The Invasive Species Council campaigns for better laws and protections for our native plants and animals from weeds, pests and feral invaders.
Australia’s wildlife is found nowhere else on Earth. But invasive animals, plants and diseases are pushing too many native species towards extinction and transforming the landscapes and waters they depend on.
Invasive species have been the number one driver of animal extinctions in Australia and are likely to remain a major cause of future extinctions. Yet many of these losses are preventable. New invasive species can be stopped before they establish. Emerging threats can be eradicated before they spread. And where invasive species are already entrenched, sustained action can protect wildlife and help damaged ecosystems recover.
Our strategy to 2030 sets out how the Invasive Species Council will help Australia seize that opportunity.
Our 2030 goal
By 2030, Australia is shifting from a short-term, reactive and narrow approach to invasive species towards a proactive, ambitious and well-funded safety net for nature.
As a powerful national advocate, the Invasive Species Council will help create the public, political and policy conditions needed to drive this systemic change.
We will measure progress through 3 critical pillars:
Prevention – substantially slowing the establishment of new invasive species in Australia and preventing very-high-risk species from permanently establishing.
Eradication – systematically eliminating priority invasive species from the Australian mainland and islands.
Containment and control – effectively managing high-priority invasive species and actively protecting our most important places for biodiversity.
How we will create change
The Invasive Species Council exists to turn problems that can seem too difficult, neglected or politically challenging into practical action for nature.
We do that by bringing together evidence, people, public support, funding and political will – developing credible solutions, building diverse alliances and creating the conditions governments and communities need to act.
By 2030, we will help:
Making it bigger than us
No single organisation can solve the invasive species crisis.
Our role is to be a catalyst – creating the conditions for others to lead, sharing knowledge, building alliances, elevating voices and helping turn ambitious ideas into action.
That is why a simple principle to ‘make it bigger than us’ sits at the heart of this strategy.
We will work with Traditional Owners, scientists, farmers, conservationists, communities, governments and people from across the country to build lasting support for protecting nature from invasive species.
By 2030, we will also become a truly national organisation, with advocates and relationships across every state and territory, leading policy expertise, powerful communications capacity and stronger networks of community partners and political champions.
Nature needs the Invasive Species Council to thrive
As Australia’s only national environmental organisation dedicated solely to advocacy on invasive species, we fill a critical gap in the movement for nature.
Our strategy to 2030 is ambitious because the challenge demands ambition.
It is a commitment to preventing the next extinction, restoring wildlife to places where it has disappeared and building a future where Australia has the systems, investment and public support needed to keep nature safe from invasive species.
Our protected areas are being trashed, trampled, choked and polluted by an onslaught of invaders. Invasive species are already the overwhelming driver of our animal extinction rate, and are expected to cause 75 of the next 100 extinctions.
But you can help to turn this around and create a wildlife revival in Australia.
From numbats to night parrots, a tax-deductible donation today can help defend our wildlife against the threat of invasive weeds, predators, and diseases.
As the only national advocacy environment group dedicated to stopping this mega threat, your gift will make a big difference.
A silent crisis is unfolding across Australia. Every year, billions of native animals are hunted and killed by cats and foxes. Fire ants continue to spread and threaten human health. And the deadly strain of bird flu looms on the horizon. Your donation today will be used to put the invasive species threat in the media, make invasive species a government priority, ensure governments take rapid action to protect nature and our remarkable native wildlife from invasives-led extinction, death and destruction.
If you are having trouble submitting a form, please read this guide.
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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.
