Australia’s lesser-known ecosystems are heading for collapse. Here’s what we stand to lose

A damning report has found several Australian ecosystems are so degraded, they are heading toward collapse if we do not intervene.

Of the 20 systems studied by a group of scientists, 19 showed evidence of collapse in some areas and required “urgent action” to prevent them from undergoing total collapse.

Ecosystem collapse is what happens when a system is so fundamentally altered that it completely reorders, often resulting in a less diverse group of plants and animals and interactions between them than before.

Among those identified in the report in Global Change Biology were some very well-known ecosystems — the Great Barrier Reef, the Murray-Darling Basin, Ningaloo Reef and Far North Queensland’s tropical rainforests.

But then there…