Category: The Conversation

The Conversation: Powerless against bird flu? Not entirely. Here are 8 ways to help protect Australia’s birds and mammals

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 5 August 2026

John Woinarski, Professor of Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University; Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, and Stephen Garnett, Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has now spread from migratory birds to infect resident Australian birds. Clusters of dead birds have been found in several locations. The virus will inevitably infect other wildlife, most notably mammals.

Death rates range from 75-100% in poultry and some wild bird species. There’s great uncertainty about how big the death toll will be over both the short and long-term. Native species such as the black swan are highly vulnerable, while others may prove more resilient.

Based on overseas experience, we can expect many thousands, if not millions, of Australian birds, and large numbers of mammals, to perish. Poultry will likely become infected, while some beloved pets may die.

Overall, the populations of many Australian species will likely plummet. Some threatened species will move closer to extinction, and relatively safe species could become threatened. As the virus spreads through widespread species such as silver gulls, white ibis, pigeons, ducks and crows, many of us will be confronted by wildlife deaths close to home.

Facing a threat like this can make us feel powerless. But there are actions we can take.

Blow after blow for wildlife

Over the 2019-20 summer, megafires incinerated forests and wildlife. In 2025, the lethal South Australian algal bloom denuded large marine areas.

The prospect of yet another hammer blow to wildlife is haunting and emotionally triggering for conservationists, wildlife carers and people who love nature.

To date, the official messaging asks us to watch for, report and record sick birds and mammals. This is important, but it risks leaving the community feeling disempowered witnesses to catastrophe. The situation is far from hopeless. Now is the time to act.

What can be done?

Following overseas work on ways to reduce the toll, we have come up with eight actions.

1. Tackle other threats to give species a fighting chance

While federal, state and territory response plans are not public, what we do know suggests a focus on controlling threats other than bird flu, especially for species that are threatened.

For example, locally eradicating predators such as cats and foxes could give more individuals a chance to get through the first wave of bird flu. Banning duck hunting could also reduce one threat to wildlife.

Working to reduce other threats such as feral cats will boost resilience to the virus at a species level. Pictured: a cat stalking a red-tailed tropic-bird chick on Christmas Island. Janos Hennicke, CC BY

2. Secure insurance populations

Threatened birds and mammals with populations in captivity provide some security. We can boost these insurance populations by increasing their genetic diversity and the number of individuals kept.

For at-risk species without these populations, we may have to collect wild animals before infection reaches them (where practical). Zoos may offer the most protection, but there’s scope to translocate species (such as northern quolls) to safer wild places.

3. Vaccinate species at risk

New Zealand authorities are already giving vaccines to birds at risk. To date, Australia is not doing so, though policymakers are exploring the option. Limited trials in mammals have been undertaken in the United States.

Wild animals have to be caught, given the vaccine, and recaptured for a booster 4-6 weeks later. This is challenging but often feasible. In the US, authorities captured and vaccinated endangered Californian condors, then released them back to the wild.

We need to explore new vaccines, especially for mammals.

4. Widen monitoring

We need good monitoring to track the spread, understand whether our efforts have helped and plan future actions. Monitoring will show what the virus has done to species, track viral mutations and assess survival rates.

For many seabirds and waterbirds, existing programs give us good estimates of current population size. This will let us estimate declines and any recoveries. But we don’t have robust estimates for other at-risk bird and mammal species. This gap needs to be rapidly filled with funding for targeted monitoring. Citizen scientists can also help.

Citizen scientists can play a key role in monitoring population declines and – hopefully – recovery through platforms such as iNaturalist and Birdata. Renee Mead, CC BY

5. Expand research

Much Australian fauna is very distinct from species overseas, meaning lessons learned elsewhere won’t necessarily apply. We need to know which species are most vulnerable, which species spread the virus most effectively, whether survivors have compromised immune systems and how much genetic diversity has been lost.

6. Slow the spread

The virus spreads rapidly in contaminated water and through the movements of infected birds and mammals. Even so, we can slow the spread. In some situations, authorities can remove sick or dead animals to reduce the chance of scavenging birds and animals eating them and contracting then spreading the virus.

Some areas may need to be closed to the public to reduce infection risks through disturbance or contamination. It may be necessary to shut down some water sources or make them less attractive to waterfowl, who are often good carriers of the virus. Poultry farmers will need to control water sources too, to avoid attracting infected birds.

7. Involve interested groups

Authorities must ensure community members, land-owners, First Nations groups and conservationists are involved in creating response plans. Bird flu is a shared problem. Governments cannot respond alone.

8. Look for some silver linings

This virus will likely have dire consequences for many species. But it could also kill introduced predators and scavengers such as feral pigs, cats, foxes and common mynahs.

Time to act

The damage this virus will do isn’t set. We can shape some outcomes. We believe this package of actions could help avert the worst future for Australian birds and mammals – and encourage their recovery.

Acknowledgements: Ecologist Tanya Loos provided helpful feedback.

Tags birds, health, nature, news, wildlife

Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: Bird flu has spread to two Australian states. Here’s how it could accelerate our extinction crisis

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 24 June 2026

A rare northern quoll, an animal almost extinct due to the cane toad. Jason Edwards via Getty Images

Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has now been found in a second state, South Australia, after earlier being identified in Western Australia.

Authorities have confirmed three seabirds have died of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus. It is too early to know if H5N1 has spread beyond these animals to other wildlife or livestock in Australia. But it appears very much a matter of when, not if, this happens.

Globally, H5N1 has already devastated wildlife populations. In Australia, this deadly virus could greatly disrupt ecosystems and push our most threatened species even closer to extinction.

Why is H5N1 so dangerous?

The H5N1 strain of bird flu spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as saliva and faeces, infected animals or contaminated environments. It can also be transmitted through scavenging by species that feed on infected carcasses.

Since 2021, the H5N1 strain has killed millions of the world’s wild birds, mammals and poultry. This is because it can spread faster than other HPAI strains – including between mammals – and move between continents via migratory birds.

However, it’s hard to predict how H5N1 will affect our wildlife and ecosystems. This strain of the virus is not yet established in Australia. And many of our species are endemic – meaning they’re not found anywhere outside Australia – so we don’t have the data needed to reliably predict how H5N1 may affect them.

Threatened species most at risk

For threatened species, an H5N1 outbreak could be catastrophic. And a mass mortality event could be the final straw that finishes off a species. This is especially true if a population is already in decline, is geographically restricted or gathers to breed during certain seasons.

After the initial outbreak passes, populations may rebound through breeding and immigration. However, an extreme drop in numbers can create a genetic bottleneck, leading to rapid, substantial loss of genetic diversity. This, in turn, can threaten a population’s long-term health.

Since detecting H5N1 in Australia, authorities have understandably focused on protecting Australia’s spectacular birds – including the threatened regent honeyeater and orange-bellied parrot.

What’s received less attention are our iconic but increasingly threatened mammals. This includes the egg-laying platypus, native rodents such as the rakali and numerous marsupial species. In the United States, the virus has already done widespread damage to native rodents such as squirrels and voles, and the marsupial Virginia Opossum. It may well do the same to Australia’s mammals.

Carnivorous marsupials such as endangered Tasmanian devils and quoll species are also at risk, as their hunting and scavenging may expose them to infected carcasses.

Kangaroos, wallabies, possums and bandicoots can also scavenge and eat meat, meaning they could come in contact with H5N1. Species that live near shore birds in coastal and island habitats – including endangered mainland eastern barred bandicoots and threatened quokkas – are even more at risk.

The H5N1 strain could also prove deadly to our Australian sea lion and black swan populations. Black swans appear particularly susceptible to H5N1, which may be because they evolved in the isolated island continent of Australia. Unlike other swan species, they lack certain genetic traits that might help their immune systems fight the H5N1 virus.

Long-term damage to ecosystems

Beyond individual species, H5N1 has the potential to greatly disrupt and devastate Australia’s ecosystems.

An H5N1 outbreak in predator species could see prey populations surge. If a local dingo population is wiped out by the virus, the kangaroos, wallabies, feral goats and other herbivores they prey on could rapidly increase in numbers. This could lead to overgrazing, which in turn would deprive other animals of food and shelter.

In freshwater and marine environments, an H5N1 outbreak could see many birds die in and around waterways in a short period. Nutrients from the bird carcasses could pollute waterways if not cleaned up, worsening water quality and oxygen levels and potentially causing widespread fish kills.

So, what can we do?

Compared to other countries and continents, Australia has had longer to prepare for an H5N1 outbreak.

The federal government has so far invested A$113 million to bolster our H5N1 response. This money will go towards disease surveillance, invasive species control, captive breeding programs and efforts to monitor wildlife health.

But we can also help stop the spread of H5N1 on an individual level by:

immediately reporting any sick or dead animals to the Emergency Animal Disease hotline on 1800 675 888 or organisations such as Wildlife Health Australia
not touching native wildlife
only feeding birds in backyards, never in the wild, and following strict hygiene measures such as cleaning water baths weekly and opting for hanging bird feeders
keeping dogs and cats away from wildlife, animal faeces and especially dead carcasses.

The arrival of H5N1 in Australia is not cause for panic, as this outbreak is yet to unfold. But we must be extra vigilant in how we observe and interact with wildlife and nature. The future of our most vulnerable species depends on it.

Tags environment, health, nature, news, wildlife

Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: From fossicking for fossils to a champion for life on Earth: Sir David Attenborough at 100

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 7 May 2026

BBC, CC BY-NC-ND

Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sir David Attenborough turns 100 this week.

Very few people have the good fortune to live for a century. Fewer still achieve so much and touch so many lives.

Across his seven decade career with the BBC, Attenborough ushered in the transition from black and white to colour television. He gave the now legendary comedy troupe Monty Python their lucky break, greenlighting their Flying Circus. His keen eye and care for viewers is in part why tennis balls are yellow, not white – they’re much easier to see on screen.

But Attenborough is, of course, most famous for his nature documentaries. For decades, he has fronted the camera to educate, entertain and inspire billions of people about the complexity, wonder and majesty of the natural world, and the many threats it faces. It wasn’t a given – Attenborough was told early in his career his teeth were too big for television!

For ecologists like myself, Attenborough’s work has been a source of deep inspiration. It was instrumental in my decision to pursue a life and a career dedicated to understanding, caring and fighting for the protection of nature. For this gift, I am eternally grateful.

A career driven by curiosity

Attenborough’s connection with nature came early, forged in no small part through an insatiable fascination with fossils – including his childhood joy at discovering an ammonite in the Leicestershire countryside.

He went on to study geology and zoology at Cambridge University, graduating in 1947. He served in the navy and worked in an educational publishing house. Notably, the BBC rejected his first job application as a radio producer in 1950. But he tried again, and joined the BBC as a trainee producer in 1952.

Early in his career, Attenborough (right) interviewed Edmund Hillary. Wikimedia, CC BY-NC-ND

His career in nature documentaries began to bud almost immediately, with his Zoo Quest series beginning in 1954. But it burst into full bloom with the landmark Life on Earth series in 1979, which brought distant locations, extraordinary wildlife and evolution and ecology to TV. It instilled a sense of wonder and awe in audiences, while maintaining and respecting scientific accuracy.

The master storyteller

One reason Attenborough has had such success as a communicator is his understated, calm but authoritative demeanour. When you sit down to watch an Attenborough documentary, you feel in safe hands.

His approach isn’t the norm. In other nature documentaries, wildlife can often seem secondary, as props for the presenter.

Some of Sir David’s documentaries didn’t always go to script.

In series such as The Living Planet, The Trials of Life, The Blue Planet, The Planet Earth, and scores of others, Attenborough took us across the globe, revealing nature’s beauty, oddities and extraordinary complexity, as well as its macabre and brutal aspects. The habitats home to the world’s species are brought to life in extraordinary detail. We watch with laughter, trepidation, sadness, anger, excitement and awe, ebbing and flowing as nature’s stories unfold.

Who can forget the first time they saw and heard the extraordinary vocal repertoire and mimicry of a lyrebird, or a curious mountain gorilla’s desire to connect with a fellow great ape? The epic battle for survival between a hatchling iguana and hungry hordes of racer snakes? Or the breathtaking explosion of colour and complexity of a coral reef? Each of these was captured by master cinematographers and the story told to us by Attenborough.

A truly epic chase and battle for survival between iguanas and snakes.

Over his long career, Attenborough has become an icon. He was voted the UK’s best TV presenter of all time. But his prodigious output has come at a personal cost too. One of his regrets is how much time he has spent away from his family.

He is also not off limits to criticism. For a long time, Attenborough focused on the glory of nature, largely omitting the damage humans do through overfishing, deforestation, pollution, spreading exotic species, and other threats. He has also shied away from assigning blame to those most responsible for the harms inflicted on nature.

In 2018, he said too much focus on why so much wildlife is threatened was a “turn-off” for some viewers. Ecologists and conservation scientists can sympathise. We know bombarding people with doom and gloom invites apathy and despair, not a desire to act. It’s a hard line to walk between harsh realities and hope.

To his credit, Attenborough has belatedly focused on these issues in recent years. Footage of plastic pollution in Blue Planet II and the ravages of industrial fishing in Ocean have brought a sharp focus on these issues.

In 2020, he released A Life On Our Planet, which he describes as a “witness statement” to the startling losses of biodiversity he has seen over his lifetime. Rather than just spell out the problems, Attenborough laid out how to solve them – and the role we can all play in fixing the two biggest and deeply interwoven problems nature faces: climate change and biodiversity declines and extinctions.

While Attenborough’s earlier work largely avoided these difficult conversations, they succeeded in bringing nature’s wonder to millions of people. This shouldn’t be overlooked. At a time when more and more of us are cut off from nature, Attenborough’s documentaries forged a new connection. For people to care about losing nature, they first have to know and love it.

Conservation relies on stories

Scientific research rarely leads to the behavioural changes we might hope for. Accumulating facts and evidence is vital. But it’s not enough. What humans respond to is stories.

Alongside other globally renowned voices such as the late, great Jane Goodall, Attenborough’s work telling the stories of nature has shaped public opinion. In turn, it has galvanised conservation efforts such as the push to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030.

As he celebrates his centenary, it’s encouraging to see a new generation and diversity of voices in the media and science communication, advocacy, and scientific community. They speak and share their messages with great clarity, confidence, and passion.

Attenborough is just one person. He can’t replace the vital role of scientists, community leaders, conservationists and policymakers in conserving nature. But no one will ever replace David’s distinctive voice. As he has said:

it seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living

Hear, hear. Happy birthday for May 8th, David Attenborough.

Tags conservation, david-attenborough, nature, travel, wildlife

Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: When feral cats are away, potoroos and bandicoots are more likely to play

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 24 February 2026

Fidel Fernando/Unsplash

Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University; Amy Coetsee, Threatened Species Biologist, The University of Melbourne; Anthony Rendall, Lecturer in Conservation Biology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, and Duncan Sutherland, Deputy Director of Research, Phillip Island Nature Parks; Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

All animals need to eat to survive, grow and reproduce. To do so, they also need to avoid being eaten. This is a big challenge for many of Australia’s native mammals, because when they search for food, they must also escape the attention of introduced predators, namely, feral cats and red foxes.

Tragically, many have been unable to overcome this test of survival, becoming one of the 40 native mammal species driven to extinction since European colonisation.

But what happens if we reduce the numbers of introduced predators? Do our surviving native species think there is less risk of being the next meal for a cat or fox? How do they respond? And how might we tell? With peanut butter balls, of course!

