“How many are there?” and “how are they doing?” are the first questions people usually ask about species of conservation concern. These seemingly straightforward questions are tough to answer when it comes…
This is what a dysfunctional ecosystem looks like: central Asia’s Aral Sea.
PhillipC/Flickr
We know quite a lot about which species around the world are most endangered. The Red List of threatened species, developed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), identifies…
The lack of biological information about some species may be keeping them off the IUCN critically endangered list.
Mariana Campbell
The World Conservation Union (IUCN) uses set criteria to define species extinction risk. At the pointy end of the wedge, species are classed as Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable.
Overall…
Maasai herders have made life harder for Tanzanian wildlife, but that doesn’t mean one of them has to go.
mar is sea Y/Flickr
Tanzanian government plans to exclude Maasai from some traditional pastoral lands in the name of wildlife conservation have met with protest and global media attention.
This is certainly not the first…
The endangered dugong is being hunted unsustainably using a cruel harpoon technique.
Nicola Sfondrini
Many Australians are rightly appalled by the slaughter conducted by the Japanese whaling fleet under the guise of “scientific research”. This is not only because whaling is cruel but also because whales…
Australian freshwater mussels are under threat from habitat erosion.
Crawford River/Photo by MW Klunzinger
Freshwater mussels, like other freshwater animals, are disappearing at an alarming rate. They are invertebrates, and while invertebrates may account for 95-99% of animal biodiversity, they are scarcely…
A tiny male Red-finned Blue-eye, half the size of your little finger.
Adam Kereszy
The Red-finned Blue-eye (Scaturiginichthys vermeilipinnis) grows to a maximum of three centimetres long. As males reach adulthood they develop the vivid colouration suggested by their common name. In contrast…
In the Coral Triangle, conservation plans that helped fish were unfair for people.
Zona Retiro/Flickr
You can’t get a project approved these days unless it satisfies the triple bottom line: equity, cost-effectiveness and environmental sustainability. But our research shows that getting all three is almost…
The demand for shark fins has pushed threatened shark species from 15 in 1996 to 180 in 2010.
Choo Yut Shing
Each year around 100 million sharks are killed for their fins. The sharks are often pulled from the water, their fins are sliced off and they are thrown back in to drown. The industry is built on the high…
Dead as a … extinct species should stay extinct, and we should focus on saving the ones still living.
Jebulon
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…
More than 400 amphibian species are in decline, but at least one – the Fleay’s barred frog – is showing strong signs of recovery.
Froggydarb/Wikimedia Commons
Globally, amphibians have suffered serious declines and extinctions over the last 30 years. But our research, published today, shows that at least one subtropical rainforest frog is recovering.
The most…
At the moment, estimating tuna numbers – these are skipjack – is a kind of sophisticated guesswork.
Flickr/dachalan
Tuna are vital to the ecology and economy of the Pacific, and maintaining their stocks at a sustainable level exercises the minds of thousands of scientists, bureaucrats, fishers, consumers and conservationists…
The Mekong in Xayaburi Province, Laos – the site of a proposed dam. But what will happen to biodiversity and people? Flickr/International Rivers.
When Australians think of the Mekong they think cheap holidays or Vietnamese restaurants. Biodiversity-wise however, the Mekong is a frontier, a place where biological riches collide with human pressure…
Its not just the forests that make the Tarkine distinctive – it is habitat for 117 threatened species of flora and fauna.
Jennifer Evans
Tasmania’s Tarkine is now instantly recognisable, evoking ancient forests and environmental controversy. It hasn’t always been so, however, with research and celebration building over the past 40 years…
Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary in the Kimberley is one of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy’s properties. Who else is privately conserving biodiversity?
dracophylla/Flickr
There is general agreement that the Commonwealth and state governments lack the commitment, and hence funding, to preserve Australia’s biodiversity. Professor Tim Flannery addressed these issues in his…
Sewer infrastructure isn’t ready for our water saving techniques.
gnackgnackgnack/Flickr
Saving water is a good thing, right? But what if I told you it could also cause problems.
