Australia’s conservation laws presume that we can preserve everything in its natural state. But in a changing world, we’ll have to be more flexible than that.
Australia may have reputation for vast areas of wilderness, but in reality the continent’s ecosystems have been chopped and diced. Now we need to protect what’s left.
A 21st century government would put the environment on at least an equal footing with the economy. That means no more extinctions, and no more putting ourselves before wildlife or future generations.
If we brought devils back to the mainland, they could play a similar role to dingoes - keeping foxes and cats under control and potentially boosting the conservation prospects of Australia’s small mammals.
There’s been a lot of talk about killing feral cats, with the government’s recently announced war on cats, with a goal to kill two million by 2020. But let’s embrace cats as part of Australia’s environment.
Feral cats are highly adaptable and highly variable, hence we must continue to search for their Achilles Heel and invest in a wide range of control methods.
Three recent reports make clear that we should be saving habitat in order to save species. It is pretty simple. Destroy a species’ habitat and you destroy its home.
A large new national park might sound like the best way to protect the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum. But it won’t do anything to save possums from the major threat of bushfire.
The Leadbeater’s has been formally listed as critically endangered. But unless clearfelling in the possums’ stronghold stops, it will continue down the road of extinction.
Feral cats are estimated to eat tens of millions of native animals each night in Australia. But what kinds of wildlife are they eating? In research published today in the Journal of Biogeography, my colleagues…
Last July, the federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, announced the appointment of Gregory Andrews as Australia’s first Threatened Species Commissioner. His mission: to help avert the extinction of a…
Australia is in the grip of an extinction crisis. Our unique animals, plants, and ecosystems are rapidly ebbing away in a process that began more than 200 years ago with European settlement. Feral cats…
Going to the beach this summer? If you’re in southern Australia, keep your eyes peeled for the world’s largest turtle, the leatherback. If you do, you can report sightings to researchers at Deakin University…