WORLD WILDLIFE FUND 2024: AUSTRALIA SCORES THREE Fs ON THREATENED SPECIES REPORT CARD

World Wildlife Fund - Australia

THE 2024 THREATENED SPECIES REPORT CARD

4 September 2024

*SELECTIVE EXCERPTS*

In September 2022, WWF-Australia launched its first Threatened Species Report Card, which provided a simple but scientifically robust way to track and communicate Australia’s progress in recovering our threatened species.

The methods behind the report card were developed in collaboration with conservation scientists from the University of Queensland. After the 2022 launch, the methods were improved through a peer review process, and published as a scientific paper in an international journal (Wardet al. 2024).

We have now refreshed the report card grades with 2024 data and have compared them with the 2022 results outlined in the scientific paper.

WHAT HAS CHANGED SINCE OUR 2022 REPORT CARD?*

• 163 species have been newly listed as threatened

• 40 species have had their threatened status upgraded, e.g., from Vulnerable to Endangered

• 3 species have had a genuine improvement in their threat status, because the rate of their decline has slowed or stopped. These are:

o The Red Knot (Calidris canutus) which moved from Endangered to Vulnerable

o The Great Knot (Calidris tenuirostris), which moved from Critically Endangered to Vulnerable

o The Northern Siberian Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica menzbieri), which moved from Critically Endangered to Endangered

 

• There have been no new extinction listings since our 2022 Report Card. However, 15 species have been listed as extinct or extinct in the wild in the last 10 years.

*Includes listing changes between 8 March 2022 and 30 June 2024.

GRADING

We calculated a score between 0 and 1 for each indicator, where 1 is the ideal scenario. We then assigned grades using equal intervals, where:

• an A grade is greater than 0.83,

• a B grade is 0.67 to 0.82,

• a C grade is 0.5 to 0.66,

• a D grade is 0.33 to 0.49,

• an E grade is from 0.17 to 0.32, and

• an F grade is less than 0.16.

As the reader will observe, in this report Australia received a shockingly bad overall assessment:

Funding - FAIL/F Grade

Recovery Plans - FAIL/ F Grade

Protection - LOW PASS/ C Grade

Threat Status Improvement - FAIL/ F Grade

Persistence - SECOND CLASS PASS/ B Grade

Full WWF The 2024 Threatened Species Report Card (released September 2024) can be read & downloaded at:

https://assets.wwf.org.au/image/upload/f_pdf/file_Threatened_Species_Report_Card_Technical_Report_2024

Once more NSW residents bring the issue of the Koala Extinction Crisis before state parliament......

 

Via @talkingkoala

A message from the New South Wales Legislative Assembly

9 August 2022

The ePetition "End Public Native Forest Logging" has closed for signatures and has been presented in the Legislative Assembly by Mrs Shelley Hancock.

The ePetition text in full is:

To the Speaker and Members of the Legislative Assembly,

Public native forest logging is pushing iconic species like the koala, swift parrot and greater glider towards extinction.

The 2019/20 Black Summer bushfires burnt over 5 million hectares of forest and have left them more vulnerable to the impacts of logging. The Natural Resources Commission (NRC) and the Environmental Protection Agency have recommended that in bushfire affected areas logging should cease entirely or face tighter restrictions, as current logging practices may cause irreversible damage to ecosystems and wildlife.

Logging of public native forests is tax-payer subsidised. Forestry Corporation’s Hardwood Division has been operating at a significant loss for the past decade. In 2020/21 it ran at a loss of $20 million, with predictions that it will face losses of $15 million until 2024.

Reports also show our state forests can generate far more income through their protection than from logging, through recreation, tourism and carbon abatement.

The Western Australian and Victorian Governments have already committed to ending this industry and have developed transition plans to support affected workers and businesses.

The petitioners ask the Legislative Assembly to:

1. Develop a plan to transition the native forestry industry to 100% sustainable plantations by 2024.

2. In the interim, place a moratorium on public native forest logging until the regulatory framework reflects the recommendations of the leaked NRC report.

