AUSTRALIA’S endangered species list has risen significantly in recent years.

With growing fire concerns – following last year’s Black Saturday bushfires – it is expected more and more species could be struck again.

While the death toll of humans in those bushfires were well documented, the toll of species weren’t known but only predicted in the hundreds of millions.

Authorities began evacuating endangered species from bushfire-ravaged parts of the state, as the extent of devastation to wildlife habitat becomes clear in March this year.

Early estimates of wildlife loss in the fires, which burnt through more than 400,000 hectares, including around 300,000 hectares of forest, put the number of animals killed in the hundreds of millions.

Many endangered species — including Victoria’s faunal and bird emblems — lived in some of the state’s worst-hit parts.

AUSTRALIA was also certain to lose a bat to extinction for the first time in 53 years, Environment Minister Peter Garrett said earlier this year.

Mr Garrett said the rare Christmas Island pipistrelle bat’s tiny population was a reason not to embark on a captive breeding program.

On a slightly positive note, there has been evidence that the more endangered animals a state or country has, the more tourists they get every year.

It’s called the Tourism of Doom.

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