Applied ecology and conservation research groupThe south-west of WA is a global biodiversity hotspot. The state barrier fence has had a questionable impact on controlling pest species and extending it would likely cause more harm than good.
Read more, including reader comments, on the Science Network Western Australia website.
By Dale Nimmo, Deakin University, Euan Ritchie, Deakin University and Thomas Newsome, University of Sydney.
“There was a plague of them and one night I got approximately 300 which had been poisoned in the garden during night. This went on for two or three years.”
Take a second and have a guess what animal species this quote might be referring to. Here’s a hint, the quote is from western Victoria, Australia, during the 1800s.
What did you guess? A house mouse, or another introduced species like a rabbit?
In fact, the quote refers to a native mammal species, the eastern quoll. A species that was “one of the commonest animals” in southeastern Australia, a species that would plague, is now officially extinct on the mainland. It has been more than 50 years since a confirmed sighting.
Australia has the worst rate of mammal extinctions in the world. More than a third have become extinct since European settlement, or are currently threatened with extinction. But what about the survivors? And what can we do to prevent further losses?
Few Australians would appreciate just how much our native mammal communities have changed since European arrival more than 200 years ago. Early quotes from books and newspaper articles like the one above, painstakingly collated by researchers, offer some insight.
Early explorers made similar notes about abundant mammals because their dogs were “completely distracted by the numbers of wallabies, paddymelons and kangaroo rats that bounded off on all sides”.
Their poor horses would struggle through the sandy soils that were “full of Wallabi holes”.
Such quotes describe an Australian landscape rich in native wildlife. A landscape that, owing to the decline and extinction of so many mammal species, has radically changed.
The abundant mammals that distracted the dog and made life difficult for the horse probably refer to species long gone. According to researchers, the burrowing bettong, which is now extinct on mainland Australia, was probably the “kangaroo rat” responsible for those pesky holes.
The “paddymelons” and wallabies are probably the eastern hare and/or bridled nailtail wallabies; the former now extinct, the latter now restricted to a few pockets across eastern Australia.
Even with the sad loss of so many native mammals, Australia retains a suite of truly fascinating species, many of which occur right among us.
In Melbourne’s suburb of Cranbourne, populations of southern brown bandicoots persist, fossicking in people’s gardens and dining from dog’s bowls by night.
Species of flying fox survive in our inner cities and darken the dusk sky as they leave their colony for their nightly foraging.
In most major capitals, some possum species are so common as to be an annoyance to many as they bound over roofs and devour prized roses.
Less raucous but arguably more striking sugar gliders and striped possums occupy urban parks, while a range of species of pygmy possums and hopping mice live on in our parks and reserves.
A diverse array of kangaroo species still bound through rural landscapes, sharing paddocks with wombats, echidnas, dingoes and koalas. Platypuses fish for yabbies in farm dams nearby.
Australia is still blessed with spectacular and globally unique mammals. But we can do better.
As part of the federal government’s National Environmental Science Programme, approximately A$30 million is being devoted to a Threatened Species Recovery Hub.
Australia’s native mammals will undoubtedly be a focus of the hub, as many species are on the brink of extinction.
However, one thing our history of mammal extinctions has taught us is that complacency is our worst enemy. Common species go extinct, and can do so rapidly.
It’s not just about conserving threatened species. The decline of eastern quolls, and many other similarly rapid declines of common species, tell of the need to be vigilant.
On the other hand, species that are regionally extinct should not be forgotten when assessing how our conservation dollar is best spent. This is particularly true for species that perform important functional roles that benefit other species (or entire ecosystems), such as native predators. Just as complacency is to be avoided, an aversion to taking calculated risks and trying new approaches in conservation also jeopardises our species’ chances of survival. We urgently need to go further and be bold if our landscapes are to be restored.
The revival of apex predators across Europe, species such as wolves, bears and lynx, demonstrates that biodiversity change is not a one way street. Indeed, few would have predicted a predator renaissance in Europe 50 years ago. Yet, European society has deemed that predators are important to conserve and they are actively restoring them.
There are emerging signs that Australians are up to the task too.
