A federal plan to protect threatened species has neglected almost all of central Australia and will not stop extinctions, wildlife advocates say.
The 10-year Threatened Species Action Plan was released last month, highlighting 20 important natural places and 110 national species of concern to be prioritised for protection.
Sheena Gillman from Birdlife Australia and Protect the Bush Alliance said the decision to overlook the Lake Eyre Basin in the plan could spell disaster for the world's largest remaining desert river system and its wildlife.
"Western Queensland is out of view, it's out of sight," she said.
"Small communities — they don't get the advocacy."
Australia has more than 1,700 plant and animal species listed as threatened and at risk of extinction.
About 95 of those are known to be located in central Australian regions — 19 of which are on the priority protection list.
Ms Gillman says more needs to be done to protect critically endangered species like the plains wanderer, which lives in the arid grasslands of South West Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria.
With between 250 and 1,000 left, Ms Gillman says it is considered at risk of imminent extinction.
"Given it is destined to be extinct within 20 years we should aim to do no further harm," she said.
Environmental lawyer and conservationist Robert Fowler was surprised to see most of the plan's priority places were in coastal areas.
As a member of the Lake Eyre Basin Community Advisory Committee, Mr Fowler informs the federal government on the conservation communities' interests in the management of the basin.
"Within the Lake Eyre Basin, there hasn't been the same evidence of that level of threat to species and places as has presented in other parts of Australia," Mr Fowler said.
"It underlines the importance of the framework for monitoring environmental conditions in the Lake Eyre Basin."
An explosion of life in Queensland's Channel Country after the best rainfall in a decade is attracting tourists from across the globe wanting to see the wildflowers and flocks of birds.
Birdlife Australia has identified 33 wetlands that are key biodiversity areas in Queensland's Channel Country.
"At the moment there will be millions of birds breeding out in the west," Ms Gillman said.
"They don't just provide for birds, they provide for other species, significant plants and animals that occur in these landscapes that occur nowhere else on Earth."
Ms Gillman said Lake Eyre and the Channel Country were critically important areas for iconic bush birds such as kookaburras and pelicans, which were not listed as threatened species but were in decline.
Central Australia's only priority area
Through the Northern Territory's Central Land Council, traditional owners co-manage the MacDonnell Ranges National Park, which is the only priority area in central Australia listed in the federal plan.
Eastern Arrente man and land council chief executive Les Turner said rangers were poorly funded and unable to adequately manage the millions of hectares they were responsible for.
"The plan doesn't cover the vast surrounding deserts where traditional owners and rangers are working hard to protect the bilby and the great desert skink, night parrot and other threatened species and they're doing it all on the smell of an oily rag," Mr Turner said.
"We welcome the plan's focus on Aboriginal rangers and Aboriginal knowledge but the funding is nowhere near enough to stop further extinction.
"Expert advice that we've got [says it] would cost around $1.7 billion a year."
The federal Department of Environment said the plains wanderer, bilby, great desert skink and night parrot were all listed among the 110 priority species in the action plan and the focus of efforts would benefit not just those species, but other species that shared the same habitat.
A department spokesperson told the ABC priority places were chosen where support could recover multiple species.
"Independent scientists applied six prioritisation principles to identify the action plan's priority species and places: Risk of extinction; multiple benefits; feasibility and effectiveness; importance to people; uniqueness; and representativeness," the spokesperson said.
Plan omits major threats
The federal plan identified five threats to species — climate change, feral cats and foxes, gamba grass and the introduction of exotic, invasive species.
But Mr Turner said the biggest threat to some of Australia's most iconic species found in the arid landscapes of the NT was buffel grass.
"For older people who remember their country before the infestation [of buffel grass], it's a heartbreaking sight," Mr Turner said.
Pila Nguru Aboriginal Corporation rangers in Western Australia manage Australia's third-largest Indigenous protected area and have also been calling for recognition of the threat of buffel grass.
"The biggest threats here are cats, fire regimes [and] buffel grass — which is a contentious one because it's still used as a pastoral grass," acting general manager Adam Pennington said.
He says, along with fire, buffel grass is the biggest threat to the desert's biodiversity, followed by camels.
"It can take over ecosystems, change things to suit itself and very quickly you have a monoculture and biodiversity disappears," Mr Pennington said.
Introduced to Australia in the 1870s, the weed became prevalent when it was used widely for agricultural use in the 1950s.
Buffel grass has been declared a weed and prohibited from sale in South Australia.
In a statement to the ABC, a spokesperson for the federal department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry said it was working towards a new national framework for Weeds of National Significance.
Ms Gillman said action was also needed to protect threatened species from logging and mining.
Recent research revealed 831 gas wells exist on the flood plains of the Lake Eyre basin, with more approvals looming in Queensland's Channel Country.
"Unless the government really works [to] halt the logging of native forests [and] the further degradation of country for coal mines or gas wells, we're not going to be better off," Ms Gillman said.
The ABC asked the federal government why threats such as mining and buffel grass were not listed for action in the plan, but did not receive a response.
"There's no point having a name to prevent extinctions if we carry on doing business as usual because that's why we have an extinction problem," Ms Gillman said.
