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• 1 2018-10-16T09:08:39-07:00 The Surprising Adaptability of Some of the Natural World to Human Interference 4 plain 2018-10-16T10:02:43-07:00 - Antonia Parker
  
  Australia has suffered greatly since European arrival. The plants are ruthlessly culled for farming and development, or strangled by weeds. The animals are forced to exist in small pockets as habitat destruction and fragmentation takes their homes, and they are hunted or outcompeted by introduced species. The land itself is being flayed, the fragile topsoil ripped up by hard-hoofed livestock and harsh European farming practices and then stripped away by dust storms. A land already known for its aridity becomes drier and drier as animals from all over the world guzzle water that the land can't sustainably provide, while natives adapted to work in concert with the land, not against it, die. Increasing salinity kills plants that have managed to hang on this long, and the environmental degradation costs Australia billions every year.
  
  Australia is known for its unique biota. Over 80% of our flora and fauna is endemic, found only in this country. That's an astonishingly high percentage, and such diversity is clearly worth protecting. Yet Australian animals are becoming endangered or even extinct horrifyingly quickly. Human impact is doing irreparable damage to a country that has been isolated from all others for over 55 million years. When Benjamin, the last known Tasmanian tiger, died in Hobart Zoo on 7th September 1936, his death marked the death of an entire family of unique marsupials, the Thylacinidae, a family that had existed for over 25 million years prior to the systematic extermination of the thylacine by humans.
  
  However, not all Australian animals are doing badly from the arrival of Europeans. In their photo essay, Bird-Atmosphere Worlds point out that sometimes, nature adapts to humans, coexisting or even thriving, doing better than before. For Australian fauna, this is the case for three species of kangaroo: the Red Kangaroo (Macropus rufus), the Eastern Grey (M. giganteus), and the Western Grey (M. fuliginosus). For these roos, the primary population control has always been access to water. All across rural Australia, particularly in semi-arid areas, farmers have been putting in water for livestock, and as a result kangaroo populations have boomed. In fact, the Eastern Grey Kangaroo, which requires more water than the Red, has been expanding its range westward so that it now overlaps with the Red Kangaroo.
  
  
  A lot of Australia is suffering, but nature is resilient, and some species have not only adjusted to human interference, but are now thriving because of it.
  
  Dawson, Terrence J., Kirsten J. McTavish, Adam J. Munn, and Joanne Holloway. “Water use and the thermoregulatory behaviour of kangaroos in arid regions: insights into the colonosiation of arid rangelands in Australia by the Eastern Grey Kangaroo (Macropus giganteus).” Journal of Comparative Physiology. B, Biochemical, Systemic, and Environmental Physiology 176 (1) (January 2006): 45-53. doi: 10.1007/s00360-005-0030-2.
  Tourism Australia. Australia's Animals. Website. Available at: ​https://www.australia.com/en-ie/facts/australias-animals.html.