The western quoll, a species that once occurred in every mainland state (now restricted to southwestern Western Australia), has been reintroduced to the Flinders Ranges, and is reproducing.
There is growing support for ambitious projects such as the reintroduction of Tasmanian Devils onto mainland Australia, both for their own conservation and to help control invasive predators, such as red foxes and feral cats. The eastern quoll also persists in Tasmania and so their reintroduction to mainland Australia remains a possibility.
Even dingoes are being recognised for considerable conservation values, and at times, their economic benefits.
Organisations are being assembled to specifically promote and support the recovery of many of our iconic apex predators.
It is time for the public, governments and non-government organisations to capitalise on this momentum and support audacious projects that seek to rewild Australia and restore its natural glory.
Let us hope that a future not so far away will see our landscapes reinvigorated by a resurgent mammal fauna.
By Bob Pressey, James Cook University and Euan Ritchie, Deakin University.
While we can never know for sure, an extraordinary number of animals and plants are threatened with extinction — up to a third of all mammals and over a tenth of all birds. And the problem is getting worse.
At the same time, we have more land and sea than ever in protected areas (“parks”) — more than 200,000 protected areas covering about 15% of the world’s land area and 3% of the oceans.
So why are protected areas making so little difference?
This is a vital question about the future of nature that should be discussed at Sydney’s World Parks Congress, beginning today.
This once-in-a-decade Congress, led by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), will be attended by thousands. A sobering reality will lie behind the excitement and networking: while protected-area systems expand, we are losing the planet’s species at an alarming rate.
One reason is that protected areas are only one of our tools, and will never do the job alone. IUCN could say, though, that it’s doing the best it can.
But another reason, more confronting for IUCN, is that protected areas tend to be in the wrong places.
Just about anywhere people have looked, the majority of protected areas are residual — leftover areas of the world pushed to the margins where they least interfere with extractive activities such as agriculture, mining, or forestry.
On land, protected areas are mainly remote or high, cold, arid, steep, and infertile. Similar patterns are emerging in the sea.
Residual protected areas, by definition, make least difference to conservation.
Meanwhile, biodiversity continues to be lost in landscapes and seascapes suitable for clearing, logging, grazing, fishing, and extraction of minerals, oil, and gas.
Residual protection also gives the false appearance of progress because many people equate the number of protected areas and their extent with success.
These figures are only “good news” if they tell us about the difference these parks make to conservation. They don’t.
The most rigorous estimates of the difference that protected areas make are small.
By 2008, only 7% of Costa Rica’s much-lauded protected-area system would have been deforested in the absence of protection.
Globally, in 2005, the loss of native vegetation prevented by protected areas was 3% of their extent.
These numbers get to the very purpose of protected areas. They are small because protected areas are mainly residual.
Protected areas that make little or no difference should be a major concern for IUCN, especially because targets for protection endorsed by the Convention on Biological Diversity at best obscure and at worst encourage the failure of protected areas to make a difference.
The Convention’s targets are meant to guide decisions on protected areas to 2020. The only unambiguously quantitative target (number 11) says nothing about making a difference. It aspires to 17% of land and 10% of the sea under formal protection.
The result has been a rush to proclaim large, remote protected areas where they are easiest to establish and make least difference. The story is familiar in conservation and beyond: provide a simplistic metric that implies success, and it will be manipulated to achieve high scores.
Another of the Convention’s targets (number 5) gets closer to the real purpose of protected areas, but remains problematic: “By 2020, the rate of loss of all natural habitats, is at least halved and where feasible brought close to zero, and degradation and fragmentation [are] significantly reduced.”
But there are problems here too. Before we halve the rate of loss, we need to know what the “baseline” rate of loss is — and over what period it should it be measured. Should it be measured in the past, when loss might have been slower, or now? Habitat loss also varies across the world — does that mean that reduction in loss rates of some areas can offset faster losses elsewhere?
Several kinds of tropical forests, for example, housing most of the world’s terrestrial species, are being lost rapidly. For these, even a halving of the rate of loss will mean mass extinction.
IUCN’s mission is hindered by recalcitrant governments.
Australia, as host of the World Parks Congress, will show off its conservation wares. The display window is less impressive than when Australia genuinely led global conservation thinking from the 1970s to 1990s.
