The State of the Environment report released on Tuesday paints a depressing picture of the threats to the natural wonders that play so large a part in Australia’s collective imagination.

Australia has the worst rate of extinction of any country, according to the five-yearly report, partly because 80 per cent of our 400 mammal species are found nowhere else.

Already 39 species have died out since 1788 and since 2017, when the last report was published, 17 have been added to the endangered list or upgraded to the critically endangered list, along with 17 species of bird and 19 of frogs. The koalas and gliders and gang-gang cockatoos that make Australia so special may soon exist only as captives in zoos.

Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek in a speech at the National Press Club on Tuesday said she was surprised by the bleakness of the report, which she described as “difficult, confronting and sometimes depressing”. She pledged that the environment was once again a priority under Labor.

Plibersek is right to lay some of the blame for the degradation of the environment over the past 10 years at the foot of the Coalition.

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Along with recalcitrant state governments, it stood by while huge tracts of environmentally sensitive land were cleared for mining, pasture and housing and while the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin were sucked dry for irrigation during the drought.

The Coalition government even sat on this report for half a year to stop the issue from taking up air time during the federal election.

But Plibersek cannot use the past as an excuse. She must act quickly to reverse these trends, both with more money for things such as research and national parks and by tougher legislation and regulation.

She will have to be more proactive in blocking damaging developments, even if it brings her into conflict with property developers, farmers and miners, who have political muscle and deep pockets.