3. Immediately protect high-conservation value forests through gazettal in the National Parks estate.

4. Ban use of native forest materials as biomass fuel.

The ePetition received 21046 signatures and has been sent to the NSW Government for a response.

You will receive an email with a link to the response when it is received.

As the ePetition received more than 20,000 signatures, it will also be debated in the Legislative Assembly at 4pm on 15/09/2022.

You can watch the debate on the webcast at https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/pages/la-webcast-page.aspx

Ms. Taneska Frank’s e-petition was signed by a total of 21,046 NSW residents by the end of the petition period on 2 August 2022.

Via @talkingkoala

It was the Baird Coalition Government which created the NSW Biodiversity Offsets Scheme (BOS) and successive NSW Liberal-Nationals governments have allowed it to become a trojan horse for unsustainable development and financial rorting

It was the Baird Coalition Government which created the NSW Biodiversity Offsets Scheme (BOS) which was established under the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016. 

 Under this scheme, applications for development or clearing approvals must set out how impacts on biodiversity will be avoided and minimised. The remaining residual impacts can be offset by the purchase and/or retirement of biodiversity credits or payment to the Biodiversity Conservation Fund. 

 Landholders can enter into Biodiversity Stewardship Agreements to create offset sites on their land to generate biodiversity credits. These credits are then available to the market for purchase by developers, landholders or the Biodiversity Conservation Trust to offset the impacts of development or clearing. 

However it was a scheme loathed by the mining industry from the start as an impediment on its commercial interests and by the industry's supporters, such as National Party political robber baron and then Deputy Prime Minister John Barilaro. It was also a scheme heartily disliked by local government areas fighting to retain biodiversity, maintain healthy water sources and protect remaining forest.

Clarence Valley Independent, 15 December 2021:

A report tabled at the August 24 Clarence Valley Council (CVC) meeting warns that the NSW Biodiversity Offset Scheme (BOS) has had the opposite effect to its intention: instead of protecting the valley’s natural environment, it has “ensured a net loss to biodiversity, often of our most threatened flora and fauna”.... 

Staff advised councillors of four key issues: “a net loss of biodiversity across the LGA, a lack of stewardship sites in the Clarence (currently, there are only two stewardship sites in the Clarence), a lack of transparency in the BOS, and inconsistencies in offset prices. 

 “There is little confidence in this legislation for biodiversity conservation as offsets can be facilitated outside of the CVC local government area,” staff wrote. 

 “…credit suppliers are located all over the state, hence, if a developer can source credits, they are unlikely to be sourced within the Clarence, creating a ‘net loss’ of biodiversity.” 

On the lack of transparency, staff wrote: “Many plant community types on the floodplain, which comprises a large percentage of land being developed in the Clarence, are threatened ecological communities (TEC), which are to be offset for the same TEC, forcing developers to pay into the fund as the sole way to offset credits, as there are no locally available credits. 

“There is no way to determine if this money deposited in the trust is then used to facilitate recovery or protection of TECs in the Clarence – creating biodiversity loss.”....

Clarence Valley Council was not alone in expressing Northern NSW concerns as the Inquiry's submissions list confirmed. 

The NSW Parliament Portfolio Committee No. 7 - Environment and Planning's Inquiry into the Integrity of the NSW Biodiversity Offsets Scheme will not report until 1 March 2022, so the jury is still out on the Perrottet Coalition Government's response to its yet to be completed investigation.

However, one issue is being addressed.......

Environment reporter Lisa Fox (left)writing in The Guardian, 10 December 2021:

Officials working on conservation matters in the New South Wales environment department have been barred from holding financial interests in the state’s biodiversity offset scheme.

This follows an investigation of the department’s management of potential conflicts of interest.

Senior officials told a parliamentary inquiry on Friday that staff who work on the offset scheme or in the department’s biodiversity, conservation and science sections had been told they could not work in those roles and hold personal interests in properties and companies that were involved in the financial trade of offset credits.

