The Guardian - Lisa Cox
More than 1,800 plant and animal species and ecological communities are at risk of extinction right now
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| ‘As a society, we should be caring more for our nature, and we’re not,’
says Prof John Woinarski. The Christmas Island pipistrelle, pictured, is
now extinct.
Photograph: Lindy Lumsden |
Global
warming wiped out the Bramble Cay melomys – the first mammalian
extinction in the world to be caused by climate change – but a
straightforward plan that could have rescued the little rodent was
thwarted by red tape and political indifference.
“It could have been saved. That’s the most important part,” says John
Woinarski, a professor of conservation biology who was on the
threatened species scientific committee that approved a 2008 national
recovery plan for the species, endemic to a tiny island in the Torres
Strait.
Extinction is entirely avoidable. We can turn the trend around but it needs meaningful government intervention
James Trezise, ACF policy analyst
The
fate of the melomys
is symptomatic of the failures in Australia’s management of threatened
species, which has seen the country lose more than 50 animal and 60
plant species in the past 200 years and record the highest rate of
mammalian extinction in the world over that period.
The mammal at the centre of this story was an uncharismatic rodent in
a remote part of the country. The key factor for the species’
extinction was almost certainly ocean inundation of the low-lying cay,
but recovery efforts were insufficient and hampered by disagreement
within government agencies over approaches – in this case captive
breeding. And while it was clear urgent action should be taken – and
that action was likely to be successful, straightforward and inexpensive
– the plan was implemented too late. While the researchers hypothesised
the melomys or a close relative might occur in Papua New Guinea,
Australia’s only mammal endemic to the Great Barrier Reef has been
declared extinct.
In the past decade alone, the country has lost two mammal species –
the Christmas Island pipistrelle as well as the Bramble Cay melomys –
and one reptile, the Christmas Island forest skink.
More than 1,800 plant and animal species and ecological communities
(woodlands, forests and wetlands are examples of ecological communities)
are currently at risk of extinction, a number that is increasing but
which is also likely to be an underestimate of how many are truly
vulnerable.
“We should have learnt the lessons,” Woinarski says of Australia’s failure to arrest its rate of species decline.
“As a society, we should be caring more for our nature, and we’re
not. The legal protections we’ve got and the funding mechanisms are
simply insufficient, as is the extent to which we care.”
There is another feature of the Bramble Cay melomys that is typical of many species in peril across the country.
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| ‘It could have been saved. That’s the most important
part,’ says Woinarski of the Bramble Cay melomys, declared extinct in
2016 due to climate change. Photograph: Ian Bell |
It is likely most Australians were not even aware of the animal’s existence.
For scientists, conservationists, researchers and those in the
broader environment community, the challenge of securing stronger
protection and more funding for Australia’s threatened flora and fauna
is made tougher by the fact that much of the population does not realise
that the wildlife the country prides itself on is in trouble.
The federal government’s most recent
State of the Environment
report concluded that Australia’s biodiversity had declined further
since 2011 and new approaches were needed to address this downward
trajectory for many species.
We need to connect Australians with their wildlife again
Darren Grover, head of living ecosystems for WWF Australia
The same report found there had been no decrease in the main
pressures faced by native plants and animals, namely habitat loss and
degradation, climate change, land use practices and invasive plant and
animal species.
Guardian Australia interviewed scientists, researchers,
conservationists and policy analysts whose work across threatened
species research and protection spans decades.
They
described the situation confronting Australia’s threatened plants and
animals as a “national disgrace” and the systems that are supposed to
protect them as “broken”.
Interviews were requested with both federal environment and energy
minister Josh Frydenberg and the government’s new threatened species
commissioner, Dr Sally Box, and both were declined.
Euan Ritchie, an associate professor in wildlife ecology and
conservation at Deakin University, says the plight of Australia’s
threatened species is an “environmental crisis”, with more and more
species edging closer to extinction “despite our capacity to prevent
such a tragedy from occurring”.
“What’s occurring is akin to allowing the art of Namitjira, Olley,
Preston, Nolan, Whiteley and others to disappear from our most treasured
museums, through neglect, and much of society being unaware or
responding with a collective shrug of shoulders,” he says.
James Trezise, policy analyst at the Australian
Conservation
Foundation, says Australia has an extinction crisis and governments are
failing to implement the reforms and investment necessary to turn the
situation around.
“Extinction is entirely avoidable. We can turn the trend around but
it needs meaningful government intervention. From a conservation
standpoint we know what needs to happen, but it seems there isn’t the
political will to get us there,” he says.
According to the Department of Environment and Energy,
Australia is home
to more than one million species and 85%of the country’s flora, 84% of
its mammals, 45% of its birds and 89% of inshore, temperate-zone fish
are found nowhere else on earth.
The conservation community says Australia has an obligation to
protect these unique species but, despite this, the country is having
trouble reversing the trends of the past 150 years. Among mammals alone,
Australia is losing one to two species per decade.