A deadly game of hide and seek

Long-nosed potoroos are vulnerable to predation by non-native feral cats and red foxes.
Leo Berzins/flickr, CC BY-ND

Natural environments contain predators and prey engaged in a deadly game of hide and seek, and – from the prey’s perspective – a landscape of fear. The extent to which the two groups are aware of each other and able to respond (hunting vs hiding and escape) varies across time and space. Prey might perceive some areas as a riskier proposition, such as more open habitats or times when predators are most active. They therefore reduce their activity to minimise the likelihood of being eaten.

But avoiding being eaten comes at an energetic cost. It may mean preferred areas or times to feed are reduced, which in turn limits rates of growth, reproduction and survival of prey species. Prey animals are constantly weighing up this tradeoff of risk vs reward as they go about their lives.

Tasty treats can assess risk appetite

We can’t know for sure how much animals fear being eaten, but we can assess it indirectly, through their willingness to eat. In our recently published study, we measured how much food animals don’t eat as a indicator of their fear of being eaten. The more food they give up, the greater the risk of predation those animals are assumed to perceive. These experiments are made easier by the fact many mammals are mad about gobbling up peanut butter.

French Island has long been fox free, but had thousands of feral cats. In 2010, authorities began a feral cat eradication, which made it a perfect place for our research.

Feral cat activity per month at one site on French Island, south-eastern Australia, across a 2-year period during a cat eradication program. The red arrow indicates when the cat eradication program began and the blue arrows indicate when we undertook our GUD experiments.
CC BY-NC-ND

Importantly, we were able to start our experiment prior to an eradication program of feral cats, which began in 2010 on French Island, Victoria. This means we were able to measure changes in long-nosed potoroos and eastern barred bandicoots habitat use and foraging as cat numbers and activity fell.

So, on fox-free French Island, we placed balls of peanut butter, rolled oats and golden syrup into trays with soil and dug them into the ground, ensuring they were below the soil surface. We did this in more open grassland areas (likely riskier habitat, with less cover and protection from feral cats) and more densely vegetated areas (less risky habitat, due to increased cover).

We used camera traps to measure how often potoroos and bandicoots visited these feeding trays to dig up the tasty treats, and how much of the peanut butter balls they left behind in different habitats and at different periods throughout the ongoing feral cat eradication program.

When feral cats are away, native animals play (more)

A deadly game of feral cat and long-nosed potoroo, as revealed by our camera trap. We can confirm that this potoroo survived, this time. Te Ao Marama Eketone (Deakin University), CC BY-NC-ND

As the number of feral cats on French Island was reduced, potoroos and bandicoots used both open and closed habitat types more frequently, and they increased their activity, giving up less food over time. This suggests bandicoots and potoroos do recognise feral cats as a threat, and are able to fairly rapidly change their habitat use and foraging accordingly.

Aside from the obvious benefits of fewer feral cats killing and eating potoroos and bandicoots on French Island, our study suggests there may be substantial benefits for native wildlife — namely increased access to habitats and foraging opportunities — even before the ultimate longer-term goal of cat eradication can be achieved.

Our study’s results are encouraging. Outside the safe havens of invasive predator-free islands and fenced sanctuaries, feral cats are notoriously hard to eradicate from large areas, and there is a constant threat of their return.

We need to do all that we can to give Australia’s native mammals, including eastern barred bandicoots, a helping hand. Zoos Victoria, CC BY-NC-ND

To change this, new and more effective ways to control and eradicate feral cats are needed. But until then, reducing and keeping feral cat numbers lower, while also carefully managing habitats to benefit wildlife, can still give native animals the helping hand they need to survive.

We would like to acknowledge that this work was led by former Deakin University Honours student, Te Ao Marama Eketone, and it occurred on the unceded Country of the Bunurong/Boonwurrung peoples.

Tags animals, conservation, nature, travel, wildlife

Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: Yes, feral cats and foxes really have driven many Australian mammals to extinction

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 23 January 2026

Lea Scannan/Getty

John Woinarski, Professor of Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University; Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University; Katherine Moseby, Professor of Conservation Biology, UNSW, and Sarah Legge, Professor of Wildlife Conservation, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Millions of years of isolation have shaped Australia’s extraordinary mammal fauna into species unlike anywhere else in the world, from platypus to koalas and wombats.

Tragically, Australia is the world leader in mammal extinctions. About 40 species have gone extinct in the 238 years since European colonisation began, and nearly 80 species are now imperilled. It’s essential we understand what factors caused these extinctions and ongoing decline.

Over many years, scientists have gathered compelling evidence demonstrating predation by introduced cats and foxes has been a key driver. Australian mammals have had millennia living alongside other predators such as wedge-tailed eagles and dingoes. But foxes and cats are extraordinarily capable and ecologically flexible hunters, quite unlike anything Australia’s mammals had confronted before.

Recently, some researchers have questioned whether these introduced predators really are responsible. In our new research, we lay out the clear lines of evidence implicating foxes and cats. For instance, extinct species tend to be small-to-medium mammals, the preferred prey size for these predators. When mammals are returned to fenced, fox- and cat-free areas, their populations often flourish.

The main lines of evidence implicating introduced predators in Australian native mammal declines and extinctions. Author provided, CC BY-NC-ND

Controversy in conservation

Last year, researchers questioned whether there was enough evidence to say feral cats and foxes had contributed to Australian mammal extinctions – and, by implication, their role in the ongoing decline of other threatened mammal species.

Their research drew on three premises relating to extinct and surviving mammals. If cats and foxes caused these extinctions, they argued that these should follow:

The last recorded sighting of a now extinct mammal from an area must come after the arrival of one or both of these predator species
Lethal management programs aimed at reducing fox and cat numbers should result in an increase in native mammal numbers in an area
Where cats and foxes are abundant, there should be fewer native mammals.

After testing these three ideas, the authors conclude the hypothesis foxes and cats cause extinctions “has come to be accepted with little evidence.”

The research caused a major stir among the conservation community, as it took aim at longstanding accumulated knowledge and questioned whether the evidence base was strong enough to justify efforts to control feral cats and foxes.

As experts with many decades experience working to protect threatened Australian mammals and other wildlife, we had a duty to evaluate their evidence.

Claim and counterclaim is essential to test, shape and hone science, and to provide a robust foundation for conservation management. It may seem like an academic argument, but it has clear real-world implications.

The survival and recovery of much of Australia’s native mammal fauna depends on controlling cats and foxes. Many recent success stories in bringing native animals back from the brink are due to removing foxes and cats.

If this objective is abandoned because of arguments feral cats and foxes are simply innocent bystanders, we risk rapidly losing many of these imperilled species.

An introduced eastern barred bandicoot population has thrived after foxes were eradicated on Phillip Island. Neil Bowman/Getty

What did we do?

A provocative claim in last year’s research was that some Australian mammal species may have gone extinct before foxes and cats ever got to the area. If this was true, cats and foxes couldn’t be held responsible.

Cats came with the First Fleet in 1788, augmented with many subsequent introductions. By the 1890s, feral populations had spread across the entire continent. Foxes came later, first introduced to southeastern Australia in the 1830s. They, too, spread out across most of the continent over decades.

We re-ran analysis of the historic data and found the last record of a now-extinct native mammal in an area was always dated after the arrival of cats. The picture is less clear for foxes, though this is understandable given the earlier arrival of cats would already have caused losses.

Further, the actual date of extinction may occur long after the last documented record, especially in remote, sparsely populated areas of Australia.

First Nations peoples and Europeans have witnessed and recorded many cases where a native mammal species disappeared from an area soon after one or both non-native predators arrived.

Fate provides further evidence. Many mammals were wiped out from their entire mainland ranges but survived on islands that cats and foxes never colonised. For instance, all mainland populations of the greater stick-nest rat have disappeared. But the species survives because it also had an island population. By contrast, the lesser stick-nest rat had no island population. It is now extinct.

After cats arrived in an area, historic data shows regional losses of mammals went up sharply, with the exception of two arbitrarily dated bones. Author provided, CC BY-NC-ND

Does fox and cat control work?

The authors argue fox and cat control doesn’t result in increases of threatened mammals. But this conclusion may stem from misreading data from feral cat and fox control programs. Not all control programs work to reduce cat numbers over long periods or even at all.

Instead, we can get far clearer evidence from what happens in safe havens – islands or fenced areas where foxes and cats are completely excluded. Threatened mammal species almost always increase in these areas and almost always decline at comparable sites where foxes and cats are not excluded.

Eastern barred bandicoots now roam Victoria’s fox-free Phillip Island, while hare-wallaby numbers are rebounding on Western Australia’s Dirk Hartog Island following the eradication of feral cats.

The assumption that native mammals should typically be less abundant when and where cats and foxes are more common doesn’t always hold. After periods of good rainfall in inland Australia, populations of native mammals and feral predators all increase. During droughts, predator and prey numbers both fall.

This trail camera image captures a feral cat with two native hopping mice in its mouth.
Katherine Moseby, CC BY-NC-ND

Difficult truths

The original analysis and our new research have a broader context. Some have argued the impact of introduced species has been overstated, and that introduced species should be seen as a legitimate part of Australia’s ecosystems. Scientific evidence and conservation outcomes do not support this.

Australia supports about 8% of the world’s biodiversity as one of just 17 megadiverse nations. Protecting our unique species is not easy. But the task for conservationists and policymakers will be even harder if feral cats and foxes are given a free pass to keep killing.

Lethal control is, unfortunately, necessary to protect many species near the brink of no return. It has to be done as humanely as possible and justified publicly. Stepping back would mean more and more extinctions.

We would like to acknowledge our research coauthors.

Tags animals, birds, nature, travel, wildlife

Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: In the most cleared state in Australia, Victoria’s native wildlife needs our help after fires

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 16 January 2026

joey found by firefighters near the Harcourt fire in Victoria. Glenlyon Rural Fire Brigade/Facebook

Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Victoria has just suffered some of its worst bushfires since the Black Summer fires of 2019–20. Over 400,000 hectares are estimated to have burnt so far, an area more than five times larger than Singapore.

Regional communities have been deeply affected. They need support to recover and rebuild their homes, towns and lives. And what about the state’s unique plants, animals and ecosystems?

Both large and small fires erupted in Victoria, and were extraordinarily widespread across diverse environments. They burned in the Wimmera–Mallee region in the northwest, the Otways in the southwest, central Victoria, northeastern Victoria and eastern Victoria, including the alpine region. This means a correspondingly diverse range of native plants and animals has been affected.

Compounding this, Victoria is the most cleared state in Australia. This makes it more difficult for animals to find suitable habitat outside of burnt areas in a fragmented landscape as they recover.

A night image of fires lighting up the sky above Lake Eildon during the Victorian bushfires. Graeme Thomas/Facebook

How will these fires affect nature?

Fires have short and long-term affects on wildlife. While a high proportion of animals can survive fires, the total numbers of insects, birds, frogs, reptiles, mammals and others that have died during the fires or afterwards, will still be large. This is due to severe burns, smoke, radiant heat or other injuries as they try to escape. Many animals get caught on fences as they move across landscapes seeking refuge.

We might think animals that can fly, such as many insects, birds and bats, should be able to easily escape. But smoke and extreme heat makes it difficult to breathe and regulate their body temperature, and can disorient wildlife. Temperatures soared well above 40°C during the fires. Along with intense winds, this took a heavy toll on some animals. Tragically, thousands of flying foxes died.

Many animals will have survived fires by finding refuge in protected waterways, caves, rock and boulder piles, or by going underground, including into wombat burrows. Echidnas dig into the ground and go to sleep, a clever tactic to conserve energy and reduce stress on the body.

After fires, animals face additional challenges. Feral cats and foxes are known to rapidly take advantage of burnt areas. Hunting and capturing their prey in more open habitat is easier. Potoroos, bandicoots, lizards and many others that survive initially may be hunted in the hours, days and weeks after a fire.

The long-term effects

The impact of fire can last for decades, or even longer. Many Australian wildlife species depend on logs and hollows in trees for shelter and to raise young. Fire can both create and destroy hollows.

Importantly, Victoria is the most cleared state in Australia. Hence, hollows are already short in supply and patchily distributed. For some tree species, they can take more than 100 years to form. Their loss puts pressure on threatened species including greater gliders, barking owls and spotted-tailed quolls.

Aquatic life is not immune to the effects of fire either. Rains that occur in burnt landscapes can wash ash, debris and toxins into waterways. This smothers underwater habitats and reduces oxygen and water quality for native fish, crayfish and amphibians. In some cases it leads to mass mortality, including fish kills.

How to respond?

Once bushfires are contained and it is safe to enter, government agencies, scientists and wildlife carers will get a clearer picture of fire severity and native wildlife that need help. They will undertake population surveys and develop a management plan. This may include culling invasive herbivores such as deer, laying poison baits to control feral cats and foxes and installing artificial refuges for native animals.

Agencies should take a whole-of-ecosystem view to ensure well intended actions don’t have unexpected consequences. While 1080 poison may be needed in some areas to help control non-native predators, it also poses a risk to dingoes, a threatened species in Victoria.

This includes the Wilkerr (dingo) population in the Big Desert-Wyperfeld region in northwest Victoria, estimated to number fewer than 100 adults. Approximately 60,000 hectares of Wilkerr habitat has burned. The fires may push Wilkerr into agricultural land seeking cover and water, increasing contact and conflict with livestock graziers. This situation needs to be thoughtfully managed to protect graziers, livestock and Wilkerr.

What should I do?

We can help in a range of ways. These include:

putting out water dishes for animals with sticks or stones in them so small animals don’t drown
donating to charities and organisations that take care of injured wildlife
creating wildlife-friendly gardens that displaced animals may use.

Members of the public should not attempt to feed wildlife, and leave this to experts. Likewise, approaching injured animals is not advised, including kangaroos and snakes. Stressed animals can behave erratically and aggressively, and should only be taken care of by experienced wildlife experts.

Feeding wildlife after fire should be done by experts, such as occurred for rock wallabies following the Gariwerd–Grampians fires.

Governments must change course

As a wildlife ecologist and conservation expert, these fires bring an unwelcome but familiar mixture of deep sadness and intense frustration. As the climate gets hotter, such events will only become more likely and more severe.

Governments must substantially increase efforts to curb climate change, including a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. Likewise, we need far stronger environmental laws, and greater government investment to protect and recover the wildlife and places Australians love.

Fire has shaped Australia’s environments, and many species are adapted to survive and even benefit from fire. But the increasing regularity of severe fires will push some wildlife and ecosystems into oblivion. As with people and communities, we have a duty to provide Australia’s native plants, animals and other life with a safe and secure future.

Tags animals, environment, nature, wildlife

The Conversation

The Conversation: Best books of 2025: our experts share their picks

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 1 December 2025

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The end of the year means holiday celebrations, summer breaks … and for us, one important thing: best books lists. We asked 35 expert readers for their favourite picks, ranging from novelists to anthropologists, scientists to criminologists – and experts in politics, publishing and philosophy. The only rule? The book had to be published this year.

And the Books & Ideas team are sharing our own best books of 2025.

Books & Ideas editor Suzy Freeman-Greene’s best book is Arundhati Roy’s memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me (Penguin Random House). Don’t be put off by the cheesy title – Roy re-enchants the genre, eyeing her dysfunctional parents and her political struggles with wit and poetic verve. (Honourable mention: Hasib Hourani’s charged book-length poem, Rock Flight).

Senior deputy editor Jo Case’s standout was The Transformations (Picador), Andrew Pippos’ big-hearted ode to the dying days of print journalism. It follows a wary, wounded, deeply kind subeditor as newspapers shrink and his solitary world widens to let people in – inviting rich complications. (Honourable mention: Olivia De Zilva’s blazingly original, smart-funny-sad debut autofiction, Plastic Budgie.)

