After the Future: Australia's New Extinction Crisis: Quarterly Essay 48

Australia is home to many animals and plants found nowhere else on earth, making Australians caretakers of a unique heritage in a land that tolerates few mistake.Yet, in After the Future, Tim Flannery shows that this country is now on the brink of a new wave of extinctions, which threatens to leave our national parks as 'marsupial ghost towns.' Why are species becoming extinct despite the tens of millions of dollars being spent to protect nature? And what more should be done?In this passionate and illuminating essay, Flannery tells the story of the human impact on the continent. He revisits his Future Eaters hypothesis, discussing how firestick farming helped to shape the ecology and preserve native fauna. He looks at the way recent governments, in tandem with an indifferent populace and a rabid libertarian right, have let environmental knowledge and commitments erode. Finally, he describes new approaches to wildlife conservation and argues that Australia must take to lead on these. This is an essay that rings the alarm on behalf of the natural world, and asks us to think again about protection of its irreplaceable riches.'Such is the depth of public ignorance about Australia's extinction crisis that most people are unaware that it is occurring, while those who do know of it commonly believe that our national parks and reserves are safe places for threatened species. In fact the second extinction wave is now in full swing, and its' emptying our national parks and wildlife reserves as ruthlessly as other landscapes.' Tim Flannery, After the FutureQuarterly Essay presents significant contribution to the general debate. Each issue contains a single essay written at a length of about 25,000 words. It aims to present the widest range of political, intellectual and cultural opinion

Tim Flannery has published numerous scientific papers and over a dozen books, including The Eternal Frontier, The Future Eaters, The Weather Makers, An Explorer's Notebook and Now or Never- A Sustainable Future for Australia? A former director of the South Australia Museum, he now chairs the Copenhagen Climate Council and has made contributions of international significance to the fields of palaeontology, mammalogy and conservation. He was Australian of the year in 2007.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.