Twelve Australian animals have been newly listed as extinct, including the Christmas Island pipistrelle, desert bettong, Nullarbor barred bandicoot and the Capricorn rabbit-rat, raising the nation’s official share of the world’s extinct mammals over 20 months from 34 per cent to 38 per cent.b

All but one of the mammalian extinctions is historic, but the update to Australia’s official list of extinct and threatened species cements the nation’s reputation as an international hotspot for wildlife loss.

The extinctions listed under the Environment Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act, updated on Wednesday, World Wildlife Day, now records the names of 34 Australian mammals wiped from the earth.

If subspecies of mammal are included, the number of mammal extinctions increases from 28 to 39. According to a spokesman for Environment Minister Sussan Ley, 11 of the 12 species have not been sighted since 1950.

Wilderness Society environment law spokeswoman Suzanne Milthorpe said the official listing was a devastating reality check for environmental management.

“There’s not another country, rich or poor, that has anything like this record,” she said. “In signing these extinction certificates the Minister must surely be moved to drive change.”

The federal government has committed more than $535 million since 2014 to projects to preserve threatened species.

“The Australian government is working in partnership with governments and land managers to provide protection and conservation for threatened species and ecological communities and importantly the ecosystems on which they depend,” a spokesman for Ms Ley said.

Since colonisation, about 100 of Australia’s unique flora and fauna species have been wiped out, with more unrecorded and unknown losses of invertebrates to boot. The rate of loss, as significant as anywhere on Earth, has not slowed over the past 200 years.

Professor John Woinarski from Charles Darwin University, also the deputy director of the Commonwealth’s Threatened Species Recovery Hub, said Australia’s conservation spending was poor compared to other countries.

A scientific paper published in 2019 in Conservation Letters estimated that public investment for Australia’s 1700 threatened species, across state and federal governments, was about $122 million a year. By contrast, the US, with a similar list of 1662 threatened species, spent at least $2.1 billion a year from 2011 to 2016.

“It takes effort, time and money if we want to recover threatened species and prevent further extinctions,” Professor Woinarski said.

University of Sydney ecologist Professor Chris Dickman said extinctions didn’t just signal the loss of a species, but reduced the ongoing viability of their native ecosystems.

“Extinction is not recoverable. When you have increasing numbers of them entire ecosystems will fall over,” Professor Dickman said.

Labor environment spokeswoman Terri Butler accused the Morrison government of presiding over an “accelerating and disastrous extinction crisis” and failing to protect species like koalas.

“Australia is a global leader in mammal extinctions and instead of taking action this government is making things worse,” Ms Butler said.