And deputy editor James Ley’s top pick was Hayek’s Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right by Quinn Slobodian (Allen Lane). (Honourable mention: Francesca Wade’s biography Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife.)

Fiona Wright

Josephine Rowe’s Little World (Black Inc.) is a surprising, deft and quietly moving book: a novella about outsiders and exiles, told in triptych. It opens with the startling image of the incorruptible body of a child-saint arriving – in a horse float – at a remote desert property, before stretching out across time and space. Its characters are all relics of a kind, all struggling with contrition and connection. It is a technically brilliant, elegant work – one that has stayed with me all year.

Fiona Wright was the 2024-2025 Judy Harris Writer in Residence, Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney.

Sandra Phillips

So much spoke to me in Angie Faye Martin’s debut crime novel, Melaleuca (Harper Collins). Martin is of Kooma, Kamilaroi, and European heritage. A writer and editor, she delivers a clever insider understanding of racialised Australia, with a speciality in small-town cop culture. Melaleuca has staunch and loving Blakfella characters – and not one, but two crimes to solve. Sad at times, funny at others, it is intricate and well-paced in plot and subplot. Right up until the very end, it’s a thrilling read.

Sandra Phillips is associate dean, Indigenous and professor of publishing and communications, University of Melbourne.

Andrew Pippos

The title of Dominic Amerena’s debut, I Want Everything (Summit Books), neatly specifies the farcical ambitions that poison its characters. The interplay between the book’s two narrative strands is an impressive achievement: the Brenda Shale chapters carry a sober emotional weight, while the contemporary framing is playful, biting and fast-paced. This is a comic novel with serious things to say about art and gender.

Andrew Pippos is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Technology Sydney.

Vijay Mishra

Heart Lamp (Scribe) by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi, was originally written in Kannada, a “minoritarian” language spoken by over 65 million people in India. This collection of 12 stories offers an extraordinary tapestry, principally of the quotidian lives of anxiety-driven Indian Muslim women under the unwavering sign of patriarchy. Written in near-minimalist prose, the collection offers delicate accounts of cultural practices, from the rituals of worship, marriage, childbirth and circumcision, to the desire for a funeral shroud dipped in the holy Zamzam waters of Mecca. Deepa Bhasthi’s uplifting and aesthetically accomplished translation transforms Banu Mushtaq’s stories (phenomenal as they are in their source language) into a great work of art.

Vijay Mishra is emeritus professor of English and comparative literature, Murdoch University.

Emma Shortis

Less than a year into the second Trump administration, I am haunted by a line written by Canadian songwriter Rufus Wainwright: “I’m so tired of you, America.” We are all of us, I think, tired. Writing a book on the history of the US that cuts through the tiredness is always a Herculean task; this year, of all years, it should have been impossible. Somehow, with The Shortest History of the United States of America (Black Inc.), Don Watson has done it.

Emma Shortis is adjunct senior fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University.

Intifar Chowdhury

After watching the Netflix adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club, I was hooked by its fresh, witty take on ageing, friendship and crime. So, when Richard Osman’s latest book in the series dropped, I couldn’t resist diving back into the world of Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron and Ibrahim. The Impossible Fortune is everything from quirky clever to utterly heartwarming. A wedding guest with a dangerous secret vanishes, pulling the club back into a whirlwind of mystery and unexpected twists. Osman delivers a page-turning thriller that balances suspense with humour and tenderness. It’s a story about loyalty, resilience and the thrill of chasing answers – even when life insists on slowing you down.

Intifar Chowdhury is lecturer in government, Flinders University.

Carol Lefevre

I read Joan Didion’s posthumous Notes to John (Fourth Estate) with enormous guilt for the invasion of privacy. But guilt aside, Notes reveals a new side of Didion. It documents a woman struggling amid the complex fallout of adoption, a mother who lives in daily terror that her adopted daughter will be lost. It explains the fear of loss that haunts Didion’s fiction, and shows the raw material she worked from in the more poetic Blue Nights. Didion may not have given her blessing to this book, which is an account of her sessions with a psychiatrist, but those who ushered Notes into the world did a good thing for those of us who adore her. It may be a source of solace, too, for many engaged in ongoing struggles with adoption.

Carol Lefevre is visiting research fellow, English and creative writing, University of Adelaide.

Peter Mares

Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling (Columbia Global Reports) is a vivid case study of the harms wrought by online sports betting in the United States after the Supreme Court greenlit the industry in 2018. A landmark parliamentary report chaired by the late Peta Murphy MP documented similar damage in Australia. Yet two years on, the government has not acted on its bipartisan recommendations. Sometimes it helps to understand your own mess by studying someone else’s, so this is the book Australian politicians should read over summer.

Peter Mares is adjunct senior research fellow, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University.

Elizabeth Finkel

Ian McEwan is my go-to writer for portraiture. In What We Can Know (Jonathan Cape), his canvas widens to civilisations – our current “deranged” one, hurtling eyes wide shut to imminent ecological collapse and AI-triggered nuclear wars – and the archipelago civilisation that follows, where scholars rely on electronic texts, rife with disinformation, to know (and ache for) the prelapsarian world. The title holds the key to the book: a meditation on the inherent murkiness of human knowledge, made infinitely worse by 21st-century tech.

Elizabeth Finkel is adjunct senior research fellow, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University.

Jumana Bayeh

Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Text Publishing) is confronting to read for a range of reasons. Some will see themselves in the heartache and confusion Akkad outlines. Others – perhaps most – will see themselves uncomfortably reflected in the complacency that caused Akkad his heartache. Providing insights into what it means to confront the genocide as an Arab in the West, this book outlines how liberal responses to the decimation of Gaza and its inhabitants are experienced by people like Akkad as betrayal, harmful silence and pain.

Jumana Bayeh is associate professor, Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University.

John Quiggin

“Enshittification” is the process by which once-useful parts of the internet, like Google, are degraded by the corporations that control them. It was Macquarie Dictionary’s Word of the Year in 2024. Cory Doctorow, who coined the term, has now written the definitive book on this disease, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It (Verso), describing its pathology, epidemiology and possible cures.

John Quiggin is professor of economics at the University of Queensland.

Joëlle Gergis

Few writers are skilful enough to articulate the complexity of the turbulent times we are living through. Even fewer provide genuine hope. There’s barely a page of Rebecca Solnit’s No Straight Road Takes You There (Granta) that I haven’t flagged to revisit her wisdom and insight. Solnit’s nuanced view of social change reminds us that every chapter in human history has challenged our moral integrity. These lyrical essays are inspiration for world-weary readers who know that giving up isn’t an option.

Joëlle Gergis is honorary associate professor of climate science at the University of Melbourne.

Tony Hughes-d’Aeth

My favourite book published this year was Evelyn Araluen’s The Rot (UQP). I’m tempted to call the book a fever dream, yet there is also something icily cold in the vision of these poems. The “rot” appears in the world as cascading injustice, from the bloodied rubble of Gaza to the escalating misery of the housing crisis. But the rot is also intimate and interior. Once we would have called it our soul.

Tony Hughes-d’Aeth is a professor and chair of Australian literature at the University of Western Australia.

Alice Grundy

Salvage (Picador) by Jennifer Mills is the perfect book to read on your summer holidays. It’s pacey and keeps you turning the pages, while you reflect on how you’re cooking on a heating planet. Salvage is a new genre for Mills, but it has the visceral descriptions readers will remember from her earlier novels, Dyschronia and The Airways, and characters you would love to road-trip with.

Alice Grundy is visiting fellow, School of Literature, Language and Linguistics, Australian National University.

Nick Haslam

“We are not getting sicker,” writes Suzanne O’Sullivan, author of The Age of Diagnosis (Hodder) – “we are attributing more to sickness.” A neurologist working at the clinical coalface, the author of this powerful book argues that over-diagnosis is rampant. Ranging from autism to ADHD to cancer screening, she finds our tendency to pathologise is doing more harm than good. Bracing without being polemical, The Age of Diagnosis pushes back against our diagnostic culture, offering practical remedies for health professionals and the wider public.

Nick Haslam is professor of psychology, University of Melbourne.

John Long

Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp (Viking) is both a sobering and utterly engaging account of the historical rise and fall of states. “Goliath States” succeed through violence or threatening it. Inequality leads to autocracy, which fuels Goliath States. Today, 71% of the population lives under autocracy, with more countries heading towards it. The conclusion is that the world will succumb to nuclear war or environmental collapse, unless more states become democratically governed and collaborate to avoid the apocalypse.

John Long is strategic professor in palaeontology, Flinders University.

Melanie Saward

Weaving Us Together (Hachette) is the Blak, queer coming-of-age story I wish I’d had as a teenager. The story follows shy Aboriginal teen, Jean O’Reilly, as they adjust to life in a small, northern New South Wales town. Lay Maloney’s beautifully written novel (which won the 2022 blak&write! fellowship), somehow manages to be a gentle, safe place to land for young people exploring gender, sexuality and identity, while not shying away from inter-generational trauma, stolen children, police violence and racism. A must-read for schools, educators and young people.

Melanie Saward is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Queensland.

Jindan Ni

Without any hesitation, my favourite book for 2025 is Ocean Vuong’s second novel, The Emperor of Gladness (Jonathan Cape). In the fictional US town of “East Gladness”, no one is “glad”. Along with the protagonist Hai, a college drop-out whose attempted suicide is interrupted by an elderly lady with dementia, Vuong compels readers to witness the vulnerable lives of many disadvantaged people. Yet despite their deep precarity, solace and love are generously provided beyond family ties. A heart-wrenching story with an incredible healing power.

Jindan Ni is senior lecturer, global and language studies, RMIT University.

John Woinarski

My best book this year was Nicolas Rothwell and Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson’s Yilkari: A Desert Suite (Text Publishing). There is mystery and meaning in the Australian landscape. Most of us are outsiders in this country, seeing only its superficialities, blind to its spirit, poorer for that lack of connection. At a glance, the western deserts are featureless, inhospitable, best travelled through on the unbending Gunbarrel Highway. Here, accompanied by quixotic guides and encumbered by the gift and genius of western high culture, a narrator recounts his quest to find the essence of this country, to fit into the land. The result is a haunting dream about our nature.

John Woinarski is professor of conservation biology, Charles Darwin University.

Sophie Gee

James Baldwin was a literary provocateur and also a crowd-pleaser; a Black radical and activist who loved Dickens and Dostoevsky; a gay man who lived in Paris, and a public voice for American civil rights. Nicholas Boggs’ extraordinary new biography of one of America’s greatest writers, Baldwin: A Love Story (Bloomsbury Circus), captures all these aspects of Baldwin’s life and writing, giving us a deep and moving account of a person whose life was riven by violence and filled with joy and glamour.

Sophie Gee is vice chancellor’s fellow, English literature, University of Sydney and professor of English at Princeton University.

Euan Ritchie

“Nature is not the backdrop to our lives; it is our lives.” This sentiment and insight from the preface of Nature’s Last Dance (Affirm Press) perfectly frames the strength and vital importance of Natalie Kyriacou’s book. The natural world is under siege, and Natalie describes heartbreaking examples. But ultimately, this book inspires – through thoroughly entertaining, sometimes joyous, well-researched examples of the extraordinary wonders and complexity of nature. Practical advice for readers to enact personal changes of their own fosters hope and empowerment. Bravo.

Euan Ritchie is professor in wildlife ecology and conservation at Deakin University.

Mia Martin Hobbs

Sunil Amrith’s The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years (Penguin) tells the story of how humanity has changed the planet we call home, untangling the environmental costs of empire, war, revolution and “progress” and revealing the devastating effects for the world’s poorest and most marginalised. Amrith shows how the human desire to control nature has, ironically, made our world less safe. The historical craft here is extraordinary: mind-bending and kaleidoscopic, The Burning Earth traverses the sweeping effects of colonisation, resource extraction, agriculture and development across every corner of the globe – while retaining individual stories of suffering and survival in the face of monumental environmental changes. Amrith’s work generates an urgent call to action to recognise the “crisis of life on Earth” before it is too late.

Mia Martin Hobbs is research fellow and historian of war and conflict, Deakin University.

Alexander Howard

Pierre Guyotat was one of postwar France’s most radical writers. Associated with the Tel Quel group and known for dense, hallucinatory prose that stretched language to breaking point, he made his name with Eden, Eden, Eden (1970) – a violent and apocalyptic text composed of a single, unbroken sentence running across 163 pages. At first glance, Idiocy (New York Review Books), his prize-winning coming-of-age memoir newly translated into English, seems formally restrained. However, a closer look reveals it to be just as intense and uncompromising. Spanning the years 1958 to 1962, the book traces his formative time in Paris and his experiences as a soldier in Algeria, where he was imprisoned for inciting desertion. Bearing witness to the atrocities of colonial conflict, Guyotat’s book feels disturbingly relevant right now.

Alexander Howard is senior lecturer, discipline of English and writing, University of Sydney.

Lynda Ng

Can we call it a genocide? Who was there first? Are we allowed to talk about this? In a year when Gaza dominated the headlines and yet public discussion was decidedly curtailed, Pankaj Mishra’s The World After Gaza (Fern Press) made a fearless foray into Zionism and the question of Palestine. Mishra’s decision to tell the history of Israel as a settler-colonial state has been highly contentious. By defamiliarising Middle Eastern politics, he forces us to reflect on how the legacy of European colonialism continues to play out in the world today.

Lynda Ng is lecturer in world literature (including Australian literature), University of Melbourne.

Eve Vincent

The Seal Woman (Giramondo), republished in 2025, was originally published the
same year as the Mabo decision: 1992. Dagmar, a Dane, is the novel’s protagonist. Living in a Victorian coastal town, Dagmar is filled with grief, desire and an obsessive interest in Norse mythology. She also undergoes an awakening about Aboriginal relations to ancestral Country. Beverley Farmer’s prose is incredibly focused and intricate. Reading of rockpools, seaweed, caves, spiders in the house, duplicity and selkies nourished and enlarged my imagination.

Eve Vincent is associate professor, anthropology, Macquarie University.

Tom Doig

Luke Kemp (originally from Bega, now based in Cambridge) has written an epic, sobering account of how and why human societies fall apart in Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse. Drawing on an exhaustive data set of 324 collapsed states, synthesising archaeology with psychology and political economy, he concludes that inequality, caused by corrupt elites, is the uniting feature. Any lessons for the present moment? Um, yep. While I’m usually sceptical of brief-history-of-everything books, Goliath’s Curse is a genuine joy to read. Pity about the ending (for us).

Tom Doig is a creative writing lecturer at the University of Queensland.

Juliet Rogers

Plestia Alqaad’s book Eyes of Gaza is not an easy read. It’s sad, painful and sometimes excruciatingly so. It is a book as witness; documenting the moments of trauma and violence in Gaza in the 45 days after October 7 2023. It shows this world through the eyes of a 23-year-old Palestinian journalist, describing a devastated landscape with nuance, with care and with the eye of someone who can read more than pain on people’s faces. Alqaad tells us of the occupation and the genocide but also the stories of camaraderie, of care, of collaboration between those who had lost everything. How can you share when you have nothing? It seems you can. Space, warmth, love and sometimes laughter are generated in proximity, even among terrible loss.

Juliet Rogers is a professor in criminology and director of the law and justice minor at University of Melbourne.

Natalie Kon-yu

Home – its myths and impossibilities – was at the heart of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, and is also the knotted centre of Mother Mary Comes to Me. In this memoir, Roy reveals the slippages that occur between fiction and nonfiction in writing a life. Roy’s mother, her country and her self form a set of nesting dolls that cannot nest, but cannot be understood without one another. A beautiful, generous book.

