SYDNEY, July 19 (ABC): Australia’s unique wildlife is being devastated by bushfires, drought, habitat loss and global warming, a government report said Tuesday, warning that more species are headed for extinction. The five-yearly State of the Environment report prompted calls for dramatic action to reverse the “poor and deteriorating” state of flora and fauna depicted by scientists on land and at sea.
The damage is being hastened by a climate that has warmed Australia’s average land temperature by 1.4 degrees Celsius since the early 20th century, the report said. A failure to manage the pressures “will continue to result in species extinctions,” scientists warned in the report.
Australia’s environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said it was a “shocking document”. “If we continue on the trajectory that we are on now, we will see more threatened species, we will see drier rivers, we will see degraded landscape, we will see reefs dying,” she told journalists.
“The path we are on is not sustainable.” Plibersek, a member of the centre-left Labor Party that came to power in May elections, criticised the previous conservative government for failing to publish the report, which it had received in December 2021. She promised to carve out more of Australia’s land and oceans for protection, pursue “fundamental reform” of environmental laws and empower a new environmental protection agency.