A recent study from Victoria University indicates water-conservation can have unintended consequences for residents…
We’re happy to kill individual creatures in large numbers – what’s stopping us wiping out the biosphere?
Darren Harmon
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…
It’s a relief to lizards and scientists that new hands-off methods are making their way into herpetology.
Kaptain Kobold/Flickr
You have probably heard someone utter the cliché “I grew up in a different era”. Compared to today, my youth was technologically anorexic. It was a time where you would never be told “Please turn off your…
A squirrel glider crosses a rope bridge over the Hume Freeway.
Kylie Soanes
Wildlife can have a tough time crossing roads. Noisy, fast vehicles and wide, open gaps in habitat make it an uninviting and risky venture. This means some animals are cut off from food, shelter or loving…
Only 3-8% of the original number of Southern Bluefin Tuna still exist.
AAP
Note: Southern Bluefin Tuna is listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN, but only as conservation dependent under Australian legislation.
Southern Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) are majestic, temperate…
Australia’s marine parks are all show, no substance, so why are conservation groups so supportive?
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
On land and in the sea, we’re losing sight of what nature conservation is about. We’ve become dangerously focused on protected areas, but rarely consider what they’re supposed to achieve. One result is…
Logging of Mountain Ash doesn’t make the sustainable forestry grade.
lizardstomp/Flickr
By any scientific yardstick, forestry operations in Victoria cannot be regarded as ecologically sustainable. Much of the attention of politicians, policy makers and the general public has been on the tall…
The Beautiful Nursery Frog is found only on Thornton Peak in northeast Queensland.
Steve Williams
The Beautiful Nursery Frog (Cophixalus concinnus) is a tiny ground-living frog from the family Microhylidae – from the Greek words “micros”, meaning small, and “hyla”, meaning forest or woods.
The species…
An exotic pet – like this slow loris – won’t have come to you voluntarily.
Michael Whitehead
What’s the worst Christmas gift you could give someone? It would have to be a non-human primate or a big cat. Images of people cuddling cute baby chimpanzees, slow lorises or tigers can lead to false perceptions…
An early dry season fire in Kakadu National Park – are these fires burning up our mammals?
Clay Trauernicht
Conservationists should take heart that Australia is finally waking up to the biodiversity crisis in Australia’s north. It is an urgent problem: right now, a diverse assortment of our small mammals – bandicoots…
Euastacus dharawalus is the most critical of the spiny crayfish group.
Jason Coughran
You may be familiar with some of Australia’s more iconic spiny crayfish, such as the giant Murray River crayfish, Euastacus armatus, but there is an untold diversity within this endemic Australian genus…
If Victoria keeps logging the way it is, the Leadbeater’s Possum is doomed.
ccdoh1/flickr
We have studied the effects of current widespread clear-felling in Victoria’s Mountain ash forests for almost three decades. Clear-felling now loses large amounts of money for the state of Victoria, degrades…
As any barramundi fisher will tell you, northern Australia’s water isn’t going to waste.
Justin Friend
With increasing pressure on Australia’s water resources, many have looked to northern Australia to provide water for agriculture, urban development and other human needs.
Much of northern Australia is…
Trees need stability and protection to get big, and both of those are in short supply.
William Laurance
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 keeps crocodiles under control? Bigger crocodiles.
Grahame Webb
There have been two fatal saltwater crocodile attacks on people in the Northern Territory (NT) in the last four weeks. Calls to “cull” the wild population of crocodiles have inevitably surfaced. More school…
Tasmanian devils have had low genetic diversity for hundreds of years.
AAP/Devil Ark/Mandy Kennedy
European settlers were not responsible for thinning the gene pool of the Tasmanian devil, new research has found.
Tasmanian devils are currently under threat due to the spread of an aggressive facial…
National parks' role as a refuge from direct human intervention will only become more important in future.
dracopylla/Flickr
Tim Flannery’s recent Quarterly Essay, After the Future, questions whether Australian national parks will become “marsupial ghost towns” despite the tens of millions of dollars governments spend on them…
Without help, parks like Kakadu could become marsupial ghost towns.
