One of the common problems we have in wildlife biology is knowing how many of an endangered species there are in a particular area. For example, how many orangutans are there in a particular national park…
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Wildlife conservation – Analysis and Comment
Whoever wins power in Victoria’s election tomorrow will no doubt have a long to-do list. Here’s an urgent item: protect the mountain ash forests of the state’s Central Highlands. We have discovered that…
A decade ago, we set out to unravel deep ocean crime scenes we weren’t even sure existed. The crime? Endangered Steller sea lions were rapidly disappearing in parts of Alaska. Their numbers dropped by…
Slow, lazy, stupid? It’s time to update your impression of the crocodilians. These animals are up to amazing things that we’re only beginning to observe and recognize.
Freshwater ecosystems such as rivers, lakes and wetlands are precious. They contain several-times more vertebrate species per unit area than land and ocean environments, and they are more degraded. Protected…
Top scientists, senior government managers, industry representatives, conservationists and even some nations’ presidents are currently in Sydney for the World Parks Congress. This major international meeting…
While we can never know for sure, an extraordinary number of animals and plants are threatened with extinction — up to a third of all mammals and over a tenth of all birds. And the problem is getting worse…
Few people are familiar with the pangolin. It is a shy creature, about as big as a medium-sized dog, and its diet consists of ants and termites. Most distinctively, it has armoured plates and will curl…
What do Beyonce, Hitler, David Attenborough, Darth Vader and GoldenPalace.com all have in common? They all have species named after them. In the case of Beyonce it is an Australian horse fly whose striking…
Most people probably know the Tasmanian devil as the iconic animal from Australia’s island state of Tasmania. Fewer know that, up until a few thousand years ago, devils were widespread across mainland…
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…
As the electric saw cuts into the base of the horn of the live rhino lying at my feet, I feel an uncomfortable guilt. The rhino shakes and judders and there is an unpleasant smell reminiscent of burning…
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…
Palm oil plantations have an overall negative impact on biodiversity, according to research released this week. The study, published in Nature Communications, found palm oil plantations are home to fewer…
Australians love to travel. About 9 million Australians travelled overseas last year, 60% of them on holiday. For most tourists, sustainable development and climate change were probably not high on their…
During a speech in Parliament on October 17 1996 — 18 years ago today — then Liberal MP Richard Evans called for the “total eradication of domestic and feral cats from the Australian mainland and offshore…
There are places in Australia that are awe-inspiring, spectacular, mysterious; they touch our spirit and help define our nation. Kakadu is one, Uluru another, the magnificent red sandy deserts, the Kimberley…
In June 2012 the Labor government announced the “world’s largest” system of marine parks, adding 2.3 million square kilometres and taking the overall size of Australia’s Commonwealth marine reserves to…
When I used to tell people that I did my PhD on the politics of shark attacks, they would ask, “Is there a politics to shark attacks?” Nobody asks that any more. Now they just say, “Oh, like in Western…
Feral cats are a huge threat to our native wildlife, hunting and killing an estimated 75 million animals across Australia each and every night. But the killing spree doesn’t end there. There’s a parasite…
Full marks to colleagues at the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London for the Living Planet Report 2014 and its headline message which one hopes ought to shock the world out of its complacency…
Brazilians head to the polls in October to decide on their new president. The country’s votes always produce surprises such as the election of a clown in 2010 and in 1959 the election of a rhinoceros named…
Does dingo control harm Australia’s environment? Results from the largest Australian experiment on dingoes – published this week in Frontiers in Zoology – shows the answer to that question is a convincing…
Spring has sprung. This time of year is peak wildflower season in the area around Perth, and the display is a major tourism draw card. People flock to places like Lesueur National Park and the Eneabba…
“The best thing you could do for the Amazon is to blow up all the roads.” These might sound like the words of an eco-terrorist, but it’s actually a direct quote from Professor Eneas Salati, a forest climatologist…