Many ecosystems have changed so radically that it is no longer possible to restore them to what they once were and in other situations it is not appropriate.
Wombats are suffering from mange, a deadly skin condition that threatens to wipe out some local populations. Frustratingly little is known about the problem, so we need a national plan to tackle it.
The fortunes of the world’s remaining wild gorillas is linked to prosperity in the places where they live - hence the high price of tourist permits. But with economic development comes economic threats too.
One of the Australian government’s new research priorities is “environmental change”. But can be hard to know how to tackle such huge and interlinked issues as climate change and species extinctions.
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.
The shooting of Cecil shines light on Zimbabwe’s new elite land politics which excludes the wider population and exposes the racial dimensions of the relationship between wildlife, land and hunting.
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.
Chalk it up as a rare conservation win: humpback whales have bounced back so strongly since the whaling era that there is no longer a need to include them on Australia’s official threatened species list.
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.