Territory Expeditions
Today we begin a series on Australia’s endangered species and how best to conserve them. The series will run each Thursday, and begins with this excerpt from Tim Flannery’s Quarterly Essay, After the Future…
Invertebrates can seem alien and “other”, but the world can’t get by without them.
Thomas Shahan
Invertebrates are all around us – crawling, squirming and buzzing about their business. From forests canopies to ocean depths, they form about 80% of the known species on Earth. By virtue of their sheer…
Locals in Mamberamo, Papua, support conservation, but also want services and development projects; now they’re getting involved in land use planning.
Mokhamad Edliadi (CIFOR)
When people ask us about our research, we answer: we are working on land-use planning. We rarely receive another question. Most of the time, after seconds of embarrassed silence, people move swiftly to…
When shot and injured but not killed, ducks will be left to fend for themselves under new Victorian laws.
oblivion9999/Flickr
Just before dawn on the third Saturday in March, the first shots will be fired, and the 2013 Victorian duck hunting session will commence. But 2013 will be unlike previous years.
You are probably unaware…
Automated cameras and microphones will help better connect the public with life in the wild.
Scott_Calleja
For 60 years Sir David Attenborough has brought the “extraordinary” of far off lands closer to home. In some aspects, Sir Dave has brought it so close that the only experiences you miss from not travelling…
Saving the Tasmanian Devil is one of many pressing preservation goals.
Mandy Kennedy/AAP
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…
Fisheries around the world are depleted, but they can be saved.
Isaac Pearlman
By Dan Ovando, University of California, Santa Barbara
Many fisheries around the world are in bad shape and getting worse. Solving this problem will require innovative monitoring and management tools, but we can provide tremendous benefits if we act now to…
Flying-foxes are taking refuge in populated areas, and people are deciding they don’t like them.
James Reed
Animosity towards the grey-headed flying-fox has intensified as their contact with humans has increased. Last month, the Queensland government announced that it would issue an annual quota of 1280 permits…
Public attitudes are shifting against government shark culling programs.
Athel D'Ombrain Collection, University of Newcastle
The great shark debate continues in Australia as summer approaches. Shark bites on bathers and surfers are a particularly sensitive reality. These are personal and community-wide tragedies that implore…
In some parts of Queensland, half the plant species may be displaced.
Laura Thorn
Climate change will place increasing pressure on Australia’s natural environments in the future. Queensland is no exception.
CSIRO and the Queensland Government recently conducted an in-depth review and…
An average of three million kangaroos are killed per year for pet meat, meat for human consumption and hides.
DarthShrine/Flickr
Australia’s commercial kangaroo industry is the world’s largest consumptive mammalian wildlife industry. Calculated on a ten-year period, an average of three million adult kangaroos are killed each year…
The proposed logging bill would tighten exportation from Indonesia in particular.
CIFOR
The Australian Senate is about to take on the task of stopping illegal logging, with legislation banning the importation and sale of timber products containing illegally logged timber being considered…
Healthy animals, perhaps, but is it ethical to confine large wild mammals to a tank for the purposes of profit and education?
Greg Lilly
Animals are a mainstay of global tourism development. They’re consumed in fishing and hunting, and used as part of “experiences” – horses in trail rides, marine mammals in theme parks, whale sharks for…
The environment is more than a passive background to human dramas.
George Lenard
Over the past couple of decades, India’s vultures have been all but wiped out. They have been poisoned by a veterinary drug given to cattle whose carcasses they then eat. While medicinal for cattle, the…
Exporting elephants from Laos to Japan could be the end of this Asian elephant population.
ElefantAsia
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…
The US Endangered Species Act controversially lets ordinary citizens propose endangered species: would it work in Australia?
Doug Beckers
The US Endangered Species Act, which became law in 1973, was one of the first major pieces of national legislation for the protection of biodiversity. It is still one of the most stringent. It has also…
We are really just beginning to learn what’s gone wrong for native species like the Murray Cod.
Biodiversity Heritage Library
The Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s Native Fish Strategy (NFS) is at serious risk of winding up, after NSW announced it is cutting its financial contributions. This is a serious blow to the conservation…
Illegal hunting is a severe threat to wildlife in many protected areas. Shown is the skull of a young forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) killed in southern Gabon.