It follows two external investigations that were commissioned by the department after Guardian Australia uncovered a series of failures in offset programs.

Offsets exist to allow developers to compensate for environmental damage in one area by delivering an equivalent environmental benefit in another.

But there have been problems with the system, including in one case a 20-year delay in delivering environmental protection and so-called “double-dipping” by developers in areas of urban sprawl.

Guardian Australia also revealed the state and federal governments bought tens of millions of dollars in offset credits from properties linked to consultants whose company advised the government on development in western Sydney.

The reporting triggered a string of reviews, including one by the legal firm Maddocks and one by the consultancy Centium examining how the environment department had managed potential conflicts of interest associated with staff holding financial interests in offset sites….

Dean Knudsen, the deputy secretary for biodiversity, conservation and science, told Friday’s hearing of the offset inquiry there had been fewer than five officials with such financial interests.

After the reviews, the department has introduced a new conflict of interest protocol that deems some investments “high risk” and presenting an “unacceptable risk to the integrity” of the scheme.

Knudsen said as a result, staff in certain sections could no longer participate in the scheme and those with historic interests had 12 months to divest.

“For departmental staff we’ve effectively said you’re not supposed to be participating in the scheme,” he said.

“If you have historically, we’ve told them what you have to do to effectively distance them from that.”

The Greens MLC Cate Faehrmann, who is chairing the inquiry, said the changes were welcome.

“This should have happened at the start of the scheme to help prevent the types of windfall gains by a few individuals with detailed knowledge of the offset industry,” she said.

“However, we also need to see a tightening of conflicts of interest [rules] within the industry itself, including within ecological consultancies.”

Officials were also asked about delays in securing permanent protection of offset sites to compensate for habitat destruction caused by coalmines in NSW.

Responses to questions on notice in the parliament from the independent MLC Justin Field state that of the 41 coalmines approved in New South Wales in the past decade, one did not require offsets, 14 had not yet triggered the requirement to deliver their offsets, nine had land set aside but permanent protections were not yet in place, and 17 had “substantially finalised” their offsets.

….but certain aspects – such as finalisation of some of the legal arrangements protecting the site – were outstanding.

Officials agreed the process for securing offsets for mines had not been “as timely as [they] should be”.

Field said it was not good enough that “not one single coalmine approved in the last decade has secured their required offsets through finalised in-perpetuity arrangements”.

“The government needs to improve the transparency around what the hold-up is, put a deadline on finalising these arrangements and hold these mine operators to that deadline,” he said. 

Read the full article here.

Anthony Waldron: "I knew there were a lot of threatened species in Australia, but I didn't realise things were getting worse so quickly."

ABC News, 26 October 2017:

Koalas are one species under pressure in Australia.

(Supplied: WWF)

Australia is one of seven countries responsible for more than half of global biodiversity loss, according to a study published today.

Scientists based their findings on the worsening in conservation status of species between 1996 and 2008 on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list.

The IUCN red list uses a series of categories to rank how close a species is to extinction, from "least concern" through to "extinct in the wild".

Of the 109 countries studied, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, China and the United States (primarily Hawaii) also ranked inside the top seven as the worst offenders on conservation.

The researchers conceded that species native to multiple countries presented an obstacle to their calculations, but lead author Anthony Waldron says they were able to narrow down where the pressures were coming from.

"Once you actually work out [which country] might have been responsible for the loss of diversity, Australia is standing there at number two," Dr Waldron said.

"I knew there were a lot of threatened species in Australia, but I didn't realise things were getting worse so quickly."

Compared to Australia, which recorded a biodiversity loss of between 5 and 10 per cent of the total global decline, the study published in Nature found Indonesia had "absolutely the highest number of declining species", representing around 21 per cent of the total decline during the period.

