Find the rare and special animals that share your lockdown bubble

Protecting remote habitats is critical to protecting biodiversity and rare species like the swift parrot. However, ecologists are increasingly recognizing the importance of green urban areas in Australia’s major cities for endangered species.

According to a recent report from the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), a quarter of Australia’s threatened plants and 45 percent of threatened animals are in cities, including Melbourne.

But these numbers keep dwindling. During the 17 years of application of the National Environmental and Biodiversity Act, National Laws to Protect the Australian Environment, at least 20,200 hectares of habitat for these species in urban areas were destroyed.

“Melburnians love the great outdoors, but few would realize they share their city with such remarkable and endangered animals,” says ACF activist Jess Abrahams.

The law to protect the environment and biodiversity is currently under review, and this is an opportunity for the federal government to “seriously raise its ambitions” and protect urban living space, he says.

There are a surprising number of threatened species in Inner Melbourne: there are eleven species in the city of Melbourne and nine in Port Phillip, partly due to the remaining coastal habitats.

Only the white-throated needletail is known to exist in all of Melbourne’s 31 counties, but the swift parrot, snarling common frog, Australasian bittern and regent honeyeater have been found in a variety of suburbs.

Melbourne’s inner east is home to a gray-headed fruit bat colony in Yarra Bend Park, and while the little penguins at St. Kilda Pier are not an endangered species as such, they are a protected marine species under national law.

The critically endangered Australasian bittern and other endangered birds can be seen around Edithvale and the Seaford Wetlands and the Cheetham Wetlands in Point Cook.

Only about 1000 pairs of faster parrots live in the wild due to the huge loss of habitat, and it was a bittersweet feeling to see them in the park every day, says Livingstone.

“There are moments of real excitement in birdwatching when something shows up in Melbourne that is not normally here,” he says. “But if you stop and wonder if it’s a brutal drought or a fire. There’s a real mix of joy and fear about where it’s going. ”

Dr. Rohan Clarke, an ecology professor at Monash University, spotted three different Phascogales – small carnivorous Australian marsupials – a Victorian endangered species near the Yarra River during his twilight walks in North Eltham.

He’s lucky: he can easily see more than a dozen species of native mammals, as well as a number of bats, within a five-kilometer radius.

Clarke hopes that seeing animals – rarely or otherwise – in urban green havens will encourage people to feel connected to their natural surroundings. And he also believes that they will be moved to better protect this environment.