Rare and endangered animals, along with their habitats, are being threatened by poachers and photographers when details of their locations are published online, scientists have said.

New research published in the journal Science warned that more than 20 newly-described species and their habitats had been targeted through open-access location data.

A fire salamander. ( Flickr: Erwin Gruber )

Lead author from the Australian National University David Lindenmayer said some animals had been killed and others had been placed on the market as pets.

The targeted species include a legless lizard found in the ACT and the Chinese cave gecko from south-eastern China.

Professor Lindenmayer has urged other researchers and industry publications worldwide to withhold or mask location details.

"Wildlife poachers are able to access online reports and publications at a click of a button. In the past it could only be accessed through hard copies and library basements," he said.

"In some cases, as soon as some animals are described, they can be poached to extinction in the wild.

"This is an issue that is going to emerge even more with online open-access data.

"It is obvious that we need to do more work to make sure that the locations of these animals [are] not easily accessible to the wrong kinds of people."

Wildlife snappers part of the problem

But Professor Lindenmayer said it was not just wildlife poachers causing the problem - nature photographers often caused devastating damage to the animals' habitats.

"Often when people want to take photographs of animals they severely disturb their behaviour or they smash up their habitat, or both," he said.

"Often it can mean that these animals are so badly disturbed that essentially they either die or the habitats are uninhabitable.

"That is almost as bad as poaching."

Pink-tailed worm lizards are threatened species present in the ACT, NSW and Victoria. ( Supplied: ANU/Daniel Florance )

According to Professor Lindenmayer, people in Australia were trespassing on private property days after research was published online on the pink tail worm lizard.

"It didn't take long before we started getting phone calls from land owners saying they had people digging up the rocky areas where they live," he said.

The research urges the scientific community to self-censor, recognising the damage publicly available information could do.

"This is only going to get worse unless governments and other bodies take action to make sure that rare and threatened species are better protected in terms of their location data," Professor Lindenmayer said.

"This is in the hands of the editors of these journals, and in the hands of the people that are scientists who publish this information."