Cautiously hopeful

The new Minister for the Environment releases the latest Australian State of the Environment report. It’s a melancholy story. Australia’s environment is poor and has deteriorated over the past five years due to pressures of climate change, habitat loss, invasive species, pollution and mining. Australia has lost more mammal species than any other continent. We have more foreign plant species than native ones. Koalas are now listed as endangered in NSW and Queensland. There is much, much more and the report has rightly been described as ‘shocking’.
And yet somehow there was a hopeful tone to this event. Maybe a new Government will bring new energy and a new vision of how things can be different. We are cautiously hopeful.