This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

With an estimated 70% of Australian organisms still undocumented and funding for species discovery declining, the national science academy will head to parliament on Friday to argue that a rapid reversal is needed to avoid extinctions and reveal unimagined health and biosecurity solutions.

The Australian Academy of Science and its New Zealand counterpart, the Royal Society Te Apārangi, are launching a 10-year plan to study and name unknown species, warning that a sound understanding of biodiversity is critical in the face of a global extinction crisis.

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It comes as an unrelated study suggests 10 Australian bird and seven mammal species are likely to go extinct in the next 20 years unless management practices change.

Peer-reviewed studies estimate that Australia is home to more than 600,000 species, only about 30% of which have been identified. The island continent is rated one of 17 “megadiverse” countries that together are home to more than two-thirds of terrestrial biodiversity on less than 10% of the Earth’s land. Australia is the sole developed country on the list.

The plant taxonomist Dr Kevin Thiele, head of the academy’s expert working group on taxonomy and biosystematics, said at the current pace of discovery it would take about 400 years to document every Australian species. Many would go extinct in that time.

Thiele said a doubling of the existing $43m in annual state and federal funding would allow scientists to take advantage of a technological revolution under way in genomics, machine learning and 3D imaging.

“With careful planning and adequate capacity building … we could completely document our biodiversity in a generation,” he said. “The ramifications if we don’t are that many species will go extinct without ever being known.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A diver views a coral colony on the Great Barrier Reef – there are 3,000 marine sponges not documented, which could be a source of new antibiotics. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

“There will be many cases in the future where biodiversity risks and hazards will emerge and we’ll be behind the eight-ball if we don’t understand them. There’s no doubt we will also miss out on enormous benefits if we don’t act.”

The academy gives two examples where rapid discovery would have clear benefits: marine sponges and mosquitoes.

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Sponges are often rich in compounds that form the basis for new antibiotics but it is estimated there are 3,000 known but not documented and more not yet discovered. Mosquitoes are responsible for more human deaths than any other animal, yet Australia is estimated to have 200 species that have not been named or studied to identify diseases they may carry.

“It’s really important to be able to manage these risks,” Thiele said. “Without a taxonomic framework we simply can’t do that.”

Meanwhile, a study by Threatened Species Recovery Hub – a partnership of 10 universities and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy – published in the journal Pacific Conservation Biology found that 10 Australian birds had no better than a 50-50 chance of surviving the next two decades.

They included the orange-bellied parrot, the western ground parrot, the plains-wanderer, the regent honeyeater and the herald petrel. The most at-risk bird was the tiny King Island brown thornbill, which was rated as having little more than a 5% chance of survival under its current level of care.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Christmas Island flying fox, one of Australia’s most at-risk mammals. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Mammals at risk included the central rock rat, the northern hopping mouse, the Carpentarian rock rat, the Christmas Island flying fox and the black-footed tree rat.

The research coordinator Hayley Geyle, from Charles Darwin University, said avoiding extinctions would require targeted action for each species, with governments, non-government organisations and the private sector working together.

“Most at-risk birds are on islands or in the more intensely developed parts of southern Australia,” Geyle said. “The mammals at risk are spread widely but many occur in northern Australia, an area currently witnessing a rapid and severe decline in mammals generally.”

Australia has already lost 50 animal and 60 plants in the past two centuries.

The Australian Academy of Science push is endorsed by the naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough. In a foreword to the plan, he says investment in taxonomy and biosystematics – the disciplines that provide the framework for the understanding of life – is falling across the globe.

“At the very time that many species are under greatest threat, funding and other resources allocated to the task of discovering, naming and documenting nature are declining,” he writes. “Our taxonomic capacity is not adequate for the magnitude of the task. This has serious consequences for the future of life on Earth.”

Thiele said vertebrate animals and flowering plants were reasonably well understood but documentation of many other groups – including insects, bacteria, roundworms and many types of marine organisms – was poor.