Our protected areas on land, such as those in the host state, are strongly residual (claims of an improving trend are based on inadequate data).
Australia’s marine parks, which are directed more at satisfying total protected area than protecting threatened marine biodiversity, show other countries how not to protect the sea.
And the only quantitative targets in Australia’s Strategy for the National Reserve System — for protected extent and coverage of regional ecosystems — leave plenty of scope for more parks that make little or no difference.
Not content with marginalising protection, Australian governments are weakening what’s there. Parks on land are being opened up for livestock grazing, industrial logging, mining, “conservation hunting”, and commercial development.
No-take zones in marine parks are being opened up for fishing. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is in jeopardy and the plan to fix it is destined to fail.
Here are four ways for IUCN to lead the way to parks that make a bigger difference:
Ultimately, the success of conservation depends on what natural resources are left unexploited by humans so that other species can survive.
Protection that does not avoid the loss of species and ecosystems merely gives the appearance of conservation progress under exploitative business-as-usual.
Real conservation – the kind that makes a difference – depends on IUCN’s leadership. Every year of delay means irreversible, avoidable loss of biodiversity.
This article was co-authored by Dr Piero Visconti, Board Member of the European Section of the Society for Conservation Biology in Washington, D.C.
The Victorian Government is considering reintroducing Tasmanian Devils to Wilsons Promontory National Park, in part to help control fox and feral cat numbers. I spoke to the ABC’s Jonathan Kendall about the evidence.
Feral cats are devastating our wildlife, so we need a long-term, sustainable solution. This is where Australia’s natural predators come in.
A few moments on the internet will reveal that, as companion animals, cats are rivalled only by dogs. Our love affair with them is hardly surprising: they are elegant, graceful and affectionate animals. But they are also highly adaptable and successful hunters. Sadly our soft spot for them brings with it disastrous consequences for smaller wildlife species, particularly mammals, birds and reptiles.
Cats are wreaking havoc on our native wildlife, from northern Australia’s Kimberley to southern Australia’s Alps: nowhere is unaffected. Along with other threats such as habitat loss and fire, cats are pushing many native animals to the brink of extinction.
How serious is the cat problem? It’s been estimated that there may be as many as 15 million feral cats in Australia, each killing about five native animals per night: a nightly total of around 75 million native animals. And it’s not just feral cats doing the damage; that adorable Fluffy has a sinister side too. It often isn’t recognised that there is abundant and diverse native wildlife in and around many Australian cities and towns, including bandicoots, sugar gliders, quolls, koalas, parrots, water dragons and snakes. The development of remotely triggered camera traps has provided ample evidence that such wildlife frequently falls victim to domestic cats on their nightly excursions.
For a long time our other invasive predator of note, the European red fox, was seen as enemy number one to our wildlife, particularly mammals, but there’s a growing realisation that its many meals are eclipsed by those of cats, both feral and owned. Globally, cats are rated at 38th and red foxes at 99th on the IUCN’s list of 100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species.
And it’s not just cats’ appetites that are doing the damage. Cats are the primary host of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which can infect most mammals and birds, causing the potentially fatal disease toxoplasmosis (toxo). Even when not lethal, toxo can impact wildlife populations indirectly, through effects that include impaired vision, disorientation, loss of coordination, anorexia, lethargy, fever, skewed offspring sex ratios and abortion. Most bizarrely, animals infected with toxo are often attracted to the smell of cats and hence are more likely to be killed and eaten by them; a kind of parasite-driven mind control.
So what can we do to reduce the damage done by cats and mitigate this national conservation disaster? The most urgent needs are for vigorous education and awareness campaigns about the impacts of cats on wildlife, and tighter regulations and enforcement around responsible cat ownership. This should include mandatory desexing, the imposition of night-time curfews and containment of cats within pet owners’ properties at all times.
In addition, a number of on-ground solutions are already available or under consideration; there is no doubt that a range of measures will be essential. These include the development of cat-specific poison baits and release of a cat-specific virus. However cat control through disease and poison programs are unlikely to be effective long-term, as natural selection will favour disease-resistant and cautious cats which will result in rapid population bounce-back. After all, cats are known for their smarts, being more attracted to moving prey and suspicious of foreign objects. Under good conditions, furthermore, they can reproducequickly and bountifully.
