11/05/2019

Fixing Australia’s Extinction Crisis Means Thinking Bigger Than Individual Species

The Conversation - Stuart Collard | Patrick O'Connor | Thomas Prowse

The endangered Cumberland Plain Woodland is an ecological community that have shrunk to 6% of their original area. Pete the Poet/Flickr, CC BY-SA
The world’s largest assessment of biodiversity recently shared the alarming news that 1 million species are under threat of extinction.
Australia’s extinction record is poor compared to the rest of the world, and our investment into conservation doesn’t do enough to restrain the growing crisis.
Currently, 511 animal species, 1,356 plant species and 82 distinct “ecological communities” – naturally occurring groups of native plants, animals and other organisms – are listed as nationally threatened in Australia. And these numbers are increasing.
While much conservation effort focuses on protecting individual species, we are failing to protect and restore their habitats.
Our ongoing research into environmental investment programs shows that current levels of investment do not even come close to matching what’s actually needed to downgrade threatened ecosystems.
One of the programs we evaluated was the 20 Million Trees Program, a part of the Australian government’s National Landcare Program. For example, we analysed investment targeted at the critically endangered Peppermint Box Grassy Woodlands of South Australia.
Fewer than three square kilometres of woodland were planted. That’s less than 1% of what was needed to move the conservation status of these woodlands by one category, from critically endangered to endangered.
Many Australian species live in endangered woodlands. Shutterstock
Restoring communities
Conservation efforts are often focused on species – easily understood parts of our complex and interrelated ecosystems.
In recent years, some effective measures have been put in place to conserve species that are teetering on the edge of extinction. We have, for instance, seen the appointment of a Threatened Species Commissioner and the release of a Threatened Species Strategy and Prospectus.
But we don’t often hear about the 82 threatened ecological communities in which many of these species live.
Temperate eucalypt woodlands once covered vast areas of southern Australia before being cleared to make way for agriculture. The Peppermint Box Grassy Woodlands of South Australia, for instance, have been reduced to 2% of their former glory through land clearing and other forms of degradation.
These woodlands provide critical habitat for many plant and animal species, among them declining woodland birds such as the Diamond Firetail and Jacky Winter.
The habitat of Diamond Firetails is under threat. Andreas Ruhz/Shutterstock

Focusing on the conservation and restoration of our threatened communities (rather than individual species) would create a better understanding of how much effort and investment is required to curb the extinction crisis and improve the outcomes of biodiversity restoration.

A problem of scale
Large-scale restoration investment programs are often touted in politics, particularly when these have a national focus. And many recent restoration programs, such as the Environment Restoration Fund, National Landcare Program, Green Army and 20 Million Trees, are important and worthwhile.
But in the majority of cases the effort is inadequate to achieve the stated conservation objectives.
Underlying threats to the environment often remain – such as vegetation clearing, genetic isolation and competition from introduced pests and weeds – and biodiversity continues to decline.
The 20 Million Trees program, for example, is the most recent national initiative aimed at restoring native vegetation systems, attracting A$70 million in investment between 2014 and 2020.
To place the scale of this investment into context, we analysed the impact of the 20 Million Trees program on the critically endangered Peppermint Box Grassy Woodlands of South Australia.
The restoration priority for this community should be to enhance the condition of existing remnant areas. But improving its conservation status would also require more effort to increase the area of land the woodland covers.


Even if the full six-year budget for 20 Million Trees (A$70 million) was used to replant only this type of woodland, it would still fall short of upgrading its conservation status to endangered. We estimate that moving the community up a category would require a minimum investment of A$150 million, excluding land value.
And Peppermint Box Grassy Woodland is just one of the threatened ecological communities listed for conservation. There are 81 others.
Although any effort to improve the status of threatened ecosystems (and species) is important, this example shows how current levels of effort and investment are grossly inadequate to have any substantial impact on threatened communities and the species that live there.
Our estimates relate to how restoration activities affect land cover. But ensuring they are also of adequate quality would need more long-term investment.

Boosting investment
Investment in biodiversity conservation in Australia is falling while the extinction crisis is worsening.
Protecting and restoring ecological communities will preserve our unique native biodiversity and develop an environment that sustains food production and remains resilient to climate change. But failure to invest now will lead to extinctions and the collapse of ecosystems.
To make genuine inroads and have an enduring impact on Australian threatened species and ecosystems, restoration programs must be clear on the amount they expect to contribute to conservation and restoration objectives, along with co-benefits like carbon sequestration.
The programs must be at least an order of magnitude larger and be structured to produce measurable outcomes.

