The review, published in the journal Conservation Biology, highlights destruction and degradation of ecosystems as the main threat. In Australia, agriculture has altered or destroyed half of all woodland and forests. Around 70% of the remaining forest has been damaged by logging. Loss of habitats is behind 80% of threatened species, the report claims.

More than 2,500 invasive plant species have colonised Australia and New Zealand, competing for sunlight and nutrients. Many have been introduced by governments, horticulturists and hunters. In addition, the report says, average temperatures in Australia have increased, in line with climate change predictions, forcing some species towards Antarctica and others to higher, cooler ground.

Often described as the Earth’s lungs, only in reverse, the tropical rainforests, take in vast quantities of carbon dioxide (a poisonous gas which mammals exhale) and through the process of photosynthesis, converts it into clean, breathable air. In fact, the tropical rainforests are the single greatest terrestrial source of air that we breathe.

tropical rainforests cover just 2% of the Earth's land surface

they are home to two-thirds of all the living species on the planet.

Massive extinctions have occurred five times during the earth's history, the last one was the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. Scientists are calling what is occurring now, the sixth mass extinction. The loss of species is about losing the very web of life on Earth

Within the next 30 years as many as half of the species on the earth could die in one of the fastest mass extinctions in the planet's 4.5 billion years history.

There is also the loss of the genetic diversity within species, as well as the loss of diversity of different types of ecosystems ,which can contribute to or hasten whole species extinction.