. The new act must have stronger requirements for the formal assessment of all projects that are likely to affect threatened species. It must also take the cumulative impacts of multiple small projects into account, to avoid “death by a thousand cuts”.
Most importantly, conservation planning that is community-led, scientifically grounded and respects the wishes and concerns of First Nations Peoples regarding enterprises on and management of Country. Recent pastoral land clearing in the NT has ignored the concerns of Traditional Owners over the loss of Country (despite having legally recognised Native Title on the land).
Avoid repeating past mistakes
While Australia’s tropical savannas are massive in scale, they are increasingly insecure and under significant strain. Against a backdrop of climate change, biodiversity decline and extinction crises, any further development of the north must be subject to rigorous risk-assessment and appropriate environmental protections.
This is essential to ensure any economic benefits justify potential risks. We simply can’t afford to risk repeating mistakes already inflicted on much of southern Australia.
Once abundant, woylies – or brush-tailed bettongs – are now critically endangered. John Gould, CC BY-SA
By William Geary (Deakin University), Adrian Wayne (The University of Western Australia), Euan Ritchie (Deakin University) and Tim Doherty (University of Sydney).
Conserving native wildlife is a challenging task and Australia’s unenviable extinction record shows us we urgently need more sophisticated and effective approaches.
Too often we focus on saving individual threatened species. But in the wild, species do not live neatly in isolation. They are part of rich ecosystems, relying on many other species to survive. To save species often means saving this web of life.
Our new research models what’s likely to happen to four well-known Western Australian marsupials in the biodiversity hotspot of south-western Australia, by identifying key drivers of their populations over time.
In the past, these species were most at risk from habitat loss. But when we ran our models forwards, we found all four species would be at more risk from climate change, which is bringing heightened fire risk and a drying trend to the region. Even better control of foxes – a major predator – did not offset the trend fully.
Our work adds further weight to efforts to protect ecosystems in all their complexity. The way species – including feral predators – interact takes place against a changing climate, fire regimes, and human-made change, like logging and grazing.
To give native species their best chance of survival, we have to embrace ecosystem-based conservation, rather than focusing on rescuing individual species.
What did we find?
We looked at long-term monitoring data to find out what was having the most impact on the woylie (brush-tailed bettong), chuditch (western quoll), koomal (western brushtail possum) and the quenda (southern brown bandicoot), four animals living in Upper Warren jarrah forests.
Our study species, left to right and clockwise: the koomal (western brushtail possum), chuditch (western quoll), quenda (southern brown bandicoot) and the woylie (brush-tailed bettong). The Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA)
All four have undergone considerable population change over the last few decades and some are now threatened due to predation by foxes and feral cats, habitat loss and increased frequency of droughts and bushfires. To add to that, controlled burns, lethal fox control and timber harvesting have all taken place in our study region within this time. What we didn’t know was how these threats and conservation efforts interact.
To find out, we built a complex statistical model of the ecosystem to pinpoint what was driving population change geographically and over time.
We found the abundance of these species were affected most by the historical impact of habitat loss, as well as less food in the form of vegetation or prey due to the area’s ongoing decline in rainfall.
Of the habitat lost here, most was cleared during the 19th and early 20th centuries. But now it has more or less stopped, the legacies of this change continue through the effects of habitat fragmentation and increased incursion by introduced species. That means the main falls in abundance took place decades ago.
What about fire and foxes? These threats had less effect than habitat loss and rainfall declines, which we attribute to the broad management of both of these in the region. It was also difficult to quantify the effects of fox control because of the lack of control areas – essentially, comparable areas without poison baits in the region.
Our work shows there’s not one simple answer for managing this ecosystem. Everything is connected. We need to embrace this complexity so that we can better pinpoint where our actions can make a difference.
This jarrah forest is typical of our study region. The Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA)
What’s likely to happen?
While habitat loss was the major historical threat, the future looks to be different. Severe fire is set to increase and rainfall reduce due to climate change. This indicates all four species will see falling populations.
Annual rainfall in south-western Australia has already fallen at least 20% below the historical average and further declines are expected. If severe fires arrive more often – and overlap with reduced rainfall – we could see even greater population loss.
These threats mean local conservation managers will be less able to help. Controlling fox numbers may help at present, but in a drier, fierier future, things will get harder.
Our modelling suggests that for woylie and koomal, lethal fox control could boost their resilience to severe fire and reduced rainfall, but not completely offset the expected losses.
Jarrah forests are now experiencing more bushfires. The Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA)
What does this mean for ecosystem management?
It’s long been a goal for conservationists to manage ecosystems as a whole. In reality, this is often incredibly difficult, as we need to consider multiple threats (such as fire and invasive species) and conflicting requirements of different species, in the face of uncertainty about how some ecosystems work, as well as limited budgets.
Ecosystems are complex webs of interacting species, processes and human influences. If we ignore this complexity, we can miss conservation opportunities, or see our actions have less effect than we expected.
Sometimes, well-intended actions can actually produce worse outcomes for some species, such as fox control leading to a boom in wallabies who strip the forest of everything edible.
Studies like ours wouldn’t be possible without the careful collection and synthesis of data over decades. As global climate change accelerates and the effects on ecosystems become increasingly unpredictable, conservation managers are flying blind if they do not have long-term monitoring to inform decisions on where and when to act.
So what can our conservation managers do? They can help ecosystems survive by doing two things. First, keep managing the threats within our control – such as invasive predators and ongoing habitat loss – to help reduce damage from other threats. Second, model and anticipate the effects of future change, and use that knowledge to be as prepared as we can.
A velvet worm from Mt Elliot, North Queensland. Image credit: Alexander Dudley/Faunaverse. Inset: A potential mascot design. Image credit: Wes Mountain/The Conversation.
Australia is set to host the 2032 Olympic games in Queensland’s capital Brisbane, captivating an audience of billions. With so many eyes on Australia, the burning question is, of course, what animal(s) should be the official mascot(s) of the games, and why?
Summer Olympics past have featured recognisable animal mascots such as Waldi the daschund (Munich, 1972), Amik the beaver (Montreal, 1976), Misha the bear (Moscow, 1980), Sam the eagle (Los Angeles, 1984) and Hodori the tiger (Seoul, 1988).
Iconic and familiar mammals and birds dominate the list. The trend continued at Sydney’s 2000 games which featured Syd (playtpus), Olly (kookaburra) and Millie (echidna).
But the Brisbane Olympics is a great opportunity to showcase lesser known species, including those with uncertain futures.
Sadly Australia is a world leader in extinctions. Highlighting species many are unfamiliar with, the threats to them and their respective habitats and ecosystems, could help to stimulate increased conservation efforts.
From a “worm” that shoots deadly slime from its head, to a blind marsupial mole that “swims” underground, let’s take a look at three leading candidates (plus 13 special mentions). What makes them so special, and what physical and athletic talents do they possess?
Onychophorans, or velvet worms
Velvet worms are extraordinary forest and woodland denizens thought to have changed little in roughly 500 million years. Australian velvet worms are often smaller than 5 centimetres and look a bit like a worm-caterpillar mash up. They’re found across Australia and other locations globally.
Their waterproof, velvet-like skin is covered in tiny protusions called papillae, which have tactile and smell-sensitive bristles on the end. Velvet worms possess antennae and Australian species have 14-16 pairs of stumpy “legs”, each with a claw that helps them move across uneven surfaces such as logs and rocks.
Their colour varies between species, often blue, grey, purple or brown. Many display exquisite, detailed and showy patterns that can include diamonds and stripes – clear X-factor for a potential mascot.
Although velvet worms may be relatively small and, dare I say it, adorable, don’t be fooled. These animals are voracious predators.
They capture unsuspecting prey – other invertebrates – at night by firing sticky slime from glands on their heads. Once the victim is subdued, velvet worms bite their prey and inject saliva that breaks down tissues and liquefies them, ready to be easily sucked out.
If this isn’t intimidating enough, one species (Euperipatoides rowelli) lives and hunts in groups, with a social hierarchy under the control of a dominant female who feeds first following a kill.
Despite their formidable abilities, velvet worms are vulnerable to habitat destruction and fragmentation, and a changing climate.
Jalbil (Boyd’s forest dragon)
Jalbil is found in the rainforests of tropical North Queensland. They are a truly striking lizard – bearing a prominent pointy crest and a line of spikes down the back, distinct conical cheek scales and a resplendent yellow throat (dewlap) which can be erected to signal to each other.
Jalbil (Boyd’s forest dragon) is found in the rainforests of North Queensland’s Wet Tropics. Chris Jolly
Despite their colourful and ornate appearance, Jalbil can be very hard to spot as they’re perfectly camouflaged with their surroundings. They spend much of their time clinging vertically to tree trunks often at or below human head-height. Some have favourite trees they use more frequently.
If they detect movement, they simply move around the tree trunk to be out of direct view.
Reaching lengths of around 50cm, Jalbil mostly eat invertebrates, including ants, beetles, grasshoppers and worms. Males may have access to multiple female mates, and breeding is stimulated by storms at the beginning of the wet season.
While Jalbil are under no immediate threat, their future is uncertain. Jalbil are ectothermic, so unlike mammals and birds (endothermic), they can’t regulate their internal body heat through metabolism. Sunlight is often very patchy and limited below the rainforest canopy, restricting opportunities for basking to warm up.
Instead, Jalbil simply allow their body temperature to conform with the ambient conditions of their environment (thermo-conforming). This means if climate change leads to increased temperatures in the rainforests of Australia’s Wet Tropics, Jalbil may no longer be able to maintain a safe body temperature and large areas of habitat may also become unsuitable.
Itjaritjari and kakarratul (southern and northern marsupial moles)
These remarkable subterranean-dwelling marsupials really are in a league of their own. Both moles can fit in the palm of your hand, measuring up to about 150 millimetres and weighing about as much as a lemon (40-70 grams).
What these diminutive mammals lack in size they make up for in digging power – if only digging were an official Olympic sport. In central dunefields, they can dig up to 60 kilometres of tunnel per hectare.
Marsupial moles are covered in fine, silky, creamy-gold fur. They have powerful short arms with long claws, shovels for furious digging. Their back legs also help them push. Instead of creating and living in permanent burrows, they “swim” underground across Australia’s deserts for most of their lives.
The impressive adaptations don’t end there either. They also have ridiculously short but strong, tough-skinned tails that serve as anchors while digging. Females also have a backwards-facing pouch and all have nose shields that protect their nostrils, ensuring sand doesn’t end up where it’s not supposed to.
Due to living underground for most of their lives, many mole mysteries remain regarding their day-to-day lives. Scientists do know they eat a wide range of invertebrates including termites, beetles and ants, and small reptiles such as geckoes.
But while neither species is thought to be in danger of extinction, there are no reliable population estimates across their vast distributions. What’s more, introduced predators (feral cats and foxes) are known to prey upon them. Itjaritjari is listed as vulnerable in the Northern Territory.
And 13 special mentions go to…
With so many amazing wildlife species in Australia, it really is a near impossible task to choose our next mascot. So I also want to give special mentions to the following worthy contenders:
The Australian giant cuttlefish
These marine animals put on spectacular, colourful displays each year when they form large breeding aggregations.
Arnkerrth (thorny devil)
A desert-dwelling, ant-eating machine that can drink simply by standing in puddles.
Thorny devils can eat more than 1,000 ants per meal. Euan Ritchie
The Torresian striped possum
This striking black and white possum is thought to have the largest brain relative to body size of any marsupial. Their extra long fourth finger makes extracting delicious grubs from rotting wood a cinch.
Kila (palm cockatoo)
Our largest and arguably most spectacular “rockatoo”, which plays the drums.
Ulysses butterfly
Also known as mountain blue butterflies, the vivid, electric blue wings of Ulysses butterflies can span as much as 130 millimetres.
The Australian lungfish
A living fossil, which is now found only in Queensland, can breath air as well as in the water.
Mupee, boongary or marbi (Lumholtz’s tree kangaroo)
Despite being powerfully built for climbing, Lumholtz’s tree kangaroos are also adept at jumping, when alarmed they’ve been known to jump from heights of up to 15m to the ground.
The green tree python
Green tree pythons are the most vivid green snake you can possibly imagine. While adult pythons are a vibrant green the juveniles may be bright yellow or red (but not in Australia), changing colour when they are about half a metre long.