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The Guardian View On Extinction: Time To Rebel

The Guardian - Editorial

A million plant and animal species are under threat. Humans are largely to blame – but we will pay the cost too
Coral bleached white by ocean warming in New Caledonia. Photograph: AP 
We humans pride ourselves on our ability to look beyond immediate concerns and think on a grander scale. While other creatures preen for mates, hunt prey or build homes, only humans ponder the nature of time, explore our place in the universe or are troubled by the question of what wiped out the dinosaurs.
Yet we are often poor at focusing on and understanding the things which really matter.
A new mass extinction is under way, and this time we are mostly responsible.The new UN Global Assessment Report warns that a million plant and animal species are at risk of being wiped out.
Most of us find it impossible to visualise such a large number. Focusing on individual cases is only partially helpful. Plenty of tears are shed for charismatic megafauna such as rhinos when they are driven to the brink.
Fewer know or care that two in five amphibian species are under threat. Phytoplankton drifting in the ocean are barely noticed at all, but absorb carbon dioxide as well as being eaten by zooplankton, which in turn are eaten by larger creatures, in turn eaten by ourselves.
It took only a century for humans to discover the dodo and drive it to extinction. But annihilation is now too speedy and commonplace for us to even recognise each species: we are sending creatures to their deaths before we know what they are. In many more cases species will survive, but in far tinier numbers. The biomass of wild animals has fallen by 82%; hedgehog populations in the British countryside halved in the last half-century.
In contrast, our own population soars, and so does its consumption. Climate change is one of the major causes of this catastrophe, bleaching corals and damaging habitats. Any sensible strategy must consider them together, as an environmental emergency. But there are also specific challenges to wildlife, including the replacement of forests by fields of cows; overfishing; the impact of pesticides and fertilisers; the pollution of air and water and soil; and the spread of plastics through our oceans and food chains.
Government leaders must press this issue by raising it personally instead of leaving it to ministers; Emmanuel Macron has pledged to do so when he hosts the G7 summit this year. They should start now: next autumn, countries will meet in China for a UN conference on biodiversity, setting new targets.
There has been shamefully slow progress towards the existing ones, drawn up in Japan in 2010, though there have been some successes. The US never even ratified the convention on biological diversity, hindering its chances of gaining traction. The best hope of progress there is perhaps through a version of a Green New Deal incorporating biodiversity.
There are already signs of a shift in thinking. A new OECD report makes a bold call for taxes on wildlife-degrading companies, and the diversion of finance to biodiversity-boosting projects rather than damaging ones; fossil fuel companies and agribusiness continue to receive vast subsidies. Many believe a more radical rethinking of our economic model is needed.
Real change will require a depth of imagination, ambition and sheer determination which humans have historically struggled to muster. Yet if we cannot summon the required concern for a million species, we could at least focus on one: our own.
We may not be charmed by Earth’s 5.5 million insect species, but we need them to pollinate crops, disperse seeds and break down waste to enrich the soil. Through ignorance, greed, laziness and simple lack of attention we are wiping out the very creatures upon whom we ourselves depend.

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'Not Adequate': Experts Rate Australian Political Response To Extinction Crisis

The Guardian - 

Following the publication of the UN’s shocking report, we ask three experts to review and rank commitments from the Coalition, Labor and the Greens
Fires burn through ancient old-growth forests – home to many threatened animal species – in Tasmania in January. Experts say more needs to be done to protect old-growth forests from logging and climate change. Photograph: Par Avion Tasmania
The United Nations’ global assessment of environmental health is grim: biodiversity declining at an unprecedented rate, one million species at risk of extinction, human populations in jeopardy if the trajectory is not reversed.
With the election less than two weeks away, Guardian Australia asked the Coalition, Labor and the Greens to explain how they planned to respond to the crisis. Three of the country’s leading scientists assessed what the parties had to say.

The Coalition
  • Policies include: review but keep existing environment laws; a $100m environment restoration fund to clean up coasts and waterways, protect threatened species and reduce waste; $189m over four years for the “direct action” climate solutions fund, in part for revegetation of degraded land.
  • The environment minister, Melissa Price, says: “The Coalition is committed to meeting its international emissions targets and to investing in the protection of our native species and their habitats. We are investing billions of dollars to deliver a cleaner environment, underlining the critical role of a strong economy in supporting positive environmental outcomes.”
  • Richard Kingsford, director of the UNSW Centre of Ecosystem Science: “It’s not adequate. We don’t know anything about what they’re doing about the burgeoning list of threatened species. We have very little commitment from them on long-term monitoring and state-of-the-environment reporting. There’s nothing in there about expanding our protected areas network. There is nothing there on how we can deal with the threats to biodiversity and they have plans that will exacerbate the threats to biodiversity. The other thing is there is no investment in monitoring. You can’t manage the environment when you don’t know what is there, or how it is faring. There is some progress towards emissions targets but we’re not stopping emissions under current policy and that’s bad for biodiversity.”
  • Euan Ritchie, Deakin University wildlife ecology expert: “The overall impression is that the Liberal policies are less strategic, smaller in scope and less focused than the other parties, with no explicit, cohesive plan dealing with the root causes. The $100m for the environmental restoration fund next year is definitely not enough money and is about reducing the negative impact of problems as opposed to stopping the problems in the first place, which we know would be cheaper and more effective. The $10m for predator-free enclosures to allow reintroduction of threatened species would be a welcome step as part of a comprehensive species conservation strategy. However, on its own, it won’t be effective … It will help some species, but it will miss many others and it will not stop more species from becoming threatened or extinct.”
  • Philip Gibbons, ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society: “The Liberals have got a pretty poor track record in this area. Environmental funding has declined by about 40% since they came into power in 2013, and there is no recognition that any of the pressures that have been identified by the UN are a real issue. They’ve got no proposal for legislative form. They haven’t mentioned in any of their campaign material that they consider land-clearing a problem. In fact, it’s the opposite – they talk in terms of red tape. And they say expenditure on the environment is only made possible because of economic growth, whereas the [UN assessment] says the problems with the environment are due to economic growth.”

