Nine more Australian birds have been added to the threatened species list and it’s honestly so embarrassing for us humans.
Despite the hullabaloo of Easter and long weekend celebrations, it is hard to be positive about anything when the environment and its inhabitants are basically at risk of extinction.
But literally in the last week, a plethora of loveable Aussie birds were added to the threatened species list.
This includes the pink cockatoo, the painted button quail, Coxen’s fig parrot, the south-eastern hooded robin, southern whiteface, south-eastern brown treecreeper, diamond firetail, blue-winged parrot and the red goshawk (BTW our rarest bird of prey) which is reportedly already extinct in New South Wales, according to The Guardian.
You might have heard the news that an alarming number of species have been added to Australia’s threatened species list – or uplisted to more threatened 💔
9 of the 28 new additions are birds, including the Eastern Pink Cockatoo, now listed as Endangered.
📷 Daniel Venema pic.twitter.com/CHTGdMntAw
— BirdLife Australia (@BirdlifeOz) April 6, 2023
The amount of new additions to the list is a big wakeup call to the current state of our environment, but Birdlife Australia’s Sean Dooley say that these listings are “the first step of the process” to turn things around for these species at risk.
Speaking to ABC News, Sean said: “The first step to protecting them is to recognise that you have a problem, so these listings, while overdue, are reflecting the governments commitment to actually try and do something and have no new extinctions in Australia.”
Sean also mentioned that these listings follow the recommendations of the 2020 Action Plan For Australian Birds — produced by BirdLife Australia and Charles Darwin University — which notes that one in six Australian birds are threatened.
It is also no surprise that the reason to the growth of that horrid list is bloody land clearance, which leads to the rise of more threatened species, and what ecologists call “extinction debt” — where species are made extinct in the future due to events from the past.
According to Sean, “it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” therefore we better brace for more birds and wildlife to be added to the threatened species list.
Hopefully it won’t be too late before we truly loose our unique and beautiful ecosystem for good.
