Is eating farmed salmon worth snuffing out 40m years of Tasmanian evolution? | Tim Flannery

Australia is justly famous as a place where ancient species, long extinct elsewhere, live on. After aeons of adversity, Australia’s living fossils often survive only in protected habitats: the Wollemi, Huon and King Billy pines, the Queensland lungfish and even the Tasmanian devil (which thrived on the mainland at the same time as the Egyptians were building the pyramids) are good examples. Such species are a source of wonder for anyone interested in the living world and they should serve as a source of hope that, given half a chance, even ancient, slow-changing species can survive periods of dramatic climate

Read Full Article