Another reptile with serious wow factor. Chris Jolly
The chameleon grasshopper
Based on temperature, male chameleon grasshoppers can change colour from black to turquoise, and back to black again, each day.
Peacock spiders come in rainbow colours and the males sure know how to shake it. Their vivid colours, such as in the species Maratus volans, are due to tiny scales that form nanoscopic lenses created from carbon nanotubes.
Peacock spiders are found only in Australia. Joseph Schubert
In fewer than 250 years, the ravages of colonisation have eroded the evolutionary splendour forged in this continent’s relative isolation. Australia has suffered a horrific demise of arguably the world’s most remarkable mammal assemblage, around 87% of which is found nowhere else.
Being an Australian native mammal is perilous. Thirty-eight native mammal species have been driven to extinction since colonisation and possibly seven subspecies. These include:
Yirratji (northern pig-footed bandicoot)
Parroo (white-footed rabbit-rat)
Kuluwarri (central hare-wallaby)
Yallara (lesser bilby)
Tjooyalpi (lesser stick-nest rat)
Tjawalpa (crescent nailtail wallaby)
Yoontoo (short-tailed hopping-mouse)
Walilya (desert bandicoot)
toolache wallaby
thylacine
This makes us the world leader of mammal species extinctions in recent centuries. But this is far from just an historical tragedy.
An undated photo of young thylacines held in captivity. AAP Image/Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Many once-abundant species, some spread over large expanses of Australia, have greatly diminished and the distributions of their populations have become disjointed. Such mammals include the Mala (rufous hare-wallaby), Yaminon (northern hairy-nosed wombat), Woylie (brush-tailed bettong) and the Numbat.
Without substantial and rapid change, Australia’s list of extinct mammal species is almost certain to grow. So what exactly has gone so horribly wrong? What can and should be done to prevent further casualties and turn things around?
Up to two mammal species gone per decade
Australia’s post-colonisation mammal extinctions may have begun as early as the 1840s, when it’s believed the Noompa and Payi (large-eared and Darling Downs hopping mice, respectively) and the Liverpool Plains striped bandicoot went extinct.
Many extinct species were ground dwellers, and within the so-called “critical weight range” of between 35 grams and 5.5 kilograms. This means they’re especially vulnerable to predation by cats and foxes.
Small macropods (such as bettongs, potoroos and hare wallabies) and rodents have suffered most extinctions – 13 species each, nearly 70% of all Australia’s mammal extinctions.
Eight bilby and bandicoot species and three bats species are also extinct, making up 21% and 8% of extinctions, respectively.
Overall, research estimates that since 1788, about one to two land-based mammal species have been driven to extinction each decade.
When mammals re-emerge
It’s hard to be certain about the timing of extinction events and, in some cases, even if they’re actually extinct.
For example, Ngilkat (Gilbert’s potoroo), the mountain pygmy possum, Antina (the central rock rat), and Leadbeater’s possum were once thought extinct, but were eventually rediscovered. Such species are often called Lazarus species.
Our confidence in determining whether a species is extinct largely depends on how extensively and for how long we’ve searched for evidence of their persistence or absence.
Modern approaches to wildlife survey such as camera traps, audio recorders, conservation dogs and environmental DNA, make the task of searching much easier than it once was.
the introduction of invasive predators, such as feral cats, red foxes and herbivores (European rabbits, feral horses, goats, deer, water buffalo, donkeys)
And importantly, the ongoing persecution of Australia’s largest land-based predator: the dingo. In some circumstances, dingoes may help reduce the activity and abundance of large herbivores and invasive predators. But in others, they may threaten native species with small and restricted distributions.
Through widespread land clearing, urbanisation, livestock grazing and fire, some habitats have been obliterated and others dramatically altered and reduced, often resulting in less diverse and more open vegetation. Such simplified habitats can be fertile hunting grounds for red foxes and feral cats to find and kill native mammals.
While cats and foxes, fire, and habitat modification and destruction are often cited as key threats to native mammals, it’s important to recognise how these threats and others may interact. They must be managed together accordingly.
For instance, reducing both overgrazing and preventing frequent, large and intense fires may help maintain vegetation cover and complexity. In turn, this will make it harder for invasive predators to hunt native prey.
What must change?
Above all else, we genuinely need to care about what’s transpiring, and to act swiftly and substantially to prevent further damage.
As a mammalogist of some 30 years, the continuing demise of Australia’s mammals is gut-wrenching and infuriating. We have the expertise and solutions at hand, but the frequent warnings and calls for change continue to be met with mediocre responses. At other times, a seemingly apathetic shrug of shoulders.
So many species are now gone, probably forever, but so many more are hurtling down the extinction highway because of sheer and utter neglect.
Feral rabbits reduce the ground cover of vegetation.
Encouragingly, when we care for and invest in species, we can turn things around. Increasing numbers of Numbats, Yaminon and eastern-barred bandicoots provide three celebrated examples.
Improving the prognosis for mammals is eminently achievable but conditional on political will. Broadly speaking, we must:
minimise or remove their key threats
align policies (such as energy sources, resource use, and biodiversity conservation)
strengthen and enforce environmental laws
listen to, learn from and work with First Nations peoples as part of healing Country
The recently announced Threatened Species Action plan sets an ambitious objective of preventing new extinctions. Of the 110 species considered a “priority” to save, 21 are mammals. The plan, however, is not fit for purpose and is highly unlikely to succeed.
Political commitments appear wafer thin when the same politicians continue to approve the destruction of the homes critically endangered species depend upon. What’s more, greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets are far below what climate scientists say are essential and extremely urgent.
There’s simply no time for platitudes and further dithering. Australia’s remaining mammals deserve far better, they deserve secure futures.
Australia’s dire and shameful conservation record is well established. The world’s highest number of recent mammal extinctions – 39 since colonisation. Ecosystems collapsing from the north to the south, across our lands and waters. Even species that have survived so far are at risk, as the sad list of threatened species and ecological communities continues to grow.
During the election campaign, Labor pledged to turn this around. On Tuesday, federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek announced what this would look like: a new action plan for 110 threatened species. The goal: no new extinctions. “Our current approach has not been working. If we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we’ll keep getting the same results,” Plibersek said.
But is this really a step change? Let’s be clear. This plan is a welcome improvement – especially the focus on First Nations rangers and Indigenous knowledge, clearer targets, better monitoring and the goal of protecting 30% of Australia’s lands and seas within five years.
But the funding is wholly inadequate. The A$225 million committed is an order of magnitude less than what we need to actually bring these threatened species back from oblivion. The grim reality is this plan is nowhere near enough to halt the extinctions. Here’s why.
There’s nowhere near enough funding
Conservation costs money. Recovering threatened species takes effort. Tackling the threats that are pushing them over the edge, from feral cats to land clearing, is expensive. “Measures of last resort”, such as captive breeding, creation of safe havens and translocations, takes more still.
How much is enough? Estimates put it at A$1.7 billion per year. This is around one-seventh of the money Australian governments spent on fossil fuel subsidies last financial year. If there’s funding for that, there should be funding for wildlife.
Make no mistake – starving conservation of adequate funding is a choice. For decades, Australia’s unique environment and wildlife have been thrown consolation crumbs of funding – even though they are our collective natural heritage, fundamental to human survival, wellbeing and economic prosperity, and a major draw card for tourists and locals. You can see the results for yourself: more extinctions and many more threatened species.
Picking winners means many species will lose
Labor’s plan is focused on arresting the decline of 110 species, and 20 places such as the Australian Alps, Bruny Island and Kakadu and West Arnhem Land.
Picking winners: the freshwater sawfish has been chosen as a priority species – while hundreds of others have not. AAP
Unfortunately, that’s a drop in the ocean. Combined, we now have more than 2,000 species and ecological communities listed as threatened. Picking species to survive betrays our remarkable, diverse and largely unique plants, animals and ecosystems. It suggests – wrongly – that we have to choose winners and losers, when in fact we could save them all.
The plan assumes recovering priority species may help conserve other threatened species in the same areas and habitats. This is questionable, given only around 6% of listed threatened species are slated to receive priority funding, and how much the needs of different species can vary even in the same habitats and ecosystems. Different species respond very differently to fire regimes, for instance.
Policies and laws are essential
Funding by itself isn’t enough. Unless all levels of governments enact and enforce effective policies aimed at conserving species and their homes, the situation will worsen. Australians are still waiting to see what reforms actually emerge from Graeme Samuel’s sweeping review of the main laws governing biodiversity and environmental protection.
Alignment of policies is vital. What’s the point of saving a rare finch from land clearing if you’re simultaneously opening up huge areas to fracking, polluting groundwater and adding yet more emissions to our overheated atmosphere? Despite Labor’s rhetoric on threatened species and climate change, they are still committed to more coal and gas.
Similarly, native vegetation clearing and habitat loss is barely mentioned in the threatened species plan. Yet these are leading causes of environmental degradation, as the 2021 State of the Environment Report makes clear.
If you want to save the critically endangered western ringtail possum and endangered black cockatoos, why would you approve the clearing of habitat vital to their existence? The Labor government did just that in July.
Conserving more land isn’t a panacea
Protecting 30% of Australia’s lands and oceans by 2030 sounds great. But protecting degraded farmland is not the same as protecting a biodiverse grassland or wetland. And establishing protected areas is not the same as effective management.
To get this right, the new areas must add to our existing conservation estates by adding species and ecological communities with little or no representation. They must help species move as they would have before European colonisation, by connecting protected areas separated by human settlement or farms. And there must be enough money to actually look after the land. There’s no point protecting ever-larger tracts of degraded, weed-infested, rabbit, deer, horse, pig, fox and cat-filled land.
The 50 million hectares of land and sea to be added by 2027 is supposed to come almost entirely from Indigenous Protected Areas. But again, where’s the funding? Right now, these land and sea areas get a pittance – a few cents per hectare per year.
It’s also important to support conservation on private land, where many threatened species live and where significant gains can be made. Maintaining wildlife on private land can also help farmers and landholders through pollination and seed dispersal as well as broader ecosystem health.
We need laws with teeth
If you liked it, you should have put a law around it. If the federal government is serious about ending extinctions, it should be enshrined in legislation. As it stands, “zero extinctions” is a promise with no clear way for us to see who is responsible or how the promise will be kept.
Too cynical? Alas, there’s a very real trend here. Successive governments have avoided accountability for losing species doing exactly this. They release strategies on glossy paper which note we all have a role to play in conservation – but strangely omit the part about who is responsible when a species dies out. If you want to save species, make human careers depend on species staying alive.
We know strong legislation and billions rather than millions of dollars are needed to stop extinctions. So far, the new government has announced inadequate funding, a non-binding strategy with an aspirational goal, and a seemingly rushed idea of a biodiversity market, dubbed “green Wall Street”, which made conservationists including the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientistsvery concerned.
Tossing breadcrumbs to conservation is what we’ve done for decades. It’s a major reason why our unique species are in this mess. Time’s up.
In a newly announced partnership with Texas biotech company Colossal Biosciences, Australian researchers are hoping their dream to bring back the extinct thylacine is a “giant leap” closer to fruition.
Scientists at University of Melbourne’s TIGRR Lab (Thylacine Integrated Genetic Restoration Research) believe the new partnership, which brings Colossal’s expertise in CRISPR gene editing on board, could result in the first baby thylacine within a decade.
The genetic engineering firm made headlines in 2021 with the announcement of an ambitious plan to bring back something akin to the woolly mammoth, by producing elephant-mammoth hybrids or “mammophants”.
But de-extinction, as this type of research is known, is a highly controversial field. It’s often criticised for attempts at “playing God” or drawing attention away from the conservation of living species. So, should we bring back the thylacine? We asked five experts.
Axel Newton, Evolutionary Biologist at TIGRR Lab
YES, with a “but” (more on that shortly). The thylacine is one of the most tragic stories of the modern era, being actively hunted to extinction through a government bounty scheme. Unlike other extinct species, the thylacine was eradicated less than 100 years ago. Its habitat and ecological environment that it once thrived in is still intact.
I think we have an obligation to do everything in our power to bring back this remarkable animal, particularly as our forebearers were the direct cause of its disappearance. However, we also have an ethical and moral responsibility to ensure that the animal we resurrect is a 99%+ thylacine and not an almost-thylacine hybrid.
