Ms BADGER (Lyons) – Deputy Speaker, it has been a horrific week in terms of the news of what is happening to Tasmania’s wildlife. It began with a brave activist, Monique Ker, who was defending critical swift parrot habitat up in the Central Highlands – 111 hectares of forest and critical habitat that is destined for the wood chip mill. This is home to Tasmanian devils, quolls, masked owls, swift parrot and blue wing parrots, which just this weekend – we saw the notice in the paper – were recommended to be listed as a vulnerable species here in Tasmania.
The Tree Project and the Wilderness Society have released a joint report, Vanishing Wildlife, which highlighted that 300,000 animals are killed or displaced by native forest logging each year in Tasmania. That includes mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles. What these figures do not include are the effects outside of a coupe, for example, silt that builds up in streams or rivers downstream, which affects other species like giant freshwater crayfish, as well as native fish and millions of insects.
That report also refers to the increasing log truck movements at night and the impact that has on roadkill. Constituents in my electorate of Lyons in communities like Westerway and Maydena, and communities right across the Meander Valley, have repeatedly raised concerns about the increasing log truck movements at all hours of the night. Their concerns relate not only to the impacts on wildlife but also the impacts on their health.
What about the not‑so‑cute species? What about the worms, insects and spiders – species that are critical to ecosystem functionality but are not the poster animals that we see heading up awareness campaigns? These are still absolutely critical, but because of their size, because of the lack of scientific ability to research them in depth, as we do for mammals or birds, we do not fully know yet the impacts that habitat loss is having on these species.
There was also the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet report for 2024. It showed that 73 per cent of earth’s wildlife has been destroyed by human activities in the past 50 years. This is damning evidence of the greatest ecological disaster in human history, and this has been a choice. These statistics that I have read out from both of these reports are from human‑inflicted activities, and as the planet heats, wildlife will increasingly be affected by habitat changes in habitable locations. Natural disasters, such as bushfires and floods, will affect their habitats.
It has been a choice to continue down the path of inaction, denial and delay-ism. We have chosen to continue to subsidise destructive industries from the public purse when we know that we have been losing wildlife. The State of the Environment report has given us a snapshot just in the last few years of exactly what we have been losing in Tasmania, that is endemic to Tasmania, that is not found anywhere else on this planet, but we have chosen to continue to destroy that habitat. It is time that we turned it around.
This is the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. Every report points to the fact, that as a part of that UN decade, we must halt and reverse nature loss by 2030, that we need to be aiming for a proper recovery by 2050, and we need to re-join fragmented landscapes. Upscaling investment into ecosystem restoration means that we can create jobs. There is an entire industry possibility waiting right there. We cannot forget that everything that we are doing to the natural world affects all of us here on this planet as well. We are intrinsically linked to the natural world.
We need to stop choosing destruction. We need to start prioritising ecosystem restoration, protection for wildlife, protection for wildlife habitat, and protection for all that makes this planet special.
