Almost Half of Australia Untouched by Humans: Study
AUSTRALIA: August 28, 2008
CANBERRA - More than 40 percent of Australia, an area the size of India,
remains untouched by humans, making the country as critical to the world's
environment as the Amazon rainforests, a study said on Wednesday.
Australia has some of the last great wilderness, with three million square
kilometres (1.1 million square miles) largely unchanged by industrial
civilisation, a report for international conservation watchdogs the Pew
Environment Group and Nature Conservancy said.
"It's rare on earth in this century," Australian wildlife ecologist and
report author Barry Traill told local radio. "We need to hold onto this
country. It's just so precious," he said.
Australia was one of five great remaining wilderness zones, along with
Antarctica, the Amazon, the Sahara Desert and Canada's northern Boreal, the
report said.
Most of the untouched areas were in the country's vast interior and northern
savanna, including largely Aboriginal Arnhem Land, northern Cape York
Peninsula, the vast southwest Nullarbor plain and the central Gibson desert.
Pristine areas faced their biggest threat from introduced feral animal and
plant species including pigs, rabbits, foxes, buffaloes and noxious weeds,
the report said.
"Around that core of wild lands, hundreds of millions more acres are healthy
enough that they can still support the maintenance of resilient ecosystems,"
Pew said on its website.
In addition to its wilderness treasures, Australia had some of the world's
most protected marine areas, with the Great Barrier Reef the largest living
organism, it said.
Australia, the world's oldest continent, ranked first globally for the total
number of unique native mammal and reptile species, and among the top five
countries in total numbers of endemic plants, birds and amphibians.
Traill said Australia's government should be recruiting up to 5,000 extra
Aboriginal rangers to act as guardians of untouched areas, with only 10
percent of the country currently protected as parklands and reserve.
"If you drive through and see these vast areas of bushland, it looks in
pretty good shape, but there are subtle changes happening, and we need to
get people back out there managing it," he said. (Editing by David Fogarty)
Story by Rob Taylor
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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