The largest challenge of this endeavour is reconstructing the genome of an extinct species without access to any living tissue (the difference between de-extinction and cloning). This equates to putting together a 3-billion-piece puzzle, with our hands tied behind our back.
Inevitably some argue that money used on this project could be put to better use through actively preserving habitats of animals on the brink. But this project will have enormous conservation benefits to already threatened species, and has the potential to generate significant advancements to human health.
The crux of this is through producing the genetic tools and methods to edit the DNA of stem cells, and then turn those stem cells back into an animal. This technology will not only meet our end goal of turning a surrogate marsupial cell into a thylacine, but in the process allow us to reintroduce genetic diversity into endangered populations. We could take bio-banked tissues of rare, endangered species, and produce animals to be reintroduced into the environment to increase beneficial genetic diversity. Not only this, but the work could be applied for targeted gene therapy to correct mutations underlying human health and cancer.
So, should we bring the thylacine back, yes. Not only for the fate of this incredible, lost species, but also the significant benefits this project will produce for humanity as a whole. As long as we keep the moral and ethical considerations at the forefront, we have an opportunity to correct the wrongs of the past.
Parwinder Kaur, Geneticist and Biotechnologist
MAYBE. It depends on the complex risks re-introductions of extinct species would have on our current ecosystems. Will such risks outweigh the potential benefits and fear unsuccessful environmental management actions?
Earlier this year, our DNA Zoo Australia team completed a chromosome-length 3D genome map of thylacine’s closest living relative: the numbat. This raised the tantalising prospect of piecing together the thylacine’s genetic sequence, which in turn would offer the possibility of reintroducing one of Australia’s most iconic lost species.
But the big question our team faced was: shall we go after resurrecting the dead, or help numbats first? Numbats are now struggling and on the verge of extinction, with fewer than 1,000 numbats left in the wild and the species officially listed as endangered. The answer was simple: focus on what we have first.
We live in exciting times when biotechnology offers various promising alternatives for achieving this purpose, and probably a better use of these techniques will be towards preserving critically endangered species on the verge of extinction.
In my opinion, focusing on de-extinction could compromise biodiversity conservation by diverting resources from preserving ecosystems and preventing newer extinctions. It is no trivial work in terms of resources and skills required to revive an extinct animal; given the low level of investments into conservation research, we need to be very careful as a scientific community to not prioritise preservation over resurrection.
Euan Ritchie, Wildlife Ecologist
MAYBE. There is much to consider with such an ambitious project. Most importantly, we must greatly increase efforts to save and recover living species, and it’s simply far cheaper and easier to conserve what we have than to attempt to resurrect species and their ecological roles.
At current rates of species decline and extinction, de-extinction will not be able to come even close to resurrecting what we have destroyed. So which species do we try to bring back, and why? And, if it is even possible, will resurrected species behave the same way, will they perform the same ecological roles and affect ecosystems in the same way? I’m very doubtful.
However, we must stop perpetuating the idea that conservation is a zero-sum game, feeding a flawed narrative that we must choose which projects, species and ecosystems we support. A shortage of money isn’t the issue, values and priorities are. For perspective, it’s estimated Australia spent A$11.6 billion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2021–22, but recently only allocated A$10 million to 100 priority threatened species, fewer than 6% of the country’s listed threatened species.
It’s vital we maintain robust scrutiny and scepticism of ambitious projects, but we must also support scientists to push boundaries and take educated risks. And sometimes we learn, even when we ‘fail’.
Personally, I would love to see thylacines back in the wild, but I’m not optimistic we’ll see a self-sustaining and genetically diverse population of thylacines any time soon, if at all. If such projects are to proceed, I also hope that Indigenous people, and communities more broadly, are properly consulted and involved.
Julian Koplin, Bioethicist
YES. Most of us think we should protect ecosystems from damage and prevent animals from going extinct. This might be because we value nature for its own sake, or it might be because we think biodiversity is good for humans ourselves.
Importantly, both of these reasons also support de-extinction. One reason to bring back (approximations of) animals like the Tasmanian tiger and woolly mammoth is to help restore the ecosystems they used to live in; another is to bring humans a sense of wonder and awe, and perhaps even greater respect for the natural world. So, why not push ahead?
Perhaps the most serious ethical worry is that de-extinction is a poor use of resources; we could probably make a bigger difference to biodiversity by funding conservation efforts instead. But this objection isn’t decisive. The costs of de-extinction may come down over time.
Also, it’s unclear whether many people funding de-extinction efforts would otherwise have funded traditional conservation projects instead. We should keep an eye on the costs, but we shouldn’t reject de-extinction outright.
Corey Bradshaw, Ecologist
NO. While the scientific endeavour to demonstrate capacity to re-animate long-extinct species does have some merit, claiming that the approach will counter present-day extinction rates or could be used as a conservation tool is naïve.
Viable populations require thousands of genetically diverse individuals to be able to persist in the wild. There is simply no prospect for recreating a sufficient sample of genetically diverse individual thylacines that could survive and persist once released.
Also, large predators like thylacines require large home ranges to gather food, establish territories, and raise young. The reason they were driven to extinction in the first instance was due to perceived conflict with landholders, so even if the problem of genetic diversity could be solved, the social licence to re-establish a large population of predators is unlikely to be granted (consider the case of dingo persecution throughout most of Australia today).
Furthermore, the available habitats in Australia that could support a large population of thylacines have dwindled or been degraded radically since the early 19th Century. Combined with no-analogue climates of the immediate future due to global warming, it is unlikely that there would be sufficient available habitat to support a viable population.
Well, what sorts of animals do you typically imagine when you think about apex predators? Great white sharks, polar bears, killer whales, crocodiles, African lions, anacondas … perhaps a wedge-tailed eagle?
To determine what the apex predator of the world is, we first need to understand what types of “predators” there are, and what we mean by “apex”.
Different types of predators
Contrary to popular belief, predators aren’t just species with large sharp teeth or fangs, hooked beaks, or razor-sharp claws. A “predator” is any species that eats part of, or all of, another living species – or in some cases its own species (which is called “cannibalism”).
These animals eat the flesh of other animals. Cannibalism is a special form of carnivory, and is widespread across the animal world. It has been recorded in several hundred species, including spiders, insects, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals (including humans).
These are animals that eat plants, but they’re still considered predators. So yes, kangaroos are predators too, but they simply eat plants rather than animals. Although it appears this wasn’t always the case in Australia – beware Balbaroo fangaroo!
These are animals or other organisms that live on (ectoparasites) or in (endoparasites) another species. They feed on this “host” for nutrients. Ticks, leeches and hookworms are all examples of parasites.
These are organisms whose young develop on or inside another host organism, feed on it, and end up killing the host as a result. The iconic movie Alien features such a scenario, albeit fictional (although you might want to wait a few years before watching it). This group includes species of wasps, flies, beetles and worms.
It all depends on the environment
Apex predators are often referred to as “top predators” because they sit at the top of their food chain and are typically considered to be dominant and without predators of their own.
It’s important to note apex predators don’t have to be particularly large. Although they often are, it’s more about how their size compares with the species they interact with, and how they behave within their own ecological community.
Imagine a terrarium in your home with some plants and various insects, including a praying mantis; the praying mantis is most certainly the apex predator here.
Praying mantises eat many different types of other insects, including crickets, grasshoppers, butterflies, moths, spiders and beetles. They may even eat other praying mantises, which is called cannibalism. Shutterstock
Now imagine letting them all loose in a field somewhere. The praying mantis is now potentially on the menu for a spider, frog, bird, or other larger predator.
A predator that is below other predators in the “pecking order” can be referred to as a mesopredator. For example, wolves are often considered apex predators, and are known to compete with and even kill coyotes (mesopredators).
In areas without wolves, however, coyotes might ascend to the apex position. They are known to kill cats, which can indirectly benefit songbirds.
In Australia, dingoes are considered apex predators. They hunt and eat a wide range of animals including kangaroos, emus, feral goats and feral deer.
Because our question is concerned with determining the world’s main apex predator, we’ll need to consider how widespread a species is.
There are some “apex” predators that are found throughout much of the world, including grey wolves, blue whales, killer whales and great white sharks.
In my mind, however, humans are clearly the overall apex predator of the world. We’ve even been called the super-predator!
Human impact spans the entire globe – from the land to sea, and the south pole to the north pole.
Compared to other predators, we use a much larger percentage of the world’s food resources, as well as water and other natural materials. In doing so, we cause widespread environmental harm.
Humans are having a devastating effect on some other apex predator populations, threatening their chances of long-term survival.
For instance, although there are situations where large sharks have killed humans, it’s estimated humans kill more than 100 million sharks per year. Many shark species are at risk of extinction as a result.
The good news is we can all make choices to help reduce our environmental footprints and help protect other species – predator or otherwise.
By Euan Ritchie (Deakin University), Erin O’Donnell (The University of Melbourne), Gregory Moore (The University of Melbourne), Kristen Lyons (The University of Queensland), Peter Christoff (The University of Melbourne), and Stefan Kaufman (Monash University).
How to counter the gloom? We asked six environmental experts to each nominate a book about the climate crisis that offers hope.
Euan Ritchie recommends All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Keeble Wilkinson (2020)
Despair, disempowerment and division are all enemies of positive action, and crippling in the face of tremendous challenges such as the climate change crisis. All We Can Save is the antithesis of such emotions and concerns. Hope is a powerful motivator, especially when it’s delivered in such a creative, thoughtful, inclusive and diverse way.
Critically, All We Can Save brings together women’s voices, spanning culture, geography and ages. Women are still, shamefully, not heard nearly enough – and worse, actively suppressed in some instances and quarters. Society suffers because of this.
In this book, however, scientists, farmers, teachers, artists, journalists, lawyers, activists and others share their unique perspectives, through their essays, poetry and art. They explore how to confront the climate crisis, the damage already inflicted, but most importantly, how to bring about positive change and progress.
Peter Christoff recommends Great Adaptations: In the Shadow of a Climate Crisis by Morgan Phillips (2021)
There is no point in pretending. There are no “good stories” about global warming. They are all framed by the crisis we refuse to talk about in Australia. We desperately need a national conversation about how to live in the perilous world forming around us.
Phillips doesn’t flinch from contemplating bleak prospects: systemic collapses, food and water insecurity, biodiversity decline. But his focus is neither on sheer doom, nor naive techno-optimism. He instead brings careful balance to his consideration of good adaptation and harmful (mal) adaptation.
He pushes us to think beyond fragmented reactions to individual climate catastrophes, such as droughts, fires, floods and storms – reactions that favour the wealthy and are based on the delusion that all will spring back to “normal”.
His aim is realistic “transformative adaptation”. He argues for enduring, flexible and equitable adjustments to nature’s new lottery. At the heart of his examples of success – from “fog harvesting” for water in arid Morocco to climate-responsive agro-forestry in Nepal – is the need for constant dialogue to guide adjustments to changing conditions.
Great Adaptations is a brilliant provocation for the discussion we must have.
Kristen Lyons recommends Who Really Feeds the World? The Failure of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology by Vandana Shiva (2016)
The climate crisis has accentuated already unjust and ecologically unviable global food systems. Australia’s recent bushfires and floods, for example, destroyed crops, devastated food-producing landscapes and their communities, and disrupted transport networks. Each laid bare a corporate controlled food system characterised by escalating food prices, growing rates of hunger, and food insecurity.
How might fair and just food systems be fostered – systems that are resilient in the face of climate chaos?
In Who Really Feeds the World? The Failure of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology, Vandana Shiva sets out principles and practices that may offer some solutions. Drawing on a range of examples from around the world, including the Navdanya movement based in India (which she founded), Shiva presents agroecology, living soil, biodiversity and small-scale farming as life-affirming responses.
Small-scale farmers on small parcels of land already produce 70% of the world’s food. They really can feed the world.
The challenge then – one of many – is how we might breathe life into the principles advocated by this award-winning environmental activist, recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and Sydney Peace Prize. In an Australian context, this will include addressing the violent settler-colonial foundations upon which Australia’s agriculture and food systems have been built.
Erin O’Donnell recommends Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science by Jessica Hernandez (2022)
Raging fires, desperate droughts and unprecedented floods underscore the power and terror of the climate catastrophe. As we experience these brutal reminders of our dependence on healthy ecosystems, many of us are searching for a different way to reconnect with the world around us.
