ACT Greens MLA Rebecca Vassarotti is the Minister for the Environment, Parks and Land Management.

We love living in a bush capital. We love the creatures we get to share our city with. World Wildlife Day is a chance for us to celebrate our native wildlife and thank our environmental volunteers who work to protect their habitat and look after them.

We encourage the community to explore our environment in local nature reserves, and see what wildlife you can find and admire. I’ve been really happy to support community-based activities like the community Gala(h) Ball that ACT Wildlife hosted on Friday night. I encourage the community to get out there, and get involved in their local environment group.

Wildlife is under threat like never before from the impacts of habitat degradation and loss, climate change, pollution, and severe weather events. Canberrans can help to protect the ACT’s wildlife by:

• Using only animal friendly netting.
• Minimising the use of insecticides.
• Disposing of rubbish properly.
• When driving, keeping watch for kangaroos at dawn and dusk.
• Submitting species records to the NatureMapr website, which helps us to keep track of key species including those that are threatened or invasive.
• Visiting the ACT’s parks and reserves with care.
• Following the rules when fishing.

There are 58 ACT native species and three ecological communities, as well as two key threatening processes, listed as threatened under the Nature Conservation Act 2014.

The ACT has eight species listed as critically endangered, 21 as endangered, 28 as Vulnerable, and one listed as regionally conservation dependent.

More species are likely to be added to this list later this year. We have seen an increase in listings in the past three years due to a rising threat of extinction of our native species nationally as well as recent changes to align listings with the Australian Government.

The ACT Government has committed to a variety of programs aimed to improve the conservation of our native wildlife.

We are supporting national efforts to conserve the koala by undertaking the ACT’s first comprehensive baseline monitoring project.

Monitoring will help to determine if we have any koala populations in the ACT and, if so, where they are, so we can better protect them.

The ACT Government is also examining the feasibility of transitioning the captive colony at Tidbinbilla to a larger breeding colony so in the future animals can be reintroduced into ACT woodlands.

There have also been some big achievements recently, such as the rediscovery of a population of critically endangered northern corroboree frogs in the high country of Namadgi Nature Reserve.