Australia’s wildlife in the balance

The lucky country

Australia’s wildlife is in the balance. But we have always been a lucky country. Australians enjoy one of the best lifestyles in the world, with access to clean air, wilderness, wild coastlines and oceans.

We nonetheless have a strange relationship with wildlife. We are one of only 17 ‘megadiversity’ countries with 70% of the world’s land species but we hold the world record for global extinction loss.  The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) hasn’t had a natural history unit since about 2004 and most Australians can’t identify even common garden birds.

Meanwhile, we’ve allowed our primary industries (farming and fisheries) to culture a nationwide narrative of hate against any wildlife that is abundant. We ‘cull’ animals to the point that we are now even driving kangaroo populations to extinction. Our neglect has even seen iconic koalas become endangered. Even conservationists, driven to try to ‘manage’ nature, often kill more wildlife, with unforeseen consequences. We jump to killing animals before understanding the harm we are doing.

The greatest opportunity

It doesn’t have to be like this. Of all the western countries in the world, we have one of the greatest opportunities. Our animal life is still abundant enough to help restore our entire landscape. Kangaroos, for example, are still more populous than our human population. We are the only place in the world that can say that about any surviving megafaunaThe largest animals that represent the top of the trophic pyramid. These are the final building blocks in ecosystem structures for maximum entropy production. Megafauna can be measured at any spatial scale. The largest animal that ever lived on Earth is the Blue Whale. In a grassland, spiders could be considered megafauna The term is generally reserved for animals larger More.

The decisions we make about our most abundant wildlife are going to determine whether our economy survives the next 50 years. This is a story untold, where conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More it is critical to our country’s future.

It’s the one thing that separates us from most of the rest of the world. It will make us stronger and more resilient. Wildlife is humanity’s best hope. We have one of the greatest opportunities.