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.
Will synthetic rhino horns decrease demand or aid law enforcement?
David W Cerny/Reuters
A company plans to flood the market with synthetic rhinoceros horn in an effort to slow poaching but these types of commercially driven conservation efforts are fraught with problems.
Stoats (Mustela erminea), feral cats (Felis catus), red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and black rats (Rattus rattus) are invasive predators in different parts of the world.
Clockwise from top left: Sabec/commons.wikimedia.org (CC BY-SA 3.0); T Doherty; CSIRO/commons.wikimedia.org (CC BY 3.0); 0ystercatcher/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Research published this week shows saving wildlife is much more complicated than killing introduced predators. Killing predators often doesn’t work, and is sometimes actually worse for native wildlife.
The white-lipped tree frog, one of the species threatened by warming.
Stephen Williams
Climate change is one of the biggest threats to the world’s wildlife, but recent projects provide hope that we’ll be able to help species adapt.
The Mountain Pygmy Possum, which is the only Australian mammal confined to the alpine zone of Australian Alps. is extremely vulnerable to climate change.
Matthew Pauza
Nearly half of 200 Australian species are threatened by climate change, according to new research, including the iconic mountain pygmy-possum.
Is it a … or a ….? Dengrogramma enigmatica, discovered in deep water off the coast of Victoria, doesn’t quite fit in anywhere in the animal family tree.
Jørgen Olesen
Monocultures - vast expanses of a single crop - may look pretty, but mounting research shows they are likely bad for environment. And in turn that’s bad news for farms as well.
The colonial legacy of rigid approaches to sovereignty continue to hinder co-operative approaches to conservation in Africa.
EPA/Dai Kurokawa
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.
Not too hot, not too cold, but just right.
Gary Miller/Australian Antarctic Division
Australia holds many world records, including the world’s longest fence, the dingo fence. At 5,531 km, the dingo barrier fence stretches from eastern Queensland all the way to the South Australian coastline…
Cane toads are still spreading across northern Australia.
UNSW
Cane toads, introduced in 1935 to control cane beetles, have now spread across a huge swathe of Australia, from the Kimberley in northern Western Australia to northern New South Wales. They’re still spreading…
Guys, I’m just trying to hibernate over here.
Jason Cohn / Reuters
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…
Mountain Pygmy Possum numbers are declining due to environmental changes, including earlier snow melt.
AAP/Tim Arch/DSE
Every Spring, the blanket of Australian alpine snow starts to melt, and the Mountain Pygmy Possum wakes up from its seven-month-long hibernation. Naturally after so long under the snow, its first thought…
Open wide: don’t be fooled by the appearance of a Leatherback’s mouth, they eat only jellyfish.
Tom Doyle
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…
Australasian Gannets are one reason to get out bird-watching this weekend.
Martin Sharman/Flickr
Here’s an activity for you this weekend: either staying at home or heading bush, count the number and type of birds you see. It’s all part of BirdLife Australia’s Challenge Count, an annual event that’s…