Why Australia marks National Threatened Species Day on September 7

Yahoo News Australia spoke with Jess Abrahams from Australian Conservation Foundation to find out more. Video: Michael Dahlstrom

Video transcript

JESS ABRAHAMS: Today marks 86 years since the last known Tasmanian tiger or thylacine died tragically in the Hobart Zoo. It's a day that each year we commemorate the loss and the extinction really of Australia's threatened species. Of course, Australia has an unenviable record of causing the extinction of more mammals than any other nation, and still we have 2,000 threatened plants, and animals, and ecosystems on our national threatened species list.

The main drivers or the main pressures on Australia's threatened species is habitat destruction. It affects more species than any other driver. Invasive species, weeds, and feral animals probably has the most impact in terms of sending species to extinction. And third is climate change, and it's making-- it's aggravating. It's making it things worse.

So the cumulative impacts of these three pressures are really pushing our endangered and threatened species to the brink.