Feral deer are capable of increasing 35 to 50 percent each year in population. Peter Jacobs tells us “there is no short-term fix to mitigate deer impacts now that the population has been allowed to grow to over a million animals spread across the state.” But Victorians can still prevent the further spread of destructive invasive deer species to the rest of the Australian continent.

The unassuming frontage along Blackburn Road in Clayton, Victoria, masks a hidden gem of Australian research infrastructure. Long gone is 1957’s iconic Clayton Metro Twin drive-in theatre. Today, the twin projectors have been replaced with a state-of-the-art light source a million times brighter than the Sun; a particle accelerator the size of a football field, the Australian Synchrotron.

Backyard beekeeping has become quite popular, supporting food production and promoting pro-environmental behaviour, meaning people are more likely to take care of the broader environment. But European honeybees can pose risks to wild pollinators in our cities. They are not a replacement for wild, native bees, which are essential for maintaining biodiversity in Australia’s urban ecosystems.

De-extinction is not simply about putting a carbon-copy of an 1800’s thylacine back into the Tasmanian ecosystem. The thylacine co-evolved within that ecosystem over many thousands of years, and its role remains intact. Returning the native apex predator to that environment has the potential to stabilise it, and even save other endangered marsupials.