CANBERRA, Sept 7 (NNN-AAP) – Australia is failing to protect its native plants and animals from extinction, a report found.
The Australian branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), today released its second Threatened Species Report Card, to coincide with National Threatened Species Day.
The updated report scored Australia an F for funding, recovery planning and improving the threat status of species at risk of extinction.
It said that, 163 species have been added to the federal government’s threatened species list, since the first report card was released in 2022.
Nationally, Australia scored a B for persistence – the likelihood species will become extinct – while the grade for habitat protection improved from a D in 2022 to a C.
The Northern Territory (NT) was the only state or territory, to score better than a C on habitat protection, and Tasmania the only one not graded an F for recovery planning.
“The federal government needs to urgently fix broken nature laws and boost funding for our threatened plants and animals,” Tracy Rout, Science and Research Lead at WWF-Australia and co-author of the report, said, in a media release.
“Our existing laws allow the continued destruction of habitat.”
She said that, only nine percent of threatened species have received dedicated funding from the federal government in the last five years, and only seven percent have a current recovery plan.
Tanya Plibersek, Minister for the Environment and Water, today announced an 11.4-million- Australian dollar (7.6-million U.S. dollar) grant programme, to better protect threatened plants and animals.
Ten research projects will share in the funding, to improve existing conservation tools and technologies.
“We all need to work together to find new and innovative solutions to stay ahead in the fight to protect our threatened species and biodiversity,” she said in a statement.
Threatened Species Day was first declared in 1996, to raise awareness of plants and animals at risk of extinction. It is held on Sept 7 every year, to mark the anniversary of the death of the last Tasmanian tiger at Hobart Zoo, in Tasmania in 1936.– NNN-AAP