In Fresh Banana Leaves, Jessica Hernandez offers us the concept of “kincentric ecology”, in which the enduring relationship between Indigenous peoples and place is one of mutual interdependence.
She argues that “we are not separate from nature” and that “Indigenous peoples view their natural resources and surroundings as part of their kin, relatives, and communities”.
Hernandez’s book demonstrates the power of Indigenous science (and the leadership of Indigenous peoples) to help bring all of us back into good relations with nature. In doing so, she offers us a glimpse of a decolonised, just and sustainable future.
Stefan Kaufman recommends The Precipice: Exisiential Risk and the Future of Humanity by Toby Ord (2020)
In The Precipice, Toby Ord considers a range of “existential risks” that could, in the next few centuries, curtail the immense potential for long-term human flourishing. It leaves me perversely hopeful about climate change for three reasons.
Firstly, while acknowledging that climate change will cause immense suffering, Ord only identifies a few, relatively unlikely scenarios that leave humanity extinct or “stuck” barely surviving.
Secondly, he considers a range of human-generated and natural risks that are of even greater concern. Many of these risks are exacerbated by the increasing accessibility of powerful technologies once available only to elites, such as bio-engineering and artificial intelligence. These are all risks that we either create or will need to cooperate to mitigate; their occurrence and their level of impact are within our influence.
Thirdly, Ord makes a compelling case that we have many of the institutions, technologies and policy tools necessary to manage long-term existential risks. There is work all of us can do now to help. Climate change can make many other risks worse. Solving it requires solving others at the same time.
The Precipice leaves one with a sense that we will need to be better humans to make it through the next centuries, but a brighter future awaits. If we attain this future, we will deserve to, because we will have married our power and prosperity with civilisational maturity, compassion and wisdom.
Greg Moore recommends Trees and Global Warming: The Role of Forests in Cooling and Warming the Atmosphere by William J Manning (2020)
As climates change and Australia warms, trees are often seen as a panacea, but, as is invariably the case with ecosystems, things can be complicated.
As William J. Manning tells us in Trees and Global Warming, trees can warm as well as cool the atmosphere. The colour of their leaves (light or dark green) influences how much radiation is absorbed, transmitted and reflected, and how much they cool.
Manning is not looking at trees and forests through rose-coloured glasses, but through a strong scientific lens. They come out as winners when it comes to tackling climate change because, cultivated effectively, they can shade and cool, reduce the urban heat-island effect, sequester carbon, and much more.
Trees are an essential, cost-effective and sustainable part of living with climate change. We must protect the trees and forests that we have. Planting more trees is part of a quick and cheap solution, providing more liveable towns and cities across our continent.
Numbats – dubbed Australia’s meerkats – are endangered. Shutterstock
Australia’s remarkable animals, plants and ecosystems are world-renowned, and rightly so.
Unfortunately, our famous ecosystems are not OK. Many are hurtling towards collapse, threatening even iconic species like the koala, platypus and the numbat. More and more species are going extinct, with over 100 since British colonisation. That means Australia has one of the worst conservation records in the world.
This represents a monumental government failure. Our leaders are failing in their duty of care to the environment. Yet so far, the election campaign has been unsettlingly silent on threatened species.
Here are five steps our next government should take.
1. Strengthen, enforce and align policy and laws
Australia’s environmental laws and policies are failing to safeguard our unique biodiversity from extinction. This has been established by a series of independentreviews, Auditor-Generalreports and Senateinquiries over the past decade.
The 2020 review of our main environmental protection laws offered 38 recommendations. To date, no major party has clearly committed to introducing and funding these recommendations.
To actually make a difference to the environment, it’s vital we achieve policy alignment. That means, for instance, ruling out new coal mines if we would like to keep the world’s largest coral reef system alive. Similarly, widespread land clearing in Queensland and New South Wales makes tree planting initiatives pointless on an emissions front.
Australia can have coal or coral reefs – but not both, as activists have been pointing out through protests like this against a coal terminal expansion in Queensland in 2013. AAP
Despite Australia’s wealth of species, our laws protecting biodiversity are much laxer than in other developed nations like the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. These nations have mandatory monitoring of all threatened species, which means they can detect species decline early and step in before it’s too late.
2. Invest in the environment
How much do you think the federal government spends on helping our threatened species recover? The answer is shockingly low: Around $50 million per year across the entire country. That’s less than $2 a year per Australian. The government spent the same amount on supporting the business events industry through the pandemic.
Our overall environmental spending, too, is woefully inadequate. In an age of mounting environmental threats, federal funding has fallen sharply over the past nine years.
For conservationists, this means distressing decisions. With a tiny amount of funding, you can’t save every species. That means ongoing neglect and more extinctions looming.
This investment is far less than what is needed to recover threatened species or to reduce the very real financial risks from biodiversity loss. If the government doesn’t see the environment as a serious investment, why should the private sector?
The next government should fix this nature finance gap. It’s not as if there isn’t money. The estimated annual cost of recovering every one of Australia’s ~1,800 threatened species is roughly a mere 7% of the Coalition’s $23 billion of projects promised in the month since the budget was released in late March.
3. Tackle the threats
We already have detailed knowledge of the major threats facing our species and ecosystems: the ongoing destruction or alteration of vital habitat, the damage done by invasive species like foxes, rabbits and cats, as well as pollution, disease and climate change. To protect our species from these threats requires laws and policies with teeth, as well as investment.
If we protect threatened species habitat by stopping clearing of native vegetation, mineral extraction, or changing fishing practices, we will not only get better outcomes for biodiversity but also save money in many cases. Why? Because it’s vastly cheaper to conserve ecosystems and species in good health than attempt recovery when they’re already in decline or flatlining.
Phasing out coal, oil and gas will also be vital to stem the damage done by climate change, as well as boosting support for green infrastructure and energy.
Any actions taken to protect our environment and recover species must be evidence-based and have robust monitoring in place, so we can figure out if these actions actually work in a cost-effective manner against specific objectives. This is done routinely in the US.
Salvaging our damaged environment is going to take time. That means in many cases, we’ll need firm, multi-partisan commitments to sustained actions, sometimes even across electoral cycles. Piecemeal, short-term or politicised conservation will not help Australia’s biodiversity long-term and do not represent best use of public money.
4. Look to Indigenous leadership to heal Country
For millennia, First Nations people have cared for Australia’s species and shaped ecosystems.
In many areas, their forced displacement and disconnection with longstanding cultural practices is linked to further damage to the environment, such as more severe fires.
Focusing on Indigenous management of Country can deliver environmental, cultural and social benefits. This means increasing representation of Indigenous people and communities in ecosystem policy and management decisions.
5. Work with communities and across boundaries
We must urgently engage and empower local communities and landowners to look after the species on their land. Almost half of Australia’s threatened species can be found on private land, including farms and pastoral properties. We already have good examples of what this can look like.
The next government should radically scale up investment in biodiversity on farms, through rebates and tax incentives for conservation covenants and sustainable agriculture. In many cases, caring for species can improve farming outcomes.
Conservation is good for humans and all other species
Corroboree frogs are critically endangered. Shutterstock
To care for the environment and the other species we live alongside is good for us as people. Tending to nature in our cities makes people happier and healthier.
Protecting key plants and animals ensures key “services” like pollination and the cycling of soil nutrients continues.
We’re lucky to live in a land of such rich biodiversity, from the ancient Wollemi pine to remarkable Lord Howe island stick insects and striking corroboree frogs. But we are not looking after these species and their homes properly. The next government must take serious and swift action to save our species.
A koala joey was found drenched and trembling near the edge of the Brisbane River. It was one of the lucky animals to be rescued from the severe floodwaters. Image credit: WWF Australia
By Euan Ritchie (Deakin University) and Chris J Jolly (Macquarie University).
For over two decades, bull sharks have called a Brisbane golf course home after, it’s believed, a flood washed them into the course’s lake in 1996. Now, after severe floods connected their landlocked home back to the river system, these sharks have gone missing, perhaps attempting to seek larger water bodies.
This bizarre tale is one of many accounts illustrating how Australia’s wildlife respond to flooding. But the sad reality is many don’t survive. Those that do may find their homes destroyed or, like those bull sharks and others, find themselves displaced far from their original homes or suitable habitat.
The RSPCA and other wildlife care organisations have received hundreds of calls to help rescue and care for stranded animals. But the true toll on wildlife will remain unknown, in part because we know surprisingly little about the impacts of floods on wildlife.
Still, as many animals have amazing abilities to survive fire, so too do many possess the means to survive or even profit from floods. After all, Australia’s wildlife has evolved over millions of years to survive in this land of extremes.
How wildlife responds to floods
Floods rapidly turn land habitats into underwater habitats, allowing aquatic animals to venture into places you wouldn’t expect. Flooding during northern Australia’s annual wet season, for example, sees crocodiles occasionally turn up in people’s backyard pools.
Land-dwelling animals typically don’t fare as well in floods. Some may be able to detect imminent inundation and head for higher, drier ground. Others simply don’t have the ability or opportunity to take evasive action in time. This can include animals with dependent young in burrows, such as wombats, platypus and echidnas.
The extent to which flooding affects animals will depend on their ability to sense what’s coming and how they’re able to respond. Unlike humans who must learn to swim, most animals are born with the ability.
Echidnas, for example, have been known to cover large areas of open water, but fast flowing, powerful floods pose a very different proposition.
Animals that can fly – such as many insects, bats and birds – may be able to escape. But their success will also partly depend on the scale and severity of weather systems causing floods.
Many birds, for example, couldn’t get away from the heavy rain and seek shelter, ending up waterlogged. If birds are exhausted and can’t fly, they may suffer from exposure and also be more vulnerable to predators, such as feral cats and foxes.
During floods, age old predator-prey relationships, forged through evolution, can break down. Animals are more focused on self preservation, rather than their next meal. This can result in strange, ceasefire congregations.
For example, a venomous eastern brown snake was filmed being an unintentional life raft for frogs and mice. Likewise, many snakes, lizards and frogs are expert climbers, and will seek safety in trees – with or without company.
Some spiders have ingenious ways of finding safety, including spinning balloon-like webs to initiate wind-driven lift-off: destination dry land. This is what happened when Victoria’s Gippsland region flooded last year.
One of the challenges of extreme events is it can make food hard to find. Some animals – including microbats, pygmy possums, and many reptiles – may reduce their energy requirements by essentially going to “sleep” for extended periods, commonly referred to as torpor. This includes echidnas and Antechinus (insect-eating marsupials), in response to bushfire.
Might they do the same during floods? We really don’t know, and it largely depends on an animal’s physiology. In general, invertebrates, frogs, fish and reptiles are far better at dealing with reduced access to food than birds and mammals.
During floods species will share refuge such as trees. Damian Kelly Photography
What happens when floods recede?
Flooding may provide a bounty for some species. Some predators such as cats, foxes, and birds of prey, may have access to exhausted prey with fewer places to hide. These same predators may scavenge the windfall of dead animals.
Fish, waterbirds, turtles and other aquatic or semi-aquatic life may benefit from an influx of nutrients, increasing foraging opportunities and even stimulating breeding events.
Other wildlife may face harsher realities. Some may become trapped far from their homes. Those that attempt to return home will have to run the gauntlet of different habitats, roads, cats, dogs and foxes, and other threats.
Even if they make it home, will their habitats be the same or destroyed? Fast and large volumes of water can destroy vegetation and other habitat structures (soils, rock piles) in minutes, but they may take many years or decades to return, if ever.
Floodwaters can also carry extremely high levels of pollution, leading to further tragic events such as fish kills and the poisoning of animals throughout food chains.
How can you help?
Seeing wildlife in distress is confronting, and many of us may feel compelled to want to rescue animals in floodwaters. However, great caution is required.
Wading into floodwaters can put yourself at significant risk. Currents can be swift. Water can carry submerged and dangerous obstacles, as well as chemicals, sewage and pathogens. And distressed animals may panic when approached, putting them and yourself at further risk.
For example, adult male eastern grey kangaroos regularly exceed 70 kilograms with long, razor sharp claws and toe nails, and powerful arms and legs. They’ve been known to deftly use these tools to drown hostile farm dogs in dams and other water bodies.
