Commitment lacking to rescue wildlife from climate change
20 Nov 2007
Australia is already committed to a significant amount of climate change and could lose more than a third of its unique wildlife unless deep and immediate cuts to global greenhouse gas emissions are made, warned WWF-Australia.
WWF-Australia's Director of Conservation Dr Ray Nias delivered the warning today on the release of the organisation's updated progress report on the uptake by Australia's major political parties of its policy framework Priorities of a Living Australia.
Less than 11 per cent of Australia's land area is presently protected and regions of high conservation importance have few or no protected areas, leaving many species vulnerable to the upheavals of climate change. Protected areas in Australia are in many cases fragile islands in a highly modified landscape.
"Even if emissions stopped tomorrow, we are already committed to significant warming and we need a practical plan to rescue our wildlife from these now inevitable impacts," Dr Nias said.
Dr Nias said the major parties have thus far failed to come up with a comprehensive and practical rescue package for Australia's wildlife - not only to curb global greenhouse gas emissions but also to bring wildlife habitat under effective protection.
"It is of major concern that the major parties in Australia are yet to show they are truly heeding the warnings of the recent Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a third of the planet's animals and plants could plummet to extinction unless urgent remedial action is taken," Dr Nias said.
The outlines of a practical rescue package were developed at a recent expert forum convened by WWF and the IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas, which found that:
- A major strategic expansion of protected areas was urgently needed on private, indigenous and public lands to rescue key wildlife habitats, including safe havens or refuges, migration corridors and stepping stones; and
- Coordinated conservation management across all tenures was needed to reduce the many threats still endangering wildlife.
"The time has come for both the Coalition and the Labor Party to announce they will both stabilise Australia's greenhouse pollution by 2010, will both contribute to global action aimed at avoiding the worst impacts of climate change, and will both help Australia's wildlife adapt to those impacts of climate change that are now inevitable as a result of previous delays," Dr Nias said.
"The Labor Party has announced a variety of good measures, the Coalition much less so. However both parties still have time to address the key issues."
Full progress report (124kb, PDF).
More information
Charlie Stevens, Press Officer, WWF-Australia
Phone: 02 8202 1274
Mobile: 0424 649 689
Email: cstevens@wwf.org.au
Dr Ray Nias, Director of Conservation, WWF-Australia
Phone: 02 8202 1223
Mobile: 0414 917 297
