There are species that I have had the privilege of working with that I'm not confident my grandchildren will ever see.
We've made a mess and we've got to do something about it.
Australia has suffered extinctions of about 10% of its native terrestrial mammal fauna in the 200 plus years
since European colonisation in 1788.
Somewhere between 30 and 40 species of Australian mammal have become extinct over that period,
far more than any other continent over that same period.
We've lost a whole lot of small wallabies,
macropods, potaroos.
The nullivore barred bandicoots.
The bilby.
Pukilas or New Holland mice.
And of course the more celebrated and recognised ones such as the thylacine,
the Tasmanian tiger.
What's fascinating is that extinctions in Australia are compared with other parts of the world.
It's that the extinctions have occurred primarily in these remote areas where there aren't lots of people.
It's not intensively settled,
so it's a different pattern of extinction to other parts of the world.
The drivers are different to other countries.
For example, in Australia,
most of the mammal extinctions are of what we call critical weight range species.