Ralph Buij
You couldn’t have witnessed the recent massacre of elephants at Bouba N’Djida National Park and not be worried about the future of biodiversity.
The park, in northern Cameroon, is supposed to be a refuge…
Super trawlers aren’t the only boats that take bycatch: 200 black browed albatross could be caught every year in the Commonwealth’s South East Trawl Fishery.
Geoff Edwards
Tony Burke and Joe Ludwig have just announced a review of the Fisheries Management Act and the EPBC Act, thanks to public opposition to the super trawler. But the Commonwealth should take a good hard look…
While the number and extent of protected areas has increased, the impact on biodiversity isn’t yet known.
Flickr/Tony Rodd
Welcome to The Conversation’s series on megatrends, exploring the compelling economic, social, environmental, political and technological issues facing Australia, as part of the CSIRO’s new report, Our…
Bumping into a jaguar in Mexico’s cloud forest could soon be a thing of the past.
Kjersti Holmang/Wikimedia Commons
The chances of being roared at by a jaguar in a Mexican cloud forest are already low, but that is precisely what happened to me during a recent fieldwork expedition. I was very lucky to see a jaguar close…
Native or not? Red cabbage palms found in Palm Valley in the Northern Territory were introduced by Aboriginal people thousands of years ago.
Jurriaan Persyn
New molecular techniques show that an iconic palm only grows in central Australia because humans moved it there thousands of years ago. It poses the question: should we still regard this as a native species…
A tiger photographed at 3,000m asl by Bhutanese researchers using a remote camera in the year 2000. How then could the BBC claim discovery of tigers at high altitude a decade later?
In September 2010, the BBC announced a stunning discovery of tigers (Panthera tigris) living at high altitude in the Himalayas. The article claimed that a BBC team had discovered first hand evidence of…
Eastern long-necked turtles, once common and abundant, are now greatly reduced throughout much of their range.
Damien Naidoo
Turtles are great evolutionary survivors. With their iconic shells and ponderously slow pace of life, they have plodded through 220 million years of natural selective pressures. In the face of forces…
Beware the hyperbole: Campbell Newman has vowed to axe the Wild Rivers legislation, but what’s the reality beneath the rhetoric?
AAP/Alan Porritt
Those who follow the Wild Rivers debates in Queensland probably know better than to trust the headlines. When, in January 2010, Tony Abbott announced a federal intervention into the state’s environmental…
No simple matter: logging and conservation are not polar opposites, and controlled harvesting can fund the protection of forests.
AAP/Greenpeace/Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert
Is there a role for logging in ensuring the future of the world’s tropical forests and their rich diversity of plants and animals? For many this idea is absurd, because timber production achieving conservation…
Extinct: the Christmas Island Pipistrelle.
Lindy Lumsden
When it comes to mammal extinctions, Australia’s track record over the last 200 years has been abysmal. Since European settlement, nearly half of the world’s mammalian extinctions have occurred in Australia…
An important ‘apex predator’ that should neither be hunted as an enemy nor treated as a pet. With respect and wisdom, we can coexist.
AAP/Tony Phillips
It’s the dry season in the Northern Territory, and for many people that means camping under a clear winter’s sky in the Top End. Yet rediscovering nature can be a fraught exercise in wilderness areas like…
Our parks are an incredible asset, and if we ran them more like a business we would see that.
AAP/Patrick Horton
National parks are among Australia and New Zealand’s most precious assets. But we don’t account for them properly, so they’re struggling. It’s time for a rethink.
The assets managed by the parks agencies…
Quarries and quandaries: Australia’s natural splendour is a major source of income, yet it sits uncomfortably with mining’s spread.
AAP/Fantasea Adventure Cruising
Australia has built a strong global brand based on its iconic natural beauty. For example, the new Australia Tourism campaign, “There’s nothing like Australia”, features icons like the Kimberley, Uluru…
To know how to ease the damage we do, we must first take stock of the natural world. New Zealand does; Australia does not.
