Large parts of Australia look like the above photo, beautiful in a rugged way, but quite useless for the survival of many of Australia species. Australia has a wide range of habitats, which means that there are many areas which need to be protected.
The problem is, according to this study, declaring an area protected appears to be having little change on what is happened.
1/3 of all land that is set aside for restoration and conservation, has got worse rather than better. Given the fact that so many species are just hanging on to existence, this could be very bad news.
In one area that was studied, the majority of the area was cleared paddock – a serious problem for the koala and grey-headed flying fox which called the area home.
In particular, the idea of this scheme is so called biodiversity offsetting – if you are to clear wildlife habitat, you protect a similar sized area elsewhere.
Recognized as an incredibly popular species, with a great deal of conservation effort being put into its survival. The Queensland conservation council is urging the state government is calling for its remaining habitat to be protected, as logging continues.
Calls are being made to create a park to protect the species.
The Miles government promised (in June) to turn 50,000-60,000 hectares of high value ecosystems into a greater glider national park. Unfortunately, this plan gave detailed listings of where timber would be extracted, but did not include clear maps for areas to be protected. Quite understandably, conservationists are calling foul – it is not possible to deforest an area, and then call for its conservation.
The population of this species is estimated to have halved in just the last 20 years, which should officially declares it as vulnerable to extinction (it is true that this is often decided over 10 years, but still is a very bad sign). Other issues, is fragmentation of their forests – they are generally very unwilling to come down to ground level to travel to other trees. They can stay in the air for around 100m, but this means that a gap greater than this can isolate the population. They require eucalypt forests (this is almost all they eat, with plenty of large tree hollows to make home, and retreat into.
Will Australia step up, or will this species get pushed into planned extinction? Time will tell, though given Australias track record, we should not expect big things without a great deal of pressure from conservation groups, and publicity on what is happening, from around the world.
Koalas are often listed as one of the most popular animals worldwide. Living only in Australia, most of us are not going to see them in their natural setting.
Increasingly it is looking like, no one will see them in their natural setting unless you are travelling to Australia soon.
A mix of droughts, heatwaves and bushfires have all contributed to deal this huge blow to this unique species.
There are now estimated to be just 58,000 wild koalas, down for 80,000 in 2018. Another problem occurs when developers clear land to build a property – which is continuing to occur in Koala habitat.
Earlier this year, Australia announced that it was considering listing the East coast koala as endangered. With a precipitous fall in population like this, it seems odd that there is any decision to be made – of course the Koala is endangered, and if the government is considering listing a particular subspecies as endangered it must be very bad.
Estimates as high as 1 billion are quoted for the number of animals killed in the fires.
Koalas as a species, are highly popular. Not found in many zoos a lot of people go to Australia to see them. Perhaps down to the character Binky bill, and the books written about him, koalas are one of the species that almost everyone knows about even though the majority of people haven’t seen them. In the UK only found and in Edinburgh Zoo and Longleat Safari Park, ( with both these arrivals relatively recent) zoo goers are not used to seeing koalas.
Wildlife species only found in Australia are threatened by several factors. The first is the fact that Australia is increasing the clearing their habitats- as in Africa, forest living species cannot survive in the wild when their habitat has been cleared, and unfortunately in Australia large parts of their land are being cleared. While on occasion that has been pledges to replant Forest elsewhere in Australia, generally the firm has either failed to live up to its promises or has not replaced it with like the like- often the new forests are fast growing species that do not support the wildlife of the forest they destroyed.
Australia is one of the countries that is being hit first by global warming with parts of the Continent becoming largely uninhabitable. The increase in temperature is also drying out the forest which is meaning that some of the forest not being cut down are dying anyway.
Over the last decade also Australia has had some politicians who have been prominent climate change deniers, and thus far they seem to be uninterested in doing the things that are required to protect their own way of life.
In this latest fire, hundreds of koalas have been burnt to death, unfortunately the area was actually a highly successful breeding ground and had very high densities (remember that koalas are herbivores and therefore can live at densities of hundreds per square mile).
However sensationalist claims that koalas functionally extinct after these fires is totally false. They are highly endangered with their habitats disappearing at an astounding rate, but be functionally extinct they need to be very few members of the Species left and we are not there yet (functional extinction essentially says without human intervention the species will disappear). There are arguments as to how many koalas are left, but it’s estimated that New South Wales has between 15,000 and 30,000 remaining.
Koala numbers declined by about 40% between 1990 and 2010, so the theory is without a change in the government’s attitude very soon the Koala will be totally extinct in the wild. Isolated cases of reforestation need to be increased and and Forest corridors between blocks would allow the population to rebound naturally (this adds resilience to farmland as well as the wild areas around).
