New report shows land clearing is decimating Queensland wildlife
26 Jan 2003
BRISBANE: At least 100 million native mammals, birds and reptiles die each year as a result of broad-scale clearing of remnant vegetation in Queensland, according to a new WWF-Australia report compiled by leading Australian scientists.
The report states that the average annual clearing rate of 446,000ha of remnant vegetation in Queensland during 1997-99 also led to the loss of an estimated 190 million trees per year.
The toll of native wildlife includes 2.1 million mammals, 8.5 million birds and 89 million reptiles. These figures encompass an estimated 342,000 possums and gliders, 29,000 bandicoots, 19,000 koalas, 233,000 macropods (kangaroos, wallabies and rat kangaroos), 1.25 million small carnivorous marsupials (dunnarts, antechinuses and others) and over 7,500 echidnas.
One third of the 342,000 possums and gliders killed annually, are tiny feathertail gliders and the remainder is made up of about equal numbers of sugar gliders, squirrel gliders, greater gliders and ringtail possums.
The authors of the report, Impacts of Land Clearing on Australian Wildlife in Queensland , are Dr Hal Cogger (former Deputy Director of the Australian Museum), Professor Hugh Ford (Head of the School of Environmental Sciences & Natural Resources Management, University of New England), Dr Christopher Johnson (Reader in Terrestrial Ecology at the School of Tropical Biology, James Cook University), James Holman and Don Butler (Queensland-based vegetation management specialists).
The 48 page report is based on figures obtained for clearing rates in Queensland between 1997 and 1999.
"This is a landmark scientific report. For the first time, recent land clearing rates have been used to calculate the direct impact of land clearing on a range of Australian wildlife throughout Queensland and the results are truly shocking," said Peter Cosier, WWF-Australia spokesperson.
Dr Cogger, who is the author of the definitive Reptiles and Amphibians of Australia , said the majority of reptiles displaced by land clearing died immediately or soon after clearing took place.
"They are never replaced and are lost in their tens of millions forever," he said.
"The highest losses in Queensland are in the brigalow belt where more than 52 million reptiles are killed each year. If clearing continues at its current rate in the brigalow, in 20 years time an estimated 1 billion reptiles will have been permanently eliminated from Queensland's rich diversity of reptile species."
The report also estimates that 5 million birds die each year as a result of land clearing in the brigalow belt. These include parrots, finches, wrens, honeyeaters, robins and bellbirds.
Dr Christopher Johnson said that although the report estimated that over 2.1 million mammals were killed by land clearing each year in Queensland, the true figure was likely to be much higher.
"These figures are a conservative estimate and are based only on species for which abundance has been measured in the habitats that are subject to land clearing - for example, there are no estimates of the number of bats killed by land clearing in Queensland.
Dr Johnson said continued land clearing had the potential to push many familiar Queensland species in to the higher threat categories, making them more vulnerable to extinction. "The future is especially grim for the smaller macropods such as the black-striped wallaby and the rufous bettong," he said.
