The government is set to restrict green groups’ right to challenge environmental approvals in court. But the law isn’t doing its job in protecting Australia’s plants and animals anyway.
Peter Alagona, University of California, Santa Barbara
The Endangered Species Act may stave off extinction for the Delta smelt in California, but will it help this threatened fish – or any other at-risk species – recover and thrive again?
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.
The 20-year-old agreements that are supposed to safeguard much of Australia’s forests, are not working. Now they are up for renewal, and it’s time for a complete rethink, writes David Lindenmayer.
Dead whales can cost beachside ratepayers a lot to clean up. The alternative is to tow them away before they wash up - but the legal question of who does the job is far more complex than it sounds.
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…
Kakadu National Park in Australia’s tropical north is one of the world’s premier conservation reserves. However, it is partly failing in one of its principal purposes. The past two to three decades have…
Today, many zoos promote the protection of biodiversity as a significant part of their mission. As conservation “arks” for endangered species and, increasingly, as leaders in field conservation projects…
The Amur tiger (Panthera tigris ssp. altaica), also known as the Siberian Tiger, is among the world’s rarest and most endangered cat species. The largest and northernmost tiger, it is believed only around…
There has been a huge increase in attention recently to the problem of wildlife poaching, mostly from the stream of grisly stories from Africa about rhino and elephants illegally killed for their horn…
The last few surviving Asiatic cheetahs live in Iran, where they stalk the hyper-arid landscape, where temperatures swing from -30°C to 50°C. This is the only place in the world a cheetah, most of which…
Sawfish are the most endangered group of marine fish in the world, largely thanks to overfishing and habitat loss. Formerly abundant, they have disappeared from many countries’ waters, and in many others…
Charles Darwin ate one on his trip to Brazil. Apparently it tasted more like pork than chicken. My nine-year-old, football-mad, half-Brazilian son could identify one on his World Cup merchandising and…
Twenty-nine Australian land mammals have become extinct over the last 200 years, and 56 are currently facing extinction. These losses and potential losses represent over a third of the 315 species present…
Chinese wildlife faces a serious survival crisis, but the tide seems to be turning in support for protecting endangered species there. China’s top legislative body has passed a new “interpretation” of…