Nature of Australia

The passerines of Australia, also known as songbirds or perching birds, include wrens, robins, the magpie group, thornbills, pardalotes, the huge honeyeater family, treecreepers, lyrebirds, Birds of Paradise and bowerbirds. The Satin Bowerbird has attracted the interest of evolutionary psychologists; it has a complex courtship ritual in which the male creates a bower filled with blue, shiny items to woo mates.

Relatively recent colonists from Eurasia are swallows, larks, thrushes, cisticolas, sunbirds, and some raptors, including the large Wedge-tailed Eagle. A number of bird species have been introduced by humans; some, like the European Goldfinch and Greenfinch, coexist happily with Australian species, while others, such as the Common Starling, Common Blackbird, House Sparrow and Indian Mynah, are destructive of some native bird species and thus destabilise the native ecosystem.

About 200 species of seabird live on the Australian coast, including many species of migratory seabird. Australia is at the southern end of the East Asian-Australasian flyway for migratory water birds, which extends from Far-East Russia and Alaska through Southeast Asia to Australia and New Zealand. About two million birds travel this route to and from Australia each year. One very common large seabird is the Australian Pelican, which can be found in most waterways in Australia. TheLittle Penguin is the only species of penguin that breeds on mainland Australia.

2.4 Amphibians and reptiles

Australia has four families of native frogs and one introduced toad, the Cane Toad.[80] In 1935 the Cane Toad was introduced to Australia in a failed attempt to control pests in sugarcane crops. It has since become a devastating pest, spreading across northern Australia. As well as competing with native insectivores for food, the Cane Toad produces a venom that is toxic to native fauna, as well as to humans. The Myobatrachidae, or southern frogs, are Australia's largest group of frogs, with 112 species classified into anywhere from 17 to 22 genera. A notable member of this group is the colourful and endangered Corroboree Frog. The tree frogs, from family Hylidae, are common in high rainfall areas on the north and east coasts; there are 77 Australian species from three genera. The 18 species from two genera of the Microhylidae frogs are restricted to the rainforests of northern Australia and nearby habitats; the smallest species, theScanty Frog, is from this family.[citation needed] There is a single species from the world's dominant frog group, family Ranidae — the Australian Wood Frog — which only occurs in the Queensland rainforests. As elsewhere, there has been a precipitous decline in Australia's frog populations in recent years. Although the full reasons for the decline are uncertain, it can be at least partly attributed to the fatal amphibian fungal disease chytridiomycosis. Another theory for the decline might be, as research shows, that species from the Southern Hemisphere are on average 4.6 million years old, compared to an average 2.9 million years old for the Northern Hemisphere: Researchers believe this age difference is because of the history of severe Ice Ages in the Northern Hemisphere, which may drive older species to extinction.

Australia has two species of crocodile. The Saltwater Crocodile, known colloquially as the "salty," is the largest living crocodile species; reaching over 7 m, and weighing over 1,000 kg, they can and do kill people. They live on the coast and in the freshwater rivers and wetlands of northern Australia, and they are farmed for their meat and leather. Freshwater Crocodiles, found only in northern Australia, are not considered dangerous to humans.

The Australian coast is visited by six species of sea turtle: the Flatback, Green Sea, Hawksbill, Olive Ridley, Loggerhead and the Leatherback Sea Turtles; all are protected in Australian waters. There are 29 species of Australian freshwater turtles from eight genera of family Chelidae. The Pig-nosed Turtle is the only Australian turtle not of that family. Australia is the only continent without any living species of land tortoise.

Australia is the only continent where venomous snakes outnumber their non-venomous cousins. Australian snakes belong to seven families. Of these, the most venomous species, including the Fierce Snake, Eastern Brown Snake, Taipan and Eastern Tiger Snake are from the family Elapidae. Of the 200 species of elapid, 86 are found only in Australia. Thirty-three sea snakes from family Hydrophiidae inhabit Australia's northern waters; many are extremely venomous. Two species of sea snake from the Acrochordidae also occur in Australian waters. Australia has only 11 species from the world's most significant snake familyColubridae; none are endemic, and they are considered to be relatively recent arrivals from Asia. There are 15 python species and 31 species of insectivorous blind snake.

