Leaders Of The Pack

Conservation in Australia may have had a glamorous makeover — think state-of-the-art institutes and the blessing of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex — but at its engine lies a team of powerhouse female scientists intent on formulating a grand plan to halt our sixth mass extinction.

- Fiona Macdonald

By the time you’ve read this story, another species on our blue planet will blink out of existence — perhaps two, depending on how briskly you skim. Western black rhinoceros, Javan tigers, Baiji freshwater dolphins — species are now going extinct 1000 times faster than the natural rate.

There’s no prize for guessing who’s to blame. Since the rise of human civilisation, it’s estimated more than 83 per cent of wild mammals and 80 per cent of marine mammals have been wiped out. Habitat loss has always been the main culprit, but the threats are growing: climate change, pollution, poaching and, of course, our mountains of plastic straws. But it’s not just exotic animals that are at risk of disappearing. If we want future generations of Australians to grow up to the heady hum of cicadas, skinks darting across hot tiles, glimpses of sparkling dolphins — even eating fruit pollinated by bees — then we need to do something to stop the riptide of extinctions sweeping across the planet.

Luckily, there’s a plan. Veterinary pathologist Dr Karrie Rose, zoo and wildlife nutritionist Michelle Shaw, and wildlife researcher and pathology co-ordinator Dr Phoebe Meagher are three scientists at the forefront of Taronga Zoo’s new $30.7 million Taronga Institute of Science & Learning — the first conservation lab of its kind in the southern hemisphere.