 Labor
  • Policies include: a new federal environment act; a science-based national environment protection authority; reversing the Coalition’s reduction of marine protected areas; a $100m native species protection fund; $200m over five years to double indigenous rangers; $200m for urban rivers and corridors.
  • Labor’s environment spokesman, Tony Burke, says: “It is now clear we are on the pathway to a million extinctions, we are potentially facing the sixth mass extinction in the history of the planet [and] Australia remains the extinction capital of the world. This reinforces the need for Labor’s comprehensive policy agenda to fight extinction.”
  • Kingsford: “These are steps in the right direction, but I think we haven’t heard enough about the necessary changes in environmental legislation that Labor plans. We’re not sure how strong a piece of legislation it will be. Will it be able to pick up on cumulative developments? How much national oversight will there be on nationally and internationally important issues? These important issues should not be left to the states. Their policies talk about threatened species, but that is only a subset of biodiversity. There’s not much focus on the rest of biodiversity to prevent it becoming threatened. The science has moved on to ecosystems now – we need to move on to a larger scale because we’re losing that battle on species. [But] on climate change, they should be applauded for really grappling with this. A 45% emissions reduction target seems like real commitment, as is their commitment on renewables.”
  • Ritchie: “Their intent is positive; however, they don’t cover all the issues that matter and the dollar values are just not enough to result in real change. It’s good to see mention of “increasing the pace” at which threatened species recovery plans are put in place and acted upon. We have an evidence base that shows that recovery plans, when implemented, help to prevent extinction. However, the scale of investment is still too small for what we need. Spending 2% of GDP on the environment would put us in the top half of OECD countries for environment investment, which is appropriate for a country with our wealth of biodiversity and ecosystems. On environmental law reform, this is all good intent, but the devil will be in the detail and it will require state and territory cooperation, which may be hard to negotiate. A new EPA is a good idea if it’s properly resourced and given autonomy, independence and real teeth to hold governments, organisations and individuals accountable.”
  • Gibbons: “Labor demonstrate a stronger commitment to the environment than the Liberal party, but they still skirt around some of the key drivers of biodiversity loss identified by the UN. They have at least committed to look at our rate of land-clearing and it’s positive that they are looking at new environment laws and particularly a new EPA. But changing laws alone is not going to solve the problem, you have to look at the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss. Agriculture is the underlying driver of land-clearing in Australia and all parties have a policy of trying to expand our agricultural exports. We really need to decouple that growth from land-clearing and its impact on biodiversity.”

 The Greens
  • Policies include: new environmental laws; a federal environmental protection authority independent of politicians; a $2bn nature fund; expanded science-based network of marine parks; ending native forest logging.
  • The environment spokeswoman, Sarah Hanson-Young, says: “Our planet is in crisis, our environment is in collapse and politicians have sat on their hands for too long and done nothing … The Greens are offering voters a real investment in protecting nature, and stronger environmental laws to help avert this crisis.”
  • Kingsford: “I think they’ve got the most comprehensive understanding of the level of threat and the state of play than the other parties, but it lacks the details to really see how it could be implemented. All the parties need to do better on linking the environment with the economy, which has been missing a lot. The other issue is we’re not addressing the threats enough. We’re essentially treating the symptoms such as threatened species and not the cause of how we are driving biodiversity loss.”
  • Ritchie: “The Greens policies appear the most advanced and, if adopted, most likely to result in positive environmental outcomes. Their policies about new environmental laws are based on expert advice. They also propose a “nature fund” to tackle invasive species, habitat destruction and climate change. These are the three biggest threatening processes for Australia’s biodiversity, and tackling these threats is likely to have widespread positive impacts for the Australian environment. Two billion dollars won’t be enough, but it’s a great start.”
  • Gibbons: “The Greens overall probably have a great commitment to the environment, which probably isn’t that surprising, but they can be a bit more ideological about it because they know they are not going to be in government. They have a similar policy to Labor in having an overhaul of environment laws and an EPA. They don’t really talk about the key drivers of biodiversity loss in their policy, such as agricultural production and urban growth, but it is good they are strongly committed to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and they have the strongest climate change policy of any of the parties.”
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