There are more than 700 species of lizards in Australia with representatives of five families. There are >130 species in 20 genera of gecko found throughout the Australian continent. The Pygopodidae is a family of limbless lizards endemic to the Australian region; all 39 species from seven genera occur in Australia. TheAgamidae or Dragon lizards are represented by 70 species in 14 genera, including the Thorny Devil, Bearded Dragon and Frill-necked Lizard. There are 30 species of monitor lizard, family Varanidae, in Australia, where they are commonly known as goannas. The largest Australian monitor is the Perentie, which can reach up to 2 m in length. There are 389 species of skink from 38 genera, comprising about 50% of the total Australian lizard fauna; this group includes the blue-tongued lizards.

2.5 Fish

More than 4,500 species of fish inhabit Australia's waterways; of these, 90% are endemic. However, because of the relative scarcity of freshwater waterways, Australia has only about 300 species of freshwater fish. Two families of freshwater fish have ancient origins: the arowana or bonytongues, and the Queensland Lungfish. The Queensland Lungfish is the most primitive of the lungfish, having evolved before Australia separated from Gondwana. One of the smallest freshwater fish, peculiar to the southwest of Western Australia, is the Salamanderfish, which can survive desiccation in the dry season by burrowing into mud. Other families with a potentially Gondwanan origin include the Retropinnidae, Galaxiidae, Aplochitonidae and Percichthyidae. Apart from the ancient freshwater species, 70% of Australia's freshwater fish have affinities with tropical Indo-Pacific marine species that have adapted to freshwater. These species include freshwater lampreys, herrings, catfish, rainbowfish, and some 50 species of gudgeon, including the Sleepy Cod. Native freshwater game fish include the Barramundi, Murray Cod, and Golden Perch. Two species of endangered freshwater shark are found in the Northern Territory.

Several exotic freshwater fish species, including Brown, Brook and Rainbow Trout, Atlantic and Chinook Salmon, Redfin Perch, Common Carp, and Mosquitofish, have been introduced to Australian waterways. The Mosquitofish is a particularly aggressive species known for harassing and nipping the fins of other fish. It has been linked to declines and localised extirpations of several small native fish species. The introduced trout species have had serious negative impacts on a number of upland native fish species including Trout Cod, Macquarie Perch and mountain galaxias species as well as other upland fauna such as the Spotted Tree Frog. The Common Carp is strongly implicated in the dramatic loss in waterweed, decline of small native fish species and permanently elevated levels of turbidity in theMurray-Darling Basin of southwest Australia.

Most of Australia's fish species are marine. Groups of interest include the moray eels and squirrelfish, as well as the pipefish and seahorses, whose males incubate their partner's eggs in a specialised pouch. There are 80 species of grouper in Australian waters, including one of the world's biggest bony fish, the Giant Grouper, which can grow as large as 2.7 m and weigh up to 400 kg. The trevally, a group of 50 species of silver schooling fish, and the snappers are popular species for commercial fishing. The Great Barrier Reef supports a huge variety of small- and medium-sized reef fish, including the damselfish, butterflyfish, angelfish, gobies, cardinalfish, wrassees, triggerfish and surgeonfish. There are several venomous fish, among them several species of stonefish and pufferfish and the red lionfish, all of which have toxins that can kill humans. There are 11 venomous species of stingray, the largest of which is the smooth stingray. Thebarracudas are one of the reef's largest species. However, large reef fish should not be eaten for fear of ciguatera poisoning.

Sharks inhabit all the coastal waters and estuarine habitats of Australia's coast. There are 166 species, including 30 species of requiem shark, 32 of catshark, six of wobbegong shark, and 40 of dogfish shark. There are three species from the family Heterodontidae: the Port Jackson shark, the zebra bullhead shark and the crested bullhead shark. In 2004, there were 12 unprovoked shark attacks in Australia, of which two were fatal. Only 3 species of shark pose a significant threat to humans: the bull shark, the tiger shark and the great white shark. Some popular beaches in Queensland and New South Wales are protected by shark netting, a method that has reduced the population of both dangerous and harmless shark species through accidental entanglement. The overfishing of sharks has also significantly reduced shark numbers in Australian waters, and several species are now endangered. A megamouth shark was found on a Perth beach in 1988; very little is known about this species, but this discovery may indicate the presence of the species in Australian coastal waters.

