Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary in the Kimberley is one of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy’s properties. Who else is privately conserving biodiversity?
dracophylla/Flickr
There is general agreement that the Commonwealth and state governments lack the commitment, and hence funding, to preserve Australia’s biodiversity. Professor Tim Flannery addressed these issues in his…
Sewer infrastructure isn’t ready for our water saving techniques.
gnackgnackgnack/Flickr
Saving water is a good thing, right? But what if I told you it could also cause problems. A recent study from Victoria University indicates water-conservation can have unintended consequences for residents…
We’re happy to kill individual creatures in large numbers - what’s stopping us wiping out the biosphere?
Darren Harmon
The environmental crisis has never loomed so large nor been so extensively debated as in the last few years. But at the same time we have never heard less about environmental ethics - the bio-inclusive…
You have probably heard someone utter the cliché “I grew up in a different era”. Compared to today, my youth was technologically anorexic. It was a time where you would never be told “Please turn off your…
A squirrel glider crosses a rope bridge over the Hume Freeway.
Kylie Soanes
Wildlife can have a tough time crossing roads. Noisy, fast vehicles and wide, open gaps in habitat make it an uninviting and risky venture. This means some animals are cut off from food, shelter or loving…
Only 3-8% of the original number of Southern Bluefin Tuna still exist.
AAP
Note: Southern Bluefin Tuna is listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN, but only as conservation dependent under Australian legislation. Southern Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) are majestic, temperate…
Australia’s marine parks are all show, no substance, so why are conservation groups so supportive?
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
On land and in the sea, we’re losing sight of what nature conservation is about. We’ve become dangerously focused on protected areas, but rarely consider what they’re supposed to achieve. One result is…
Logging of Mountain Ash doesn’t make the sustainable forestry grade.
lizardstomp/Flickr
By any scientific yardstick, forestry operations in Victoria cannot be regarded as ecologically sustainable. Much of the attention of politicians, policy makers and the general public has been on the tall…
The Beautiful Nursery Frog is found only on Thornton Peak in northeast Queensland.
Steve Williams
The Beautiful Nursery Frog (Cophixalus concinnus) is a tiny ground-living frog from the family Microhylidae - from the Greek words “micros”, meaning small, and “hyla”, meaning forest or woods. The species…
An exotic pet - like this slow loris - won’t have come to you voluntarily.
Michael Whitehead
What’s the worst Christmas gift you could give someone? It would have to be a non-human primate or a big cat. Images of people cuddling cute baby chimpanzees, slow lorises or tigers can lead to false perceptions…
An early dry season fire in Kakadu National Park – are these fires burning up our mammals?
Clay Trauernicht
Conservationists should take heart that Australia is finally waking up to the biodiversity crisis in Australia’s north. It is an urgent problem: right now, a diverse assortment of our small mammals – bandicoots…
Euastacus dharawalus is the most critical of the spiny crayfish group.
Jason Coughran
You may be familiar with some of Australia’s more iconic spiny crayfish, such as the giant Murray River crayfish, Euastacus armatus, but there is an untold diversity within this endemic Australian genus…
If Victoria keeps logging the way it is, the Leadbeater’s Possum is doomed.
ccdoh1/flickr
We have studied the effects of current widespread clear-felling in Victoria’s Mountain ash forests for almost three decades. Clear-felling now loses large amounts of money for the state of Victoria, degrades…
With increasing pressure on Australia’s water resources, many have looked to northern Australia to provide water for agriculture, urban development and other human needs. Much of northern Australia is…
Trees need stability and protection to get big, and both of those are in short supply.
William Laurance
When I was a small lad there was a stately old tree in our backyard. My little sister and I practically lived in it — it was our lair, our fortress, our stairway to the sky. Decades later, I sometimes…
What keeps crocodiles under control? Bigger crocodiles.
Grahame Webb
There have been two fatal saltwater crocodile attacks on people in the Northern Territory (NT) in the last four weeks. Calls to “cull” the wild population of crocodiles have inevitably surfaced. More school…
Tasmanian devils have had low genetic diversity for hundreds of years.
AAP/Devil Ark/Mandy Kennedy
European settlers were not responsible for thinning the gene pool of the Tasmanian devil, new research has found. Tasmanian devils are currently under threat due to the spread of an aggressive facial tumour…
National parks’ role as a refuge from direct human intervention will only become more important in future.
dracopylla/Flickr
Tim Flannery’s recent Quarterly Essay, After the Future, questions whether Australian national parks will become “marsupial ghost towns” despite the tens of millions of dollars governments spend on them…
Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University