Natalie Kon-yu is a teaching and research associate professor in creative writing and literary studies.

Edwina Preston

My best book of 2025 is Shokoofeh Azar’s The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen (Europa). Azar’s second novel filled me with wonder and horror, and gave me entry to a strange, beautiful and wondrous world: that of the ancient Zoroastrian culture as it butts up against the murderous modern regimes of Ayatollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei. A profoundly beautiful and harrowing work.

Edwina Preston is a novelist and PhD candidate in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne.

Julian Novitz

I Want Everything (Summit Books), Dominic Amerena’s blackly funny and acutely well observed satire of Melbourne literary life, struck close to home for me this year. I Want Everything explores Australian literary history and contemporary writing lives with an uncompromising eye as Amerena’s unnamed narrator attempts to extract material for an “eminently fundable” book from his chance encounter with a famously reclusive and mysterious author. Brilliantly funny, it develops the pace and tension of a thriller, as gambits and deceptions start to pile up. Best debut and best novel of 2025 for me.

Julian Novitz is senior lecturer, writing, Swinburne University of Technology.

Jen Webb

My pick is Omar Sakr and Safdar Ahmed’s The Nightmare Sequence (UQP). In a year marked by global levels of violence, both discursive and physical, Sakr and Ahmed use poetry and graphic art to express anger, truth-telling and tenderness. They remind readers that we humans are all in this together – and though “History is an angel with seven faces / All of them are turned away from us”, we can turn towards each other.

Jen Webb is distinguished professor emerita of creative practice, University of Canberra.

Matthew Sharpe

Most people are happy enough to accept the latest gadgets coming to us from Silicon Valley without asking too many questions about what the people who run the companies might think. Science journalist Adam Becker is not one of those content to “wait and see what happens”. In More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity (Basic Books), he probes the ideas of the “techbros” and their cheerleaders. And the news is not comforting. Claiming the mantle of science and backed by billions of dollars, these ideas are often troubling melanges from sci-fi, futurism and racist pseudoscience, whose implications for life as we know it are far from beneficent.

Matthew Sharpe is associate professor in philosophy, Australian Catholic University.

Allanah Hunt

Moonlight and Dust (Allen & Unwin) by Jasmin McGaughey is a fantasy novel that’s enticing from its first page with its dark academia and ecological themes. Set in stunning Cairns, the author’s strong voice weaves together a mystery about a young Torres Strait Islander girl who comes to life in the words, along with her endearing family.

Allanah Hunt is lecturer, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland.

Wanning Sun

In Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future (Allen Lane), Dan Wang gives you a new lens through which to view China and US-China competition. Conceptualising China as an engineering state and America as a lawyerly society, Wang shows that China’s strengths are as impressive as its weaknesses are disturbing. But Wang does not take sides: Breakneck argues China has learned from the West, and now the West should learn from China. Whether or not you agree with him, it is likely to be a thought-provoking – even eye-opening – read.

Wanning Sun is professor of media and cultural studies, University of Technology Sydney.

Julienne van Loon

A yoga teacher, a poet and a long-time reader of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, Antonia Pont has delivered us an idiosyncratic and delightful new non-fiction book. With A Plain Life: On Thinking, Feeling and Deciding (New South), Pont advocates for plainness. That is, for a stance in which we decide for ourselves “that one’s life is intrinsically ‘enough’”. It’s a book about expectations and about capacities, including “unlearning meanness” in the context of our neoliberalist age. I believe the best books become not just an accompaniment, but a living companion: this is one such book.

Julienne van Loon is associate professor in creative writing, University of Melbourne.

Tags book-review, books, fiction, literature, writing

The Conversation

The Conversation: Long‑sought environmental law reform is finally here. But will the compromise deal actually protect nature?

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 27 November 2025

Brayden Stanford/Pexels, CC BY-NC-ND

Justine Bell-James, Professor, TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland; Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University; Phillipa C. McCormack, Future Making Fellow, Environment Institute, University of Adelaide, and Yung En Chee, Senior Research Fellow, Environmental Science, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Today is a landmark day for environmental law. After years of false starts and abandoned promises, Labor has finally struck a deal with the Greens to pass long-awaited changes to the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The laws are expected to pass the Senate today – the final parliamentary sitting day of the year.

Change is long overdue, as the 25-year-old laws have been shown to be not fit for purpose. Australia’s unique species and ecosystems are in real trouble. Threatened species populations are falling year after year, while climate change is driving species to extinction and ecosystems towards collapse.

Significantly, neither Labor nor the Greens are declaring the bill a complete success. In its second reading today, Labor Senator Michelle Ananda-Rajah described the bill as “not perfect”, while the Greens described it as falling “woefully short” on climate.

Environment Minister Murray Watt was negotiating with both the Coalition and the Greens to pass the laws. While the Greens agreed to the deal and extracted key concessions on native forest protections, Watt has left some wins for business and the Liberal Party.

The compromise deal is indeed far from perfect. But after five years of stalled reforms, it’s clear significant compromise was the only way for the laws to pass.

What was in the original reform bill?

In late October, Labor introduced reforms that proposed a slew of changes to existing environment laws.

These included provisions for:

making national environmental standards to guide decision-making
a new federal environmental protection agency
planning at a bioregional scale to assess cumulative damage across a landscape

These changes were broadly positive. But other elements raised considerable concern, namely:

considerable ministerial discretion over whether to apply the new national environmental standards to development applications
a wide-ranging national interest exemption allowing the government to fast-track projects in the undefined “national interest”
fast-tracking for some decisions
allowing developers to pay into a “restoration fund” to compensate for biodiversity loss despite evidence it worsens biodiversity loss
excluding native forest logging from Commonwealth oversight
plans to devolve environmental decision-making to states, with the pro-mining and anti-regulation Western Australian government the first in line.

The original 500-page draft bill had areas of considerable uncertainty, such as requiring the minister to knock back developments if satisfied they would have “unacceptable impacts”. The idea was sound: create red lines where projects don’t have to be considered if damage to the environment would be too great. But the definitions were confusing and subjective.

For instance, an “unacceptable impact” on a critically endangered species was defined as one that “seriously impairs, will seriously impair, or is likely to seriously impair” species viability. But “seriously impair” was nebulously defined as “something if, compared to the action not being taken, the impact results in the thing being seriously altered for the worse”. Industry criticised this for setting the bar too low, fearing it would stop projects in their tracks.

What concessions have the Greens secured?

While the Labor-Greens deal means the bills can now pass the Senate, it hasn’t fundamentally changed what was introduced by Labor. The concessions include:

better protection for native forests
banning fast-tracking of new coal and gas projects
reining in ministerial discretion.

The Greens are claiming their major concession is the removal of a longstanding exemption for the logging industry for areas of native forest covered by Regional Forest Agreements. Forested areas under these agreements currently have no protection from federal environment laws.

Under the changes, these agreements will have to comply with the laws and meet higher standards within 18 months. The deal contains compensation for forestry workers. This is a clear win for the environment.

The Greens also secured modest progress on climate, but far short of their long-sought climate trigger, which was a non-starter for Labor.

Instead, the bill will be amended to remove coal and gas projects from fast-tracked approvals and to prevent the minister from declaring these to be projects to be in the “national interest”.

Crucially, the Greens claim the deal will tighten ministerial discretion. The original reforms said the minister “must be satisfied” a decision is “not inconsistent with” the National Environmental Standards. This gave the environment minister of the day wide leeway to depart from the standards and approve projects. The Greens are claiming a major win here by changing the language from “not inconsistent with” these standards to “consistent with”. This isn’t semantics – it’s a stricter legal test.

The amendments will also bring more land clearing under the environment assessment regime and allow the minister to declare some matters too important to be offset by paying into the new Restoration Contributions Fund. This could be a potentially important safeguard.

Wins for the Liberals?

In recent months, Watt has pitched these reforms as a win for the environment and for business, which would benefit from faster approvals. But businesses were wary of the nebulous concept of “unacceptable impacts”.

It looks like Liberal Senator Jonathon Duniam’s proposed changes to the definition of “unacceptable impacts” have been supported.

The definition of an “unacceptable impact” on a critically endangered species has been pared back to “seriously impairs […] viability”. This means projects can’t be knocked back if they are only likely to seriously impair viability.

“Seriously impair” has now been redefined as “something if, compared to the action not being taken, the impact results in an impairment or alteration of the thing that is of a severe nature and extent”. These are terms requiring subjective interpretation, but “severe nature” may make it harder to reject projects than “seriously altered for the worse”.

Will the new legislation stem the damage to nature?

The bar for improvement is low. Australia’s current environment laws are riddled with administrative discretion. Many projects are never assessed, and 99% of projects assessed under these laws are given the green light.

The revised bill contains some key elements proposed by the scathing 2020 Samuel Review, such as provision for National Environmental Standards, while the concessions won by the Greens reduce ministerial discretion. Samuel described today’s deal as a “great balance” between environment and business concerns.

Much will be up in the air even after these laws pass. The government has only drafted two of the many environmental standards anticipated, one on matters of national environmental significance and one on environmental offsets. It remains to be seen whether these standards will improve decision-making, and they are also not yet finalised. Major questions around the interpretation of language in the new laws may need to be hashed out in future court proceedings.

The Greens were unable to remove Labor’s new “pay to destroy” from the laws. This is a significant concern, as the controversial ability for developers to pay into a restoration fund will likely be seen as the easy route. This mechanism is already up and running in New South Wales, with poor outcomes.

What now?

These reforms are the end of a tortuous process – and the start of another, far bigger, job. To be successful, they will need to be coupled with far greater public investment and rigorous enforcement.

The true test of these reforms will be whether we succeed in the ultimate act of conserving and recovering the wildlife and places Australians know and love.

Tags biodiversity, climate change, environment, nature, sustainability

Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: Let’s celebrate nature’s spookiest and freakiest animals this Halloween

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 29 October 2025

Großer Vampir (False Vampire Bat) Vampirus spectrum, Eduard Oscar Schmidt, Wikimedia Commons

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Beyond ghoulish costumes and mountains of lollies, Halloween is rooted in celebrating nature. It originated in the Celtic pagan tradition of Samhain, marking the bounty of the autumnal harvest and transition to the dark depths of winter.

Fast forward to 2025, and Halloween is a commercial juggernaut expected to exceed $A19 billion in spending in the US alone.

It’s also one that can cause serious environmental harm, generating masses of plastic and food waste, and disturbing and harming wildlife.

This year, let’s celebrate nature’s spookiest and most gruesome wildlife with an environmentally-friendly Halloween.

Move aside werewolves, headless horsemen, witches and warlocks, here are ten of the most marvellous and macabre animals that will truly turn heads.

1. Vampire and ghost bats

Dracula had nothing on vampire bats. These flying mammals use razor-sharp teeth to puncture their prey’s bodies and grooved tongues then lap up the blood. Vampire bats are restricted to Central and South America.

But Australia has the aptly-named ghost bat, although they don’t drink blood. This species hunts mammals, birds, lizards, frogs, and other prey, but is itself sadly listed as vulnerable to extinction.

Australia’s ghost bat is an impressive predator of the night.

2. Horned lizards

Rather than being blood suckers, some animals squirt blood to protect themselves!

Horned lizards can control and constrict the blood flow in their heads, causing pressure to build up and, ultimately, rupture blood vessels around their eyes.

Rapid and repeated squirts of blood — laced with noxious chemicals from their venomous ant prey — are shot with remarkable precision over several feet at unsuspecting would-be predators, including coyotes.

Few can squirt blood as accurately and as far as horned lizards.

3. Dementor wasps

The dementor wasp is truly the stuff of nightmares, especially if you’re a cockroach. They inject venom into cockroach brains, turning them into compliant zombies.

Once in control, wasps lead the zombie cockroaches back to their nests, lay their eggs in or on them, and the young wasps eat them alive.

Dementor wasps turn cockroaches into zombies.

4. Goblin sharks

The ocean depths are renowned for bizarre animals, including the wolf-fish, the fang-tooth fish, the vampire squid … and the goblin shark!

These sharks have distinctly goblin-like pointed snouts and long sharp teeth. Perhaps their most shocking feature is their mouth, which can be rapidly shot out from their head when feeding.

5. Assassin bugs

Assassin bugs kill ants for a living. But that’s not all.

Once they’ve liquefied and sucked their prey dry, they pile the lifeless bodies onto their backs. This is thought to be a way to confuse living ants and avoid their attack.

Assassin bugs, nature’s body collectors.

6. Slow lorises

Looks can be deceiving: beware the bite of a slow loris! CC BY

Beware cute first appearances. The slow loris is capable of turning living creatures into visions of the walking dead.

Glands in their armpits produce a noxious oil, which oozes out and is licked by the loris. Combining this oil with their saliva produces a powerful cocktail that can be delivered through strong jaws and grooved teeth capable of piercing bone.

A bite from a slow loris can cause flesh to gradually rot away.

7. Sea cucumbers

The film The Exorcist is famous for its vomiting scene, but the humble sea cucumber delivers a far more unnerving performance.

When threatened they self-evisercate, spilling their guts out of their head or rear end (cloaca) and putting off would-be predators who prefer “live prey” from their meals.

Some have additional sticky and toxic filaments able to entangle, immobilise and even kill some attackers. Once danger has passed they can retreat and over several days they will remarkably regenerate their internal organs.

Sea cucumbers literally spill their guts in self defence.

8. Skipper caterpillars

Living in confined spaces can pose many problems, including how to avoid soiling your home. Skipper caterpillars that live in curled leaves have a solution – explosive defecation!

They fire their waste via a hatch and under elevated blood pressure, meaning their flung dung can travel as far as 1.5 metres. It’s believed this trick has evolved to reduce scent building up that could attract predatory wasps.

Skipper caterpillars are expert poop projectors.

9. Gordian worms

Gordian worms are another body-snatching species.

When their encysted larvae are eaten by unsuspecting grasshoppers or crickets, they develop inside their host and ultimately control their behaviour.

They lead them to water and cause them to drown themselves, whereupon the worm that has been growing inside them hatches out and completes the parasite’s life cycle. Ridley Scott’s iconic chest-bursting scene in Aliens comes to mind.

he Gordian (horsehair) worm is a parasitic body-snatcher.

10. Shrews

Like the slow loris, cute and furry can hide a darker side for shrews. Many shrew species are venomous, using their bite to subdue their prey.

But they don’t always eat their victims immediately. Instead, they engage in “live hoarding”, where they stow their incapacitated, comatose meals away until hunger calls.

What they lack in size, shrews make up for with fight and powerful venom.

Halloween horrors

Far scarier than any animal’s appearance or bizarre behaviour, is the toll Halloween takes on the environment.

Halloween sees a surge in the sale of single-use polyester and plastic costumes and decorations, as well as individually-wrapped sweets.

One of the most popular but dangerous Halloween decorations are fake spider webs. These synthetic fibres regularly entangle and kill wildlife. They’re often blown away, ending up in waterways – where they can cause the same issues for aquatic life.

Halloween bright lights and loud noises also confuse and disorient nocturnal animals.

Making Halloween wildlife and environmentally friendly

Bake treats to avoid using plastic-wrapped lollies. CC BY

This Halloween, try these ideas to celebrate without harming animals and the environment.