2.6 Invertebrates

Of the estimated 200,000 animal species in Australia, about 96% are invertebrates. While the full extent of invertebrate diversity is uncertain, 90% of insects and molluscs are considered endemic. Invertebrates occupy many ecological niches and are important in all ecosystems as decomposers, pollinators, and food sources. The largest group of invertebrates is the insects, comprising 75% of Australia's known species of animals. The most diverse insect orders are the Coleoptera, with 28,200 species of beetles and weevils, the Lepidoptera with 20,816 species including butterflies and moths, and 12,781 species of Hymenoptera, including the ants, bees and wasps. Order Diptera, which includes the flies and mosquitoes, comprises 7,786 species, Order Hemiptera, including bugs, aphids and hoppers, comprises 5,650 species; and there are 2,827 speciesof order Orthoptera, including grasshoppers,crickets and katydids. Introduced species that pose a significant threat to native species include the European wasp, the red fire ant, the yellow crazy ant and feral honeybees which compete with native bees.

Australia has a wide variety of arachnids, including 135 species of spider that are familiar enough to have common names. There are numerous highly venomous species, including the notorious Sydney funnel-web and redback spiders, whose bites can be deadly. There are thousands of species of mites and ticks from the subclass Acari. Australia also has eight species of pseudoscorpion and nine scorpion species.

In the Annelida (sub)class Oligochaeta there are many families of aquatic worms, and for native terrestrial worms: the Enchytraeidae (pot worms) and the "true" earthworms in families Acanthodrilidae, Octochaetidae and Megascolecidae. The latter includes the world's largest earthworm, the giant Gippsland earthworm, found only in Gippsland, Victoria. On average they reach 80 cm in length, but specimens up to 3.7 m in length have been found.

The large family Parastacidae includes 124 species of Australian freshwater crayfish. These include the world's smallest crayfish, the swamp crayfish, which does not exceed 30 mm in length, and the world's largest crayfish, the Tasmanian giant freshwater crayfish, measuring up to 76 cm long and weighing 4.5 kg. The crayfish genus Cherax includes the common yabby, in addition to the farmed species marron and Queensland red claw. Species from the genus Engaeus, commonly known as the land crayfish, are also found in Australia. Engaeus species are not entirely aquatic, because they spend most of their lives living in burrows. Australia has seven species of freshwater crab from the genus Austrothelphusa. These crabs live burrowed into the banks of waterways and can plug their burrows, surviving through several years of drought. The extremely primitive freshwater mountain shrimp, found only in Tasmania, are a unique group, resembling species found in the fossil record from 200 MYA.

A huge variety of marine invertebrates are found in Australian waters, with the Great Barrier Reef an important source of this diversity. Families include the Porifera or sea sponges, the Cnidaria (includes the jellyfish, corals and sea anemones, comb jellies), the Echinodermata (includes the sea urchins, sea stars, brittle stars, sea cucumbers, the lamp shells) and the Mollusca (includes snails, slugs, limpets, squid, octopus, cockles, oysters, clams, and chitons). Venomous invertebrates include the box jellyfish, the blue-ringed octopus, and ten species of cone snail, which can cause respiratory failure and death in humans. The crown-of-thorns starfish usually inhabits the Reef at low densities. However, under conditions that are not yet well understood, they can reproduce to reach an unsustainable population density when coral is devoured at a rate faster than it can regenerate. This presents a serious reef management issue. Other problematic marine invertebrates include the native species purple sea urchin and the white urchin, which have been able to take over marine habitats and form urchin barrens due to the over harvesting of their natural predators which include abalone and rock lobster. Introduced invertebrate pests include the Asian mussel, New Zealand green-lipped mussel, black-striped mussel and the Northern Pacific seastar, all of which displace native shellfish.