Reduction in biodiversity was calculated by looking at species that had their IUCN red list upgraded during the period, such as from "least concern" to "threatened", or "vulnerable" to "endangered"……

Environmental sustainability professor Barry Brook from the University of Tasmania said there were a number of pressures threatening biodiversity in Australia.

"The predominant one is landclearing — ongoing clearing for habitat. New South Wales and Queensland have been particularly bad for that over the past two decades," Professor Brook said.

"[But] it's also what's known as 'lags' or 'extinction debt'. That's where you've had this historical change over many decades and it takes time for extinction to catch up as populations are reduced and fragmented and lose genetic diversity, then gradually fade away."

He said that spending on conservation is worthwhile when it involves preserving habitat or targeting pests.

"Native biodiversity is definitely improved by removing invasive plants and to a lesser extent invasive species."

Orange-bellied parrots are one of Australia's critically endangered species.

(ABC News: Caroline Winter)

BACKGROUND

Nature Magazine, Anthony Waldron  et al, Reductions in global biodiversity loss predicted from conservation spending, 25 October 2017

"Blinky Bill" visits a couple of Iluka residents in February 2017

Delightful video and photograph of a koala in Spenser Street, Iluka NSW, by Lisa Shaw from the Green Room café at Iluka.

Ken Nicholl from Iluka Landcare transferred this little koala to a koala food tree next door.

An Iluka resident tells me that this koala was approximately 1km from the proposed subdivision of Lot 99 Hickey Street, Iluka, a parcel of land which also reportedly contains koala food trees.

Of the 2,145 species studied forty-seven per cent of land-based animals and over twenty-three per cent of threatened birds may have already been negatively impacted by climate change

NATURE.COM, Nature Climate Change,  Letter, abstract, 13 February 2017:

Species’ traits influenced their response to recent climate change

Michela Pacifici, Piero Visconti, Stuart H. M. Butchart, James E. M. Watson, Francesca M. Cassola & Carlo Rondinini

Although it is widely accepted that future climatic change—if unabated—is likely to have major impacts on biodiversity1, 2, few studies have attempted to quantify the number of species whose populations have already been impacted by climate change3, 4. Using a systematic review of published literature, we identified mammals and birds for which there is evidence that they have already been impacted by climate change. We modelled the relationships between observed responses and intrinsic (for example, body mass) and spatial traits (for example, temperature seasonality within the geographic range). Using this model, we estimated that 47% of terrestrial non-volant threatened mammals (out of 873 species) and 23.4% of threatened birds (out of 1,272 species) may have already been negatively impacted by climate change in at least part of their distribution. Our results suggest that populations of large numbers of threatened species are likely to be already affected by climate change, and that conservation managers, planners and policy makers must take this into account in efforts to safeguard the future of biodiversity.

UPDATE

Climate Home, 21 February 2017:

Seaweeds, invertebrates, fish and giant, ethereal kelp jungles are among a group of more than one hundred species that are being driven towards extinction by warming waters around Tasmania, an Australian senate inquiry has heard.

Neville Barrett, a research fellow at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Hobart, where the hearing was held, told the Environment and Communications References Committee that the waters around Tasmania were a global hotspot for warming.

“I mentioned that there were 100 or more species in general of kelps and endemic fishes and things that will probably disappear over the coming century, certainly by the turn of the next century under the current bottom end of predictions of climate change,” he told Climate Home after his appearance.

“There’s a whole lot of species on the southern end of Australia that are as far south as they can currently go and some of them are already pushed to their upper thermal limit, as far as summer temperatures will go.”

Beyond Tasmania, there is no major landmass until Antarctica, meaning many species have “nowhere else to go”, said Barrett.

One such species is the giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera, the last stands of which Climate Home reported had been lost from Tasmania’s east coast in 2016.

And property developers try to say that Iluka in the Clarence Valley NSW has no koala population

Clarence Valley Council, media release, 18 January 2017:

Koala avoids nasty shock

On the way to work one morning in early January, Iluka resident Mark Starkey was shocked to see a koala high up an electricity pole. Koalas usually prefer good quality habitat with plenty of their favourite food trees.

