Environmental issues in Australia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Australia faces a number of environmental issues, including:

• soil erosion as a result of overgrazing, industrial development, and poor farming practices
• desertification; and limited natural freshwater sources due to aridity and very low runoff ratios (see Water distribution on earth).

• • It is estimated that since European settlement, 50 percent of Australia’s wetlands have been drained and put to other uses. Shrinking habitat due to increasing agriculture is a threat to the sustainability of a variety of native plant and animal species, and increased shipping and tourism threaten the Great Barrier Reef. Invasive non-native plant and animal species introduced onto the Australian continent in the past century have at times had a negative impact on the environment.

• Exacerbated by the country having the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world, climate change is increasingly becoming a major threat that could wipe out the most biologically diverse region of the continent (Southwestern Australia) as the arid belt rapidly moves southward.

[edit] See also

• Conservation in Australia
• The Greenhouse Mafia

[edit] References

• This article contains material from the Library of Congress Country Studies, which are United States government publications in the public domain.