The cost of conserving Australia’s wildlife

Preventing the extinction of 99 Australian species would require an estimated $15.6 billion per year for 30 years, researchers found. Australia’s wildlife has faced massive declines—over the last three centuries, 100 endemic species disappeared from the country. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers aimed to determine how much it would cost to prevent the extinction of 99 of the country’s 110 priority species. While they found that $15.6 billion would prevent extinction of many of the threatened species, they also discovered that some species would not recover. Many frogs, including the mountain-top nursery frog (Cophixalus monticola) and swan galaxias (Galaxias fontanus), fell into the latter category with threats from climate change. “Australia’s ever-growing list of threatened species is a direct result of decades of under-spending,” said Romola Steward, co-author of the study and WWF-Australia’s head of evaluation and science. “Turning this tragedy around will take a dramatic increase in action and investment. This is achievable for a wealthy nation like Australia. If we fail to put our wildlife and wild places on a path to recovery, our economy and environment will suffer, and we will see more species silently slide towards extinction.”

Read the study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.