Australia is not doing enough to preserve biodiversity
This World Environment Day, it is useful to reflect on Australia’s climate-induced bushfire disaster during the summer of 2019-20. A conservative estimate is that 1.25 billion animals and 100 billion insects died. Climate change contributed to the inferno through drought, extreme temperatures, dry lightning strikes and unique fire weather systems. By the end of January 2020, more than 10 million hectares had been burnt.
However, Australia’s biodiversity was in a precarious state even before the fires. The 2020-1 IUCN Red List ranks Australia sixth in the world for the highest number of threatened species of reptiles; fish; molluscs; other invertebrates; plants; fungi; and protists (a kind of a single-celled organism). It ranks after Madagascar; Ecuador; Mexico; the United States; and Malaysia.
Read more: https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/06/05/australia-isn-t-doing-enough-to-preserve-biodiversity.html
However, Australia’s biodiversity was in a precarious state even before the fires. The 2020-1 IUCN Red List ranks Australia sixth in the world for the highest number of threatened species of reptiles; fish; molluscs; other invertebrates; plants; fungi; and protists (a kind of a single-celled organism). It ranks after Madagascar; Ecuador; Mexico; the United States; and Malaysia.
Read more: https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/06/05/australia-isn-t-doing-enough-to-preserve-biodiversity.html
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