Why does Australia lead the way in mammal extinction?

By Andrea Otto

I want to talk about habitat and in particular our native animals and their reliance on trees.

Many of our birds and most of our tree dwelling animals rely strongly on hollows. I think we need an education campaign around hollows because so many people don’t know or understand the interconnection between our birds and animals and hollow trees.

It takes around 80 years for our trees to produce a hollow for our smallest inhabitant. As the tree grows so do the hollows. The home is then too big for that smaller critter and so it moves out and that hollow is then used by something bigger. Even hollows on the ground are important as they provide habitat for many small mammals, reptiles and invertebrates along with fungi’s and other plants.

When we understand this, it isn’t hard to see that the loss of old trees is one of the main reasons that Australia extinction rate is so high.

Protection of our old trees is paramount to native species survival including our own. Australia is one of the worst developed countries in the world for broad scale deforestation; an MCG area of forest or woodland is cleared every two minutes, killing countless native birds and animals.

Vote Planet land use policy includes ceasing land clearing, instead subsidising land owners to regrow and maintain forest, and ceasing logging native forests. Please read more on our policies page.

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