Instead of buying lollies, bake Halloween-themed biscuit treats. (Make sure people with allergies know the ingredients).
Use biodegradable and recyclable materials like twigs, feathers, leaves and paper to make decorations. Cardboard makes excellent nature-inspired Halloween cutouts and stencils.
Carve a pumpkin! But eat what you scoop out to reduce food waste and compost your pumpkin afterwards to prevent adding to landfill, methane production and climate change.
Visit your local opportunity shop or repurpose old clothes to make a Halloween costume. It’s better to reuse and recycle than give in to fast fashion.

Why not let some of our wonderful native wildlife, like ghost bats or peacock spiders, inspire your Halloween costume and theme this year!

The Conversation

The Conversation: Labor is close to a deal on environmental law reforms. There are troubling signs these will fall short

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 10 October 2025

Old growth logging in Southwest National Park, Tasmania, Chris Putnam/Getty

Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University; Phillipa C. McCormack, Future Making Fellow, Environment Institute, University of Adelaide, and Yung En Chee, Senior Research Fellow, Environmental Science, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Albanese government has hinted it is close to a deal with the Coalition over the long-awaited overhaul of Australia’s environment laws. Environment Minister Murray Watt plans to introduce new legislation to parliament in November.

Can Watt deliver what is sorely needed to turn around Australia’s climate and nature crises? Or will we see a continuation of what former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry called “intergenerational bastardry”?

However the bill is passed, the new laws must include substantial improvements. But with pressure from all sides – including the Opposition and minor parties, mining companies, green groups and big business – will the new laws be strong enough to protect Australia’s embattled environment? Here are some of the ways our environment laws should be reformed.

Not fit for purpose

Australia’s key national environmental law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) is 25 years old.

Two major reviews, ten years apart in 2009 and 2020, criticised it variously as “too repetitive and unnecessarily complex” and “ineffective”.

At the 2022 election the Albanese government promised to overhaul the laws. But most of its proposed reforms were abandoned in the lead up to the next election in 2025, citing a lack of parliamentary support.

In 2022, Labor was talking up its plan to reform Australia’s broken environmental laws.

A strong watchdog

The success or failure of the reformed laws rests on developing well-defined National Environmental Standards – legally binding rules to improve environmental outcomes. These would apply to environmental decisions that affect nationally important plants, animals, habitats and places. Examples include land clearing in areas where threatened species occur, regional planning and Indigenous consultation.

Alongside strong standards, we need a well-resourced and fearlessly independent Environment Protection Agency to assess proposals, such as applications for new gas wells or to clear native vegetation for mining. A strong EPA is essential for legal compliance.

The Coalition doesn’t support an EPA and wants final approval powers to rest with the minister of the day. But if an EPA can be overruled by the minister, it could further reduce public confidence in the protection system, especially given recent examples of real or perceived industry pressure on government decisions.

If the minister is given powers to “call in” proposals to assess them they should be very specific and restricted. For example, for responding to national disasters but not for purely economic purposes. The reasons for calling in a decision should be published and made public.

The endangered southern black-throated finch is just one of many threatened Australian species. Geoff Walker/iNaturalist, CC BY-NC

Habitats are homes for wildlife and need greater protection

New laws should also clarify what are considered “unacceptable impacts” of new projects. For example, irreplaceable natural areas should be saved from destruction or damage by new developments.

Destroying or damaging habitats that are home to rare and endangered species should be illegal. Protected, “no-go” areas could be recorded on a register to guide project decisions, as Watt has discussed.

It is vital that environmental offsets, designed to compensate for unavoidable impacts from developments, are legislated as a last resort.

Climate change

The EPBC Act lacks a “climate trigger” that explicitly requires consideration of climate change impacts of greenhouse gas-intensive projects.

At least ten previous attempts to introduce a climate trigger have not succeeded, and Watt has all but ruled it out in these reforms.

Instead, Watt suggests “the existing Safeguard Mechanism as an effective way of controlling emissions”. The Safeguard Mechanism legislates limits on greenhouse gas emissions for Australia’s largest industrial facilities.

But it only applies to the direct or scope 1, greenhouse gas emissions. It does not include emissions produced from Australia’s fossil fuel exports of coal, oil and gas. Nearly 80% of Australia’s contribution to global emissions comes from its fossil fuel exports.

Even without a climate trigger, reforms to the EPBC Act must reflect the impact of climate change on Australia’s environments. They could require climate is taken into account in all decision making to achieve environmental outcomes under the Act, and prohibit development in places that offer refuge to native species during extreme events.

First Nations to the front

Environmental decision making must include genuine Indigenous engagement and a required standard should be part of the Act. A Commissioner for Country would help to ensure this expectation was adhered to.

Furthermore, calls have been made by First Nations for new laws to include the protection of species based on their cultural significance.

No more logging loopholes

There must be an end to industry carve outs, including regional forestry agreements. A pact between the national government and certain states, these agreements define how native forests should be managed, harvested and protected.

For decades, they have allowed the logging of forests that are home to endangered native species, including the koala and greater glider. In 2024, Victoria and Western Australia both ended the native forestry industries in their states.

In August 2025, Watt confirmed that bringing regional forest agreements under the operation of national environment standards “remains our position”. But so far he has avoided questions about how that would work in practice.

Clear targets

If the Labor government is serious about delivering on its promise of “No New Extinctions” these reforms must include clear targets to better protect threatened animals, plants and their environments. Preventing further extinctions will take far greater, long-term funding than Australia currently provides.

We need a better understanding of how endangered species and ecological communities are faring. The newly-created Environment Information Australia body will collect data and track progress against an agreed baseline, for example the 2021 State of Environment Report.

Conservation leader not pariah

Australia is known globally for its unique and much-loved wildlife, and its diverse and beautiful nature places. However, in the face of enormous pressure to enable increased development, we are gaining a reputation for our gross failures to care for and conserve this extraordinary natural heritage.

Australia must step up as a global leader in nature conservation through strong environmental laws and biodiversity recovery strategies. As we bid to host the UN’s global climate summit COP31 next year, the eyes of the world will be on our environmental and climate ambition.

Tags climate, climate change, conservation, environment, sustainability

Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: ‘Only if we help shall all be saved’: Jane Goodall showed we can all be part of the solution

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 2 October 2025

Scientist Jane Goodall studies the behavior of a chimpanzee during her research February 15, 1987 in Tanzania. Penelope Breese/Getty

Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University; Kylie Soanes, Postdoctoral Fellow in Urban Biodiversity, The University of Melbourne; Marissa Parrott, Honorary Research Associate in BioSciences, The University of Melbourne; Vanessa Pirotta, Postdoctoral Researcher and Wildlife Scientist, Macquarie University, and Zara Bending, Associate, Centre for Environmental Law, Macquarie University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

With the passing of Dr Jane Goodall, the world has lost a conservation giant. But her extraordinary achievements leave a profound legacy.

Goodall was a world-leading expert in animal behaviour and a globally recognised environmental and conservation advocate. She achieved all this at a time when women were commonly sidelined or ignored in science.

Her work with chimpanzees showed it was wrong to assume only humans used tools. She showed us the animals expressed emotions such as love and grief and have individual personalities.

Goodall showed us scientists can express their emotions and values and that we can be respected researchers as well as passionate advocates and science communicators. After learning about how chimpanzees were being used in medical research, she spoke out: “I went to the conference as a scientist, and I left as an activist.”

As childhood rights activist Marian Wright Edelman has eloquently put it, “You can’t be what you can’t see”.

Goodall showed what it was possible to be.

Forging her own path

Goodall took a nontraditional path into science. The brave step of going into the field at the age of 26 to make observations was supported by her mother.

Despite making world-first discoveries such as tool use by non-humans, people didn’t take her seriously because she hadn’t yet gone to university. Nowadays, people who contribute wildlife observations are celebrated under the banner of citizen science.

Goodall was a beacon at a time when science was largely dominated by men – especially remote fieldwork. But she changed that narrative. She convinced famous paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey to give her a chance. He first employed her as a secretary. But it wasn’t long until he asked her to go to Tanzania’s remote Gombe Stream National Park. In 1960, she arrived.

This was not easy. It took real courage to work in a remote area with limited support alongside chimpanzees, a species thought to be peaceful but now known to be far stronger than humans and capable of killing animals and humans.

Goodall is believed to be the only person accepted into chimpanzee society. Through calm but determined persistence she won their trust. These qualities served Goodall well – not just with chimps, but throughout her entire career advocating for conservation and societal change.

At Gombe, she showed for the first time that animals could fashion and use tools, had individual personalities, expressed emotions and had a higher intelligence and understanding than they were credited with.

Jane Goodall worked with chimpanzees for decades. This 2015 video shows her releasing Wounda, an injured chimpanzee helped back to health in the Republic of Congo.

Goodall was always an animal person and her love of chimps was in part inspired by her toy Jubilee, gifted by her father. She had close bonds with her pets and extended these bonds to wildlife. Goodall gave her study subjects names such as “David Greybeard”, the first chimp to accept her at Gombe.

Some argue we shouldn’t place a human persona on animals by naming them. But Goodall showed it was not only acceptable to see animals as individuals with different behaviours, but it greatly aids connection with and care for wildlife.

Goodall became an international voice for wildlife. She used her profile to encourage a focus on animal welfare in conservation, caring for both individuals and species.

Jane Goodall’s pioneering work with chimpanzees shed light on these animals as individuals – and showed they make tools and experience emotions. Apic/Getty

A pioneer for women in science

With Goodall’s passing, the world has lost one of the three great “nonagenarian environmental luminaries”, to use co-author Vanessa Pirotta’s phrase. The other two are the naturalist documentary maker, Sir David Attenborough, 99, and famed marine biologist Dr Sylvia Earle, who is 90.

Goodall showed us women can be pioneering scientists and renowned communicators as well as mothers.

She shared her work in ways accessible to all generations, from National Geographic documentaries to hip podcasts.

Her visibility encouraged girls and women around the world to be bold and follow our own paths.

Goodall’s story directly inspired several authors of this article.

Co-author Marissa Parrott was privileged to have spoken to Goodall several times during her visits to Melbourne Zoo and on her world tours. Goodall’s story was a direct inspiration for Parrott’s own remote and international fieldwork, supported by her mother just as Goodall’s mother had supported her. They both survived malaria, which also kills chimpanzees and gorillas. Goodall long championed a One Health approach, recognising the health of communities, wildlife and the environment are all interconnected.

Co-author Zara Bending worked and toured alongside Goodall. The experience demonstrated how conservationists could be powerful advocates through storytelling, and how our actions reveal who we are. As Goodall once said:

every single one of us matters, every single one of us has a role to play, and every single one of us makes a difference every single day.

From the forest floor to global icon

Goodall knew conservation is as much about people as it is about wildlife and wild places.

Seventeen years after beginning her groundbreaking research in Gombe, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute with the mission of protecting wildlife and habitat by engaging local communities.

Her institute’s global network now spans five continents and continues her legacy of community-centred conservation. Researchers have now been studying the chimps at Gombe for 65 years.

Goodall moved from fieldwork to being a global conservation icon who regularly travelled more than 300 days a year. She observed many young people across cultures and creeds who had lost hope for their future amid environmental and climate destruction. In response, she founded a second organisation, Roots & Shoots, in 1991. Her goal was:

to foster respect and compassion for all living things, to promote understanding of all cultures and beliefs, and to inspire each individual to take action to make the world a better place for people, other animals, and the environment.

Last year, Roots & Shoots groups were active in 75 countries. Their work is a testament to Goodall’s mantra: find hope in action.

Jane Goodall went from pioneering field researcher to international conservation icon. David S. Holloway/Getty

Protecting nature close to home

One of Goodall’s most remarkable attributes was her drive to give people the power to take action where they were. No matter where people lived or what they did, she helped them realise they could be part of the solution.

In a busy, urbanised world, it’s easier than ever to feel disconnected from nature. Rather than presenting nature as a distant concept, Goodall made it something for everyone to experience, care for and cherish.

She showed we didn’t have to leave our normal lives behind to protect nature – we could make just as much difference in our own communities.

One of her most famous quotes rings just as true today as when she first said it:

only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help shall all be saved.

Let’s honour her world-changing legacy by committing to understand, care and help save all species with whom we share this world. For Jane Goodall.

Tags chimpanzees, environment, jane-goodall, nature

Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: Dingoes are not domestic dogs – new evidence shows these native canines are on their own evolutionary path

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 21 August 2025

By Kylie M Cairns (UNSW Sydney), Bradley Smith, (CQUniversity Australia), Euan Ritchie (Deakin University) and Thomas Newsome (University of Sydney).

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For decades, scientists, policymakers, graziers and land managers have been locked in a surprisingly high-stakes debate over what defines a dingo. Are these wild canids their own species? Or are they simply feral dogs?

The intensity of the debate can seem baffling. But the naming of animals influences how they are perceived and managed. The dingo debate has very real consequences for conservation laws, cultural recognition and respect, and the future of one of Australia’s iconic animals.

In 2020, researchers proposed four conditions dingoes would have to meet to be considered separate from domestic dogs: reproductive isolation (they don’t mate and produce fertile offspring), genetic distinctiveness, independent evolutionary path and distinctiveness from South-East Asian village dogs, which superficially resemble dingoes.

In our new research, we lay out the scientific case showing dingoes do indeed meet these requirements, across genetic, behavioural, ecological and archaeological evidence. We now have a clear answer: dingoes are distinct.

Australia’s wild canines have been on their own evolutionary path for thousands of years. As a distinct lineage, they should be recognised in their own right as a species or subspecies. They are not Canis familiaris, the domestic dog. They should be named either Canis dingo or Canis lupus dingo.

Species aren’t always in neat boxes

A typical ginger dingo in the Strzelecki desert, South Australia.
Matthew Brun, CC BY-ND

One of the greatest challenges for modern taxonomy is how to categorise “species” that don’t fit in neat little boxes but exist along a continuum.

It’s harder still for species whose long and significant associations with humans can lead to substantial changes that are evolutionarily significant.

It’s widely accepted domestic and wild animal populations should be distinguished and be given different scientific names. Domestication is often portrayed as a simple before-and-after event. But this isn’t accurate.

Domestication is a long, messy continuum. Some domesticated species such as cattle and modern dog breeds depend on humans for their survival. But dingoes are different. They have lived alongside people but are also entirely capable of surviving without us, and have done so for thousands of years.

In evolutionary terms, what matters is the trajectory. Did human contact fundamentally alter the appearance, biology and behaviour of the species, locking it into a domestic lifestyle? Or did human influence have little effect, meaning the species has been shaped primarily by natural selection in the wild?

Do dingoes meet the criteria to be considered taxonomically distinct?

Many modern dog breeds such as pugs have been bred for specific body shapes and traits rendering them less likely to survive in the wild by themselves.
Abuk Sabuk/Wikimedia, CC BY

Our research shows how the four conditions have been met to consider dingoes separate:

1. Reproductive isolation

Dingoes have been separated from other Canis lineages for 8,000-11,000 years. Genetic studies show dingoes have little contemporary interbreeding with domestic dogs, even when they live in the same areas. While all Canis species can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, differences in breeding seasons and behaviour act as natural barriers. Unlike dingoes, domestic dogs rarely establish wild, self-sustaining populations.

2. Genetic distinctiveness

Genome-wide analyses reveal dingoes descend from an ancient “eastern” dog lineage, while most modern domestic dogs come from “western” and “Arctic” dog lineages. Since their arrival in Australia, dingoes have remained genetically isolated.

3. An independent evolutionary lineage

From a genetic point of view, dingoes are more distinct from domestic dogs than domestic dog breeds are from each other. Modern dog breeds have undergone waves of mixing and human selection, while dingoes have not. This is why dingoes lack the genetic adaptations to starch-rich diets that domestic dogs evolved alongside agriculture and human contact.

