Islands are havens for biodiversity, and many support ecosystems and species found nowhere else. But the same factors that make islands special – for example, their isolation, restricted area and resultant high levels of endemism – also lead to a greater risk of species going extinct.
Our work seeks to advance island conservation and biodiversity research across regions, and integrate local communities with their islands’ natural ecosystems.
Photo credit: Salit Kark
Saving species on islands
In recent years we have led a large national scale project to advance conservation of Australian islands and are advancing work at the global and Austral-Pacific scales. Between 2016–2021 Professor Kark led a project to develop the first national database of threatened species on Australian islands, examining spatial patterns and processes, as well as management strategies of invasive and threatened vertebrate species across Australia’s islands. This project brought together scientists, managers, experts and other stockholders to share their successes and experiences across regions and enhance island environmental conservation and trade offs.
Selected peer reviewed papers on islands:
Invasive species in Hong Kong
Samuel Ho, Yik‑Hei Sung, Salit Kark. 2025. Alien terrestrial vertebrates of Hong Kong: species richness, taxonomic composition and introduction pathways. Biological Invasions 27: 248. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-025-03687-1
Koalas on Australian Islands
Mitchell Eddie, William Ellis and Salit Kark. 2025. Koalas on Australian Islands. Biodiversity and Conservation 34: 3559–3587. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-025-03115-9
Amphibian and freshwater fishes on Australian islands
Samuel Ho, Simon Hart, Michael Hammer, Peter Baxter, Peter Unmack and Salit Kark. 2025. Diversity and distribution of amphibians and freshwater fishes on Australian islands. Diversity and Distributions 31: e70062. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.70062
Towards a national platform for Australia’s islands:
Salit Kark, Andrew Rogers and Dorian Moro. 2022. Towards a national platform for Australia’s islands. Pacific Conservation Biology 28: 362-371. https://doi.org/10.1071/PC21062
Access our database: Island occurrences of threatened Australian species (IOTAS)
Open access database: Kark Group database IOTAS Oct 2021 (hosted by The University of Queensland library)
Citation: Peter Baxter, Andrew Rogers and Salit Kark. 2021. Kark Group’s “Island Occurrences of Threatened Australian Species (IOTAS)” database, October 2021. The University of Queensland. Data Collection. https://doi.org/10.48610/0c62ecc
How-to-use-guide and worked examples: for detailed information on how to use the database, please read the database guide and watch the complementary database video
Explore more about our work on threatened species by visiting the Threatend Species Recovery Hub website, watching the video and reading the final project report or one of the fact sheets below.
Final report: Saving species on Australian islands
Project summaries:
- Actions for saving threatened species on priority islands
- Creation and analysis of a national database of threatened species on Australian islands
Summary factsheets:
- Using local stakeholder knowledge to inform best practice for invasive predator management
- Using population models for tackling invasive species: The case of the red fox in Australia
- Optimising feral animal control to benefit threatened species on South East Queensland islands
- Island invasions: Prioritising surveillance for cane toads on Kimberley islands
- Assessing the impacts of invasive species: Hollow-nesting birds in Tasmania
