The cost of recovering Australia's threatened species.

Accounting for the cost of repairing the degradation of Earth's biosphere is critical to guide conservation and sustainable development decisions. Yet the costs of repairing nature through the recovery of a continental suite of threatened species across their range have never been calculated. We estimated the cost of in situ recovery of nationally listed terrestrial and freshwater threatened species (n = 1,657) across the megadiverse continent of Australia by combining the spatially explicit costs of all strategies required to address species-specific threats.

Long-term livestock exclusion increases plant richness and reproductive capacity in arid woodlands.

Herbivore exclusion is implemented globally to recover ecosystems from grazing by introduced and native herbivores, but evidence for large-scale biodiversity benefits is inconsistent in arid ecosystems. We examined the effects of livestock exclusion on dryland plant richness and reproductive capacity. We collected data on plant species richness and seeding (reproductive capacity), rainfall, vegetation productivity and cover, soil strength and herbivore grazing intensity from 68 sites across 6500 km of arid Georgina gidgee (Acacia georginae) woodlands in central Australia between 2018 and 2020.

Fellowship of the Spring: An initiative to document and protect the world's oases.

An 'oasis' signifies a refugium of safety, recovery, relaxation, fertility, and productivity in an inhospitable desert, a sweet spot in a barren landscape where life-giving water spills forth from the Earth. Remarkable mythological congruencies exist across dryland cultures worldwide where oases or 'arid-land springs' occur. In many places they also provide specialised habitats for an extraordinary array of endemic organisms.

A national-scale dataset for threats impacting Australia's imperiled flora and fauna.

Australia is in the midst of an extinction crisis, having already lost 10% of terrestrial mammal fauna since European settlement and with hundreds of other species at high risk of extinction. The decline of the nation's biota is a result of an array of threatening processes; however, a comprehensive taxon-specific understanding of threats and their relative impacts remains undocumented nationally. Using expert consultation, we compile the first complete, validated, and consistent taxon-specific threat and impact dataset for all nationally listed threatened taxa in Australia.

Mechanisms behind persistence of a fire-sensitive alternative stable state system in the Gibson Desert, Western Australia.

Alternative vegetation types that switch from one to another under contrasting fire regimes are termed fire-mediated alternative stable states (FMASS). Typically, pyrophylic communities (i.e.

Rare plant species do not occupy water-remote refuges in arid environments subject to livestock grazing.

In many of the world's arid regions there has been a dramatic increase in grazing pressure with herds of livestock sustained by the provision of artificial water points. In these systems it has been suggested that grazing-sensitive plant species will have contracted to refuges distant from water points where grazing impacts are low. This association was tested using a large data set of presence/absence records for rare plant species throughout the northeastern Australian arid zone.