I’m about to escape for three blissful weeks of road tripping when I read a snippet of news that turns my holiday on its head. It’s the latest list of worldwide animal extinctions, and I’m appalled to discover that most of them are ours. Australia — for all our sanctuaries and collective sympathy — has one of the highest animal extinction rates in the world. One in every three mammal extinctions in the last 400 years has happened here. Ironic, isn’t it, given that mammals are so closely entwined with our collective Australian identity? Think koalas, echidnas and the platypus, Tasmanian devils and dunnarts, woylies and wombats: all of them distinctly Australian and all of them at risk.
This inescapable truth stalls my self-indulgent holiday plans, so I swap infinity pools for outback waterholes, scrawl a list of four enigmatic, endangered creatures and set out to explore the sanctuaries that protect them best. From the Atherton Tablelands to Idalia, hiking rainforest trails and off-roading through Central Queensland’s Mitchell grasslands, just one question plagues my mind: if wildlife encounters were made mutually beneficial, could an Aussie adventure holiday have the power to save a species?
Lumholtz’s tree-kangaroo
Mount Hypipamee National Park, Atherton Tablelands
If you crossed a bear with a kangaroo, the result might look something like the Lumholtz’s tree-kangaroo. Heavily muscled and residing almost entirely in the canopy, it () in 1882 when Indigenous guides led zoologist Carl Lumholtz onto the Cardwell Range, 185km south of Cairns. Today, the remnant forests that support them are fragmented and dwindling, and as few as 2000 mabi are estimated to remain.