So unless you’re a trained wildlife expert or animal carer, we don’t recommend you try to save animals yourself. There is more advice online, such as here and here.
If you’d like to support the care and recovery of wildlife following the floods, a number of organisations are taking donations, including WWF Australia, WIRES and the RSPCA.
What does the future hold?
While many Australian wildlife species are well adapted to dealing with periodic natural disasters, including floods, we and wildlife will face even more intense events in the future under climate change. Cutting greenhouse gas emissions can lessen this impact.
For common, widespread species such as kangaroos, the loss of individuals to infrequent, albeit severe, events is tragic but overall doesn’t pose a great problem. But if floods, fires and other extreme events become more regular, we could see some populations or species at increased risk of local or even total extinction.
This highlights how Earth’s two existential crises – climate change and biodiversity loss – are inextricably linked. We must combat them swiftly and substantially, together, if we’re to avoid a bleak future.
With the scrutiny on climate change, the collapse of Australian ecosystems has received scant attention. But saving them is entirely possible.
Australia’s iconic koala, listed as endangered in the Australian regions of Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory in 2022, is unfortunately far from alone.
Since European colonisation of Australia, roughly 230 years ago, at least 39 native mammal species have been driven to extinction. The Australian continent, with its extraordinary and largely unique (endemic) plants and animals, now has more than 1,900 threatened species and ecological communities.
Ecosystems from the tropics to Antarctica, including the Great Barrier Reef, are showing signs of collapse.
Ecologists and conservation biologists have been documenting and warning of the widespread demise of nature for decades. Then in 2019 an intergovernmental body confirmed what many had been pointing out: we are in the midst of Earth’s sixth mass extinction event.
Using the fossil record as a reference for ‘normal’ rates of extinction, we are now seeing rates of extinction tens, hundreds or thousands of times higher than expected.
It’s a crisis no less catastrophic than climate change, but one that garners far less attention.
Far too few recognise the need to combat climate change, environmental destruction, and extinction in an integrated way.
Addressing climate change has rightly received considerable global attention. But climate change is one dimension — albeit a big one — of the environmental and extinction crisis we face.
Without a substantial increase in investment in conservation, habitat destruction and modification, invasive species, pollution, and disease will continue to be key threats. If we hope to turn things around, we need stronger, not weaker environmental legislation. And ultimately, if environmental decline is to stop, we will need to confront the main driver of these issues: consumption and living unsustainably.
Climate change, extinction, and environmental health are inextricably linked.
Protecting forests, either on land or underwater, helps to capture and store carbon thereby helping to fight climate change. It also provides homes for countless species. Restoring whale populations can increase the productivity of oceans, as what whales leave behind after their meals helps to fertilise microscopic phytoplankton, which themselves capture carbon and drive foodchains.
Restoring or protecting nature via returning species to landscapes, often known as ‘rewilding’, is seen as a key ingredient in fighting climate change and extinction.
Another key ingredient for change is investment. The more countries invest in conservation, the better their conservation outcomes will be. Money is needed for establishing conservation reserves, and just as importantly, managing them. It also costs money to monitor species’ populations and the diversity of plants, animals, fungi and other organisms within them.
By area, most land and sea is not under conservation protection, and many threatened species occur on private land. Conservation initiatives spanning public and private land would better protect them.
Investing in people to carry out conservation would have far reaching benefits. For example, Indigenous Protected Areas and Indigenous Ranger programs help to conserve native plants and animals, reduce invasive animal populations, manage fire, and maintain connections with culture and Country. Likewise, undertaking pest animal control, revegetation, species reintroductions and other conservation-focussed actions, can create jobs in cities and regional towns.
It’s estimated it would cost around A$1.7 billion a year to bring all the species on Australia’s threatened list back to health. Australia currently spends around A$120 million a year on targeted threatened species conservation and recovery. Recently, it committed A$10 million (or $100,000 each) to 100 species deemed a priority, of the more than 1,800 species on the threatened list.
Despite its immense social, cultural, economic and environmental value, Australian governments and society seemingly don’t see the environment as a priority investment. The question we must confront, is why?
Imagine two of the world’s most iconic canids – a dingo and a wolf – head to head in a fight. Who would win?
Before we examine the combatants in more detail, we need to answer an important question first, which wolf and which dingo? Taxonomy – the way we describe, name and classify Earth’s biodiversity – remains contentious for both animals.
As for wolves, there are North American (“Grey”), Mexican, Eurasian, Himalayan, Asiatic, Indian and Tibetan, Red, African golden, Ethiopian and even “ghost wolves” – yes, ghost wolves! Ghost wolves are species we can recognise from the past using genetic information, but they no longer survive and no fossils are known to exist.
And then there are “wolves” that aren’t wolves at all: the fox-like maned wolf in South America, and the gargantuan, now-extinct dire wolf.
For the purposes of this battle, let’s assume it’s between a grey wolf and an alpine dingo.
Why do dogs, dingoes and wolves fight?
For wild canids, fights occur for many reasons, within and between species when they overlap. Wolves and dingoes fight for mates, to attain dominance within packs, and to establish and maintain their territories.
So, let’s get to know each opponent a little better.
Grey wolves are what we call hyper-carnivores, feeding predominantly on other animals, in many cases large prey such as deer, elk, moose and bison.
Dingoes are omnivores with a broad, varied diet. They eat everything from fruits, to invertebrates, to small and large vertebrates – think lizards, birds, wombats, wallabies, possums, kangaroos, and feral animals like goats and deer. Dingoes will also scavenge food and carcasses.
Aside from humans, it’s thought the grey wolf was once the world’s most widespread mammal, where it, and its subspecies, occurred across much of Europe, Asia, and North and Central America. But, like with dingoes, humans have caused substantial population and range decline of wolves.
The battle: terrain is crucial
The terrain of the arena for our combatants would be crucial. Dingoes and wolves are capable of moving at great speeds, sustained for long periods of time, especially in open country. Both can reach top speeds in the range of 50-60 kilometres per hour!
However, dingoes arguably have the advantage in tight spots, in terms of their much smaller size, greater agility and flexibility, and climbing abilities. Dingoes typically weigh between 15 and 20 kilograms, while grey wolves are usually in the range of 30-65kg, and up to around 80kg for some males.
Dingoes have been recorded vertically jumping 2 metres and climbing fences, making them quite cat-like in many respects. So, if the battle occurs among many obstacles and on steep terrain, this will give dingoes an edge.
But if the fight is in the open, the much heavier, taller, and longer wolves will be too much for dingoes. They also pack a heavier bite quotient (bite force relative to body mass) of 136 as compared to the dingo’s 108.
Having said that, wolves are much taller than dingoes, around 65-80 centimetres and 45-60cm at their shoulders, respectively. So it’s possible a wily dingo could dash under the legs of a tall wolf and launch an attack on the vulnerable underbelly.
What about pack vs pack?
The final factor to consider is whether the fight is simply one dingo vs one wolf. Both can occur as individuals or in packs.
Dingoes are typically found alone, in pairs or in small packs of a few individuals, but occasionally can be found in much larger, less socially cohesive groups of ten or more when food resources are plentiful.
Wolves, on the other hand, are often found in groups of between five and ten, but much larger packs of 20 or more can also occur.
I spoke to Lyn Watson, who runs the Dingo Discovery and Research Centre. She says dingoes are “flight, rather than fight, canids”. This is wise behaviour, as dingoes are small in number and size and can’t rely on a large pack, like wolves sometimes can, to substitute them should they become injured in a fight.
She goes on to say that from her 30 years of observations, female dingoes are particularly deadly.
While dingoes are small, bonded pairs will fight in a coordinated way. Males fight in traditional neck and throat grabs, or “elbow”, but their bonded other has a completely different mode – and it’s deadly.
The female will stay at the periphery then dart into the soft parts of the combatant that is threatening her mate. She aims to maim – and does so, targeting the most “sensitive” of areas, enough said!
So if it’s pack vs pack, wolves will be far too strong. But if a single wolf was unlucky enough to come across a pack of dingoes, the tide could turn strongly in favour of dingoes.
Learning to live together
Even though wolves and dingoes fight in the wild, despite common perceptions, they generally pose a very small risk to people, especially if we adhere to advice such as not feeding them.
Domestic and feral dogs pose a far greater risk to us. It’s estimated that around the world, dogs bite and injure tens of millions of people annually. In the US alone, it’s thought around 4.5 million people are bitten by dogs each year.
Of course, in reality wolves and dingoes will never fight each other in the wild. The greatest threat they both face is the ongoing destruction of their habitats and widespread direct persecution from humans (trapping, poisoning, shooting, and exclusion from areas), often aimed at protecting livestock.
Like other apex predators, dingoes and wolves have critical roles in our ecosystems and, in many cases, have deep cultural significance for Indigenous people. We must find more ethical and sustainable ways to share our world.
This article is part of the “Who would win?” series, where wildlife experts dream up hypothetical battles between predators (all in the name of science).
By Euan Ritchie (Deakin University), Ben Moore (Western Sydney University), Jen Martin (The University of Melbourne), Mark Hall (Western Sydney University), Megan C Evans (UNSW), and Ross Crates (Australian National University).
What do koalas, barking owls, greater gliders, southern rainbow skinks, native bees, and regent honeyeaters all have in common? Like many native species, they can all be found in vegetation along fences and roadsides outside formal conservation areas.
They may be relatively small, but these patches and strips conserve critical remnant habitat and have disproportionate conservation value worldwide. They represent the last vestiges of once-expansive tracts of woodland and forests, long lost to the chainsaw or plough.
And yet, the NSW government last week made it legal for rural landholders to clear vegetation on their properties, up to 25 metres from their property boundaries, without approval. This radical measure is proposed to protect people and properties from fires, despite the lack of such an explicit recommendation from federal and state-based inquiries into the devastating 2019-20 bushfires.
This is poor environmental policy that lacks apparent consideration or justification of its potentially substantial ecological costs. It also gravely undermines the NSW government’s recent announcement of a plan for “zero extinction” within the state’s national parks, as the success of protected reserves for conservation is greatly enhanced by connection with surrounding “off-reserve” habitat.
Small breaks in habitat can have big impacts
A 25m firebreak might sound innocuous, but when multiplied by the length of property boundaries in NSW, the scale of potential clearing and impacts is alarming, and could run into the hundreds of thousands of kilometres.
Some plants, animals and fungi live in these strips of vegetation permanently. Others use them to travel between larger habitat patches. And for migratory species, the vegetation provides crucial refuelling stops on long distance journeys.
For example, the roadside area in Victoria’s Strathbogie Ranges shown below is home to nine species of tree-dwelling native mammals: two species of brushtail possums, three species of gliders (including threatened greater gliders), common ringtail possums, koalas, brush-tailed phascogales, and agile antenchinus (small marsupials).
Many of these species depend on tree hollows that can take a hundred years to form. If destroyed, they are effectively irreplaceable.
Creating breaks in largely continuous vegetation, or further fragmenting already disjointed vegetation, will not only directly destroy habitat, but can severely lower the quality of adjoining habitat.
This is because firebreaks of 25 m (or 50 m where neighbouring landholders both clear) could prevent the movement and dispersal of many plant and animal species, including critical pollinators such as native bees.
An entire suite of woodland birds, including the critically endangered regent honeyeater, are threatened because they depend on thin strips of vegetation communities that often occur inside fence-lines on private land.
For instance, scientific monitoring has shown five pairs of regent honeyeaters (50% of all birds located so far this season) are nesting or foraging within 25m of a single fence-line in the upper Hunter Valley. This highlights just how big an impact the loss of one small, private location could have on a species already on the brink of extinction.
But it’s not just regent honeyeaters. The management plan for the vulnerable glossy black cockatoo makes specific recommendation that vegetation corridors be maintained, as they’re essential for the cockatoos to travel between suitable large patches.
Native bee conservation also relies on the protection of remnant habitat adjoining fields. Continued removal of habitat on private land will hinder chances of conserving these species.
Disastrous clearing laws
The new clearing code does have some regulations in place, albeit meagre. For example, on the Rural Fire Service website, it says the code allows “clearing only in identified areas, such as areas which are zoned as Rural, and which are considered bush fire prone”. And according to the RFS boundary clearing tool landowners aren’t allowed to clear vegetation near watercourses (riparian vegetation).