2.7 Invasive species

Introduction of exotic fauna in Australia by design, accident and natural processes has led to a considerable number of invasive, feral and pest species which have flourished and now impact the environment adversely. Introduced organisms affect the environment in a number of ways. Rabbits render land economically useless by eating everything. Red Foxes affect local endemic fauna by predation while thecane toad poisons the predators by being eaten. The invasive species include birds (Indian Mynah) and fish (common carp), insects (red imported fire ant) and molluscs (Asian mussel). The problem is compounded by invasive exotic flora as well as introduced diseases, fungi and parasites.

Costly, laborious and time-consuming efforts at control of these species has met with little success and this continues to be a major problem area in the conservation of Australia's biodiversity.

3 Human impact and conservation

For at least 40,000 years, Australia's fauna played an integral role in the traditional lifestyles of Indigenous Australians, who exploited many species as a source of food and skins. Vertebrates commonly harvested included macropods, opossums, seals, fish and the Short-tailed Shearwater, most commonly known as the Muttonbird. Invertebrates used as food included insects such as the Bogong moth and larvae collectively called witchetty grubs and molluscs. The use of fire-stick farming, in which large swathes of bushland were burnt to facilitate hunting, modified both flora and fauna — and are thought to have contributed to the extinction of large herbivores with a specialised diet, such as the flightless birds from the genus Genyornis. The role of hunting and landscape modification by aboriginal people in the extinction of the Australian megafauna is debated.

The impact of Aborigines on native species populations is widely considered to be less significant than that of the European settlers, whose impact on the landscape has been on a relatively large scale. Since European settlement, direct exploitation of native fauna, habitat destruction and the introduction of exotic predators and competitive herbivores has led to the extinction of some 27 mammal, 23 bird and 4 frog species. Much of Australia's fauna is protected by legislation. The federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 was created to meet Australia's obligations as a signatory to the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity. This act protects all native fauna and provides for the identification and protection of threatened species. In each state and territory, there is statutory listing of threatened species. At present, 380 animal species are classified as either endangered or threatened under the EPBC Act, and other species are protected under state and territory legislation. More broadly, a complete cataloguing of all the species within Australia has been undertaken, a key step in the conservation of Australian fauna and biodiversity. In 1973, the federal government established theAustralian Biological Resources Study (ABRS), which coordinates research in the taxonomy, identification, classification and distribution of flora and fauna. The ABRS maintains free online databases cataloguing much of the described Australian flora and fauna. Impacts such as the illegal setting of traps in rivers affect animals such as the Australian platypus, along with lack of awareness each year an average of 2–5 Australians lose their lives to what is presumed a safe creature. The key is understanding of Australia's diverse wildlife and fauna; what seems safe is often deadly.

Many of Australia's ecoregions, and the species within those regions, are threatened by human activities and introduced animal, chromistan, fungal and plant species. The federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 is the legal framework for the protection of threatened species. Numerous protected areas have been created under the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia's Biological Diversity to protect and preserve unique ecosystems; 65 wetlands are listed under the Ramsar Convention, and 16 natural World Heritage Sites have been established. Australia was ranked 51st of 163 countries in the world on the 2010 Environmental Performance Index.

Climate change has become an increasing concern in Australia in recent years, and protection of the environment is a major political issue. In 2007, the First Rudd Government signed the instrument of ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Nevertheless, Australia's carbon dioxide emissions per capita are among the highest in the world, lower than those of only a few other industrialised nations. Rainfall in Australia has slightly increased over the past century, both nationwide and for two quadrants of the nation, According to the Bureau of Meteorology's 2011 Australian Climate Statement, Australia had lower than average temperatures in 2011 as a consequence of a La Niña weather pattern, however, "the country's 10-year average continues to demonstrate the rising trend in temperatures, with 2002–2011 likely to rank in the top two warmest 10-year periods on record for Australia, at 0.52 °C above the long-term average". Water restrictions are frequently in place in many regions and cities of Australia in response to chronic shortages due to urban population increases and localised drought. Throughout much of the continent, major flooding regularly follows extended periods of drought, flushing out inland river systems, overflowing dams and inundating large inland flood plains, as occurred throughout Eastern Australia in 2010, 2011 and 2012 after the 2000s Australian drought.

