About

About Threatened Australians (threatened.org.au)

Threatened Australians is a collaboration between conservation scientists from University of Queensland Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science (CBCS), interaction design academics from Queensland University of Technology Design Lab and web developers from Wando Labs.

It was born out of a recognition that Australian species are in a disastrous state and without better support, they will continue to decline. Australians and their elected representatives can provide that support by talking about it. If we talk about it, we can start to encourage those in power to do what they can to provide the necessary solutions.

We felt the lack of a conversation around the Australian threatened species crisis was, in part, due to a lack of basic information at the fingertips of all Australians. This project is an attempt at providing an accessible and engaging resource that helps to communicate the ongoing crisis.

How many people know about which species are endangered in their backyards? And why are they endangered? And if locals don’t know these facts, how can they possibly alert elected representatives when issues which affect the future of these species arise?

This project is guided by two overarching principles:

1. Education. If people are aware of the size of the challenge and can articulate that which matters most to them, meaningful change is more likely to occur. The conservation community has developed impressive data about threatened species in Australia. Yet not enough people know about this important work. Through interaction design these data can become meaningful for all Australians.
2. Communication. There are many Australians who are concerned with the state of the environment. It should be easy for constituents to communicate with local elected representatives and what they expect from them. Threatened Australians aims to facilitate the constituency’s ability to communicate with their elected officials to help create solutions and protect these important non-human members of our society.

Why is the project called Threatened Australians?

Calling the project Threatened Australians is a way of encouraging people to notice the way that the word “Australians” gets used in everyday language and to bring attention to the non-human species that surround us. It’s also a reference to the fact that these species are threatened, that they are a part of our country, and that without “Australians” acting to save them, many will become extinct. And when a species goes extinct, part of our natural legacy disappears forever.

Project information

Project team:

• Gareth Kindler
• Dr Nick Kelly
• Professor James Watson
• Tim Carden

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Threatened Australians Research

This website is part of a research project that records user activity (clicks on different pages) for analytics purposes. Identifiable user information is not being recorded. By using this website, you are consenting to this data being used for research purposes.

The research is focused on improving how users engage with the platform by tweaking the design and may be used in future projects relating to threatened species engagement. You may withdraw from this research at any time by ceasing to use the platform.

The data collected from the usage of this website (which does not include any personal or identifiable information) will be shared with the public, users, and the scientific community to support transparent and open scientific research. We are in the process of implementing this feature.

Funding

Threatened Australians has been funded by UQ’s CBCS and Green Fire Science with additional support from the QUT Design Lab.

Contact

Fill in our feedback form or email us at contact@threatened.org.au 

Read the documents describing the methods used to create this project on GitHub

Data

The more ecologically-minded using the web app might have noticed some species being shown to occur within certain electorates that could be deemed unlikely to occur there now. We have used the only current federal data available as we wanted to utilise what is available to the public via the Australian government.

We note that in 2019 an independent review of the legislation responsible for the Species of National Environmental Significance Database found that the data was not the best available and thus impedes conservation efforts. We assume that more up to date data will be released to the public in the near future.

Data sources

• Species of National Environmental Significance
• Threats facing Species of National Environmental Significance
• They Vote For You
• Threatened Species Index
• Species Profile and Threat Database
• Atlas of Living Australia

Acknowledgements

We’d like to thank the workshop attendees, interlocutors, and organisations that selflessly gave their time and thoughts for this project and its principles.

• CBCS leadership team
• Dr Skye Doherty (UQ)
• BirdLife Australia and ACF
• Threatened Species Index team
• Elisa Bayraktarov and the EcoCommons team
• The Pluriversal, Ontological, and Media-Theory Informed (POMTI) Design  reading group
• The More-Than-Human Futures research group at QUT
• The BEATS

Get involved

The best way of getting involved is to follow the action steps on the profile page for each species. Find your local endangered species using the search form below.

You can also give us feedback via our feedback form.