The rate of extinction of species today is many thousand times the natural rate. There are even examples that such loss can have serious impact on humans. So a critical question is: what is the role species…
The State of Nature report published this month showed that of more than 3,100 British species surveyed, 60% are in decline, and one in 10 of those species on the Red List are under threat of extinction…
There can be few words as poignant as “endling”, the name given to the last surviving individual of a species. The picture (below) of Benjamin, the last Tasmanian tiger or thylacine, is heartbreaking…
It may be that there are no more shrews in Australia. There was only ever one representative, edging into the Australian political estate on the remote Christmas Island, closer to Java than any other part…
Throughout the Ice Age that characterised our planet for much of the last two million years or so mainland Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea formed a single landmass — Sahul. It was a strange and often…
“Dad, the world is missing amazing animals. I wish extinction wasn’t forever”. Despite my wife and I working as biologists, our five-year-old son came to make this statement independently. He is highlighting…
It’s long been known that massive increases in emission of CO2 from volcanoes, associated with the opening of the Atlantic Ocean in the end-Triassic Period, set off a shift in state of the climate which…
On Friday, March 15 in Washington DC, National Geographic and TEDx are hosting a day-long conference on species-revival science and ethics. In other words, they will be debating whether we can, and should…
A long-standing natural history mystery has been solved, as my colleagues and I explain today in the journal Nature Communications. The Falkland Islands wolf, or warrah, may have been the world’s loneliest…
Global bans on rhinoceros products have failed, and legalisation is required to save rhinos from extinction, argue scientists. In a paper published today in journal Science, University of Queensland researcher…
The environmental crisis has never loomed so large nor been so extensively debated as in the last few years. But at the same time we have never heard less about environmental ethics - the bio-inclusive…
Australia accounts for one-third of all contemporary mammal extinctions worldwide. At least ten species and six subspecies of Australian marsupials have become extinct following European settlement, and…
Extinction is a diminution of the natural legacy that we have inherited. It is a breach of the duty we have for inter-generational equity – that we should pass to our descendants a world as rich, intact…
When I was a small lad there was a stately old tree in our backyard. My little sister and I practically lived in it — it was our lair, our fortress, our stairway to the sky. Decades later, I sometimes…
What is the oldest debate in Australian science? Probably, the argument over what caused extinction of our Pleistocene megafauna – the diprotodons, giant kangaroos, marsupial tapirs, über-echidnas and…
Scientists have mapped the first family tree for all known living bird species, showing that new species appeared on Earth much faster than originally thought. The research, which links all 9993 known…
A rare toad from Tanzania declared “extinct in the wild” three years ago has been restored to its original habitat. This is the first time an amphibian species has been returned home after being classified…
You may have heard of Australia’s “Frozen Zoo” – the only facility of its kind on the continent – and that it’s facing funding difficulties. Why should you care about this? Let me explain. An increasing…
The 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan was undeniably a tragedy on many scales. Thousands killed, tainted agriculture, disappearing tourism and overall economic gloom. It’s little wonder the Japanese government…
Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University