Climate change threatens Australia's unique mammals

[Simon Hampel]

Climate change threatens Australia's unique mammals - AustraliaWide - ABC

Australia, according to WWF, currently has the worst rate of mammal extinction in the world. WWF zoologist, Tammie Matson, is heading a push to compile a list of top-10 threatened species in an effort to educate Australians on their 'woeful' record of killing mammals and to warn them about the current threat that climate change holds. Since the start of European settlement more than 200 years ago, 27 species of Australian mammal have been driven to extinction. Ninety-one are under threat right now and four are on the verge of extinction. Federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, has pledged to spend $200 million creating reserves for threatened species.

[ame=http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200804/r237438_957718.asx]Australia Wide 2008 - 02-Apr-2008[/ame]

 

[Monty]

There was a report on mammal extinxtions and other still likley to go extinct in Australia last night on the ABC. I thought it was a terable example of reporting as it hardly ever mentioned the reasons these smaller animals are dieing is the introduced preditors like foxes and cats.

The example they gave was of a colony of rock walabies which lived in a national park. The rangers found that the rest had disapeared and it was down to one female. They then relocated others to the location to keep the colony going without mentioning why the others died or if they did anything to stop it happening again. This was given as a good outcome.

There was little mention of fenced areas set up to exclude preditors or captive breeding buy zoos.