State of Environment Report Conservation success stories

ABC News, July 21, 2022

While the State of the Environment report said Australia's environment was in a poor condition and deteriorating, there are bright spots that indicate how the country could turn around its fortunes.

One group mentioned in the report is Australian Wildlife Conservancy, which manages 12.9 million hectares of privately owned land.

Their projects are also funded primarily by philanthropy and partnership projects, which include creating large fenced predator-free areas to help bring back threatened species. 

Senior ecologist Jennifer Pierson said the secured areas were then able to bring back native species to healthy population levels that might also be used for future reintroductions. 

"What we do is we've identified areas where a species used to be in the landscape, but predators like feral cats and red foxes are preventing them from being there anymore," Dr Pierson said.

"For the species that we prevent extinction for, it allows us time basically to figure out how to reduce threats outside these fences as well."

Dr Pierson said some of the 22 species reintroduced by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy include the bilby, of which the conservancy looks after an estimated 10 per cent of their population.