
Australia’s Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act currently lists 446 species of animals in genuine need of protection, but 29 of these can be safely delisted.
A large research project studying endangered species in Australia has tallied 29 recovered species – 15 mammals, 8 birds, 4 frogs, a reptile, and a fish that can be safely de-listed from the country’s endangered species list.
Among these critters are the golden, Western barred, and Eastern barred bandicoots, the Western quoll, the sooty albatross, the waterfall frog, the Flinder’s Ranges worm-lizard, the yellow-footed rock wallabies, the greater bilby, the humpback whale, the growling grass frog, the Murray’s cod, and others.
Australia has been a focus of endangered species conservation for decades because so many of the animal varieties are found nowhere else.
Invasive predators introduced and living here for decades, including foxes and cane toads, have proven highly disruptive to local wildlife like bandicoots and bilbies.
Unlike America’s ESL, the EPBC doesn’t mandate that species be reviewed regularly for recovery. These large scientific papers are rare and represent moments to celebrate for Australia’s conservationists.
The paper, published in Science was conducted by a variety of Australian academic institutions and concluded that conservation managers should aim to measure success at least in part through documentation of recoveries based on stability, ranges, and populations of the current day, even though this represents a smaller fraction of what these were before Australia was colonised.
This, they argue, will help co-ordinate conservation efforts and funding for the animals whose populations are decreasing, and address threats that are a danger to multiple animal species at once.