Recent developments in the Australasian Species Management Program

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Conservation of Australia's Forest Fauna

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

The highly distinctive and mostly endemic Australian land mammal fauna has suffered an extraordinary rate of extinction (>10% of the 273 endemic terrestrial species) over the last ∼200 y: in comparison, only one native land mammal from continental North America became extinct since European settlement. A further 21% of Australian endemic land mammal species are now assessed to be threatened, indicating that the rate of loss (of one to two extinctions per decade) is likely to continue. Australia's marine mammals have fared better overall, but status assessment for them is seriously impeded by lack of information. Much of the loss of Australian land mammal fauna (particularly in the vast deserts and tropical savannas) has been in areas that are remote from human population centers and recognized as relatively unmodified at global scale. In contrast to general patterns of extinction on other continents where the main cause is habitat loss, hunting, and impacts of human developme.

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Outlines the origins of the World Conservation Strategy and the aims and principles underlying it. The main aim is to foster “sustainable development through the conservation of living resources”. However, the conservation goal defined in the Strategy document is insufficiently specific to be operational. Many of the wider conservational issues, as for example raised in the writings of Daly, are not considered in the Strategy document but it is clear that long-term conservational issues cannot be discussed rationally unless attention is given to moral philosophy and the ultimate aims of mankind. Nevertheless even if a shorter-term perspective is taken, economic development may be assisted by 1. the maintenance of essential ecological processes and life support systems; 2. the preservation of genetic diversity, and 3. the sustainable utilization of species and ecosystems; each of which is advanced in the World Conservation Strategy as an important objective. This paper is critical, however, of a number of the policy recommendations that are made (such as the reservation of good cropland, specific priorities in saving species and in the type of design for nature reserves, suggested levels of utilization of species) and suggests that economic trade-off problems are largely ignored. There is also some discussion of the progress that has been made in drawing up a National Conservation Strategy for Australia.

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