Koalas and other iconic species are in danger of going extinct in Australia, which will destroy “the country we grew up with,” according to the authors of a major research.
The State of the Environment report, which Scott Morrison’s administration described as “stark and gloomy,” was kept a secret and not made public prior to the May federal election.
However, the 2000-page research will be made public on Tuesday after Tanya Plibersek, the new environment minister, admitted she was disturbed by its conclusions.
It presents a story of environmental disaster and deterioration in Australia, which is terrible, she added.
‘We are the worst continent on the planet for mammal extinctions.’
A five-yearly health check on Australia’s natural ecosystems, the State of the Environment report was completed last year but kept secret. The results are alarmingly bad.
The study concluded that Australia’s ecosystem is unhealthy and only growing worse as a result of the deadly toll that mining, land clearing, pollution, and climate change are having on the country.
The summary of the report cautions that “overall, the state and trend of the environment of Australia are poor and deteriorating,” which the report’s researchers acknowledge is “stark and dismal.”
‘Our incapacity to appropriately manage stresses will continue to result in species extinctions and declining ecological condition.’
They warn that abandoning the environment will hurt the country economically too, with the tourism industry facing ruin if Australia’s unique nature is destroyed.
Eight out of ten of the country’s 400 mammal species, like the platypus, are only found in Australia but 39 mammal species have become extinct since colonization.
Now even more are close to being wiped out, including the now officially endangered koala.
The number of species listed as threatened or put in a higher category has increased eight per cent since 2016 and will jump again after 2019’s Black Summer bushfires, it warns.
Another 17 mammal, 17 bird – including the Gang Gang Cockatoo – and 19 frog species have either been added to the endangered list or upgraded to the critically endangered list.
‘We need to increase our investment almost twentyfold to be able to actually prevent the further loss of species,’ said conservation Professor Brendan Wintle.
‘Unless we see a really dramatic increase (in funding) we’re going to see many, many more extinctions in the next 10 years.’
Former CSIRO director Dr Ian Cresswell – one of the three chief authors – says a lack of national leadership and investment to tackle the crisis has cost the nation and it needs to stop.
‘We’re going to lose the Australia that we grew up with, for future generations, if we don’t truly start dealing with some of the environmental problems,’ he said.
The report details ‘abrupt’ changes in ecological systems over the last five years with climate change adding a devastating new layer to the accumulation of other threats.
The result is a growing list of threatened species trying to survive in shrinking and degraded ecosystems that are being ineffectively managed with too little money, it says.
According to the research, Australia relies on a patchwork of systems from many levels of government rather than having a coherent plan to manage the environment.
Up to 46% of threatened vertebrates, 69% of threatened plants, and 70% of threatened ecological ecosystems are not monitored at all, making monitoring of these species and communities “largely inadequate.”
In contrast, between 2000 and 2017, 7.7 million hectares of vulnerable species’ habitat on land were removed.
However, none of that—7.1 million hectares—were subject to federal environmental laws’ impact assessments.
Ecologists warn the government will need to take on industry and agriculture to have any significant impact on protecting the environment.
The latest report includes new chapters on climate and extreme events for the first time including recent floods, terrestrial and marine heatwaves, droughts, and bushfires.
‘In previous reports we talked about climate impacts in mostly the future tense,’ says co-chief author and professor of marine ecology Emma Johnston.
‘But in this report we document wide-scale impacts of climate-related extreme events across the nation.
‘That has compounded existing threats – land clearing, invasive species, pollution.
‘The layering of climate impacts on top of that – that’s primarily what is causing the deterioration and the depressing trends for those ecosystems.’
The research also shows how less money is being spent by the federal government on biodiversity while the threats are rising.
According to the report, spending on biodiversity stayed between $400 and $500 million per year from 2010 until it fell below $300 million in 2018–19 and has been below $400 million ever since.
According to Ms. Plibersek, the study, which was given to her predecessor Sussan Ley last year, should be made public. Despite requests from its writers, Ms. Ley refused to make it public.
Tuesday’s National Press Club talk will be used by the environment minister to present the findings and outline Labor’s response.
‘I look forward to outlining the report and our government’s plans,’ she said. ‘Some of the really disturbing stuff in here goes to species loss.
‘The environment is in a bad state, and it’s declining and if we don’t do something to change what we’re doing now, we’ll continue to see that decline.
‘We’ve lost rainforest, we’ve lost a significant amount of bush due to land clearing but also due to that those catastrophic bushfires we’ve seen.
‘Plastics are polluting our oceans, we’ve got coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef. We’re seeing the the huge, beautiful kelp forests in our Southern Oceans affected also by the warming of our oceans.
‘That’s terrible for the environment, biodiversity.’
She added: ‘Non-native plants now outnumber native plants in Australia and you think oh, what why does that matter?
‘Well, the agricultural industry spends about $8.3 billion a year on weed control.
‘At the moment, our environmental laws are not protecting our environment but they’re also not meeting the needs of business.
‘It’s just one example of the sort of human costs of this environmental destruction.’
The report, written by 37 expert authors, is a comprehensive assessment of the state of the environment, the pressures it’s facing and how well, or not, it is being managed.
Australian Conservation Foundation CEO Kelly O’Shanassy warned the report’s findings must be a call to action before it’s too late.
‘Nature is under pressure like never before with wildlife habitat continuing to be destroyed – much of it through indiscriminate land clearing for farming, mining and housing estates,’ she said.
‘The animals we all love, like the koala, are threatened because we keep destroying their homes. We’ve got to protect their habitat, not destroy it.’