Threatened Australian Animals
Communicating biodiversity risk clearly is difficult. Long legislative lists don’t help people understand scale or urgency.
This data visualisation project explores ways to translate the list of threatened fauna under the Australian federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) into visual formats that make patterns, groupings, and conservation status easier to see at a glance.
I imported the dataset into Excel for analysis, brainstormed visual concepts on paper, and then developed these in Adobe Illustrator to communicate the information more effectively.
I used a distinct colour for each of the six animal groups to allow quick visual identification:
Birds = yellow, Mammals = red, Other = orange, Reptiles = green, Fish = blue, and Frogs = teal.
To reduce complexity, I divided larger categories into sub-groups. For example, the 61 threatened reptiles were broken into turtles (13), geckos & lizards (16), skinks (23), and snakes (9). Similarly, the 66 species in “other” were grouped into categories such as moths & butterflies, snails, freshwater shellfish, Flying Bugs (10 threatened), Creepy-Crawlies (9 threatened)*, and Seastars (2 threatened)*.
*Some sub-groups are not yet depicted but are planned additions.
What to do next:
Review the design’s accessibility (colour use, colour contrast, text legibility).
For the bar chart, I used three shades of each colour to represent conservation status (Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered). This allows viewers to compare risk levels across animal groups at a glance, without relying on labels alone. Icons and callouts were added to guide attention. I added animal visuals to enliven the chart.
The tree diagram maps all 89 critically endangered Australian animals(2). Side branches reflect sub-groups where possible, helping reveal clusters of risk within categories. I adjusted the colour palette slightly here (e.g. reptiles shown in green instead of brown) to maintain clear visual distinction between categories.
This flow-style diagram focuses on a smaller subset, the 14 species of threatened bat species, within the mammal category, showing how simpler visual structures can be more effective for focused datasets.
Key: VU = Vulnerable (Light Red); EN = Endangered (Medium Red); CR = Critically Endangered (Dark Red); EX = Extinct (Black)
For the 29 threatened and extinct Australian rodents, I mapped species names to the rings of a tree, using colour to indicate conservation status. This approach emphasises both grouping and progression risk.
Key insights
Mammals and reptiles account for a large share of critically endangered species
Sub-grouping reveals clusters of risk (e.g. skinks within reptiles)
Visual structure significantly improves readability compared to raw lists
Process
Extracted threatened fauna data from the EPBC Act list
Structured and analysed data in Excel
Identified meaningful groupings and categories
Designed visual systems in Adobe Illustrator
Created reusable vector assets for consistency across diagrams
Notes
(1) The values for mammals and reptiles in the bar chart will need tweaking, as a species of each has since become extinct.
(2) Since the Christmas Island Pipistrelle and Christmas Island Forest Skink were have become extinct in recent years but were originally classified as critically endangered, I’ve left them in the tree diagram but denoted the Extinct (EX) status. Over the course of the project, I made a unique vector of each animal to use across infographics.
Related infographics
Sources
Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) List of Threatened Fauna, https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/epbc