Publications

20 Tips to Help Save Our Threatened Species

• Join a community group and offer to do voluntary work.
• Give your local Threatened Species Network office a call and find out what activities are happening in your area. They may need help with field and office work.
• Participate in local clean-up, tree planting and weed control activities.
• Find out what threatened species live in your area what they look like, what they eat, where they live.
• Plant some native trees in your garden to provide food and shelter for birds.
• Replace your water thirsty lawn with some native grasses.
• Build nest boxes in areas that only have young trees.
• At Easter, eat chocolate bilbies, not bunnies.
• Learn how to care for abandoned or injured wildlife by contacting the RSPCA (they can give you contacts for your local wildlife rescue service).
• Build a frog pond in your back yard.
• Desex your cat, put a bell on its collar and keep it indoors at night.
• Cut up the plastic collars on your milk and soft drink bottles before throwing them out.
• Report any sightings of unusual animals or plants or feral pests and weeds to your local Parks and Wildlife Service.
• Throw back fish that are too small when you are fishing. Be careful not to lose your nets, lines, hooks and sinkers in the water. These entangle or choke many animals such as whales, fish, birds, platypus and water rats.
• Take some binoculars with you when you go bushwalking and keep notes of the different plants and animals you see.
• Take pictures, not souvenirs.
• Support industries that support the environment.
• Extinguish your camp fires and cigarette butts when you are in the bush.
• Drive slowly at dawn and dusk, and where trees grow near the road. Many native animals get killed on the roadsides at these times.
• Take your own bag shopping. Plastics can choke whales, seals and seabirds if they get into the ocean.

For general information about threatened species and threatened ecological communities contact the Department of the Environment and Heritage's Community Information Unit on 1800 803 772 or email ciu@environment.gov.au