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What about biodiversity? Redefining urban sustainable management to incorporate endemic fauna with particular reference to Australia

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Abstract

An estimated 50 % of the world’s population live in urban areas and this is expected to rise to 70 % by 2050. Urban developments will thus continue to encroach on non-urban landscapes and native biodiversity (flora and fauna). Although much has been written on sustainable urban development, the biodiversity component has been largely ignored. Consequently, sustainable development of biodiversity is poorly understood within urban confines by planners and designers, community developers and social planners, activists and social movements, and even academics and consultants. When native flora and fauna are incorporated deliberately or ad hoc, for example due to landscaping fashions, the outcome may create on-going issues for authorities which could be minimised with sustainable management. For example, green urban infrastructure including parks and gardens, ‘backyards’, remnant bushland and even wastelands can be more effectively developed to sustainably support biodiversity, typically at reduced on-going cost. However, due to the lack of understanding of this aspect of sustainable development and on-going issues of ‘pest management’, the focus has been on only a small sub-set of the overall biodiversity. In addition, these changes in species’ dynamics often lead to the decline of local amenity for humans, and endemic species (e.g., small-bodied birds). Other taxa are typically neglected because they are cryptic, innocuous, dangerous, a nuisance, feral, or just not ‘sexy’.

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  1. Faculty of Society and Design, Bond University, Gold Coast, 4229, Australia

    Shelley Burgin

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  1. Shelley Burgin
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Correspondence to Shelley Burgin.

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Burgin, S. What about biodiversity? Redefining urban sustainable management to incorporate endemic fauna with particular reference to Australia. Urban Ecosyst 19, 669–678 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-015-0522-0

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