A Bat’s End: The Christmas Island Pipistrelle and Extinction in Australia - John Woinarski, CSIRO Publishing, 2018

Abstract

A Bat’s End is intended as ‘an obituary and an inquest’ (p 1) for the first known species to have become extinct in Australia since the introduction of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 Woinarski’s analysis reads like a whodunnit, exploring eight possible causes of the Pipistrelle’s extinction, including increased predation, extreme weather events, and exposure to new diseases, pollution and poison, but there is no single obvious explanation;rather, threats are ‘indirect, multiple, diffuse and subtle’ (p 139) Whether we think specifically of endangered bats, from loss of habitat;diseases such as white nose syndrome;climate change;and now COVID-19 related reprisals;or whether we think of extinctions of all creatures, and the unravelling of ecologies everywhere, A Bat’s End provides much material worth considering for the difficult journey ahead