Australia – Eastern European Association of the Greens

The Australian government on Friday pledged 1 billion Australian dollars ($700 million) to protect the Great Barrier Reef, months after it narrowly avoided being placed on the UN’s cultural agency’s “danger” list due to the threat of climate change, CNN reports.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison unveiled the nearly decade-long conservation package days ahead of a February 1 deadline set by UNESCO to submit a report on the reef’s state of conservation.

“We are backing the health of the reef and the economic future of tourism operators, hospitality providers and Queensland communities that are at the heart of the reef economy,” Morrison said in a statement.

The funding will support new climate adaptation technology, investment in water quality programs, and protect key species in the biodiverse reef, he added.

In July, UNESCO debated whether the Great Barrier Reef was “in danger” – a designation that means a site is under threat. If the action wasn’t taken to address concerns, it was at risk of losing its World Heritage status, the UN agency warned.

In a letter published last July, 13 public figures – actors, former politicians and journalists – urged leaders to act fast and “save” the reef.

“We urge the world’s major emitters to undertake the most ambitious climate action under the Paris Agreement,” the letter read. “There is still time to save the Great Barrier Reef, but Australia and the world must act now.” Morrison’s announcement Friday comes ahead of a general election expected in May.

The Australian Climate Council, which is independent of the government, dismissed Morrison’s pledge, calling it “a band-aid on a broken leg” in a statement Friday.

“Unless you are cutting emissions deeply this decade the situation on the Reef will only get worse,” climate scientist and Professor of Biology at Macquarie University, Professor Lesley Hughes said in the statement.

In an interview with radio station 4A Cairns Friday, Morrison said emissions were falling under policies the government has put in place, which is beneficial for the reef.

“We’re achieving those outcomes, and we’re going to keep doing it because we’re passionate about it,” he said.

Impact of the climate crisis

The Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef, covers nearly 133,000 square miles (344,000 square kilometers) and is home to more than 1,500 types of fish, over 400 kinds of hard corals and dozens of other species.

But the effects of the climate crisis, coupled with a series of natural disasters, have had a devastating impact on the reef. An Australian government five-year survey in 2019 found the condition of the natural wonder had deteriorated from “poor” to “very poor.”

The reef has lost 50% of its coral populations in the last three decades, according to a study published in October 2020 by researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

In a report published in June last year, a UNESCO monitoring mission said that despite the Australian government’s work to improve the reef’s situation, “there is no possible doubt that the property is facing ascertained danger.”

But the Australian government has strongly objected to that conclusion. Environment Minister Sussan Ley flew to Europe last July as part of a last-ditch attempt to convince the other members of the World Heritage to vote against the measure. Australia is currently part of the 21-country rotating committee.

Morrison on Friday called the reef the “best managed” in the world. “Today we take our commitment to a new level,” he said.

(CNN) – A mouse thought to have become extinct more than 150 years ago has been found alive on an island off the coast of Western Australia, researchers have discovered.

Scientists compared DNA samples from eight extinct Australian rodents and 42 of their living relatives, and discovered that the extinct Gould’s mouse was “indistinguishable” from the Shark Bay mouse.

Researchers were studying the decline of the country’s native species since the arrival of Europeans in Australia in 1788.

The mouse — which will still be known by the common name “djoongari,” or “Shark Bay mouse” — was once found across the country, from south-west Western Australia to New South Wales, but was last seen in 1857. The introduction of invasive species, agricultural land clearing and new diseases destroyed the native species, researchers said, adding that climate change and poor fire management also affected population sizes.

The remaining populations of the djoongari were located on a single 42 square-kilometer (16.2 square-mile) island in Shark Bay, Bernier Island. One small population is not enough for a species to survive, researchers said, so the mice have been taken to two other islands to establish new populations.

“The resurrection of this species brings good news in the face of the disproportionally high rate of native rodent extinction, making up 41 per cent of Australian mammal extinction since European colonisation in 1788,” lead author Emily Roycroft, an evolutionary biologist from the Australian National University (ANU), said in a statement.

“It is exciting that Gould’s mouse is still around, but its disappearance from the mainland highlights how quickly this species went from being distributed across most of Australia, to only surviving on offshore islands in Western Australia. It’s a huge population collapse,” she added.

The team also studied seven other extinct native species, which were found to have high genetic diversity immediately before extinction, showing that their populations were widespread before Europeans arrived.

“This shows genetic diversity does not provide guaranteed insurance against extinction,” Roycroft warned.

More than 80% of Australia’s mammals are endemic, as result of Australia’s long period of isolation from other continents. But the country has what researchers described in a 2015 paper as an “extraordinary rate of extinction.” Meanwhile, a study published in 2019 found that Australia was home to 6-10% of the world’s post-1500 recognized extinctions.

Roycroft said the extinction of the seven native species happened “very quickly.”

Humans have already wiped out hundreds of species and pushed many more to the brink of extinction through wildlife trade, pollution, habitat loss and the use of toxic substances. The Earth’s sixth mass extinction is happening now, much faster than previously expected — and the rate at which species are dying out has accelerated in recent decades, scientists have warned.

The research will be published in the journal PNAS next month.

Australia pledges 1 billion Australian dollars to protect the Great Barrier Reef

Impact of the climate crisis

Mouse thought extinct for 150 years found living on island