The Vanishing Wild (Australian wildlife and the fight against extinction)

‘ I’ m listening for a ghost. Bright green and yellow, with a tail striped like a bumble-bee, it crouches in wait as the sun sinks below the escarpment...’ Australia is a country celebrated for its wildlife, yet native species are in crisis. In the last 200 years, Australia has lost more biodiversity than any other developed nation. In this book, award-winning science writer Justine E. Hausheer encounters pygmy possums that live high in the Snowy Mountains, hears the booming calls of bitterns from their adopted home in the Riverina’ s rice fields, crouches after dark in the spinifex grasslands listening for the elusive night parrot and meets adorable fat-tailed dunnarts who might hold the answers to reviving the Tasmanian tiger. The Vanishing Wild immerses us in the harsh reality of the extinction crisis – and shows us the future of conservation and what can be done to save Australia’ s native species.