Flickr/borkazoid
In 1992-93, 168 countries including Australia and New Zealand signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) acknowledging an urgent need to halt ongoing decline in the planet’s biodiversity. In its…
Queue for iPad 2 in Sydney: green activists targeting companies and governments should realise that those ‘enemies’ reflect the values of the money and consumption-hungry populace.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
The recent news out of the RIO+20 summit is dire. No collective pre-agreement, no institutional change, no investment. The difference between RIO+20 and Kyoto was that at least Kyoto created an agreement…
Arise marsupial: the NSW town of Campbelltown could be the place to claw back Big Koala status from this one at Dadswell Bridge, Victoria.
Flickr/pixelhut
One of Campbelltown Council’s councillors, facing re-election in the upcoming elections, recently suggested that the city should construct a “Big Koala” (BK) in the style of other “big local features…
Networks of nature: a potato cod with striped cleaner wrasse at Osprey Reef, an area in the expanded marine reservations announced today.
Flickr/richard ling
Today’s announcement of a national network of marine parks is really a memorable day for Australian nature conservation.
The political rhetoric and self-congratulation associated with major events is…
How bad do things have to get before we want to seriously address environmental issues?
AAP
The fifth edition of the Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-5) – a global environmental report card by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) – reads like the results for a sedentary, middle-aged…
A shortage of their usual food sources may be pushing wombats to eat toxic weeds.
Jenny Scott
Over the past 18 months, increasing numbers of southern hairy nosed wombats in the Murraylands region have been found in poor to emaciated condition with damage to their skin and other organs. The skin…
When you buy imported products, are you buying dead endangered species as well?
Mark Hudson
The tide of globalisation drives development, providing jobs and much needed dollars. But development and trade consumes local biodiversity, much of it in the iconic biodiversity hotspots of tropical countries…
We don’t have enough money to save all species, but would invertebrates get a look in if the public chose what lived and died?
Howard Rawson
At current levels of funding, it is not possible to save all threatened species in Australia from extinction. Trade-offs are required. For example, managers could concentrate efforts on the most threatened…
Vietnam’s growing economic prosperity, and demand for cute pets, has given its gibbons a bleak future.
Clare Campbell
Gibbons are among our closest living relatives. These small apes are beautiful singers and glorious swingers. But a new survey of their numbers has found an economic boom in Vietnam is eating up their…
Conservation doesn’t fare well once the miners move in.
Kate Ausburn
Across Australia, landholders are signing conservation agreements or covenants to protect biodiversity on their property. These agreements, offered by state governments, create private protected areas…
Decades of work to reduce rhino poaching has achieved little. Farming rhino is one alternative, but what happens to a species when it’s domesticated?
Jim Epler
When we talk of conserving an animal species what do we actually mean? We are likely to have in mind a vision of a rhinoceros (or any other species, for that matter) being given the opportunity to pursue…
The dingo fence is a blunt instrument; we could do better.
Paleontour/Flickr
We feel we have to set the record straight after some of our (Bradshaw’s) comments were taken grossly out of context, or not considered at all (Ritchie’s). A bubbling kerfuffle in the media over the last…
Land of the snow gums: Australian forests are dynamic.
Flickr/SplaTT
Forests spark emotional debates in Australia. Much of the rhetoric is about saving “the last of Tasmania’s wild forests” or how we must “stop logging in Australian native forests”.
Australian forests…
Working with farmers, Australian researchers have come up with technology and methods to make farming kinder to the environment.
Chesapeake Bay Program
The misconception of Australian agriculture being inefficient and unsustainable is deeply concerning for me. Images of dusty ploughed fields and dying sheep and trees are misleading. On the contrary, if…
Collaboration is the only way to preserve biodiversity.
Kasi Metcalfe
Plans for conserving Australian species rely on successfully collaborating across regions and across jurisdictions. It makes sense: species don’t recognise state or local government boundaries. But at…
Scientists are clear that tuna catch needs to be cut, but figuring out who will fish less and where is much trickier.
AAP
The eighth meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission concluded in Guam on Friday 30 March 2012. Five hundred delegates from more than 40 countries argued for a week about how to reduce…
Habitat of the Eastern Curlew along its migratory pathway in east Asia is rapidly being reclaimed for development.