Dingoes have carved out their own ecological niche in Australia’s unique environments, from deserts to snowy mountains. They have developed separate traits such as hyperflexible joints and a single breeding season over autumn and winter. By contrast, humans have heavily shaped the evolutionary path of domestic dogs, making them reliant on us.

4. Clear up whether dogs found in South-East Asia are dingoes

Some researchers have suggested dingo-like village dogs in South-East Asia are actually dingoes. While dingoes share some ancestors with these dogs, modern genetic evidence shows dingoes and their closest relatives, New Guinea singing dogs, are a separate population.

What’s in a name?

The question over how dogs evolved is not yet resolved. Some taxonomists believe dogs are a subspecies of wolf, while others disagree. Given this uncertainty, giving dingoes a unique scientific name can be done in two ways.

If we consider dingoes distinct from both dogs and wolves, the most appropriate name would be Canis dingo — recognising the dingo as its own species with a long, separate evolutionary history.

But if dingoes are not distinct from wolves, the correct name would be Canis lupus dingo. This would treat it as a subspecies of wolf, while still acknowledging its wild lineage separate to domestic dogs.

The name of the dingo matters

There is real power in the name of a species.

Under some state laws, dingoes are defined as “wild dogs”. This means dingoes are targeted for lethal control – even in many national parks. If treated as a domestic dog, dingoes can be ineligible for official threatened species lists.

As a result, the species is often overlooked for targeted conservation, while its culturally significant role for many First Nations peoples is often not recognised nor respected.

Defining dingoes as a distinct species or subspecies would allow governments to differentiate them from domestic dogs in laws, policies and conservation programs, and align western science with First Nations knowledge holders who have long distinguished between dingoes and dogs.

Ending decades of confusion will take work

Dingoes are culturally important for many First Nations peoples. This is a black and tan Wilkerr (the name used by Wotjobaluk peoples in northwestern Victoria) in Wyperfeld National Park.
Big Desert Dingo Research, CC BY-NC-ND

To clear up long-running disagreement over the dingo, we believe the time has come for an independent, evidence-based review by a national scientific body. This would bring together geneticists, ecologists, taxonomists and First Nations representatives.

This approach helped untangle similarly knotty problems overseas, such as the United States National Academies’ review to settle the taxonomy of red and Mexican wolves.

An Australian review could finally end decades of confusion for the dingo and ensure our laws reflect the most up-to-date scientific evidence.

Taxonomic debates might sound obscure. But this naming question will shape the future of one of Australia’s ecologically and culturally significant animals.

We believe the evidence shows the dingo is not a domestic dog – it’s on its own path. The question is whether Australia can accept this evidence.

Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: Want to see Australia’s rare and remarkable species for yourself? Here are 10 standout spots

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 20 August 2025

Brolgas (Antigone rubicunda) Uwe-Bergwitz/Getty

By Patrick Finnerty (Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Conservation and Wildlife Management, University of Sydney), Euan Ritchie (Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University) and Rhys Cairncross (Ecologist and PhD Researcher, University of Sydney).

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia is home to an extraordinary variety of wildlife, ranging from striking palm cockatoos to elusive mountain pygmy-possums and remarkable rat-kangaroos.

Most of us never get to see these creatures in real life – and that’s a real shame. Spending time in nature looking for wildlife is more than just a hobby – it’s a way to reconnect with the natural world and remember why it matters.

But how do you actually see these creatures for yourself? It’s often easier than you think.

As wildlife researchers, we’ve spent a long time in the field looking for wildlife. Here are ten standout locations where you have a good chance of seeing some genuinely remarkable Australian creatures – and tips on doing so without causing them stress or harming the environment.

1. Kutini-Payamu / Iron Range National Park, Queensland

Located in far north Queensland, Iron Range is renowned for lush rainforests and rich wildlife. Here, you can spot majestic palm cockatoos, secretive green pythons, the striking green, red and blue hues of eclectus parrots and the adorable common spotted cuscus, a species of possum. These species also occur in Papua New Guinea, but the Cape York region is the only place to spot them in Australia.

Spotting tips: Walk the trails with binoculars during peak times for bird activity, early morning or late afternoon. At night, use a head torch to spot pythons, frogs, death adders, geckoes, rufous owls, cuscus and other nocturnal fauna.

2. Atherton Tablelands, Queensland

The shy spotted cuscus (*Spilocuscus maculatus*) lives in Australia’s far north. John Giustina/Getty

Inland from Cairns lies the Atherton Tablelands, an elevated region with a cooler climate and abundant and diverse wildlife. Here, you can spot vibrant Ulysses butterflies, shy platypuses and rare marsupials. Australia’s largest snake, the scrub python, can block entire roads as it warms itself up before the night’s hunt. Rare waterfall frogs can be spotted in fast-flowing falls.

Lumholtz’s tree kangaroos can be spotted hopping along limbs at Curtain Fig National Park and Mount Hypipamee National Park, alongside green ringtail possums and striped possums with elongated fingers to ferret out grubs.

Meanwhile, musky rat-kangaroos can be seen “gardening” on the forest floor at Lake Eacham and Lake Barrine. These are the smallest kangaroos and the only non-hopping species. Your best chance of sighting an elusive northern quoll or northern bettong is at Davies Creek National Park.

Spotting tips: Take guided night walks to glimpse nocturnal wildlife. Use a head torch with a red filter. Move quietly and regularly stop to listen for movement and animal calls. Binoculars are a must for spotting creatures high in the canopy.

3. Western Treatment Plant, Victoria

Surprisingly, Melbourne’s Western Treatment Plant is a mecca for birdwatchers. The huge wastewater facility is recognised as a wetland of international importance. Migratory birds such as sharp-tailed sandpipers and red-necked stints can be seen, while well-hidden bitterns, rare orange-bellied parrots and Australia’s dancing crane, the brolga, can be glimpsed feeding in dense heath during cooler months. Almost 300 species have been recorded here.

Spotting tips: Visit during migration seasons (spring and autumn) for the best birdwatching opportunities. Use binoculars, telescopes, or telephoto lenses for close-up views without disturbance. Visitors need a permit.

4. Lunawanna-allonah / Bruny Island and Wukaluwikiwayna / Maria Island, Tasmania

South of Hobart lies Bruny Island, a sanctuary for endangered species such as eastern and spotted-tailed quolls. Most of Tasmania’s endemic bird species are found here, such as green rosellas and forty-spotted pardalotes. Rare swift parrots can also be seen.

North of Hobart is Maria Island, an island national park where no cars are allowed – and where Tasmanian devils, bandicoots and wombats can readily be seen.

Spotting tips: Join guided tours to see nocturnal wildlife or birds in Bruny Island’s tall forests. Eastern quolls can often be seen at night on the main road when heading north from the island’s isthmus. Tasmanian devils and bandicoots can be seen around campsites at Maria Island at night.

5. Flinders, Portsea and Blairgowrie piers, Victoria

Snorkelling the cool waters beneath Flinders, Portsea and Blairgowrie piers is a revelation. Here live spectacular weedy sea dragons, sand octopuses, big-belly seahorses, ornate cowfish, smooth and eagle rays, Port Jackson and banjo sharks and vividly coloured nudibranchs.

Spotting tips: Snorkel or dive during calm weather for best visibility. Keep your distance from marine life for their safety (and yours).

6. Sydney Harbour and cliff tops, New South Wales

Sydney’s iconic harbour and surrounding cliffs are well suited for marine life enthusiasts. Every winter, humpback and southern right whales migrate past the headlands, while pods of bottlenose dolphins can be seen year-round. White-bellied sea eagles, Australasian gannets and short-tailed shearwaters add to the spectacle in the skies.

Spotting tips: Join whale-watching cruises between May and November for the best chance. Clifftop spotting is best done with binoculars from Royal National Park, North Head, Clovelly and The Gap.

7. Binybara / Lee Point, Northern Territory

The black-footed tree-rat (*Mesembriomys gouldii*) is a clever native rodent with a knack for life in the trees. François Brassard, CC BY-NC-ND

Just north of Darwin is Lee Point, one of the best places to glimpse the elusive black-footed tree-rat. Weighing almost a kilo, this threatened native rodent is an expert climber and lives in tree hollows.

Around 200 bird species have also been recorded here. Flocks of great knots, eastern curlews and grey-tailed tattlers feed on the mudflats, while the woodlands are home to the dazzling colour of Gouldian finches and the charismatic blue-winged kookaburra.

Spotting tips: Visit at night to see the tree-rat moving between trees, or come at low tide to watch thousands of shorebirds feeding. Binoculars will be invaluable.

8. Wadjemup / Rottnest Island, Western Australia

The ‘smiling’ quokkas (*Setonix brachyurus*) on Rottnest Island have become globally famous. Posnov/Getty

Offshore from Perth, Rottnest Island is rightly famous for its smiling quokkas. But other unique species such as King’s skink and venomous dugites can be seen here too, while osprey nests occupied for decades can be seen on rock stacks. The reefs around the island have WA’s southernmost coral.

Spotting tips: Cycling is the best way to explore different habitats on the largely car-free island. Keep your distance from quokkas and other wildlife to ensure they stay wild.

9. Kunama Namadgi / Kosciuszko National Park, New South Wales

Mountain pygmy possums (*Burramys parvus*) are hard to spot – but the thrill of seeing these tiny, secretive marsupials is hard to beat. Jason Edwards/Getty

Australia’s highest peaks are home to the nation’s most remarkable alpine wildlife. Birdwatchers can spot gang-gang cockatoos feeding in eucalypts, while lucky hikers might glimpse an alpine dingo crossing a snow-dusted plain, or see a strikingly coloured Corroborree frog in a bog or fen.

This is the only place in the world where you can encounter a critically endangered mountain pygmy-possum. These tiny marsupials hibernate under winter snow and emerge to feed on bogong moths in spring.

Kosciuszko is also home to the native smoky mouse and – remarkably – to Leadbeater’s possum, long thought to be confined to Victoria’s Central Highlands.

Spotting tips: For the best chance of spotting a mountain pygmy-possum, visit between late spring and early summer when the snow has melted. Stick to alpine boulder fields such as those around Charlotte Pass and Mount Kosciuszko. You may need to camp overnight to see nocturnal possums and the smoky mouse. Binoculars and patience are essential to glimpse these shy species.

10. Karta Pintingga/Kangaroo Island, South Australia

Southwest of Adelaide lies the large Kangaroo Island, home to echidnas, tammar wallabies, a rare subspecies of the glossy black-cockatoo and Kangaroo Island dunnarts. Koalas are common. While the island’s isolation has protected these species, the 2020 megafires caused much damage. Wildlife is now bouncing back.

Spotting tips: Explore national parks and conservation areas with a local guide. Observe from a distance.

Take care of wildlife

Wildlife spotting has to be done with care. Think of yourself as a guest in someone else’s home.

Keep a respectful distance, don’t touch wildlife, move quietly and use binoculars or a zoom lens for a closer look rather than creeping closer.

If you’re out after dark, make sure your head torch has a red light option. This light is vastly less damaging to animal eyes optimised for the dark.

When snorkelling or diving, avoid hitting corals and sponges with your fins.

It can be tempting to use playback of calls to attract birds such as owls. But this is very disruptive and can do real damage.

Avoid moving logs, bark, stones and other habitat in your effort to see animals. This is disruptive and risks bites from venomous creatures.

Clean and disinfect your boots before moving between areas to avoid spreading soil-borne pathogens such as cinnamon fungus and chytrid fungus.

Whatever you do, don’t feed wildlife. It might seem harmless, but it can change their natural behaviour, make them ill and even make them dependent on people.

Posting sightings on citizen science apps such as iNaturalist and FrogID can help scientists learn more about these species and aid their conservation.

Enjoy the journey

As wildlife researchers, we often seek out species in their natural habitat. These moments never lose their impact.

It’s a remarkable thing to see a creature in its natural habitat. A successful sighting gives a sense of awe and joy. At a time when many people are cut off from nature, deliberately seeking out these species is a powerful and rewarding act.

Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: Top End’s tropical savannas are a natural wonder – but weak environment laws mean their future is uncertain

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 5 June 2025

Gouldian Finch, François Brassard

By Euan Ritchie (Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University), Brett Murphy (Professor of Ecology, Charles Darwin University) and John Woinarski (Professor of Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University).

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Top End of Australia’s Northern Territory contains an extensive, awe-inspiring expanse of tropical savanna landscapes. It includes well-known and much-loved regions such as Darwin, Kakadu National Park, Arnhem Land and Nitmiluk Gorge.

Australia’s tropical savannas are diverse and dynamic, shaped by fire and the cycle of wet and dry seasons. Brett Murphy

These tropical savannas feature open forests and woodlands dominated by eucalypts and a diverse grassy understorey. They experience an intense monsoon-driven wet season and long dry season during which fire is common.

The area is home to a spectacular range of plants and animals, including crocodiles, barramundi, speartooth sharks, the spectacularly coloured Leichhardt’s grasshopper and flocks of magpie geese. Some groups are extraordinarily diverse. Several thousand ant species are thought to live there – compared to just 1,000 species in South America’s Amazon basin.

Yet, despite their immense ecological and cultural significance, the NT’s tropical savannas face an uncertain future. The landscape is under increasing pressure from invasive species, more frequent and severe fires, climate change, mining, agriculture and development – including water extraction.

Our new report outlines what should be done to ensure conservation and sustainable management of this unique and special region.

A region in trouble

Species such as the brush-tailed rabbit-rat have declined substantially and are now locally extinct in some areas. Cara Penton

As ecologists, we share a deep passion for tropical Northern Australia but fear for its future. To aid environmental policy and decision-making, we set out to describe the current condition and likely future of the NT’s tropical savannas. This involved identifying existing, emerging and possible future threats.

We found biodiversity in decline. Many species, particularly mammals that were once common and widespread, have disappeared from much of the region. These include the northern quoll, brush-tailed rabbit-rat and black-footed tree-rat.

Habitats are degraded and ecosystems are showing signs of collapse. Feral animals are widespread. Cats prey on native wildlife. Feral pigs feast on turtle nests and trash plants in and around waterways, reducing water quality. Cattle, water buffalo, horses and donkeys eat their way through native plants, reducing habitat structure and complexity, aiding the establishment and spread of weeds.

In many parts of the Top End, fires are becoming more frequent and severe. This is in part due to the increasing dominance of invasive grasses, particularly Gamba and buffel grass. Both grasses are highly flammable, increasing the risk and harm of fires.

Longer and hotter dry seasons also increase fire risk and severity, as well as making water less available to wildlife due to higher rates of evaporation. Plants and animals also face greater heat stress and risk of dying during extended periods of extreme temperatures.

The changing nature of land-clearing

The Top End is spectacular and rich in biodiversity. François Brassard

Land-clearing is increasing in the Top End, too. We estimate about 45,000 hectares of savanna habitat was destroyed between 2000 and 2020. That’s equivalent to an area roughly the size of 22,500 Melbourne Cricket Grounds.

Another 146,000 hectares have approval to be cleared, and an additional 100,000 hectares could be cleared for an expanded cotton industry.

It is not just the amount of clearing that matters, but where it occurs. The habitat mainly destroyed to date has been in higher rainfall areas between Darwin and Katherine. This is where most threatened species live. On average, the cleared areas overlapped with more than 12 nationally listed threatened species.

What should be done?

The Top End is awe inspiring but without greater enviromental protection its many values may be diminished. François Brassard

Our report shows current laws are insufficient to protect the Northern Territory’s tropical savannas. Evidence-based law reform is urgently needed.

