Solutions

The Australia fur Seal or Brown Fur Seal lives in the Bass Strait between Victoria and Tasmania and small patches off the coast of New South Wales and South Australia. On land, they live on rock slopes, ledges, pebble beaches, reefs and caves. There are two main threats to Australian Fur Seals, pollution and over fishing, although their number are still recovering from the severe poaching in the early 1900’s. The Seals food supply is slowly disappearing as per the effect of over fishing, they also often get caught up in fishnets, lines and ropes and mistake rubbish for food. Measures can be taken to prevent these seals from becoming any more endangered than they already are, one of those measures being to increase awareness. Sure, everybody knows that if you through your MacDonald’s rubbish out your car window, some poor animal will probably end up eating it or it will get flushed down a drain and into the sea but what the public don’t understand is while some animals, like crows, have adapted to eating trash, others haven’t.

To increase awareness I suggest visiting schools and businesses to try and get the word out, and if the funds can be raised, creating a billboard or TV ad. For a school you may want to arrange a meeting with the Principal or Head of Student Body and see if they will agree to letting you show their staff and students a presentation based on pollution and how they can impact it. For Businesses, you may consider talking to the Manager or Owner of the company and talk about how they could be more eco-friendly.

Another way to increase the Seals numbers is during the months of November and December restrict access to certain beaches. These months are breeding season and pups are also born, this process is essential to the species survival and cannot be interrupted. Obviously you can’t go and cut off access to every beach in the seals habitat but closing certain ones that match the needs and seem to be popular with the seals would increase the chances of them re-establishing their numbers. Talking to the local council and also creating a Wildlife Awareness group in the surrounding communities may help sway the public and council’s decision.

Overfishing isn’t just taking its toll on seals, many other animals are struggling. Ways to control overfishing is to bring down stricter laws on who can enter Australia’s waters and the number of fish allowed to be taken from one spot. This can be achieved by raising awareness and talking to politicians.

The Australian Masked owl tends to live in forests, woodlands, timbered waterways and open country near the previous areas, it searches for anywhere with suitable trees with hollows for nesting. In most cases this owl it sticks to within three hundred kilometres of the coast. The only real threat to these owls is habitat loss but their numbers are declining far too rapidly and many experts are worried.

To increase their numbers, you may want to focus on deforestation and in certain woodlands restrict any form of cutting down trees or any form of flora. This can happen if you talk to council and by coordinating with the workers and choosing choice areas to cut down.

Another way to help the owls is to plant trees in different areas that they already live in so their numbers will increase and they spread out as they are territorial and this is part of their problem.

Constructing a breeding program with zoos would also create awareness with the public and they should grow supportive and begin to help the owls, making homes in their backyards or using the community to help. This breeding program would also stretch across many zoos and the owls numbers should increase.