Tragedy. You have made wild accusations over my claims and I regret that you have misused my information by re-arranging my statement and asking: "Which parts of Australia have become extinct" when I'm sure posters would realise that I was referring to Australia's currently threatened and numerous extinct eco systems.

In addition it is also unfortunate that you failed to perform any research prior to your attack. This would have prevented you from having egg all over your face:

"At a national level, Western Australia has 8 of 12 Australian biodiversity hotspots.

"At a global level, the South West is recognised as one of the world's 34 biodiversity hotspots.

"Throughout the southwest of Western Australia, 44 percent of all jarrah forest has been cleared, while nearly 90 percent of all eucalyptus woodlands has been cleared (Mittermeier et al. 1999).

"Logging, agriculture, and mining are all forms of land use in this ecoregion.

"WA currently has 362 threatened plants, 199 threatened animals and 69 threatened ecological communities.

"Recovery plans have been developed for less than one-third of threatened species and ecological communities.

"There is ongoing loss and degradation of biodiversity in WA.

"Knowledge about many species and ecosystems and some threats to biodiversity remains inadequate.

"Fifty percent of all mammalian extinctions of the last 200 years occurred in Australia (Short and Smith 1994), and a large portion of these extinctions were concentrated in Western Australia.

"This ecoregion and the well-watered ecoregions along the coast have a better mammalian fauna than the more arid regions, including the wheatbelt, which is marked with a number of extinctions (Burbidge and McKenzie 1989).

"Threats include introduced weeds (especially grasses, Iridaceae, Asteraceae, Fabaceae, and Brassicaceae), grazing by introduced and domestic animals and dieback (or root rot) caused by Phytophthora spp.

"Phytophora cinnamomi is well established in the wetter regions in southwest Western Australia and has caused the collapse of entire ecological communities (Coates and Atkins 2001).

Tragedy. I must ask you again why you pass such harsh judgment on the eminently qualified experts in this field when your own claims/denials are either fraudulent or very naive?

Listen here Dickie, if you want to claim that I am either fraudulant or naive then YOU had better get your facts right.

I quoted your post and let me repeat what you wrote "Parts of Australia along with several of its eco systems are now threatened or have become extinct."

Now you can squirm all you like but you wrote it. You are claiming parts of Australia AND some of its ecosystems are threatened or extinct. Now all I wanted was for you to tell me which parts of Australia had become extinct (your words). I am not interested in your diatribe about ecosystems.

However, while on ecosystems, your selective quoting on mammalian extinctions exposes your niaivity and dare I say it - your fraudulent claims. (cont'd)

Cont'd

Of the 18 species that have become extinct since European settlement, only one lived in a forested environment (the Thylacine). The others occurred in the drier inland regions of the southern half of Australia. When you quote most of them are from WA this is incorrect as the extinctions had the following characteristics:

1). they affected mainly medium-sized species from dry habitats in the southern parts of mainland Aust (as mrentioned above);

2). they were spread over a long interval of time, and they spread in waves from south to north and from east to west over the continent, affecting smaller species first and larger species later; and

3). within regions the process unfolded very quickly as populations of many species collapsed within short periods of time (Johnson, 2006)

Burbidge & McKenzie (1989) paper only focused on WA declines and, whilst a good paper and still relevant in parts, some of its arguments have been discredited over the last 18 years.

You were being fraudulent in your quote from Short & Smith 1994). The last sentence on p288 and start of p289 says, & I quote "...two areas most affected are the southern arid zone (areas of spinifex desert as well as areas of extensive pastoralism) and the wheatbelt of Western Australia"
cont'd

The problem with the debate on mammal extinctions in Aust, is that the ancient and recent extinctions have been treated as completely separate and independent problems. To understand the high rate of extinction and endangerment of Australian mammals in recent history we must begin by looking back at the events of the late Pleistocene and Holocene. This, I concede, was very well covered by Tim Flannery in Future Eaters.

So Dickie and Bronwyn I don't have a beef about Flannery's science, I have a beef about his modus operandi.