'A national disgrace': Australia's extinction crisis is unfolding in plain sight

More than 1,800 plant and animal species and ecological communities are at risk of extinction right now
" Interactive: Wombats, sharks, possums, frogs: Australia's animals at risk of extinction

Global warming wiped out the Bramble Cay melomys - the first mammalian extinction in the world to be caused by climate change - but a straightforward plan that could have rescued the little rodent was thwarted by red tape and political indifference.

"It could have been saved. That's the most important part," says John Woinarski, a professor of conservation biology who was on the threatened species scientific committee that approved a 2008 national recovery plan for the species, endemic to a tiny island in the Torres Strait.