We are a world leader in eradicating invasive species from islands and, for a time, led the world in biological control. We have stopped rampant habitat destruction in many places and done much to reduce fishing bycatch.
The following case studies exemplify many of the attributes needed to successfully abate threats to nature. Only the first two are a focus of Australia’s current national threat abatement system.
In the late 1980s, it became clear that longline fishing was killing thousands of threatened seabirds each year in Australian waters. An albatross would fly thousands of kilometres over the ocean only to have its life cut short – snagged on a fishing hook and drowned. This case study explains how a combination of federal leadership, industry engagement, conservation advocacy, and the implementation of safer fishing methods have achieved a major reduction in the numbers of seabirds killed as bycatch.
Australia’s islands are biodiversity treasures – centres of endemism and havens for species threatened on the mainland. But many have been degraded by rabbits, goats and other feral plant-eaters and their wildlife decimated by cats, rats and other invasive predators. Eradicating such invaders has been one of the greatest conservation achievements in Australia in recent times, with Macquarie and Dirk Hartog islands as outstanding examples.
Conflicts over native forest logging in Australia have raged for more than four decades and pressures on forests have grown despite 20-year regional forest agreements intended to achieve sustainable timber harvesting. Commercial forestry is not a focus of the national threat abatement system, but this case study of the 1999 South East Queensland Forests Agreement exemplifies the collaborative, stakeholder-driven governance needed to address many of Australia’s most challenging threats.
During the early 1900s, prickly pear, advancing more than a thousand hectares a day, blanketed more than 20 million hectares of Queensland and northern New South Wales in a horror of spines. This case study explains how a devastating and seemingly intractable weed was tamed with the aid of a tiny moth from South America. This success was due to federal leadership, intergovernmental collaboration and a persistent, well-funded scientific endeavour.
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians throughout Australia and their connections to land and sea. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.
Threats to Nature is mainly funded by the Australian Communities Foundation’s Impact Fund. The project is hosted by the Invasive Species Council.
We are grateful for the advice of our working group members (Birdlife Australia, Bush Heritage Australia, Ecological Society of Australia, Humane Society International, TierraMar and WWF-Australia) and for the support from our volunteers.
Website developed and managed by Digital Evolution. Design by Ecotype.
Dear Project Team,
[YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.]
I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.
The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.
The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.
This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.
Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.
Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.
Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.
I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.
Dear Project Team,
[YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.]
I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.
The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.
The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.
This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.
Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.
Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.
Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.
I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.