Decision-making must be collaborative, not controlled by individuals, based on sound science. It must also actively support and involve First Nations peoples and their goals.

The situation in the NT reflects broader calls to strengthen national environmental laws as a matter of urgency and greatly boost investment in conservation to achieve positive results for nature.

Nature is the lynchpin of northern Australia. It characterises and nurtures the place, underpins and embraces Indigenous culture, is a major tourist attraction and helps make our country healthy. We need to recognise its value, and guard against its ongoing loss.

Our report was independently reviewed by experts in the ecology and conservation of Northern Australia, Professors Richard Williams and Christopher Johnson.

Tags biodiversity, environment, nature, wildlife

Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: Farmers fear dingoes are eating their livestock – but predator poo tells an unexpected story

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 12 May 2025

Dingo (Canis dingo) Kristian Bell/Shutterstock

By Rachel Mason (PhD candidate in Conservation Biology, Deakin University) and Euan Ritchie (Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University).

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Killing carnivores to protect livestock, wildlife and people is an emotive and controversial issue that can cause community conflict. Difficult decisions about managing predators must be supported by strong scientific evidence.

In Australia, predators such as dingoes and foxes are often shot or poisoned with baits to prevent them from killing sheep and cattle. Feral cats and foxes are also killed to protect native wildlife.

But research elsewhere suggests public perceptions of how predators affect ecosystems and livestock are not always accurate.

Our recent study sought to shed light on these controversies. We examined the scat, or poo, left behind by dingoes, foxes and cats. We focused on the mallee region of Victoria and South Australia where there are calls to resume dingo culling to stop them killing livestock.

A contentious issue

Our study took place in the Big Desert-Wyperfeld-Ngarkat reserve complex in the semi-arid mallee region of Victoria and South Australia. This continuous ecosystem comprises about 10,000 km² of protected native mallee bushland, and is entirely surrounded by crop and livestock farming areas.

Fox-baiting is conducted along the boundaries of Victorian-managed reserve areas. Dingo baiting occurs in the South Australian-managed section of the park.

Since March 2024, the small dingo population has been protected in Victorian-managed areas due to their critically low numbers in the region.

Prior to the change, Victorian farmers and authorised trappers could control dingoes on private land and within public land up to 3km from farms. Farmers say they have lost livestock since dingoes were protected.

What are predators eating in the mallee region?

We collected and analysed 136 dingo, 200 fox and 25 cat scats to determine what each predator in the area was eating and how their diets differed.

Livestock was not a major part of the diet of dingoes, foxes or cats. Some 7% of fox scats contained sheep or cattle remains. This was more than that of dingoes, at 2% of scats. No feral cat scats contained livestock remains.

The dingo diet was dominated by kangaroos, wallabies and emus, which comprised more than 70% of their diet volume.

Cats and foxes consumed more than 15 times the volume of small native mammals compared with dingoes, including threatened species such as fat-tailed dunnarts.

Frequency of occurrence of threatened and near-threatened species in the diet of dingoes, foxes and cats in the Big Desert-Wyperfeld-Ngarkat park complex. Rachel Mason

Our data must be interpreted with caution. Scat analysis cannot differentiate between livestock killed by predators and those that are scavenged. It also can’t tell us about animals that a predator killed but did not eat.

In 2022–23, when we collected the scats, rainfall in the area was high and prey was abundant. So, while we found livestock were not likely to be a substantial part of these predators’ diets at the time of our research, this can change depending on environmental conditions.

For example, fire and extended drought may force predators to move further to find food and water. They may move from conservation areas to private land, where they could prey on livestock.

Volume of prey categories in the diet of dingoes, foxes and cats in the Big Desert-Wyperfeld-Ngarkat complex. Rachel Mason

A taste for certain prey

A predator’s poo doesn’t tell the full story of how it affects prey populations.

To understand this further, we used motion-sensing wildlife cameras to assess which prey were available in the ecosystem. We compared it to the frequency they occurred in predator’s diets. This allowed us to determine if dingoes, foxes or cats target specific prey.

We found foxes and cats both consumed small mammals proportionally more than we expected, given the prey’s availability in the study area. Cats consumed birds at a higher rate than expected, and dingoes consumed echidnas more than expected.

Further intensive monitoring work is needed to determine how these dietary preferences affect the populations of prey species.

Embracing the evidence

The findings build on a substantial previous research suggesting foxes and cats pose a significant threat to native mammals, birds, reptiles and other wildlife, including many threatened species. Our results suggest foxes may cause more harm to sheep than dingoes overall – a finding consistent with research elsewhere in Victoria.

Dingoes were the only predator species that regularly preyed on kangaroos and wallabies. These species are abundant in the region. They can also compete with livestock for grazing pastures, consume crops and degrade native vegetation.

Currently, dingoes are killed on, or fenced out of, large parts of Australia due to their perceived threat to livestock.

Lethal control of invasive species remains important to protect native wildlife and agriculture. But such decisions should be based on evidence, to avoid unforeseen and undesirable results.

For example, fox control can lead to increased feral cat numbers and harm to native prey. Fewer dingoes may mean more feral goats and kangaroos.

Non-lethal and effective alternatives exist to indiscriminately killing predators to protect livestock, such as protection dogs and donkeys. These measures are being embraced by farmers and graziers globally, often with high and sustained success.

In Australia, governments should better embrace and support evidence-based and effective approaches that allow farming, native carnivores and other wildlife to coexist.

Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: Australians want nature protected. These three environmental problems should be top of the next government’s to-do list

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 2 April 2025

The striking Palm Cockatoo, (Probosciger aterrimus) is only found at the northern tip of the Cape York Peninsula, as well as parts of Papua New Guinea and the Aru Islands, Indonesia. Christina Zdenek

By Euan Ritchie (Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University), John Woinarski (Professor of Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University) and Martine Maron (Professor of Environmental Management, The University of Queensland).

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia is a place of great natural beauty, home to many species found nowhere else on Earth. But it’s also particularly vulnerable to introduced animals, diseases and weeds. Habitat destruction, pollution and climate change make matters worse. To conserve what’s special, we need far greater care.

Unfortunately, successive federal governments have failed to protect nature. Australia now has more than 2,000 threatened species and “ecological communities” – groups of native species that live together and interact. This threatened list is growing at an alarming rate.

The Albanese government came to power in 2022 promising to reform the nation’s nature laws, following a scathing review of the laws. But it has failed to do so.

If re-elected, Labor has vowed to complete its reforms and introduce a federal Environment Protection Agency, in some other form.

The Coalition has not made such a commitment. Instead, it refers to “genuine conservation”, balancing the environment and the economy. They’ve also promised to cut “green tape” for industry.

But scientific evidence suggests much more is required to protect Australia’s natural wonders.

Fighting invaders

Labor has made a welcome commitment of more than A$100 million to counter “highly pathogenic avian influenza”. This virulent strain of bird flu is likely to kill millions of native birds and other wildlife.

The government also provided much-needed funding for a network of safe havens for threatened mammals. These safe-havens exclude cats, foxes and other invasive species.

But much more needs to be done. Funding is urgently needed to eradicate red imported fire ants, before eradication becomes impossible. Other election commitments to look for include:

increased biosecurity funding, to prevent new incursions
long-term investment in eradicating major pests and weeds from key sites
support for research into new tools to control invasive species such as feral cats, for which no broad-scale solution is currently possible
no reversal or weakening of policies aimed at curbing invasive pests such as feral horses in national parks
new laws to ensure threat abatement plans are implemented
adequate funds to manage invasive species across Australia’s expanding protected areas
national coordination and leadership to stop the indiscriminate use of poisons that can spread through ecosystems and food-chains, killing non-target animals such as owls, quolls, Tasmanian devils, reptiles and frogs.

Stopping land clearing and habitat destruction

The states are largely responsible for controlling land clearing. But when land clearing affects “matters of national environmental significance” such as a nationally listed threatened species or ecological community, it becomes a federal matter.

Such proposals are supposed to be referred to the federal environment minister for assessment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

But most habitat destruction is never referred. And if it is, it’s mostly deemed “not a controlled action”. That means no further consideration is required and the development can proceed.

Only about 1.5% of the hundreds of thousands of hectares of land cleared in Australia every year is fully assessed under the EPBC Act.

This means our threatened species and ecological communities are suffering a “death by a thousand cuts”.

How do we fix this? A starting point is to introduce “national environmental standards” of the kind envisaged in the 2020 review of the EPBC Act by Professor Graeme Samuel.

A strong Environment Protection Agency could ensure impacts on biodiversity are appropriately assessed and accounted for.

Protecting threatened species

Habitat destruction at Lee Point, Darwin. Martine Maron

For Australia to turn around its extinction crisis, prospective elected representatives and governments must firmly commit to the following actions.

Stronger environmental law and enforcement is essential for tackling biodiveristy decline and extinction. This should include what’s known as a “climate trigger”, which means any proposal likely to produce a significant amount of greenhouse gases would have to be assessed under the EPBC Act.

This is necessary because climate change is among the greatest threats to biodiversity. But the federal environment minister is currently not legally bound to consider – or authorised to refuse – project proposals based on their greenhouse gas emissions. In an attempt to pass the EPBC reforms in the Senate last year, the Greens agreed to postpone their demand for a climate trigger.

Key threats to species, including habitat destruction, invasive species, climate change, and pollution, must be prevented or reduced. Aligning government policies and priorities to ensure environmental goals aren’t undermined by economic and development interests is essential.

A large increase in environmental spending – to at least 1% of the federal budget – is vital. It would ensure sufficient support for conservation progress and meeting legal requirements of the EPBC Act, including listing threatened species and designing and implementing recovery plans when required.

Show nature the money!

Neither major party has committed to substantial increases in environmental spending in line with what experts suggest is urgently needed.

Without such increased investment Australia’s conservation record will almost certainly continue to deteriorate. The loss of nature hurts us all. For example, most invasive species not only affect biodiversity; they have major economic costs to productivity.

Whoever forms Australia’s next government, we urge elected leaders to act on the wishes of 96% of surveyed Australians calling for more action to conserve nature.

Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has been taken to court over 11 threatened species. Here’s why

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 4 March 2025

Carnaby’s Black Cockatoo. Imogen Warren/Shutterstock

By Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What do the Australian lungfish, ghost bat, sandhill dunnart and southern and central greater gliders have in common? They’re all threatened species that need a formal “recovery plan” – but do not have one.

Today, environmental group the Wilderness Society launched a case in the Federal Court against Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, arguing she and successive environment ministers have failed to meet their legal obligations to create threatened species recovery plans.

Other species forming the basis of the case are Baudin’s cockatoo, the Australian grayling, Carnaby’s black cockatoo, red goshawk, forest red-tailed black cockatoo and the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle.

Many other species and ecological communities also don’t have recovery plans. If successful, the case would set a precedent compelling future environment ministers to meet their legal obligations and improve Australia’s dire conservation record. This is a significant moment for conservation in Australia – testing how accountable environment ministers are in preventing species extinctions.

Why do recovery plans matter?

Threatened species recovery plans lay out very clearly why species or ecological communities are in trouble and the actions necessary to save them. Once a plan is in place, it can directly benefit the species by tackling threats and safeguarding habitat.

Proposals such as a new farm, suburb or mining project can be assessed by the environment minister and rejected if they are inconsistent with recovery plans and place threatened species at increased risk of extinction. Recovery plans have helped dozens of species come back from the brink.

Under Australia’s national environmental laws, the environment minister must decide whether a recovery plan is required for a species or ecological community listed as threatened.

If a plan is ordered, it must typically be created within three years. But a 2022 Auditor-General’s report found just 2% of plans met this timeframe.

Recovery is possible, but plans are vital

Successive governments have failed to keep up with creating and implementing recovery plans in a timely manner. The perennial and chronic lack of funding for conservation means there’s little capacity to do the vital but time-consuming work of planning and recovery.

As a result, the federal government has increasingly shifted to offering conservation advices in place of recovery plans. Conservation advices can be produced and updated faster than recovery plans. This is useful if, say, a new threat emerges and needs a rapid response.

But there’s a key legal difference. When the environment minister is considering a project such as land clearing for new farmland or a mine, they need only consider any conservation advice in place. When a recovery plan is in place, the minister is legally obliged not to approve actions which are contrary to its objectives and would make the plight of a species or ecological community worse.

A conservation advice can be thought of more like a fact sheet without the same legal weight or accountability that recovery plans have.

In March 2022, the Morrison government scrapped recovery plans for 176 threatened species and habitats, despite thousands of submissions arguing against this.

After the Albanese government took power in May 2022, it pledged to end “wilful neglect” of the environment and to introduce stronger environmental laws. Sadly, this commitment has not been honoured.

Why do we need recovery plans?

The range of northern Australia’s ghost bats has shrunk significantly. Ken Griffiths/Shutterstock

Australia’s species protection record is unenviable. Since European colonisation, more than 100 species have been driven to extinction and more than 2,000 species and ecological communities are listed at risk of suffering the same fate.

For a species to be considered threatened, its population has to have shrunk or meet other criteria putting it at risk of extinction. The severity of the decline and hence its extinction risk will determine how it’s categorised, from vulnerable through to critically endangered. Recovery plans lay out the research required to actually recover these species, meaning helping their populations to grow out of the danger zone.

A key role for these plans is to coordinate planning and action between relevant interest groups and agencies. This is especially important for species found across state and territory borders, such as the southern greater glider and the migratory swift parrot. The greater glider should have had a recovery plan in place since 2016, but does not.

Are individual plans still worthwhile?

Faced with so many species in need of protection and limited funding, prominent figures including former Environment Minister Peter Garrett have argued we should focus our efforts on protecting ecosystems rather than single species to make the best use of scarce funds.

But there is a deeper issue. Australia is one of the wealthiest nations in the world. It has the capacity to greatly increase conservation spending without impoverishing humans, and should do so for the benefit of the economy, culture and our health and wellbeing.

That’s not to say ecosystem protection isn’t worthwhile. After all, ecosystems are made up of species and their interactions with each other and their environment. You cannot have healthy species without healthy ecosystems and vice versa.

But if we focus only on protecting large expanses of wetland, forest and grasslands, we risk overlooking a key issue. Two species in the same ecosystem can be very differently affected by a specific threat (predation by foxes, for instance). Some species can even have conflicting management needs. For some species, invasive species are the biggest threat, while climate change and intensified fire regimes threaten others the most.

Extinction is a choice

The sandhill dunnart is one of 11 species listed in the court case. Kristian Bell/Shutterstock

As Australia’s natural world continues to deteriorate, climate change deepens and worsening wildlife woes abound, these issues will no doubt be front of mind for many in the upcoming federal election.

It can be easy to see these trends as inevitable. But they are not – the collapse of nature is a choice. We have what we need for success, including traditional, ecological and conservation knowledge. What’s sorely needed is political will.

There were once fewer than 50 northern hairy-nosed wombats alive. Today, that number exceeds 400. When supported, conservation can succeed.

Almost all Australians want their government to do more to save our species. Let us hope whoever forms the next government takes up that challenge – even if it takes court cases to prompt action.

Media Science communication The Conversation

The Conversation: Labor’s dumping of Australia’s new nature laws means the environment is shaping as a key 2025 election issue

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 3 February 2025

Controversy over land clearing at the Lee Point (Binybara) housing development site, near Darwin, highlights the urgent need for environmental law reform. Image credit: Euan Ritchie

By Peter Burnett (Australian National University), Euan Ritchie, (Deakin University), and Jaana Dielenberg (Charles Darwin University).

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has shelved the proposed reforms to Australia’s 25-year-old environment laws, citing a lack of parliamentary support for the changes.

