Nearly half of Australia is largely untouched by Man, making it one of the biggest wildernesses in the world, ranking alongside the Amazon rainforest and Antarctica, a new study has found.
Three million square kilometres (1.1 million sq miles) — an area 12 times the size of mainland Britain — have been left pristine, according to the report for the Pew Environment Group and Nature Conservancy. Barry Traill, co-author of the study and director of the Wild Australia programme, said: “We were pleasantly surprised that there were still so many areas which came up in such good condition after 200 years of European settlement.”
The other two great remaining wilderness areas in the world are the Sahara and the northern Boreal forest in Canada.