Threatened species up by 25% in Queensland’s Wet Tropics due to climate change

Subject: Environment

Section: Biodiversity

Context:

Climate change has pushed 25 per cent more organisms in Australia’s biodiversity-rich northern rainforests into the list of threatened species since 2020, a new report showed. The rainforests are world heritage sites.

Details of the report:

Report name: State of the Wet Tropics
Prepared and submitted by the management and conservation authority for the UNESCO-listed Queensland wet tropics to the state government.
It highlighted the growing threats and declining health of species such as ringtail possum.
- It was given international protection in 1988, but climate change, habitat loss and degradation of supporting ecosystem, invasive species and Disease pose threats.
Other threatened species: Endemic rainforest frogs, high-altitude birds, ringtail possums and plants of the Myrtaceae family, Euastacus crayfish, Spiny crayfish, Robert’s crayfish, Apollo jewel (Hypochrysops apollo apollo) butterfly, Flying fox (Pteropus conspicullatus), Tooth-billed bowerbird (Scenopoeetes dentirostris).
The Wet Tropics bioregion contains 26 per cent of Australia’s vascular plant species. Some 314 of these are classified as Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered, according to the Nature Conservation Act (NCA) or Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act with a further 98 species listed as Near Threatened.
Bushfires in 2019 affected 53 per cent of the Gondwana World Heritage Rainforests and 80 per cent of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.