Fencing can effectively exclude cats from habitats and provide wildlife refuges, and they play a critical role in holding the line for species such as bilbies, already teetering on the edge of extinction. However the use of fencing as a regular and ongoing strategy for wildlife conservation in our vast country will not only be logistically challenging (perhaps impossible) but also forbiddingly expensive. More fences will also result in it becoming harder and harder to see bilbies, bandicoots and many other native species in the wild. What a sad outcome for our nation and what an indictment of our allowing cats to reign supreme and unchecked!
Why are cats able to run rampant? A significant reason is the lack of balance that now characterises our ecosystems. A crucial step is likely to be returning native top predators, in particular dingoes and Tasmanian devils, to landscapes, so that they can resume their important ecological roles. Scientific research (pdf) is strongly suggesting that dingoes not only kill cats but also instill fear in them, which means that they avoid areas and times where dingoes are active. Hence dingoes can provide a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week, cat control service.
If we want to conserve our iconic and globally unique wildlife then we need to work with, rather than against nature, and supporting more positive management of dingoes and returning Tasmanian devils to mainland Australia for their biodiversity benefits (pdf)would be one of the best and most cost effective things policy-makers could do now. Non-government conservation organisations such as the Australian Wildlife Conservancy are already leading the way.
In 1995 the USA and Canada worked together to reintroduce wolves to Yellowstone for their ecosystem benefits. The success of this bold step is now the stuff of legend. Isn’t it time we had our ‘Yellowstone moment’ and began restoring Australia’s ecosystems to some of their former glory?
Parts of Australia are teeming with over-abundant herbivores, such as feral goats and native kangaroos. But is shooting the best approach? Or can a well-managed dingo population lead to a well-managed kangaroo population?
It’s all about mammals on this week’s Einstein-A-Go-Go podcast.
Jim Thomas (Tenkile Conservation Alliance) and I chat to the team at Triple R about our adventures in Papua New Guinea, the discovery of new species and our plight to save endangered tree kangaroos in the remote Torricelli mountains.
A diminutive wallaby is among several previously undescribed species we caught on camera in remote Papua New Guinea.
The wallaby, probably genus Dorcopsulus, is only as big as a domestic cat — quite unusual for a macropod.
The Guardian has published some of the first pictures from my PNG adventure including a dwarf cassowary, previously unclassified wallaby and, of course, the endangered tenkile.
I spoke to ABC News Radio’s about my trip to PNG and the possibly discovery of several new species.
We went in with 40 crowd-funded camera traps and hopes of collecting evidence of some of Papua New Guinea’s most endangered animals. What we found were the first images of previously unrecorded mammals, including a small dorcopsulus wallaby.
Jim Thomas from the Tenkile Conservation Alliance and I chatted with the ABC Radio’s Rachel Carbonelli this morning about our adventures in PNG, conserving tree kangaroos, and the possibility of previously undiscovered mammal species.
Victorian Agriculture Minister, Peter Walsh, claims hunting is the state’s second biggest tourism money earner and he wants spend nearly $18 million to lure more hunters from interstate and overseas.
While I’m not against the idea of hunting per se, I’m concerned about justifying hunting as a conservation tool.
Shooting fast-breeding feral animals such as rabbits and foxes is unlikely to have much impact on overall numbers — they reproduce far too quickly.
The evidence for successful ‘conservation hunting’ is fairly weak.
As state Minister for Agriculture, Peter Walsh, unveils new plans to market Victoria as a game hunter’s mecca, the debate about so-called ‘conservation hunting’ continues.
Many conservation biologists, including myself, generally see trophy-hunting as a potential option for generating income for conservation.
But, the environmental benefits of hunting are often overstated. Hunting, in many areas, can actually have counter-productive effects. And focussing on bounty schemes and body counts just doesn’t work.
Australia’s ‘native dog’ has a bad reputation, with farmers long having problems with their attacks on livestock. But some farmers are now finding a dingo-friendly approach is gaining better results.