Dean Ingwersen
Australia is a signed up member of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and a strong supporter of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Both these global programs are trying to reduce the rate…
Species have trouble getting around without landscape-scale corridors.
Michael Dawes
In the 1980s, ecologists were locked in a debate about how best to preserve biodiversity. Which, they asked, was better: a single large reserve, or several small reserves? The debate was never resolved…
For whom the bell tolls: a Little Penguin.
Belinda Cannell
Little Penguins off the coast of Perth are being found dead – starved, battered, and in some cases almost completely beheaded – as elements both natural and manmade conspire against them.
Penguin Island…
Dingos are introduced, but have they gone native?
AAP
Native status is a big deal. It affects where conservation dollars are spent, and our inherent reaction to a species. Most people believe that native equals good and alien equals bad, but in some cases…
Researchers have taken important steps in conserving endangered cats.
dragaroo/Flickr
Looking at embryonic cells allows researchers to understand many of the fundamental questions about how an animal’s genes are structured and the role they play in developing the adult animal. This information…
Pet cats are single-minded hunters, but are they wiping out native species?
bolg/Flickr
In “The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson”, Mark Twain equated keeping a cat to domestic bliss:
When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there – in sunny weather…
The US has information about its threatened species, but isn’t acting on it.
photommo/Flickr
We know very little about the world’s biodiversity. A recent study suggests that, despite 250 years of taxonomic effort, a mere 14% of the world’s species are recognised by scientists.
Worryingly, anthropogenic…
In northern Australia, the state of the environment has improved.
pallotron/Flickr
Every five years the Australian Government must report on how our environment and heritage are fairing. The 2011 State of the Environment Report gives Australians the clearest and most comprehensive assessment…
The Coral Sea could soon become the world’s largest marine park.
babasteve
The release of the Coral Sea Commonwealth marine reserve proposal is a milestone achievement in marine protection.
The area proposed to be covered is larger than that of many small European nations. In…
How do we know whether replacing lost habitat with new habitat has worked?
OZ in OH
Biodiversity offsets are touted as a new tool for protecting our natural environment. While they have the potential to deliver real gains, understanding the possible consequences of these polices over…
Western Australia’s new dedication to shark research is good news for sharks, and for beachgoers.
autumn_leaf
Public concern following the recent wave of shark attacks in WA
initially prompted the government to respond with suggestions of a shark cull to reduce numbers in a misguided attempt to improve public…
National parks: the traditional way, but is it the best?
jimmyharris/Flickr
Many plants and animals will become extinct in this century – millions of years of evolutionary experimentation will be abruptly terminated.
This raises profound philosophical dilemmas: which species…
Australia’s eastern forests are on par with those of Brazil.
YAZMDG
If you live in eastern Australia there’s a good chance you’re one of nine million Australians who call the world’s newest biodiversity hotspot home.
In a recent publication, “Forests of East Australia…
Success stories like the recovery of the Southern White Rhino give cause for hope, and impetus to act.
AAP
A recent article in Nature Neuroscience contends that optimism is hard-wired – that we are more likely to update our knowledge with positive than negative news.
So what happens if all the news seems bad…
Culling sharks is unlikely to make our beaches safer.
Hermanus Backpackers
In Western Australia, politicians and members of the public are calling for a shark cull in response to the state’s recent shark attack fatalities.
The most recent of these attacks was on a diver off…
Eighteen tigers from a private zoo in Ohio have been shot: could you have a pet tiger here?
Karl Vernes
Residents of Zanesville, Ohio, woke to the news today that most of the bears, wolves, lions and tigers that had been roaming free in their neighbourhood had been shot by police.
Police believe the animals…
Biting is a big part of the devil’s life. It’s also their undoing.
AAP
For more than a decade, the Tasmanian devil has been fighting for survival against an unusual enemy – Devil Facial Tumour Disease (or DFTD). This deadly infectious cancer has ravaged the Tasmanian devil…
Shark nets have been proven to hurt sharks, but does that help humans?
AAP
Western Australia’s Cottesloe Beach has been closed due to concerns a swimmer there was taken by a great white shark.
