Almost half of Australia untouched by humans

AUSTRALIA: More than 40 percent of Australia, an area the size of India, remains untouched by humans, making the country as critical to the world’s environment as the Amazon rainforests, a study said on Wednesday.

Australia has some of the last great wilderness, with three million square kilometres (1.1 million square miles) largely unchanged by industrial civilisation, a report for international conservation watchdogs the Pew Environment Group and Nature Conservancy said.

Australia was one of five great remaining wilderness zones, along with Antarctica, the Amazon, the Sahara Desert and Canada’s northern Boreal, the report said.

CANBERRA, Reuters