Even before introducing this new code, NSW’s clearing laws were an environmental disaster. In 2019, The NSW Audit Office found:
clearing of native vegetation on rural land is not effectively regulated [and] action is rarely taken against landholders who unlawfully clear native vegetation.
The data back this up. In 2019, over 54,500 hectares were cleared in NSW. Of this, 74% was “unexplained”, which means the clearing was either lawful (but didn’t require state government approval), unlawful or not fully compliant with approvals.
Landholders need to show they’ve complied with clearing laws only after they’ve already cleared the land. But this is too late for wildlife, including plant species, many of which are threatened.
Landholders follow self-assessable codes, but problems with these policies have been identified time and time again — they cumulatively allow a huge amount of clearing, and compliance and enforcement are ineffective.
We also know, thanks to various case studies, the policy of “offsetting” environmental damage by improving biodiversity elsewhere doesn’t work.
Nobody disputes the need to keep people and their assets safe against the risks of fire. The code should be amended to ensure clearing is only permitted where a genuinely clear and measurable fire risk reduction is demonstrated.
Granting permission to clear considerable amounts of native vegetation, hundreds if not thousands of metres away from homes and key infrastructure in large properties is hard to reconcile, and it seems that no attempt has been made to properly justify this legislation.
We should expect that a comprehensive assessment of the likely impacts of a significant change like this would inform public debate prior to decisions being made. But to our knowledge, no one has analysed, or at least revealed, how much land this rule change will affect, nor exactly what vegetation types and wildlife will likely be most affected.
A potentially devastating environmental precedent is being set, if other regions of Australia were to follow suit. The environment and Australians deserve better.
Australia is globally renowned for its abysmal conservation record – in roughly 230 years we’ve overseen the extinction of more mammal species than any other nation. The federal government’s Threatened Species Strategy was meant to address this confronting situation.
The final report on the five-year strategy has just been published. In it, Threatened Species Commissioner Dr Sally Box acknowledges while the plan had some important wins, it fell short in several areas, writing:
…there is much more work to do to ensure our native plants and animals thrive into the future, and this will require an ongoing collective effort.
Clearly, Australia must urgently chart a course towards better environmental and biodiversity outcomes. That means reflecting honestly on our successes and failures so far.
How did the strategy perform?
The strategy, announced in 2015, set 13 targets linked to three focus areas:
feral cat management
improving the population trajectories of 20 mammal, 21 bird and 30 plant species
improving practices to recover threatened species populations.
Given the scale of the problem, five years was never enough time to turn things around. Indeed, as the chart below shows, the report card indicates five “red lights” (targets not met) and three “orange lights” (targets only partially met). It gave just five “green lights” for targets met.
Summary of the Threatened Species Strategy’s targets and outcomes. Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment
Falling short on feral cats
Feral cats were arguably the most prominent focus of the strategy, despite other threats requiring as much or more attention, such as habitat destruction via land clearing.
However, the strategy did help start a national conversation about the damage cats wreak on wildlife and ecosystems, and how this can be better managed.
In the five years to the end of 2020, an estimated 1.5 million feral cats were killed under the strategy – 500,000 short of the 2 million goal. But this estimate is uncertain due to a lack of systematic data collection. In particular, the number of cats culled by farmers, amateur hunters and shooters is under-reported. And more broadly, information is scattered across local councils, non-government conservation agencies and other sources.
Australia’s feral cat population fluctuates according to rainfall, which determines the availability of prey – numbering between 2.1 million and 6.3 million. Limited investment in monitoring makes it impossible to know whether the average of 300,000 cats killed each year over the past five years will be enough for native wildlife to recover.
The government also failed in its goal to eradicate cats from five islands, only achieving this on Dirk Hartog Island off Western Australia. Importantly, that effort began in 2014, before the strategy was launched. And it was primarily funded by the WA government and an industryoffset scheme, so the federal government can’t really claim this success.
On a positive note, ten mainland areas excluding feral cats have been established or are nearly complete. Such areas are a vital lifeline for some wildlife species and can enable native species reintroductions in the future.
Priority species: how did we do?
The strategy met its target of ensuring recovery actions were underway for at least 50 threatened plant species and 60 ecological communities. It also made good headway into storing all Australia’s 1,400 threatened plant species in seed banks. This is good news.
The bad news is that, even with recovery actions, the population trajectories of most priority species failed to improve. For the 24 out of about 70 priority species where population numbers were deemed to have “improved” over five years, about 30% simply got worse at a slower rate than in the decade prior. This can hardly be deemed a success.
What’s more, the populations of at least eight priority species, including the eastern barred bandicoot, eastern bettong, Gilbert’s potoroo, mala, woylie, numbat and helmeted honeyeater, were increasing before the strategy began – and five of these deteriorated under the strategy.
The finding that more priority species recovery efforts failed than succeeded means either:
the wrong actions were implemented
the right actions were implemented but insufficient effort and funding were dedicated to recovery
the trajectories of the species selected for action simply couldn’t be improved in a 5-year window.
All these problems are alarming but can be rectified. For example, the government’s new Threatened Species Strategy, released in May, contains a more evidence-based process for determining priority species.
For some species, it’s unclear whether success can be attributed to the strategy. Some species with improved trajectories, such as the helmeted honeyeater, would likely have improved regardless, thanks to many years of community and other organisation’s conservation efforts before the strategy began.
What must change
According to the report, habitat loss is a key threat to more than half the 71 priority species in the strategy. But the strategy does not directly address habitat loss or climate change, saying other government policies are addressing those threats.
Of the priority bird species threatened by land clearing and fragmentation, the trajectory of most – including the swift parrot and malleefowl – did not improve under the five years of the strategy. For several, such as the Australasian bittern and regent honeyeater, the trajectory worsened.
Preventing and reversing habitat loss will take years of dedicated restoration, stronger legislation and enforcement. It also requires community engagement, because much threatened species habitat is on private properties.
Effective conservation also requires raising public awareness of the dire predicament of Australia’s 1,900-plus threatened species and ecological communities. But successive governments have sought to sugarcoat our failings over many decades.
Bushfires and other extreme events hampered the strategy’s recovery efforts. But climate change means such events are likely to worsen. The risks of failure should form part of conservation planning – and of course, Australia requires an effective plan for emissions reduction.
The strategy helped increase awareness of the plight our unique species face. Dedicated community groups had already spent years volunteering to monitor and recover populations, and the strategy helped fund some of these actions.
However, proper investment in conservation – such as actions to reduce threats, and establish and maintain protected areas – is urgently needed. The strategy is merely one step on the long and challenging road to conserving Australia’s precious species and ecosystems.
By Dana M Bergstrom (University of Wollongong), Euan Ritchie (Deakin University), Lesley Hughes (Macquarie University) and Michael Depledge (University of Exeter).
In 1992, 1,700 scientists warned that human beings and the natural world were “on a collision course”. Seventeen years later, scientists described planetary boundaries within which humans and other life could have a “safe space to operate”. These are environmental thresholds, such as the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and changes in land use.
Crossing such boundaries was considered a risk that would cause environmental changes so profound, they genuinely posed an existential threat to humanity.
This grave reality is what our major research paper, published today, confronts.
In what may be the most comprehensive evaluation of the environmental state of play in Australia, we show major and iconic ecosystems are collapsing across the continent and into Antarctica. These systems sustain life, and evidence of their demise shows we’re exceeding planetary boundaries.
We define collapse as the state where ecosystems have changed in a substantial, negative way from their original state – such as species or habitat loss, or reduced vegetation or coral cover – and are unlikely to recover.
The good and bad news
Ecosystems consist of living and non-living components, and their interactions. They work like a super-complex engine: when some components are removed or stop working, knock-on consequences can lead to system failure.
Our study is based on measured data and observations, not modelling or predictions for the future. Encouragingly, not all ecosystems we examined have collapsed across their entire range. We still have, for instance, some intact reefs on the Great Barrier Reef, especially in deeper waters. And northern Australia has some of the most intact and least-modified stretches of savanna woodlands on Earth.
Still, collapses are happening, including in regions critical for growing food. This includes the Murray-Darling Basin, which covers around 14% of Australia’s landmass. Its rivers and other freshwater systems support more than 30% of Australia’s food production.
The effects of floods, fires, heatwaves and storms do not stop at farm gates; they’re felt equally in agricultural areas and natural ecosystems. We shouldn’t forget how towns ran out of drinking water during the recent drought.
Drinking water is also at risk when ecosystems collapse in our water catchments. In Victoria, for example, the degradation of giant Mountain Ash forests greatly reduces the amount of water flowing through the Thompson catchment, threatening nearly five million people’s drinking water in Melbourne.
This is a dire wake-up call — not just a warning. Put bluntly, current changes across the continent, and their potential outcomes, pose an existential threat to our survival, and other life we share environments with.
In investigating patterns of collapse, we found most ecosystems experience multiple, concurrent pressures from both global climate change and regional human impacts (such as land clearing). Pressures are often additive and extreme.
Take the last 11 years in Western Australia as an example.
In the summer of 2010 and 2011, a heatwave spanning more than 300,000 square kilometres ravaged both marine and land ecosystems. The extreme heat devastated forests and woodlands, kelp forests, seagrass meadows and coral reefs. This catastrophe was followed by two cyclones.
A record-breaking, marine heatwave in late 2019 dealt a further blow. And another marine heatwave is predicted for this April.
These 19 ecosystems are collapsing: read about each
① Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system, extending over 2,300 kilometres. It is home to over 5,000 species of mollusk, 1,500 species of fish, 400 species of coral and around 240 species of birds. It spreads over almost 4,000 individual reefs, 900 continental islands, 300 coral cays and 150 inshore mangrove islands.
In the last 30 years, climate change and many regional pressures have combined to cause ecosystem collapse across the reef, with shallower reefs worse off than deeper reefs. These pressures include five mass coral bleaching events since 1998, marine heatwaves, major tropical cyclones, freshwater floods from extreme high rainfall events, flood sediment and pollution, ocean acidification and crown of thorns starfish outbreaks.
Major feedback loops that compound the pressures are now establishing. From 1985–2017, the reef lost half of all coral cover due to five massive bleaching events, of which two were consecutive (2016, 2017). In 2017, 67% of corals died along a 700km stretch.
The reef provides around A$12 trillion of ecosystem services and over 64,000 jobs. The Australian and Queensland governments have committed billions into reef protection but there are significant challenges to overcome.
Pressures:
Temperature
Ocean acidification
Salinity change
Native species interactions
Heatwave
Flood
Storm
Habitat change/loss
Runoff / pollution
Other (dredging, fishing, boat strikes, ship fouling, tourism debris)
② Australian Tropical Savannas
Australia’s tropical savannas sweep across more than 1 million square kilometres of northern Australia, from the western Kimberley region, WA, to the eastern edge of Queensland’s tropical coast. Savanna woodlands and forests have mainly gum trees over an understory of tall grasses and very ancient, poor soils.
These savannas are currently the least altered and unpolluted in the world, but they’re changing fast because of agriculture, mining and the effects of poor management decisions of the past. Land clearing has removed vegetation permanently, reducing food availability for wildlife. Climate change is adding further pressures as rains increase in the wet season, and dry seasons are becoming hotter and last longer.
Add in cat predation, the presence of cane toads, livestock encroachment and increasing bush fire frequency, and it becomes clear why Kakadu National Park is now a hot spot for mammal extinction.
Of particular urgency is the impact of a weed called giant African Gamba grass. It grows up to 4 m in height and produces up to 74,000 seeds per square metre. This adds a huge fuel load for fires, which burn 12 times more intensely than native grass fires, with flames penetrating and killing tree canopy. Gamba grass fires are very expensive to fight, cause loss of livestock and agricultural assets, and diminish the financial viability of the low carbon farming initiative of “savanna burning”.
Damage to the savannas affects the cultural, spiritual and socioeconomic livelihoods of First Nations communities. Loss of ecosystem services, production and pastoral lands is around A$113 million per year.
Pressures:
Rainfall changes
Temperature
Increasing CO2
Storm
Fire
Habitat change/loss/ mining
Invasive species
Livestock impacts/ harvesting
Water extraction
Human-lit fire
③ Mangrove Forests, Gulf of Carpentaria
In late 2015, nearly 40 million mangrove trees, representing around one million tons of carbon, died along 1,000 kilometres of the Gulf of Carpentaria. They succumbed to multiple pressures, including extremely high temperatures (39°C for 18 days), prolonged drought conditions, along with feral pigs, scrub fires and invasive weeds.