Thanks to Mark, the koala avoided serious injury. ‘I rang the energy company who temporarily disconnected the power and relocated the animal to nearby bushland’, he said.

Mark was just one of the residents in the areas of Iluka, Woombah and Ashby to receive a brochure from Council detailing ways to help koalas by protecting native bushland, containing dogs, and ways to recognise koala food trees. The brochure also asked residents to ring and report koala sightings. Mark then contacted Council with the details of the koala.

The biggest threats to koalas in our area are loss of food and shelter trees, vehicle strike and dog attacks. Even though there are 100’s of different types of Eucalypts, koalas tend to only eat one or a few species. So even a single tree in your backyard can be important to koalas and other wildlife.

There’s more information about koalas in the Clarence on our website www.clarence.nsw.gov.au (search ‘koala’).

If you’d like a copy of the brochure or if you’ve seen koalas in your area, please ring Council on 66430200.

Release ends.

The same koala on his way down the electricity pole

Koala in bushland at Frazer's Reef, Iluka, in May 2016 at 

https://www.facebook.com/Ilukadahaveyoursay/videos/1158769244173802/

Australia faces an era of mass extinctions

For decades international scientists have been warning Australia that this island continent would feel the worst environmental impacts of global warming first.

And for just as many decades (with the exception of the years between 2007 and 2013), as both governments and the governed, this country has been ignoring these warnings.

The end result is that Australia now lists 83 species of higher plants, 23 mammal species, 22 species of birds and at least 4 frogs species as having been driven into extinction since 1788. 

There are many hundreds more threatened species and ecological communities. See: C'wealth EPBC Act List of Threatened Fauna.

While we as a nation and people have not yet achieved 100 per cent extinction in certain flora and fauna groups, climate change has arrived to assist in turning this unique landmass and its coastal waters into a barren wasteland. 

This year alone has seen 93 per cent of The Great Barrier Reef experience coral bleaching and 700 kilometres of the Gulf of Carpentaria suffer widespread mangrove dieback with saltmash loss, while the Great Southern Reef lost 100 kms of its giant kelp forests in 2011 leading to the functional extinction of 370sq km of rocky cool-climate reefs, extending down the coast from Kalbarri, about 570km north of Perth, Western Australia. 

Now reputable institutions and senior scientists are giving us another urgent warning about extinctions to come if Australia doesn't stop acting as if the natural environment hasn't changed for the worse in the last 200 years.

SCIENTISTS’DECLARATION: ACCELERATING FOREST, WOODLAND AND GRASSLAND DESTRUCTION IN AUSTRALIA

Australia’s land clearing rate is once again among the highest in the world.

Remaining forests and woodlands are critical for much of our wildlife, for the health and productivity of our lands and waters, and for the character of our nation. Beginning in the 1990s, governments gradually increased protection of these remaining forests and woodlands.

However, those laws are now being wound back.

The State of Queensland has suffered the greatest loss of forests and woodlands. But while stronger laws by the mid-2000s achieved dramatic reductions of forest and woodland loss, recent weakening of laws reversed the trend. Loss of rtinture forest has more than trebled since 2009. In Victoria, home to four of Australia’s five most heavily cleared bioregions, land clearing controls were weakened in 2013, and in New South Wales, proposed biodiversity laws provide increased opportunities for habitat destruction.

Of the eleven world regions highlighted as global deforestation fronts, eastern Australia is the only one in a developed country. This problem threatens much of Australia’s extraordinary biodiversity and, if not redressed, will blight the environmental legacy we leave future generations.

Australia’s wildlife at risk

Already, Australia’s environment has suffered substantial damage from clearing of forests, woodlands and grasslands, including serious declines in woodland birds and reptiles.  Vast numbers of animals are killed by forest and woodland destruction. For example, between 1998 and 2005 an estimated 100 million native birds, reptiles and mammals were killed because of destruction of their habitat in NSW; in Queensland, the estimate was 100 million native animals dying each year between 1997 and 1999. As land clearing once again escalates, so too will these losses of wildlife.