In this 3-minute feature story on Channel Ten’s The Project, I add my voice to the dingo debate; how culling and baiting have been unsuccessful strategies, and why maintaining apex predators adds balance to our ecosystems.
I caught up with the ABC’s Richard Stubbs about tracking tenkiles, trekking the Torricelli ranges, the role of social media in science communication, crowd funding, conservation, carbon storage and much more besides. Have a listen.
![Sharks are critical to keeping environments in balance. Image credit: Terry Goss [CC-BY-SA-3.0] via Wikimedia Commons](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/White_shark.jpg)
None of us wants to be an animal’s next meal.
And a number of recent fatal shark attacks in Western Australia have intensified the issue of human-predator conflict.
In response, the WA Government has introduced a shark cull to create “safe zones” for beachgoers – with the first killing on the weekend.
Thousands of people, including surfers, have since rallied against the move.
So what are the broader consequences of losing sharks and other large predators?
Landmark research in the international journal Science this month reviewed the conservation status and ecological roles of the world’s 31 largest carnivores.
Our study suggests that we should be greatly concerned about the ongoing loss of predators.
We studied lions, tigers, African wild dogs, leopards, cheetahs, wolves, lynx, otters, bears, hyenas and dingoes. The study spans all continents except Antarctica.
Alarmingly, roughly 75 per cent of all predators are declining and headed towards extinction.
So unless genuine and urgent efforts are made to conserve these animals, many of them could be gone for ever.
What happens when predators decline or, worse, disappear? In short, wherever we looked, we saw major environmental problems.
Research on Australia’s top predator, the dingo, tells a compelling story.
Over much of the continent, this native predator is shot and poisoned to protect livestock.
But science has now shown that by killing dingoes we make life easier for introduced foxes, cats, goats and pigs, as well as native kangaroos.
This has many impacts: most importantly the net loss of our native animals.
And in many cases, we actually lose more stock after killing dingoes. More sophisticated solutions to managing dingoes are available, like the use of livestock guardian dogs.
Globally, when top predators are lost, the number of mammals grazing on vegetation goes up, causing soil erosion, lower carbon sequestration and loss of habitat for native animals. Predators can also prevent the spread of disease.
In Africa, we are also seeing children forgoing an education to stay home and help their families protect crops from raids by rising numbers of Olive baboons, once kept in check by leopards and lions.
So what about sharks?
Like other top predators, they are critical to keeping environments in balance.
When large sharks are culled, numbers of rays and smaller fish species increase dramatically. Because these smaller species feed on commercially valuable fish, the economic impacts can be huge.
If endangered and legally protected species such as great white sharks are targeted and killed under government orders, we are surely within our rights to request a full cost-benefit analysis.
We need to make sure millions of taxpayer-funded dollars are not being wasted or even making things worse.
Persecuting sharks is not the answer. The management of any wildlife should be based on sound scientific evidence, not political rhetoric.
Clearly, predators have far-reaching ecological, economic and social benefits that are grossly underappreciated.
There is no doubt predators pose challenges, such as wolves attacking livestock and sharks attacking humans. But education and new management practices offer alternatives to culling.
When sharks were culled in Hawaii there was no long-term benefit because shark attacks occurred immediately after.
This is because many species of shark are migratory – some travelling thousands of kilometres. This means killing sharks in a local area only is doomed to fail.
Public education programs about sharks and installing shark exclusion nets is more sensible.
It is telling that many recent victims of shark attacks have come out to protest against the planned shark cull in WA.
Clearly, many people, including those most deeply affected, want smarter solutions to coexisting.
With all of this in mind, governments must find and encourage better ways for people and predators to live together. Failure to do so places us all at risk.
A live chat with Science journal associate editor, Sacha Vignieri.
In this 48-minute Google+ Hangout, we ask: what is it about large predators that makes them so important in ecosystems? How can we ensure their continued survival in a world with increasing human encroachment? And what would a world without predators look like if we fail?
The BBC’s Matt McGrath speaks to Professor William Ripple about the global decline of the world’s top predators, and how we are all paying the price.
Applied ecology and conservation research group 