3.1 The conservation Council of Western Australia

The Conservation Council of Western Australia is the umbrella body for conservation groups and organisations in Western Australia. It has been the co-ordinator, publisher and guiding body for issues of woodchipping in the South West of Western Australia, the logging of old growth forests, as well as providing input into government processes involved with all aspects of environmental protection and conservation.

Its origins were closely related to the Perth based - Environment Centre of W.A., and the development and success of the environmental movement also saw subsequent development of the regional environment centres in Denmark, Albany, Margaret River and Busselton.

In 1981 the council was involved in a class action regarding the mining in the Jarrah forests in the United States against bauxite miners Reynolds and Alcoa, the complaint was lodged with U.S. Federal District Court in Pittsburgh, Pennsyilvania.

Notable member groups of the council have included the Campaign to Save Native Forests, South West Forests Defence Foundation, West Australian Forest Alliance, and Great Walk Networking. Smaller, more transient single-purpose protest groups have found the council a positive custodian and advocate over the thirty years of its activities. Some groups are no longer current but their impact on the process of conservation and preservation in Western Australia have been significant in raising public awareness of issues.

3.2 The conservation Council of South Australia

The Conservation Council of South Australia is an environmental organisation that aims to develop the green movement’s blueprint for environmental action in South Australia, by focusing on water, planning, waste, biodiversity, coast and marine, and energy.

3.3 The Australian Greens

The Australian Greens, commonly known as The Greens, is an Australian green political party. The party was formed in 1992 and is today a confederation of eight state and territory parties. Other thanenvironmentalism the party cites four core values: ecological sustainability, social justice, grassroots democracy and peace and non-violence.

Party constituencies can be traced to various origins – notably the early environmental movement in Australia and the formation of the United Tasmania Group (UTG), one of the first green parties in the world, but also the nuclear disarmament movement in Western Australia and sections of the industrial left in New South Wales. Co-ordination between environmentalist groups occurred in the 1980s withvarious significant protests. Key people involved in these campaigns included the party's former leader Bob Brown and current leader Christine Milne who went on to contest and win seats in the Tasmanian Parliament and eventually form the Tasmanian Greens.

Currently, the Greens party have nine senators and one member in the lower house, 24 elected representatives in state and territory parliaments, more than 100 local councillors and close to 10,000 party members.

At the 2010 federal election the Greens received a four percent swing to finish with 13 percent of the vote in the Senate, a first for any Australian minor party. The Senate vote throughout the states was between 10 and 20 percent. The Greens won a seat in each of the six states at the election, again a first for any Australian minor party, which brought the party to a total of nine senators from July 2011 and gave the Greens the sole balance of power in the Senate. The Greens also won their first House of Representatives seat at a general election, the seat of Melbourne with candidate Adam Bandt. The Greens support a minority Labor government in the A.C.T. Legislative Assembly and govern in formal Coalition with Labor in Tasmania.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Сonclusion

Australia  is  an only  country  of the world, occupying  territory  of unit of the same name  mainland,  and also  о.  Tasmania  and  adherent  islands. A country  is located  in  south  and  east  hemispheres, is  washed seas Quiet and Indian oceans.  Australia  lies  on  the opposite    to Middle East  side  of Earth. This country is a motherland of many unique plants and animals.  From the enormous sizes and unique geographical location, a country  possesses  the wide  variety  of climatic  terms  -  from subequatorial districts in the north to moderate marine on a south. Hot and  the moist  north  areas  of country  are replaced  by semideserted by tropical central districts, and south and south-east coasts behave already to the zone of субтропиков, with a pleasant enough warm climate. Tasmania  is    the most "cold"  area  of country  with  a temperate  climate,  but also here are enough areas primely suitable for rest.