Pay up or risk species extinction, conservationists tell government

Conservationists have calculated for the first time the money needed to save some of Australia’s most at-risk animals from extinction.

Hannah Wilcox

A newborn Australian sea lion pup at Seal Bay. Picture: Paul Frahm

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5 hours ago

Conservationists have calculated for the first time the money needed to save some of Australia’s most at-risk animals from extinction as experts called on the government to act before it was too late.

An annual tranche of $340m is the cost to secure the future of 95 threatened marine species protected under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which includes rare sea snakes, sea lions, and turtles, according to research from the Biodiversity Council and Australian Marine Conservation Society.

The little tern, a seabird, is the 95th and latest addition to the EPBC list. According to the organisations, the government spends 0.1 per cent of the federal budget on conservation action, a figure they want raised to 1 per cent to “adequately support” threatened species.

University of Melbourne ecology expert Brendan Wintle – a lead contributor to the groups’ Spending to Save report, which defined the multimillion-dollar figure – said the rate of extinction in Australia was “shocking”.

“We have incredible biodiversity, with one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots … and yet unfortunately we have a really poor recent track record,” Professor Wintle said.

“The population size of most species has more than halved. We have this amazing wildlife … (but) Australia has the highest rate of biodiversity loss of any of the developed nations and the second-highest rate of loss on the planet.”

In the United States, the Endangered Species Act, introduced in the 1970s, sees funding allocated for conservation recovery and reports on exactly what that funding was spent on.

Professor Brendan Wintle.

Professor Wintle urged the government to follow that lead, saying the introduction of that act in the US had seen hundreds of species removed from the endangered list.

“We haven’t had that kind of success here in Australia,” he said. “In the US, when a species is listed as threatened or endangered, under their act it’s mandated that the government provides the funding to support recovery for that species.”

Marine environments and the ocean industries it underpins support more than 462,000 jobs and contributes $150bn to the economy each year, continuing to act as the backbone of Australia’s tourism industry and its food chain.

“(But) we can see the loss of the ability of oceans to secure carbon, and that has potentially catastrophic impacts for global climate but also our food systems,” Professor Wintle said.

“We have an incredibly productive ocean-based tourism industry... places like the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef.

“Last year, as a nation, we spent $35bn caring for our cats and our dogs. Even just the GST on that money would be enough to prevent the extinction of our 2000 odd endangered species.

“There’s all sorts of ways we could save the money that we actually need to spend on conserving our natural heritage and our identity.

“It’s really important to our national identity, and really important to our health and wellbeing to continue to have healthy ocean environments.”