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Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Page: 3660

Mr KELVIN THOMSON (Wills) (19:05): Over the past 200 years, more mammal species have become extinct in Australia than anywhere on earth. Australian mammal extinctions account for about one-third of all mammals that have disappeared from the world over the past 500 years. Back just 50 years, we would still find quolls around Melbourne and pig-footed bandicoots, crescent nail-tail wallabies and desert rat-kangaroos in Central Australia. Those animals have gone, in a time frame that in an evolutionary context is the blink of an eye.

We assume that this is the fault of previous generations, who did not know any better, and that we now have a greater sense of environmental responsibility and that we now look after our unique animals. We have environment protection legislation, we have more national parks and we know a lot more about the Australian ecology. We assume that future generations will commend our responsibility rather than condemn our neglect. We would be wrong. The decline goes on as fast as ever, and we face the real likelihood of a new wave of mammal extinctions on our watch.

I commend the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy, and the Pew Environment Group for drawing public attention to this ongoing crisis. I have drawn extensively on two of their reports—Into oblivion: the disappearing native mammals of northern Australia and The collapse of northern mammal populations—in preparing these remarks. Twenty years ago, people camping in northern Australia were likely to witness bandicoots and quolls scampering around their campsite during the night. For native mammals this was a land of plenty, one of the few remaining places with a fauna largely as it was at the time of European settlement. But three years ago a team of Australian Wildlife Conservancy ecologists was carrying out a fauna inventory survey of a property in the Northern Territory to assess its conservation value for possible acquisition. Over two weeks they set traps at a range of remote locations accessible only by helicopter. The survey sites were positioned in combinations of topography and vegetation that seemed guaranteed to deliver high diversities of various mammal species. But night after night the traps were empty. Amongst complex sandstone formations that should have been thick with rock rats, and northern quolls, the team found nothing, not even tracks. In lush paperbark forests, the rich loamy soil should have been dotted with the characteristic potholes of digging bandicoots. The survey team saw and caught nothing. Long-tailed planigales were absent from the black-soil plains. Native rodents were absent from the savanna woodlands and the creek banks. In over 1000 trap nights, the AWC caught only two species of small native mammal, which they described as a truly demoralising experience.

AWC says this survey experience is not unique. In the past 20 years there has been a catastrophic decline in the diversity and abundance of small mammals across northern Australia. From Cape York to the Kimberley, small mammals are disappearing. A growing body of published and unpublished survey reports across the north provides compelling evidence of a dramatic collapse in mammal populations. What is causing this decline? The first culprit is fire. Prior to European settlement Aboriginal people generally lit fires with care and a close appreciation of environmental conditions. They were typically of low intensity and small in scale, producing an intricate landscape tapestry, a fine mosaic of burnt and unburnt areas. But the regime of fire is now very different. Across much of the land fires are now more extensive and burn with greater intensity and frequency. For example, many national parks and Aboriginal lands now are at least 50 per cent burnt every year. The native mammals of northern Australia are highly susceptible to fire, and the frequent, intense and large-scale fires are driving declines. I urge northern Australian land managers to reduce the scale and intensity of fires so that burnt patches are on a scale of hectares rather than hundreds of square kilometres. The size and intensity of fire needs to be reduced so that fires occur in fine-scale mosaics.

There also needs to be a big effort to effectively control introduced predators and pests such as cats and cane toads. Feral cats need to be effectively controlled through intensive management such as targeted baiting. Our native mammal species are part of Australia's rich heritage. They have an intrinsic value and the right to exist. It is a mark of our character as a nation, and we will be judged by future generations on the way we value and cherish this unique and irreplaceable heritage.