The decision breaks Labor’s 2022 election commitment to overhaul the protections. The Albanese government is now the latest in a string of governments that have tried and failed to reform the law known formally as the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

This is despite two major independent reviews calling for wholesale change.

Labor’s capitulation does not, however, change the facts. Australia’s natural environment is deteriorating rapidly. Laws are urgently needed to protect our nation’s valuable natural assets.

Establishing effective laws is an investment that will benefit Australia’s biodiversity, economy, cultural values, health and wellbeing. Nature is now a key 2025 election issue.

How did we get here?

An independent review of the EPBC Act, known as the Samuel Review, was completed in 2020 under the former Coalition government. It found that without urgent changes, most of Australia’s threatened plants, animals and ecosystems will become extinct.

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek promised to act on the review’s recommendations, via a plan Labor badged as “Nature Positive”.

The centrepiece of reform is to set national environmental standards that would be overseen by an independent regulator and watchdog called Environmental Protection Australia (EPA). But reform was split into three stages.

Stage one legislated for national markets in nature repair and expanded the requirement to assess potential impacts on water resources under the EPBC Act. The so-called “water trigger” now captures “unconventional gas” projects such as shale gas recovery in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin. The law passed in December 2023, but the markets are not yet functioning.

Stage two of the reforms, including establishing a federal EPA, came before the Senate in late 2024. Plibersek had reportedly made a deal with the crossbench to secure passage. But this deal was scuttled by Albanese at the eleventh hour.

The Government could pass legislation for Environment Protection Australia today if it agrees to close a loophole that would prevent the EPA looking at native forest logging.

Let's do it.https://t.co/ynI3EGMxEW
— David Pocock (@DavidPocock) November 17, 2024

Delay of Nature Positive bills measures for improved compliance with existing environment law a terrible loss, means continued illegal clearing of endangered species habitat . The other elements though could be done NOW administratively + by regulationhttps://t.co/ImgTPWBY1T
— LEAN Australia (@LEANAustralia) February 1, 2025

Stage two was relisted for discussion in the upcoming first parliamentary sitting week of 2025, this week. But on Saturday, Albanese told The Conversation the government would, again, not be proceeding with the reform this term.

The reforms have been delayed for so long that we are now closer to the next statutory review of the laws, due in 2029, than to the last one.

Stage three, which covers the bulk of substantive reform recommended in the Samuel Review, is yet to be seen publicly.

What will happen after the next election?

Albanese must go to the polls by May 17, but there is speculation the election may be as early as March. So what is the likely fate of these environmental reforms in the next term?

A Roy Morgan poll on Monday found if a federal election were held now, the result would be a hung parliament. So the result is looking tight.

Government control of the Senate is rare. So whoever is in power after the election is very likely to rely on crossbench support for any reforms.

Albanese has ruled out forming a coalition with the Greens or crossbenchers in the event of a hung parliament. However, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says he would negotiate with independents to form government.

A returned Albanese majority government would probably revisit the scuttled deal on stage two. With elections in the rear-view mirror, Albanese may be prepared to wear some political pain early in the next term to secure a deal. He would also still need to roll out the bulk of the Nature Positive reforms, the detail of which remains hidden behind a vague “stage three” banner.

A minority Albanese government may face a tougher ask: demands from an environmentally progressive crossbench for major commitments to environmental reform in return for promises of support on budget and confidence.

A Coalition government would be coming from a very different angle. Dutton has painted Nature Positive as a “disaster” for the economy, expressing particular concern about impacts on the mining sector.

The Coalition’s environmental agenda is increasingly focused on “cutting green tape” – in other words, reducing bureaucratic hurdles for developers – and repealing bans on nuclear power stations. Finding crossbench support in the Senate for this agenda could be challenging.

The Greens have vowed to make environmental protection a key election issue, urging voters to cast their ballot for nature this election.

A recent poll published by the Biodiversity Council shows 75% of Australians support strengthening national environmental law to protect nature. Only 4% are opposed and the rest are undecided.

But converting a high level of broad support into votes is another thing altogether – especially during a cost-of-living crisis.

Crystal clear consequences

The political crystal ball remains cloudy. But when it comes to the state of Australia’s environment, the picture is clear.

The environment continues to decline and the consequences are increasingly serious. These consequences extend beyond further irreversible loss and the increasing cost of environmental repair, to include the economic and social consequences of losing more of the natural assets on which our quality of life depends.

The building blocks of successful reform are all on the table, where the Samuel Review put them in 2020.

When will governments accept that kicking the can down the road is selling us all down the drain?

Logging is leaving koalas homeless. Image credit: AAP, supplied by WWF Australia

Media Research The Conversation

The Conversation: 1080 baits are used to kill foxes, cats and dingoes – but other animals can be more likely to eat them

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 20 January 2025

1080 poison is regularly used to kill introduced foxes (Vulpe vulpes) but many native animals, such as kangaroos, echidnas and quokkas also dig up and eat the bait. Image credit: Milosz Maslanka/Shutterstock

By Rachel Mason, Anthony Rendall, and Euan Ritchie, Deakin University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Around the world, humans routinely kill carnivores to protect livestock and game, increase human safety and conserve native wildlife. Unfortunately, killing carnivores often creates new problems including population booms of native and invasive prey species such as rabbits, kangaroos, goats and deer. More herbivores can mean more damage to crops and native vegetation.

1080 is lethal to introduced animals such as dogs – but it can also harm some native animals. Image credit: Todd Powell/Shutterstock

In many parts of Australia, dingoes, foxes and – to a lesser degree – feral cats are routinely poisoned with 1080 (sodium fluoroacetate) to protect livestock and native animals. Predator baiting is sometimes done intensively to help threatened wildlife populations recover after disasters such as the 2019–20 megafires.

Despite widespread use, predator baiting with 1080 is controversial for social, cultural, environmental and economic reasons. Recent opponents include farmers whose livestock protection dogs died in agony after eating 1080 baits.

In southeastern states, land managers may use techniques such as burying the poisoned baits to ensure carnivores are most likely to dig up and eat them. But our new research shows these techniques may not be working as intended.

Why do we use 1080 bait?

Invasive predators such as foxes and cats have driven many native species to the edge. Their silent, stealthy hunting is implicated in dozens of extinctions of small animals.

That means poison baits can be an important conservation tool to control numbers of foxes and feral cats and give native species a better chance of survival. But baiting comes with the risk that other animals will eat it.

In Australia, 1080 has long been seen as a kind of “wonder poison” – a chemical deadly to introduced species that many native animals are highly resistant to. The toxin is derived from “poison pea” plants of the Gastrolobium genus, mostly found in regions of Western Australia. Many native animals in these regions have evolved a high tolerance to the poison.

Quokkas have been recorded eating up to 95% of baited meat deployed to control foxes, while goannas are adept at finding and eating poisoned baits. These species are resistant to the poison, and aren’t normally harmed by consuming baits.

But southeastern Australia has no species of poison pea, meaning native animals in this region may be more susceptible to 1080 than elsewhere.

Which animals actually eat the bait?

Our research suggests a huge number of poison baits buried according to best practice methods are potentially being dug up and eaten by other animals.

To find out which animals might be doing this, we buried non-toxic liver baits in dirt mounds, a method currently considered to be best practice. Then we set up remote motion-sensing cameras at our sites in the semi-arid Wyperfeld National Park in northwestern Victoria and recorded what happened for 70 days.

Our footage captured native mice such as this Mitchell’s hopping mouse digging up the mounds and eating many of the baits. Image credit: Rachel Mason/Deakin University

What did we find? Foxes and dingoes accounted for just 12% of the baits dug up or eaten. Of the 146 interactions with baits, 88% were non-target species – primarily, native mice species such as Mitchell’s hopping mouse (Notomys mitchellii) and silky mice (Pseudomys apodemoides).

The single dingo which took the bait dug it up only after 60 days. Foxes took the bait 17 times, but they were typically slow to do so too, averaging 41 days. By contrast, native mice dug up baits after an average of 13 days.

We also saw western grey kangaroos dig up and eat baits. Echidnas, rabbits and house mice often unearthed baits and left them uneaten on the surface, making them available to be found and consumed by other animals.

In sites with denser vegetation, we found native mice were more likely to dig up and eat the baits. But they were less likely to do so in open areas.

Dingoes and foxes (target species, in orange) did not dig up many baits relative to non-target species (in blue). Image credit: Rachel Mason/Deakin University

What about dingoes?

Baiting for dingoes and “wild dogs” is still done routinely, even though DNA testing shows the canids roaming Australia are mostly pure dingo. Recent research has shown that dingoes are largely avoiding breeding with domestic dogs. The “wild dogs” being poisoned to protect lambs and other livestock are almost all dingoes.

Shepherd dog breeds such as Maremma dogs have been bred to guard sheep from wild predators. Image credit: Marco Branchi/Shutterstock

This poses a major problem for baiting programs. While dingoes are susceptible to 1080 poison, they have lived in Australia for thousands of years. Aside from humans, dingoes are the top terrestrial predator everywhere outside Tasmania. To many First Nations people, these canids are culturally important and are often considered kin.

Graziers have long seen dingoes as a threat, given these predators can take sheep, goats, cattle and other livestock. But there are now non-lethal and highly effective predator-smart methods to safeguard livestock, such as predator-proof fencing and guardian animals such as Maremma dogs. These methods reduce livestock losses without the need to kill dingoes.

Keeping dingoes alive can often actually benefit graziers, as dingoes scare off or eat competing herbivores such as kangaroos and feral goats.

What does this mean for baiting?

Our research shows predator baiting has the potential to harm more native species than previously realised. That means baiting programs must be conducted carefully according to local conditions and the wildlife present.

More targeted methods for controlling predator species are being developed. Feral cats are now being targeted with machines which spray poisonous gel on their fur which cats will groom off, leaving other animals unharmed.

Using 1080 to control invasive predators has undoubtedly helped to save many native species. Even so, we must continue to evaluate the best approaches for predator control and wildlife conservation in Australia.

As the biodiversity crisis deepens and more species march towards extinction, we must find ways of better targeting our methods of control to protect livestock and safeguard native species – including the dingo.

The Conversation

The Conversation: Mind-bending, body-snatching, blood-sucking: parasites are bizarre yet vital for life on Earth

Post author By Euan Ritchie
Post date 2 January 2025

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Parasite, zombie, leech – these words are often used to describe people in unkind ways. Many of us recoil when ticks, tapeworms, fleas, head lice or bed bugs are even mentioned. Coming across such unwelcome guests – in our hair, on our skin or in our beds – can be a real nightmare.

Some parasites cause horrific deformities and diseases, maiming and killing millions of people and wildlife. Others may help boost immunity or provide the basis of food chains.

Parasites are often demonised and misunderstood. But the more we study these oddities and wonders of evolution, the more we appreciate their vital roles in ecosystems and our complex relationships with them. They’re essential to life on Earth.

As an ecologist with a focus on wildlife and conservation, I wrote this article to share some of my fascination for parasites and the importance of their extraordinary lives.

What is a parasite?

Parasites rely on living organisms for food, to grow and to reproduce.

They can either live on the outside (ectoparasites) or inside (endoparasites) of their hosts. Far from being invited dinner guests, parasites typically turn up of their own accord and feed at the host’s expense, consuming part or all of them.

Parasites can live within their host (or hosts) for short or extended periods – in some cases many years – going largely unnoticed. For instance, one man lived with a tapeworm in his brain for more than four years until the headaches and strange smells become too much to bear. In other cases, parasites can kill their host.

Perhaps the most gruesome type of parasite, parasitoids, kill their hosts in order to reproduce. The disturbing chest-bursting scene from the 1979 movie Alien is a truly visceral sci-fi example of a parasitoid.

In real life, examples include spider wasps that first immobilise their spider prey, lay an egg on them, and bury them. Then when the egg hatches, the wasp larvae devour the incapacitated spider. That is, of course, if another animal such as a “bin chicken (Sacred Ibis)” or insect doesn’t intervene.

Parasites are typically much smaller than their hosts. Many are furnished with equipment for latching on and remaining attached, including hooks, suckers and “teeth”.

Endoparasites such as tapeworms are often flat, allowing them to live within the tight spaces inside other organisms. The flatworm Diplozoon paradoxum that lives in gills of some fish must conjoin with another to reach adulthood and reproduce. Once fused, they form a permanent, lifelong bond and mate with each other over many years.

As much as 40% of all animal species may be parasites, and this mode of life might have evolved more than 200 times in the animal kingdom. But parasitism is not solely confined to animals. Many plants, fungi, protists, bacteria and viruses are parasites too.

Parasite powers

The leech scene in the iconic 1986 movie Stand By Me comes back to me every time I walk through a damp forest. The idea of providing a blood meal for another species sparks fear in many people. But leeches may also come to our aid, either by helping to reduce pooling of blood or reestablishing blood flow to areas post-surgery. Their anaesthetic saliva also has anti-inflammatory and anticoagulant properties, which are advantageous for medical procedures.

As the blood of leeches contains DNA from their past meals, conservation scientists can use them to search for rare and cryptic wildlife.

One of the world’s most widespread parasites is Toxoplasma gondii. Some estimates suggest as many as one in three people are affected. This parasite’s main host is cats, large and small species. House cats are frequently infected, spreading this parasite through their faeces.

While many infected people appear to have no symptoms, serious effects can include organ damage, complications with pregnancy or abortion, erratic risk-taking behaviour, mental conditions, and more traffic accidents than unaffected people.

Sometimes extra legs are a hindrance not helpful. Image credit: Brett Goodman and Pieter Johnson

There are potential “benefits” too. Research suggests Toxoplasma infection, which can increase confidence and risk-taking, may even be linked with increased entrepreneurial and business-related activities. Indeed, this same study found that nations with higher rates of toxoplasmosis had a lower proportion of individuals concerned about failure related to new business ventures.

Toxoplasma gondii manipulates its host to increase transmission and continue its life cycle. Infected rodents may become unwitting participants in a game of cat-and-mouse-and-parasite in which they lose their fear of cats and instead become attracted to them.

Rather than manipulating host behaviour, as in the case of fungi that turn ants into zombies, some parasites cause body malformations. This makes hosts more likely to become prey for subsequent hosts and hence to continue the parasite’s life cycle. One of the most striking examples is a trematode (flatworms often known as flukes) that causes missing legs, extra legs or deformed legs in frogs and other amphibians. Extra legs, in some cases several, serve no function and simply impede movement, making it harder to escape predators.

Parasites are fundamental to ecosystems and require conservation

Parasites are a big part of life on Earth. A study on the Californian coast found the sheer mass of parasites exceeded that of top predators. In particular, the biomass of trematodes was greater than that of birds, fish, burrowing shrimps and polychaetes (marine worms).

The presence of parasites (*Gyrodactylus turnbulli*) can affect how colourful male guppies are, influencing their ability to attract mates. Image credit: 5snake5 via Wikimedia commons

Evidence suggests ecosystems rich in parasites are healthier than those with fewer parasites. But there is increasing concern for the survival of these species amid a growing extinction crisis. So a global plan for parasite conservation was proposed in 2020, with priorities including increased data collection and genetic analysis, making conservation assessments, and raising public awareness.

Sadly, parasites can inflict great pain, meat allergies, suffering, and a heavy death toll. Malaria, schistosomiasis (sometimes referred to as snail fever, bilharzia, and Katayama fever), and sleeping sickness are just a few examples.

But they also shape our world in profound ways, have crucial ecological roles, and paradoxically, may in some cases help keep us healthier. Though it may be confronting to admit, we need parasites as much as they need us.