Australia has lost more native mammal species than any other country in the past two centuries, and this record of loss looks likely to worsen over the next few decades. Small-to medium-sized mammals are declining in both distribution and density across large tracts of northern Australia's tropical savannas, including within protected areas. The most likely causes are a combination of changed fire patterns, the impacts of introduced herbivores and predation by feral cats. Here, in contrast to the prevailing trend across northern Australia, we report the recovery of native mammals in response to a large-scale (>40 000 ha) destocking experiment carried out at Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary in the central Kimberley, north-west Australia. Following the removal of introduced herbivores from 2004, the species richness and abundance of small native rodents and dasyurids increased significantly across all sampled habitats over the next 3 years.We discuss the implications of these results for guiding land management and applied research to help to reduce the impending risk of mammalian extinctions in northern Australia.

for providing expert advice during the post-workshop review stage. We thank the experts involved in the New Guinea assessment workshop, for their information on species with distributions spanning Torres

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Australia hosts approximately 10% of the world's reptile species, the largest number of any country. Despite this and evidence of widespread decline, the first comprehensive assessment of the conservation status of Australian terrestrial squamates (snakes and lizards) was undertaken only recently. Here we apply structured expert elicitation to the 60 species assessed to be in the highest IUCN threat categories to estimate their probability of extinction by 2040. We also assessed the probability of successful reintroduction for two Extinct in the Wild (EW) Christmas Island species with trial reintroductions underway. Collation and analysis of expert opinion indicated that six species are at high risk (.50%) of becoming extinct within the next 20 years, and up to 11 species could be lost within this timeframe unless management improves. The consensus among experts was that neither of the EW species were likely to persist outside of small fenced areas without a significant increase in resources for intense threat management. The 20 most imperilled species are all restricted in range, with three occurring only on islands. The others are endemic to a single state, with 55% occurring in Queensland. Invasive species (notably weeds and introduced predators) were the most prevalent threats, followed by agriculture, natural system modifications (primarily fire) and climate change. Increased resourcing and management intervention are urgently needed to avert the impending extinction of Australia's imperilled terrestrial reptiles.

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