'I’m listening for a ghost. Bright green and yellow, with a tail striped like a bumble-bee, it crouches in wait as the sun sinks below the escarpment. On dark, it will whistle out into the night before taking wing. For this ghost is a bird. A bird more myth than real, a legend lost in Australia’s vast arid interior. Lost, and then found again not far from where I sit on a rocky rise, staring south over a sea of spinifex. The night parrot ...'
 
Australia is a country celebrated for its wildlife: the weird, the wonderful and the deadly. And yet across the continent, native species are in crisis. Australia has lost more biodiversity than any other developed nation over the last 200 years. About four species have disappeared per decade, and more losses are inevitable. 
 
From night parrots to pygmy blue-tongues, this book takes readers behind the scenes to discover the stories of Australia's threatened fauna. Joining scientists in the field, each chapter focuses on a different species and the varied technological advances that scientists are using to study and protect them: dogs that sniff out koala scat, drones that drop moth biscuits, drugged toad sausages, and even cancer-thwarting vaccines. 
 
These stories are set in places as diverse as the cattle stations of Cape York, rice paddocks in the Riverina, and the suburban streams of Brisbane. Along the way, readers will get a sense of the myriad threats facing Australian wildlife, from feral predators to climate change, and a sense of what the future might bring for our native species. 
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Out in 2026 from NewSouth Publishing.