The public is understandably worried, but the local mayor says no shark nets will…
People who get to know flying foxes are less likely to loathe them.
michis
Even Australia’s most iconic, charismatic species are in danger of extinction. Species such as the cassowary, Tasmanian devil and koala all enjoy significant community support and relatively generous funding…
Protecting coral reefs means thinking about people, not just marine species.
Fran Tapia
Overfishing is a serious problem on many of the world’s coral reefs – a problem that is generally attributed to too many people. But our research has found that economic development, rather than population…
As Australia gets warmer and drier, koalas will struggle to survive.
JSFauxtography
On 22 September, a Senate inquiry released its report, The koala – saving our national icon. The inquiry made 19 recommendations, and called for more funding for koala research. The environment minister…
Research done in South Africa can guide Australian conservation managers on where to focus effort.
Brian van Wilgen
It’s true: many species will go extinct due to the direct and indirect impacts of climate change.
We will have to make some hard decisions about where to invest conservation dollars for the best effect…
Primary forest is best for biodiversity, but we should also look at second-best.
cknara/Flickr
We live in an age of vanishing rainforests. Half of the world’s tropical forests have disappeared since World War II and roughly another 10 million hectares are being felled each year — the equivalent…
Dharawal National Park is safe from mining, but do we value biodiversity enough to spread protection?
taffynorm/Flickr
The New South Wales government last week said it would ban mining in the newly announced Dharawal National Park, an area where Illawara Coal was planning to extract up to $40 billion worth of black coal…
Fruit bats carry disease, pollen and a warning about the state of the environment.
shellac/Flickr
This year has had the lot. First came the tempest, then the floods. Fires are on their way as the landscape dries out.
Now we have pestilence, in the form of Hendra virus. Calls for bat culls have ensued…
Cosy, sure, unless your house is on fire.
sediger/Flickr
The issue of firewood management has recently attracted renewed attention in Victoria, where the State Government has changed the regulations on collecting firewood from State Forests. Firewood is cheap…
In India, species decline when they have to share land with agriculture.
flickrPrince
So, we have to feed an extra 2.5 billion people by 2050. For those of us interested in the future of biodiversity on this planet, this poses an uncomfortable challenge. It is also the topic of a recent…
We can’t run away from it: we need food, and we need biodiversity.
buiversonian
Our planet is on the precipice of a sixth mass extinction event.
But unlike the five previous mass extinctions, this one is man-made: a global biodiversity crisis in which species are disappearing three…
Why deplete a country’s mineral resources when its natural capital is worth so much more?
Muhammad Erdi Lazuardi
“Natural capital” is the resources in nature’s bank. Nature’s capital is not evenly spread across the world: some areas are “richer” than others. Raja Ampat in Papua is one of the richest. Currently under…
Coral reefs may cease to exist – where will their inhabitants go?
Nick Hobgood
Human-induced climatic changes are altering ecosystems worldwide.
Because of these ecosystem changes, the geographic range of species is shifting towards the poles or to higher elevations. The speed of…
The peace package will have to work hard to bring forestry workers into the modern economy.
Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library
The recently announced $276 million Tasmanian forest agreement agreement sets out to end the war between loggers and conservationists. But the war has been bitter, and forest industry workers have often…
If we keep going the way we are, Australia’s environment will be in trouble in 2050.
adriansalamandre/Flickr
AUSTRALIA 2050 – There’s no way of predicting what the environment will be like in 2050, but there are many possibilities. I will sketch out two extremes.
The first is bleak.
The first independent national…
Southern bluefin tuna are critically endangered, but the fishing industry wants to catch more.
AAP
The Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna is meeting today to discuss raising Australia’s tuna fishing quota.
The tuna industry is expected to ask for a 30% rise in Australia’s allocated…
Seals, turtles, sharks and dolphins are killed by abandoned fishing nets.
tedxgp/Flickr
Pollution from human activities has major impact on the world’s marine ecosystems. Plastic refuse is one of the most pervasive types of pollution.
More than 80 million tons of plastics are estimated to…
The wave of extinction that swamped southern species like the stick-nest rat is heading north.
