Natural Heritage - Number 28
The Journal of the Natural Heritage Trust
Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Australia
Department of the Environment and Heritage, Winter 2006
ISSN 1440-7256
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About this document
Australia is home to more than one million plant and animal species - many of which are found nowhere else in the world. About 85 per cent of flowering plants, 84 per cent of mammals, more than 45 per cent of birds and 89 per cent of inshore, temperate-zone fish are found only in our country. Some of these species are considered threatened due to ongoing habitat destruction caused by land clearing, invasive weeds and feral animals and climate change.
This edition of Natural Heritage draws attention to the plight of Australia’s rare and endangered flora and fauna but also the rescue efforts underway to help save them.
The Australian Government is working in partnership with state, territory and local governments, non-government organisations, tertiary institutions and community groups to protect our native species.
The Natural Heritage Trust has recently invested $1.3 million in a habitat conservation project to help save from extinction the south-eastern Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo. There are less than 1000 of these birds remaining in the wild.
The Australian Government has pledged a $2 million rescue package to save the iconic Tasmanian devil with funding to accelerate research into the deadly facial tumour disease afflicting the animals.
Twenty Tammar wallabies that were previously thought to be extinct were recently released into Innes National Park, southern Yorke Peninsula, about 70-80 years after being wiped out on mainland South Australia. The re-introduction of the species, supported with $340,000 from the Trust, is one of the most significant environmental events of the decade. The mainland SA sub-species of Tammar wallaby is listed as “extinct in the wild”.
It is alarming that in the past 200 years 17 different Australian mammals have become extinct and recent studies predict that about 20 per cent of Australia's species will be threatened with extinction by 2010.
The Australian Government mechanism for national environment protection and biodiversity conservation is the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). The EPBC Act provides for:
- identification and listing of threatened species and threatened ecological communities
- development of recovery plans for listed species and ecological communities
- recognition of key threatening processes, and
- reducing these processes through threat abatement plans
Our Threatened Species Network (TSN), funded by the Natural Heritage Trust, equips communities to preserve and protect at-risk species. Now in its 15th year, TSN provides $500,000 annually to more than 35 community projects and to date, it has helped protect more than 370 threatened plants, animals and ecological communities.
It should also be remembered that National Threatened Species Day is held on the 7th of September each year to encourage the community to help conserve Australia’s unique native flora and fauna. We can all take action to prevent further extinctions by restoring healthy numbers of endangered species and ecological communities in the world.
Senator Ian Campbell
Australian Minister for the Environment and Heritage
Peter McGauran
Australian Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
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