The loss of habitat is among the greatest of threats to Australia’s unique threatened species, imperiling 60% of Australia’s more than 1,700 threatened species. Habitat protection is essential for preventing more species from becoming threatened in the future, adding to our burgeoning threatened species lists. Habitat removal eliminates the plants and animals that lived in it; increases risks to wildlife from introduced predators; impacts surface and groundwater-dependent ecosystems, and fragments habitat so that individuals are unable to move through the landscape. It also reduces the ability of species to move in response to climate change.

The societal costs of forest and woodland destruction

Forest and woodland destruction also causes long-term costs to farmers, governments and society. Removal of native vegetation:

·         Hastens erosion and reduces fertility of Australia’s ancient and fragile soils 

·         Increases the risk of soils becoming saline 

·         Exacerbates drought 

·         Reduces numbers of native pollinators and many wildlife species (such as woodland birds and insectivorous bats) that control agricultural pests 

·         Reduces shade for livestock from heat and wind.

Continued and increasing removal of forests, woodlands and grasslands increases the cost of restoring landscapes and reduces the chance of success. For example, the Australian Government has committed to plant 20 million trees by 2020. Yet many more than 20 million trees are cleared every year in Queensland alone.

Forest and woodland destruction increases the threat to some of Australia’s most iconic environmental assets. Coral health on The Great Barrier Reef has declined precipitously from the effects of high temperatures associated with climate change, poor water quality, and the flow-on impacts it triggers (such as crown-of-thorns outbreaks). Native vegetation removal from catchments that flow into the Great Barrier Reef liberates topsoil and contaminants, reducing water quality and threatening the health and resilience of the Great Barrier Reef. Governments have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this problem, with estimates of the full cost of restoring water quality as high as AUD$10 billion.

Native vegetation is a major carbon sink. Forest and woodland destruction is the fastest-growing contributor to Australia’s carbon emissions, as it transfers the carbon that was stored in the vegetation to the atmosphere. Hence, Australia’s increasing forest and woodland destruction threatens its ability to meet its commitments under four major international treaties: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the World Heritage Convention, the Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Urgently-needed solutions

·         Develop and implement a strategy to end net loss of native vegetation, and restore over-cleared landscapes

·         Recognise all biodiversity, not just threatened species, in policy and legislation for the management of native vegetation

·         Establish clear, transparent and repeatable national reporting of clearing of native vegetation

·         Use rigorous biodiversity assessment methods for assessing clearing requests, accounting for all potential impacts, including cumulative and indirect impacts

·         Identify habitats that are of high conservation value for complete protection

·         For unavoidable losses of native vegetation, require robust and transparent offsets that meet the highest standards and improve biodiversity outcomes

Thirteen years ago, scientists from across the world expressed their grave concern about ongoing high rates of land forest and woodland destruction in the Australian State of Queensland. For a while, the warning was heeded, and the Queensland state government acted to bring land clearing to historically low levels.

The progress made then is now being undone. Forest and woodland destruction has resumed at increasingly high rates. This return of large-scale deforestation to Australia risks further irreversible environmental consequences of international significance.

Today, scientists from across the world (including those listed), in conjunction with scientific societies and the delegates of the Society for Conservation Biology (Oceania) Conference, call upon Australian governments and parliaments, especially those of Queensland and New South Wales, to take action. We call for the prevention of a return to the damaging past of high rates of woodland and forest destruction, in order to protect the unique biodiversity and marine environments of which Australia is sole custodian.

Signatories

Scientific Societies

·         The Society for Conservation Biology Oceania

·         The Ecological Society of Australia

·         The Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales

·         The Australian Wildlife Management Society

And 200 senior scientists from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Malaysia, Sweden, Denmark, United Kingdom, and United States of America whose names can be found here.

8 July 2016