Gould/Wikimedia Commons
Mention “The Kimberley”, and for most Australians visions of spectacular sunsets, giant boab trees, rocky escarpments and cascading waterfalls spring to mind. But there is a storm on the horizon, and…
The trees are falling, but is anyone listening?
NatureNut3/flickr
Political scientists now commonly distinguish between ‘government’ and ‘governance’. The former refers to a hierarchical institution while the latter captures the idea of a general process of social steering…
Kangaroo populations are robust and abundant.
Wombalano/Flickr
The Scottish eat their deer and the South Africans their springbok. Australia’s national icon is gentle on the environment, doesn’t emit methane, is good to eat and could be a great source of income for…
Much of nature’s delicate balance is a case of give and take.
UCCSbiology
We now know that mountain treeshrews and summit rats feed on the nectar secreted by the giant pitcher plant – Nepenthes rajah – then defecate into its pitchers, providing it with much needed nutrients…
Every trip has positive and negative effects.
Ben Beiske/Flickr
Many of us eagerly await those few weeks when we can escape the daily grind and break away to some breathtaking holiday destination. But with increasing concern over climate change and the emissions generated…
Marine parks are an evidence-based way to stop trashing ocean environments.
Urban Woodswalker/flickr
Given the growing evidence of catastrophic extinctions in the world’s oceans due to climate change and overfishing (see, for example, the recent IPSO report) one would expect a groundswell of demand for…
As species head for greener pastures, we need to reconsider old ideas about what belongs where.
Matthew Stewart/Flickr
For many agencies and community groups interested in protecting biodiversity, a primary goal has been to protect native species and to control introduced alien species, such as feral animals and weeds…
Hated enemy or part of the landscape?
Radio Pictures
Every night under cover of darkness an advancing wall of toads heads west. Rather than winding through the bush, the toads march straight down the highway, ignoring the official border signs.
Meanwhile…
The pancake batfish is endearingly ugly, and we may have wiped it out.
Prosanta Chakrabarty (Louisiana State University, USA)
When I told my family that the top ten list of new species had been announced, the teenager asked, “Are we on it?”
Although we’re not on the list, our fingerprints are all over it. Homo sapiens remains…
Hopes that UN agreements will save Borneo’s forests may be unrealistic.
Flickr/Rainforest Action Network
Tourists from all over the world head to Borneo for orangutans, unspoiled ancient rainforests and an insight into the traditional way of life of the Dayak people. This ecotourism is based on an idyllic…
REDD gives countries a reason to hang on to trees: let’s make it work.
AAP
The world has been fiddling while the forests burn, or are otherwise lost. One proposal to keep what’s left intact is REDD – essentially, paying countries to conserve their forest carbon stocks.
REDD…
A missed opportunity to resuscitate our rivers.
Flickr/wazzas world
A vision splendid of the sunlit plain extended?
The federal budget acknowledges the profound impact of flood, fire and cyclones on our economy. It compensates, rebuilds and funds mental health programs…
When people want timber but animals need trees, how do we compromise?
AAP
In the developing world, there’s often a face-off between conservation needs and the needs of the community, with neither coming out all that well.
Is it possible to “save more space for nature” without…
Informative labelling can put us on the road to ethical choices.
AAP
The most important factor determining whether consumers avoid purchasing a product containing palm oil is not how they feel about orangutans, the environment, or anything else for that matter. It’s whether…
The Tarkine is our largest cool temperate rainforest, but will that be enough to save it?
Flickr/leonrw
Once a place is heritage listed, it’s protected, right? Wrong. Politics and a flawed statutory regime are undermining the independence of the listing system, and threatening Australia’s national treasures…
Just how vulnerable and defenceless are whales?
Flickr/Guarda La
There are several reasons why Australians should welcome the imminent demise of Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean. But none of them relate to the triumphal claims recently expressed by the likes of…
Revered tradition or barbaric bloodsport? The waters are muddy.
peteSwede/flickr
There are few issues as divisive in eastern Australia as duck hunting. And 2011 has been one of the most vitriolic seasons yet.
The season opened in Victoria with news that a protester had been shot in…