By comparison, the continental United States, whose
Endangered Species Act imposes tougher enforcement of threatened species
protection and recovery, has lost only one mammal species since
colonisation – the sea mink.
The experts who spoke to Guardian point to a range of complex and
intertwined issues affecting the decline of threatened species in
Australia, which have occurred under governments on both sides of the
political aisle over many years and will be explored throughout the
series.
Among them are: massive rates of land clearing, urbanisation,
weakening of protections under the EPBC Act, cuts to environment
budgets, poor monitoring of species, poor coordination between federal
and state governments, a lack of legislation compelling governments to
actually fund recovery actions for listed species once they’ve been
identified, and a lack of accountability measures to ensure actions that
are being taken are working or assess what processes have failed when a
species goes extinct.
I think the whole system is completely broken
Prof Lesley Hughes, Macquarie University
“I think the whole system is completely broken,” says Prof Lesley
Hughes from the department of biological sciences at Macquarie
University.
“The fact that our threatened species lists continue to grow and very
few if any species have ever come off those lists due to conservation
action is evidence that what is being done thus far is not effective.”
Humane Society International Australia participates in an annual
federal nomination process to list new threatened species as either
vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered under the EPBC Act.
For an animal, plant or ecological community to qualify for
assessment by the government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee,
it must first make a priority list that is drafted by the committee and
signed off by the minister.
The HSI Australia head of campaigns, Nicola Beynon, says this process
of requiring a priority listing from the government before the final
scientific assessment stage could enable “politically difficult
nominations to be de-prioritised.”
“The priority list is necessitated by a lack of resources; it sees
threatened species drip-fed for protection rather than a concerted
effort into ensuring that everything that deserves protections is
receiving it,” she says.
“There’s so many little things in the system that all add up to failure.”
In the past, species listed as vulnerable, endangered or critically
endangered under the EPBC Act required the drafting of what is known as a
recovery plan for their management.
But changes to the Act in 2006 made the making of recovery plans
optional and at the discretion of the minister. The changes also
introduced an alternative document known as a conservation advice, which
a minister only has to consider – as opposed to being bound to specific
actions or protections for a species – when making approvals under the
EPBC Act.
This was seen in 2015 when approval of Adani’s Carmichael coalmine in
Queensland was overturned because the then environment minister Greg
Hunt failed to consider the conservation advices for the yakka skink and
ornamental snake.
The mine was re-approved two months later after the minister went
back and considered the advice for both species and signed off on the
development.
Dr Bruce Lindsay, a lawyer with Environmental Justice Australia, says
“part of the issue we’ve got is the environment laws within the EPBC
Act have really become more about facilitating development than
protecting threatened species.”
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| Adani’s approval was overturned in 2015 because Greg Hunt
failed to consider conservation advices for the yakka skink, pictured,
and ornamental snake. Photograph: Shawn Scott |
“It’s about development with conditions. The purpose of the laws is
not really about arresting and reversing the decline of threatened
species,” he says.
Since
the Coalition took power in 2013, it has taken steps to invest in the
eradication of predators such as feral cats and has established a
threatened species commissioner to raise the profile of threatened
species. Its threatened species prospectus includes commitments to
improve the trajectories of 20 mammals, 20 birds and 30 plants by 2020,
but this is a small portion of the mammals, birds, reptiles, fish,
plants and other species that have threatened species listings, and the
process by which the mammals and birds were selected has been a source
of conjecture.
“With 503 animal and 1,308 plant species listed as nationally threatened, there is a big task ahead,” Frydenberg has said.
“The Coalition government, however, is strongly committed to
threatened species protection and recovery – that’s why we appointed
Australia’s first threatened species commissioner. We also launched
Australia’s first threatened species strategy and have mobilised $255m
for more than 1,200 projects with threatened species outcomes.”
But scientists say these measures will be insufficient as long as
factors such as vegetation destruction remain unaddressed and that
Australia is flying in the dark on a whole range of other management and
monitoring concerns for threatened species.
“Habitat loss and modification remains the elephant in the room in
terms of the total number of threatened species it affects, and because
the loss of vegetation can compound other serious threats, for example
by making it easier for feral cats and foxes to find and kill native
animals” Prof Ritchie says.
In a recent paper on Australia’s three known vertebrate extinctions
of the past decade, Woinarski and fellow scientists Stephen Garnett,
Sarah Legge and David Lindenmayer recommended Australian governments
establish an inquest after any extinction to better understand the
factors that led to it and to reduce the likelihood that they will occur
again – similar to what coronial inquiries do in unexplained deaths of
humans.
Darren Grover, head of living ecosystems for WWF Australia, says
another part of the challenge is simply making Australians understand
what is at stake.
He says the current plight of threatened species is made more
difficult by the fact that many of the plants and animals under threat
are species Australians “have never heard of, they’ve never been to
where the animal lives and it doesn’t affect them in any way”.
“But what we will see starting to happen in the next couple of years,
if we can’t turn things around, is that it will be things that people
know,” he says.
“We need to connect Australians with their wildlife again.”
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