Book Review: After the Future: Australia’s New Extinction Crisis

Tim Flannery’s The Future Eaters remains one of my favourite non-fiction books. It is famous for its controversial hypothesis that the arrival in Australia of the ancestors of current Indigenous Australians had been instrumental in the extinction of Australia’s megafauna.

The book, however, provides much more than a single creative hypothesis. It is a study in comparative ecology between Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Noumea and New Zealand. In particular, the book brings the science of ecology to bear upon the way in which Indigenous and colonists’ relations developed in post-colonial times. It explains how Indigenous lifestyles and culture were influenced by the ecology of the locations in which they existed for long periods of time.

The Future Eaters also seeks to indicate how the different colonial experiences of the respective Indigenous Peoples may also be explained by the way in which the ecology supports or hinders colonial industry and agriculture.

It is not surprising that Flannery has become an advocate for effective action to combat human induced climate change. Climate change is the ultimate example of ecology having the last say on human lifestyles.

After the Future revisits aspects of The Future Eaters. In particular, Flannery identifies research since the publication of The Future Eaters that strengthens his hypothesis linking the arrival of humans in Australia and the demise of the large mammals.

After the Future, however, is concerned with the immediate threat of extinctions. A small bat, the pipistrelle, endemic to Christmas Island, became extinct in 2009. This is the first of a threatened new wave of extinctions that may break over Australia’s mammals in the coming decades if not years.

Flannery is critical of a number of aspects of politics and public administration in the Australian polity. After the Future describes an hysterical anti-conservation reflex among the recently elected series of conservative state and territory governments. Flannery also describes a failure among environment departments to devote resources to developing and implementing recovery plans for species whose continued existence is in danger.

The failure of public administration of endangered species and ecosystems, more generally, is shown by the decline of small mammals in the 13 years up to 2008 in the well-resourced Kakadu National Park. The surveys reveal that the abundance of small mammals declined by 75% and a third of the species had disappeared from the Park.

After the Future stresses the importance of scientific research for effective species and ecosystem management. Flannery laments the way in which scientific expertise has been lost from Australia’s museums and environment departments.

In contrast, After the Future discusses the success of private NGOs in both researching the causes of species decline and species success and in successfully applying that knowledge to management of the ecosystems on that land.

After the Future is a persuasive argument for Australia to dramatically change its approach to management of endangered species to avoid suffering another wave of extinctions in the near future. It is also a plea for Australia to provide leadership on the same subject in our region.

After the Future continues two important traditions: Flannery’s important contribution to debate on the environment and the Quarterly Essay’s ongoing publication of seminal essays across a broad spectrum of public affairs.

Stephen Keim

13 January 2013