Giant clams have rapidly been disappearing from the world’s oceans and Australia has one of the world’s most important strongholds for the species.
Although these long-lived stationary molluscs are comfortable sitting in tropical waters, there’s a roaring trade in their shells and flesh around Asia and the Pacific.
Studies into the giant clam’s decline have resulted in the species being listed as critically endangered — the most dire category before ‘extinct’ in the wild. The announcement was made by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as it updated its Red List of threatened species overnight.
Of 166,061 species assessed globally, 46,337 are threatened with extinction. This is up from 157,190 species assessed and, 44,016 threatened in December last year.
Populations of giant clams around New Caledonia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand are already believed to be extinct, and researchers are uncertain about its survival across a long list of countries including Cambodia, India, Kiribati, China, the Cocos Islands, Vietnam, Tuvalu and Japan.
While it appears to be secure and well-protected in Australia for now, local non-profit the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has warned climate change and pollution remain a threat to the giant clam’s existence.
“Like so many marine species, climate change knows no borders, and warming waters are a pressure for them on coral reefs,” its national nature campaigner Jess Abrahams told Yahoo News.
Another species added to the list as endangered is Australia’s heath mouse. It faces a multitude of threats including invasive predators, habitat destruction and fragmentation by farmers, and climate change.
“When does it stop?… Australia has this terrible record of mammal extinctions, and here’s yet another mammal that’s taken a step closer to it,” Abrahams said.
Another species in decline on the list is the curlew sandpiper, a small wading bird that migrates from Siberia and Alaska to Australia every year. Sadly, the shorefront habitat along its journey has been degraded, along with feeding grounds along the Murray-Darling Basin.
As new Australian species continue to be added to the Red List, the ACF has urged the federal government to bring forward the package of nature protection laws it promised before the federal election. They have been stalled in parliament and Labor has refused to work with the crossbench to further reform them.
“If this is not a wake-up call, that yet more Australian species have been added to the international list, what is?” Abrahams said. “It’s gobsmacking. If we can’t take action now, what will it take?”
But it’s not only government that ACF argues needs to act, but it also thinks the corporate sector has a role to play. “The drivers of that deforestation are businesses like the big supermarkets — particularly Coles — who won’t commit to deforestation-free beef, and the banks that are funding nature destruction,” Abrahams said.