Rachel Lowry | Feral cat strategy doesn't go far enough to stem extinction crisis facing Australian wildlife

There is a lot of merit in the draft cat management plan. Feral cats are unfortunately named. These are cats living in poor welfare conditions and hunting to survive. But there's no question that these cats do an enormous amount of harm in nature and decimate our native wildlife. Even roaming pet cats kill 546 million animals a year, 323 million of which are native animals.

It was also good that another 48 native species have been added to the list of wildlife at risk of extinction. For once our species are recognised as threatened, our law requires them to receive better protection.

In fact, this government has committed to a lot of great things. It has made a welcome commitment to zero new extinctions in its threatened species action plan, and in their first few weeks on the job promised to introduce stronger laws to repair nature. Australia joined other countries in committing targets to protect land, sea and freshwater, and were a strong voice on the international stage in Montreal last year calling for all countries to commit to a target of zero new extinctions.

But with this praise there is a significant caveat. The government has yet to deliver adequate funding to make zero extinctions a reality here on the home front. Not even close.

It has been estimated that it would cost at least $2 billion to improve the status of all Australia's threatened species and get anywhere near being able to return their health to the point where they could be removed from lists of at-risk plant and animals.

In stark contrast, Australia spent just $122 million a year in 2018-2019 across state and federal territories on threatened species recovery.

Currently this is the massive divide between words and the funding to make it happen.

A second significant gap in the government's response to threatened species is its failure yet to deliver strong nature laws

In 2020, Australia's environmental laws underwent a once-in-a-decade independent review. The review by Professor Graeme Samuels found that the laws were outdated, ineffective and failing to protect the environment.

In the 20 years since the laws were first introduced, more than 7.7 million hectares - an area bigger than the whole of Tasmania - of threatened species habitat has been destroyed across the east coast of Australia.

Rampant destruction of threatened wildlife habitat continues at an unprecedented rate due to the loopholes in our current laws and the lack of compliance and regulation.

The recent logging of the Tallaganda State Forest, one of the state's last remaining greater glider strongholds, is simply another example of the system failing.

Although, the recent immediate stop-work order that has been issued is welcome, it came only after a dead glider was found just 50 metres from the logging operations.

What we are missing across Australia is a cop on the beat to help ensure that mass destruction of threatened species habitat does not occur on our soil, which sadly, data suggests is a common occurrence.

WWF wants strong national environment standards, an independent and well-resourced Environment Protection Agency with teeth, or at the very least an independent board which is missing in the current proposals, and adequate funding to recover threatened species populations.

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New nature laws must also value traditional knowledge, customs and interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Many people in Australia understand the climate crisis. It is a driving force now at the ballot box. However, there is not the same understanding and drive around the nature crisis that Australia faces.

Only 34 per cent of Australians believe we are in an extinction crisis with the majority of Australians believing that our natural environment is in a good or excellent state.

But this is simply not the case.

Australia has the worst mammal extinction rate of any country in the world. Sadly, Australia's rate of extinction is expected to rise if we continue on our current trajectory.

A CSIRO study quantifying extinction risk estimated that climate change would increase the rate of losses about five-fold, with 10 birds and seven mammals species becoming extinct in the next 20 years "without purposeful intervention".

Deforestation, climate change, altered fire regimes, invasive species and pollution are pushing Australia's globally significant wildlife, land and seascapes to breaking point.

Australia ranks alongside the Amazon and Congo as a global deforestation hotspot, and we are clearing trees faster than any other developed nation in the world.

Australians can do a lot in their own backyard to help native wildlife, cat owners for start can contain and care for their cats indoors.

The government's cat management plan is a good start. But we need to do so much more to save our native wildlife from rapidly disappearing from the planet. Budget commitments worthy of a crisis must follow to avoid further extinctions. Our native wildlife do not have nine lives.