But most significant was the additive effect of severe El Niño conditions, which effectively pushed the sea away from the coast. This led to a short-term, extreme drop in mean sea level of around 20 centimetres, taking seawater away from mangrove roots.
Two severe tropical cyclones and damaging floods have since hampered its recovery. Continued tidal rafting of dead trunks is curtailing the establishment of seedlings and damaging remaining trees. And the decomposition of dead roots is probably affecting nursery habitat for fish and crustaceans.
The damage is expected to have lasting repercussions on the local economy and livelihoods of the region. The Gulf of Carpentaria fishing industry is worth A$30 million per year. First Nation people and recreational fishers also use the area. Ecosystem services from mangroves are worth around A$250,000 per hectare per year.
Pressures:
Rainfall changes- drought
Temperature
Salinity change
Sea level change – extreme lows
Heatwave
Flood
Storm
Habitat change/loss – erosion
Invasive species
Livestock impacts
Water extraction
Runoff
Human-lit fire
Other
④ Wet Tropical Rainforest, North Queensland
The wet tropics of North Queensland span around 450 kilometres, with rainforest covering around 1.85 million hectares. The region contains extraordinary diversity, with more than 3,000 plant species and over 60 vertebrate species found nowhere else on Earth. Although tropical rainforests make up only 0.1% of Australia’s landmass, they’re also home to over 50% of its ferns, butterflies and birds, and over 20% of freshwater fish, mammals, orchids, frogs and reptiles.
It’s for this reason and others, such as the significant First Nations cultural values, that the wet tropics are a World Heritage Area.
But they experience a range of pressures, many of which compound each other. These include habitat fragmentation, fringe livestock grazing, increased urbanisation, more frequent and severe fires and invasive plants and animals. Climate change poses perhaps the greatest threat overall.
Many of the region’s plants and animals live in discrete elevation bands: a “Goldilocks” combination of the right habitat and microclimate. As air temperatures increase and extremes in weather worsen, species’ areas of suitable habitat shrink. Some species have already moved to higher elevations and/or experienced striking local population declines. For example, in November 2018, a heatwave killed one-third of all spectacled flying foxes. And two possum species have disappeared from habitat under an altitude of 600 metres.
There have been four major storms or cyclones in 13 years. One event brought up to 2 m of rain, and the storm surge (seawater) inundated coastal rainforest. In 2006, one cyclone killed 35% of the regional cassowary populations, and cars and dogs killed many more as the birds left the destroyed forest.
The wet tropics are visited by around 5 million tourists per year, contributing over A$400 million to the region’s economy. In 2015, the wet tropics were valued at over A$5 billion per year, due to ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, biodiversity protection, and soil and water resources.
Species interactions (such as snake losing prey due to flooding)
Invasive plants and animals
Habitat fragmentation and destruction
Logging and land clearing
Altered fire regimes (more frequent and severe fires)
Erosion, sediment runoff and pollution
Overgrazing
Tourism
Urbanisation
Chytrid fungus
⑤ Western-central Arid Zones
The arid zone covers around 43% of Australia and is characterised by low lands, generally less than 300 metres in elevation, occasionally punctuated by a few big hills (higher than 1,000 metres). Vegetation ranges from woodlands, shrublands and grasslands to rangelands and desert dunes. There are isolated freshwater systems through the arid zone including waterholes and lakes, underground water, clay pans and springs fed by the Great Artesian Basin.
Widespread pastoral activities over the last 100 years have altered large areas of the arid zone from their pre-European states. Changes include major loss of habitats, reduction in small mammal populations, and livestock trampling of delicate biotic soil crusts (which maintain soil and dune stability and water infiltration).
There are more than 200 weed species. Some were planted for pasture, shade trees or to suppress dust, and dispersed by machinery, vehicles and floods. The most threatening is buffel grass. It has invaded extensive areas, wreaking havoc through degradation, habitat loss and biodiversity decline. Like Gamba grass in the north, in combination with extreme heatwaves, buffel grass has altered fire frequency and intensity. Hot fires now reach well into the tree canopy, killing the trees, as well as shrubs and native grasses.
Introduced feral animals include cattle, goats, camels, foxes, cats and pigs.
The arid zone rangelands are also economically important and contribute approximately A$4.4 billion per year to Australia’s economy through tourism, pastoralism and agriculture combined.
Pressures:
Rainfall changes
Temperature
Heat wave
Fire
Habitat change/loss
Invasive species
Livestock
Water extraction
⑥ Georgina Gidgee Woodlands, central Australia
Georgina gidgee is a keystone tree, a species that holds an ecosystem together, and dominates low open woodlands. It occurs naturally in small patches (up to 10 hectares) in the arid zone, growing mostly along watercourses and in clay depressions between spinifex grass dunes. Georgina gidgee woodlands are important hot spots for life, acting as refuges for native rodents, small marsupials, red kangaroos and bats. They provide permanent or temporary habitat for more than 80 bird species, and animals such as lizards and ants.
Georgina gidgee woodlands are heading for collapse due to a range of pressures including climate change, fire, overgrazing, wood collection, weeds, feral animals and changes in water flow. For example, harvesting for fence posts in the Brigalow Belt, Queensland, cleared 7.4 million ha of gidgee and associated ecosystems by 1998. What remains still suffers extensive loss through pastoral activities.
As mature trees are relatively long-lived (over 200 years), their recovery is slow. Without significant intervention, this ecosystem will turn into a desert.
The consequences of desertification include loss of shade for cattle, loss of water catchment surface for refilling the artesian basin, and loss of biodiversity and ecosystem function associated with their role in stabilising ancient dunes. Loss of vegetation also increases the number of giant, regional dust storms, which can travel all the way to the major cities in eastern Australia.
Pressures:
Rainfall changes
Temperature
Heat wave
Fire
Habitat change/loss
Invasive species
Livestock
Water extraction
Other
⑦ Ningaloo Reef, northern Western Australia
Ningaloo and adjacent reefs are within the World Heritage listed Ningaloo Coast, and comprise an ecosystem of immense biodiversity, and national and international ecological importance. It’s home to megafauna such as migrating whale sharks and whales, turtles, corals, and economically important habitat for fisheries.
The ecosystem is threatened by rising ocean temperatures, ocean acidification, and increasingly intense and severe weather events such as marine heatwaves and tropical cyclones. Coral bleaching events have been recorded from 1990 to 2019, causing substantial reef-wide death (such as around 80% loss of coral cover of Bundegi Reef).
Fish numbers have also decreased, especially in recreational fishing areas. Pressures from human use and water quality exacerbates these changes. And crown-of-thorns starfish and carnivorous snails hamper their recovery from bleaching.
The impacts of these combined global and local pressures are felt in tourism and commercial fisheries, which are worth around A$1.5 billion per year for the region.
Pressures:
Temperature
Ocean acidification
Sea level change
Heat wave
Storm
Habitat change/loss
Livestock harvesting
Water extraction
Runoff / pollution
⑧ Shark Bay Seagrass Communities, Western Australia
Shark Bay, a World Heritage Area, is the home to one of world’s largest (4,300 square kilometres) and most diverse seagrass meadows. It’s a carbon storage hotspot, holding 350 million tons of carbon.
It supports an extensive food web, and diverse fauna including tiger sharks, and around 10% of the world’s dugongs, manta rays, dolphins, and green and loggerhead turtles. Southern right and humpback whales also use Shark Bay as a migratory staging post.
Over a background of chronic increases in seawater temperatures, Shark Bay experienced an unprecedented marine heatwave in the summer of 2010-11, lasting more than 10 weeks. Meanwhile, flooding from a tropical storm over the Gascoyne River catchment covered the bottom of the bay in up to 10 centimetres of mud. About a quarter of all sea grasses died, with limited recovery since.
This saw major decreases in dugongs (68% decrease), sea snakes (77% decrease). Populations of bottlenose dolphins, pied cormorants and green sea turtles decreased by 35–40%. Another marine heatwave hit in December 2019, and another is predicted for March 2021
The failure of major seagrass recovery has led to the release of millions of tons of carbon dioxide as organic sediments breakdown. The ecosystem collapse caused major disruption to the local commercial fishing industry, when the scallop and crab commercial fishery had to close for five years.
Pressures:
Temperature
Ocean acidification
Heat wave
Flood
Storm
Habitat change/loss
Livestock harvesting
Other
⑨ Murray Darling River Basin — waterways
The Murray-Darling Basin is Australia’s largest river system with 23 river valleys and over 77,000 kilometres of watercourses. The basin has more than 30,000 wetlands (400 wetlands are considered “high value” in Victoria alone) home to 46 species of native fish and 120 species of water birds. Some wetlands are recognised internationally as globally important.
The overall health of the river system is poor. Since European settlement, the river and tributaries have become highly regulated, with significant water diversion for agriculture and urban uses. These impacts have been exacerbated by increasing temperatures, declining average rainfall and severe droughts, further reducing water flows (by 40% since the mid-1990s).
Salinisation (saltier water), toxic algal blooms, hypoxia (low oxygen), introduced fish species, erosion, bushfire ash and nutrient runoff also contribute to declining water quality. Today, native fish populations are just 10% of pre-European numbers. Some 20 mass fish deaths, including of threatened species, have occurred since the 1960s.
The ecosystem is increasingly non-functional with decreasing freshwater biodiversity, and loss of ecosystem services and cultural values. The 2011 plan to improve the basin set a target to recover water for the environment, diverting it from irrigation. This was estimated to cost A$542 million annually, but the additional water has added A$3–8 billion worth of ecosystem services to the entire basin.
Despite the last drought ending, and rivers are flowing again, troubles are still emerging with recent reports of toxic algal blooms.
Pressures:
Rainfall changes
Temperature
Water level change
Heat wave
Flood
Fire
Habitat change/loss
Invasive species
Livestock/harvesting
Water extraction
Runoff/pollution
Other
⑩ Murray-Darling River Basin — riverine
The Murray Darling Basin covers around 14% of Australia’s land area, comprising low-lying undulating areas, extensive plains and parts of the Great Dividing Range. The basin is Australia’s most important water catchment – forests and wetlands cover over 100 million hectares of floodplains and adjacent riverbank areas. The mighty river red gum is key to the health of these ecosystems that depend on frequent flooding (once every three years) for growth and reproduction.Floodplain and riparian vegetation provide corridors and habitat for millions of animals, including water birds and 46 species of native fish. More than 2 million people live in the basin, and it’s home to 46 First Nations who care for at least 10,000 culturally significant places.
Over the last 200 years, humans have altered much of the basin, including the construction of weirs, irrigation channels, farm dams and municipal water reservoirs. All these changes affect the region’s water, and have significantly deteriorated riparian (bank-side) systems and populations of dependent species such as waterbirds.
Around 40% of the highly diverse ecosystems have been cleared or otherwise modified for logging and agricultural use. In 2008, an investigation of 1,600km of river estimated only 30% of the remaining river red gums were in good condition. Extraction of water for agriculture, including 1.8 million megalitres of groundwater, has increased soil salinity. The region is experiencing chronically raising temperatures, ongoing reductions in rainfall and increasingly long and severe droughts (2003–2009, 2017–2019).
Despite some restoration efforts, ecological collapse of riverine ecosystems continues. As tree deaths are becoming more widespread, forest canopy cover is reducing. Rivers flows and groundwater levels are decreasing, contributing to loss and degradation of habitat. Populations of birds, mammals and fish are shrinking. All these changes have flow-on impacts.
The basin is Australia’s main food bowl; 40% of food worth A$22 billion is produced annually. In addition, tourism contributes some A$8 billion each year. The droughts cut farm profits by 30%.
Pressures:
Rainfall changes
Temperature
Heat wave
Fire
Habitat change/loss
Invasive species
Livestock/harvesting
Water extraction
⑪ Montane and Sub-alpine Forests, South Australia, New South Wales and the Victorian highlands
Montane alpine ash and subalpine snowgum forests occupy the highest forested areas of the Australian Alps. Alpine ash are giants and can grow over 90 metres tall, although trees over 40m are rare across most of the alps today.
