Wildlife Australia Magazine FREE Sample Issue Special Issue

THERE IS a brutal realisation creeping across Australian communities that time is running out for many of our most unique species – mainly because their habitat is running out.

Humans are simply part of nature and totally reliant upon it for survival – a point author, ecologist, photographer and film-maker Simon Mustoe has been driving home for many years. It is a key theme of his latest book, Wildlife in the Balance.

“Where ecosystems are concerned, no species (even human) is more important than another,” he writes in his opinion piece Fact: Animals make ecosystems habitable (p16). This is actually a message of hope, not despair, from Mustoe.

Hope that we humans are coming to our senses is also a theme of acclaimed international wildlife photographer Tim Laman and his latest book, Bird Planet (p38). He believes people who admire birds are steadily drawn closer to the natural world – and protecting it.

Then there is the concerted drive by Deborah Tabart and the Australian Koala Foundation to establish a viable interconnected habitat – an area of about 1.5 million kilometres – that stretches from Cairns to Melbourne (p13). After three decades, AKF is tired of waiting for government.

Yet with help from the Western Australian government, Dirk Hartog Island’s Return to 1616 Ecological Restoration Project just celebrated its halfway mark, releasing 85 western grasswrens. The birds are back after being made extinct here in the 19th century (p18).

There are many other examples in this edition: People saving endangered nudibranch colonies under a bridge in Victoria (p32); returning the rare Gilbert’s potoroo to its original habitat at Two Peoples Bay (p22); and native stingless beekeepers moving their hives to safety from the scourge of the varroa mite.

Humans are interdependent with wildlife and the natural world. We just need reminding.