Biodiversity fuels the planet': finding ways to avoid extinctions

The Coodardie station, 100 kilometres south of Darwin near a turn-off from the Stuart Highway, may not be the most likely place to find a cattle farm in sync with nature.

Moira Lanzarin and her mother, Clair O'Brien, surrounded
 by Brahman cattle on their Coodardie property.

But for the past 15 years, Moira Lanzarin and her parents Mike and Clair O'Brien have been raising Brahman cattle - her "very curious, beautiful beings" - in ways that foster rather than trample native plants and animals.

“The wildlife here, and the birds in general, is just really, really abundant - there is such energy and life everywhere," she says. "Biodiversity is what fuels the planet ... plants and livestock and nature all working together.”

The fragile state of nature - including the huge and growing demands placed on it by humans - was laid out this week with the release of an international report on the mounting threats to biodiversity.

Read the story from The Sydney Morning Herald by Peter Hannam - “‘Biodiversity fuels the planet': finding ways to avoid extinctions.”