Side Event

A REPORT FROM THE AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT – 1) BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION AND PROTECTED AREA MANAGEMENT: AN AUSTRALIAN PERSPECTIVE, AND; 2) A NEW PARADIGM FOR THE PRESERVATION OF WILDLIFE GENETIC DIVERSITY

Organizer
Australia-Japan Wildlife Conservation and Education Foundation

Date and Time
22 October 2010 18:15 - 19:45

Meeting
Tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 10)

Presentations addressing the issue of biodiversity will be given from the macro and micro perspectives. 1. Australia currently conserves more than 13 per cent of the country through the protected area network. Threats to reserves, however, go beyond boundaries and influences are often landscape based. The major influences to slowing the loss of biodiversity appear to be systemic and often social in nature. For example, many conservation experts believe that to improve biodiversity outcomes we need to emphasise the responsibility of us as individuals in conservation fields to focus on our own motivations and actions. Importantly, we need to better communicate and actively promote the importance of biodiversity beyond our own circles of the conservation converted. 2. Against a backdrop of a 64% decrease in koala numbers in southeast Queensland over the last decade and rapid fragmentation of their habitat due to urbanisation, wild koalas in the region are now beginning to exhibit deformities due to inbreeding. An expert in marsupial reproduction will present a concept for the application of artificial insemination techniques to improve genetic diversity in wildlife in fragmented habitat, looking specifically at the case of koalas in southeast Queensland. Australia. The concept, however, has the potential to be applied to other areas of the world where urbanisation is creating the same kind of habitat fragmentation and pressures on wildlife.