Intense fires kill both snowgums and alpine ash. Climate change is increasing the frequency of fire through droughts, longer snow-free periods, tree stress and dry lightning in storms. This is amplified by positive feedback, where regrowth after prescribed burns or bushfire is much more flammable than long-unburnt forest. From 2000 to 2019, 84% of the entire alpine ash forests in NSW and Victoria were burned, some areas up to three times. Now, 70% of alpine ash are immature trees and over 75% of snow gums are at their most flammable age.These forests are critical to the health of one of Australia’s most important water catchments. They also store large quantities of carbon, and surround high value utility and tourism infrastructure, such as Snowy Mountain power stations and ski resorts.
Increases in wildfire amplified by positive feedbacks place a heavy economic burden on these, as well as a health and safety impact on surrounding human populations.
Pressures:
Rainfall changes
Temperature
Heatwave
Storm
Fire
Habitat change/loss
Invasive species
Livestock / harvesting
Human-lit fire
⑫ Great Southern Reef Kelp Forests, southern Australia
The Great Southern Reef extends along 8,100 kilometres of coast, covering 71,000 square kilometres from Brisbane, around the south coast of Australia and Tasmania, to well north of Perth. It comprises a large number of rocky temperate reefs that support lush kelp forests, dominated by golden kelp and, in colder areas, giant kelp. Kelp supports high levels of biodiversity including other seaweeds, sponges, crustaceans, starfish, abalone, fish and rock-lobsters.
Different combinations of pressures cause kelp forest to degrade and collapse. These include coastal development, pollution, marine heatwaves, ocean acidification, and increased storm severity and frequency. For example, along 100 km of coastline reefs from Perth to Kalbarri, WA, most kelp forests have been lost and replaced with algal turfs. Giant kelp forests are now endangered.
The East Australian Current (thrust into popular culture via the film Finding Nemo) is frequently penetrating southward to Tasmania. This transports warm, nutrient- depleted waters, larvae of a NSW sea urchin and northern species of fish. The sea urchins severely damage the kelp forests, as does overfishing of large lobsters.
On conservatively estimates, the Great Southern Reef kelp forests generate at least A$10 billion per year in economic activity. Economic and social consequences of its decline include the collapse of the rock lobster, abalone and other fisheries, as well as impacts on Indigenous communities and decreases in tourism.
Pressures:
Temperature
Ocean acidification
Native species interactions
Heat waves
Storms
Habitat change/loss
Harvesting
Runoff/pollution
Other
⑬ Mediterranean-type Forests and Woodlands
Forests and woodlands in south-west WA extend over 10,000 square kilometres. They include the northern jarrah forest, tuart forest and woodlands, and banksia woodlands. The woodlands experience a Mediterranean-type climate, with cool, wet winters and dry, hot summers.
Vulnerable parts of these forest ecosystems experienced substantial die-off during an acute drought associated with an extreme heat wave in 2010-2011. But warming and drying of the region has been chronic since the mid-1970s. Impact was locally severe with, for example, up to 60% of Menzies banksia dying in woodlands on the Swan Coastal Plains.
Die-off sites illustrate what can happen when these forests and woodlands don’t have enough water. If die-off occurs at larger scales, forest resources and ecosystem services (such as carbon storage and seed resources) are threatened. Increased fire is also a risk, with associated damage to property and widespread pollution from bushfire smoke, as was recently experienced invFebruary 2021.
Pressures:
Rainfall changes
Temperature
Native species interactions
Heatwave
Storm
Fire
Habitat change/loss
⑭ Monaro Tablelands, South Eastern Highlands
The Monaro tablelands of south-east NSW are characterised by mosaics of grassy woodlands, grasslands and forests. These provide important habitat for a range of threatened plants and animal species, including koalas, spotted-tail quolls and dusky wood swallows, as well as 15 other smaller marsupial species, 95 bird species, 14 species of reptiles and more.
Like most other temperate grasslands and grassy woodlands in Australia, the Monaro ecosystems have declined since Indigenous burning regimes were replaced with livestock and feral herbivore grazing, along with clearing, cultivation and non-native plant invasions.
Tragically, since 2005, ribbon gums that once dominated the rolling plains have died in great numbers. This is likely associated with the Millennium drought, ongoing drying conditions and heatwaves, and exacerbated by invertebrate pest outbreaks. More recently, the catastrophic Black Summer bushfires burned extensive areas across the Monaro.
Widespread tree deaths are not only a loss of habitat for mammals, birds, reptiles and invertebrates, but significantly impact the economy through lack of shelter for livestock during the Monaro’s harsh winters and hot summers. The impacts on the landscape’s aesthetic also affects human well-being.
Pressures:
Rainfall changes
Temperature
Native species interactions
Heatwave
Fire
Habitat change/loss
Invasive species
Livestock/harvesting
⑮ Snowpatch Herbfields, Australian Alps
The snowpatch herbfields, made up of dwarf grasses and alpine herbs, are one of the rarest and most restricted ecosystems in Australia. They occur only on steep, south-east-facing slopes of alpine and high treeless subalpine zones, where snow persists into the spring and summer growing seasons.
Over the past 50 years, climate change has caused warming of almost 1°C, and substantial decrease in snow amount and depth, cover and persistence in the Australian alpine area. Fire has also become a major force with increased frequency, dry lightning storms and extreme fire weather. And feral horses trample vegetation and cause soil erosion. These pressures, and others, are collapsing the snow patch herbfield, replacing them with larger shrubs and grasses or just eroded ground.
The collapse of the snow patch herbfields highlights the plight of the Australian alpine ecosystems in general. The alps are regional economic powerhouses; visitors to the Australian Alps generate over A$1.3 billion and the area employs almost 20,000 people.
Pressures:
Rainfall changes
Temperature
Storm
Fire
Habitat change/loss
Invasive species
Human-lit fire
⑯ Mountain Ash Forests, Victorian Central Highlands
The mountain ash ecosystem in the Central Highlands of Victoria supports the world’s tallest flowering plants. It’s among the world’s most carbon-dense forests, supporting an array of threatened forest-dependent species, and generating almost all of the water for the 5 million inhabitants of Melbourne (as well as communities and agriculturalists north of the Great Divide).
The mountain ash ecosystem is under enormous environmental pressure from widespread and recurrent wildfire, coupled with widespread clear-cut logging. Extensive old growth forests once dominated the ecosystem, but now just 1.16% of the ecosystem (1,886 hectares of 170,400 ha) is old growth. The widespread young forest is highly flammable and at extreme risk of reburning at high severity. This is especially due to increased temperatures and greater numbers of days marked as “extreme” on the forest fire danger index.
The collapse will have severe economic and social effects. The value of water from the ecosystem is 25.5 times greater than the value of the timber generated from the same ecosystem. The collapse of the ecosystem also poses an enormous threat for long-term carbon storage, biodiversity conservation and the billion-dollar tourism industry in regional Victoria.
Pressures:
Rainfall changes
Temperature
Fire
Habitat change/loss
Invasive species
Other
⑰ Gondwanan Conifer forests, Tasmania
The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area covers 15,800 square kilometres. One of its key values is the high concentration of ancient invertebrate animals and plants endemic to Tasmania (often called “palaeoendemics”). An iconic example is the genus Athrotaxis in the conifer family, which is considered one of the oldest surviving plant lineages on Earth — a living fossil.
There are two existing species of Athrotaxis: Pencil pines (Athrotaxis cupressoides) and king billy pines (Athrotaxi selaginoides). Both are very slow growing and can live for more than 1,000 years.
Like other palaeoendemics, Athrotaxis species can’t tolerate frequent or intense fire, and are restricted to fireproof landscapes. Around 30% of the range of king billy pines have been lost in the last 200 years, and half the pencil pines were burnt in the summer of 1960/61 by uncontrolled fires set by graziers to renew grasslands during an intense drought.
Climate change now threatens these and other palaeoendemic species through increased fire activity due to more dry lightning storms and drought. In January 2016, lightning storms ignited numerous fires that destroyed about 1% of the remaining pencil pines. These trees are unlikely to ever return. The loss of palaeo-endemics will profoundly diminish the region’s natural and cultural values.
Securing the survival of palaeoendemics under climate change requires costly management interventions. These include establishing fire breaks, targeted planned burning to reduce fuel surrounding the palaeoendemic refuges and active restoration programs. The Tasmanian Government and the University of Tasmania currently trial these measures.
Pressures:
Rainfall changes
Temperature
Storm
Fire
Habitat change/loss
Invasive species
⑱ Subantarctic Tundra, Macquarie Island
The World Heritage sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island is home to unique alpine tundra. Cushion plants and bryophytes (such as mosses) dominate this treeless ecosystem. This uninhabited island ecosystem is one of the rarest on the planet, occurring on only eight other oceanic, sub-Antarctic islands. It’s home to many invertebrate species, and is the breeding ground of thousands of seabirds and marine mammals.
The ecosystem is rapidly collapsing due to mass die-off of cushion plants. Wind, rain and regional climate patterns all have changed in recent years, due to greenhouse gas increases and loss of ozone. There have also been increases in average wind speed, sunshine hours, and “evapotranspiration” (the sum of evaporation from the land surface plus transpiration from plants). Winter rainfall, cyclones, and a drier atmosphere also appear to have increased.
This has resulted in surface drying and raised surface evaporation of cushions and byrophytes in summer, leading to their death. With plants under such stress, an unknown disease has emerged that has now devastated much of this fragile ecosystem. And this has led to the ecosystem losing World Heritage values.
Antarctic vegetation is limited to the small ice-free areas covering less than 0.4% of the continent. Algae, cyanobacterial mats (dense “mats” of microbes), lichens and mosses dominate the flora, and there are no flowering plants. Moss beds only occur in areas where enough moisture is available during the short summer growing season. Some of the most extensive and well-developed vegetation in continental Antarctica support century old moss “forests” near Australia’s Casey Station. These lush, green moss turfs support the majority of invertebrates in the ecosystem.From 2000 to 2013, the species composition in these Antarctic moss beds changed significantly. Moss species that can tolerate drier conditions expanded, while endemic moss, better adapted to frequent pulses of water from melted ice, declined. By 2008, half the mosses that had been green and healthy in 2003 suffered water stress, turning red or grey under drying conditions.This drying is likely due to a combination of climate change and ozone thinning,making it windier and lowering temperatures around coastal East Antarctica in summer. This makes water less available during the growing season, and less water means less moss growth.
Historically, human activity associated with research stations has reduced local moss populations, but drying appears to be more widespread than just in the Casey region. Recovery has been limited, and in the summer of 2019-20, an Antarctic heatwave melted nearby snow banks and glaciers, causing flooding. Some grey mosses greened within a month. However, others that didn’t receive floodwater remained grey, stressed or dead.
Pressures:
Rainfall changes
Native species interactions
Heatwave
Storm
Habitat change/loss
Water extraction
Other
What to do about it?
Our brains trust comprises 38 experts from 21 universities, CSIRO and the federal Department of Agriculture Water and Environment. Beyond quantifying and reporting more doom and gloom, we asked the question: what can be done?
We devised a simple but tractable scheme called the 3As:
Awareness of what is important
Anticipation of what is coming down the line
Action to stop the pressures or deal with impacts.
In our paper, we identify positive actions to help protect or restore ecosystems. Many are already happening. In some cases, ecosystems might be better left to recover by themselves, such as coral after a cyclone.
In other cases, active human intervention will be required – for example, placing artificial nesting boxes for Carnaby’s black cockatoos in areas where old trees have been removed.
It might also include replanting banks along the Murray River with species better suited to warmer conditions.
Some actions may be small and localised, but have substantial positive benefits.
For example, billions of migrating Bogong moths, the main summer food for critically endangered mountain pygmy possums, have not arrived in their typical numbers in Australian alpine regions in recent years. This was further exacerbated by the 2019-20 fires. Brilliantly, Zoos Victoria anticipated this pressure and developed supplementary food — Bogong bikkies.
We must rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero, remove or suppress invasive species such as feral cats and buffel grass, and stop widespread land clearing and other forms of habitat destruction.
Our lives depend on it
The multiple ecosystem collapses we have documented in Australia are a harbinger for environments globally.
The simplicity of the 3As is to show people can do something positive, either at the local level of a landcare group, or at the level of government departments and conservation agencies.
Our lives and those of our children, as well as our economies, societies and cultures, depend on it.
Applied ecology and conservation research group 
