A total of 144 animals, plants and ecological communities were added to the list, five times more than the yearly average and double the previous record year (2009).
“The problem is the factors driving species onto the endangered list are not being stopped. In the last 12 months, 10,426 hectares [25,800 acres] of habitat destruction was approved under Australia’s national nature laws – the equivalent to clearing the size of the MCG 5,000 times over,” said an ACF nature campaigner, Peta Bulling.
Bulling added that the amount of clearing approved was likely a fraction of the total habitat actually cleared because land clearing in Australia often happens without being assessed under environmental laws.
Kirsty Howey, executive director of the Environment Centre of the Northern Territory, said unregulated clearing in the territory threatened habitat for species.
“A litany of loopholes and a lack of enforcement has meant that no pastoral land clearing application in the NT has ever been referred, much less assessed, under federal environmental law,” she said.