East coast Australia, the new Amazon
Australia’s east coast has been compared to the Amazon as a “deforestation front”.
WWF’s The Living Planet report, produced every second year for the past 20 years, says global populations of vertebrate species have declined 60% since 1970. But koala numbers have disappeared at a much faster rate – more than 20% a decade – to the extent they could disappear from the wild in New SouthWales by 2050.
The report assessed 11 deforestation hotspots, where broadscale clearing had occurred at problematic levels since 2010, and where deforestation was expected to continue in the next decade. Eastern Australia was the only location in the developed world to make the list. Read more in the Guardian article here.