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Insect Conservation in Australia

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Insect Conservation: Past, Present and Prospects

Abstract

Insect conservation is generally a ‘young discipline’ in Australia and interest has developed mainly since the 1970s. The slightly over 200 years of European settlement of Australia have been associated with massive alterations to natural environments, and rapid changes have enforced impressions of the contrast between modern anthropogenic environments and the more pristine ones that persist. They are associated also with Australia having an unenviably high record of vertebrate extinctions and substantial proportions of extant vertebrates threatened. There is little reason to doubt that invertebrates have also suffered significant losses, but these have not been documented in parallel detail. Extirpations of some butterflies, for example, have been reported intermittently since the late nineteenth century (Waterhouse 1897) but there is no historical record equivalent to the information available in the United Kingdom or United States.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, La Trobe University, Melbourne, 3086, Victoria, Australia

    Tim R. New

  2. Department of Primary Industry, Biosciences Research Division, 621 Burwood Highway, Knoxfield, VIC, 3156, Australia

    Alan L. Yen

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  1. Tim R. New
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  2. Alan L. Yen
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Correspondence to Tim R. New .

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  1. , Department of Zoology, La Trobe University, Plenty Road, Melbourne, 3086, Victoria, Australia

    Tim R. New

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New, T.R., Yen, A.L. (2012). Insect Conservation in Australia. In: New, T. (eds) Insect Conservation: Past, Present and Prospects. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2963-6_9

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