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Most originated along the Murray River (to as far downstream as Lake Alexandrina), though some were obtained along the Torrens and Onkaparinga Rivers before 1900 (marked by the small green blob and nearby wiggle on the map above). Only a few platypus specimens were ever collected in South Australia in the early years following European settlement. A population is also well established on King Island, which has been isolated from Victoria and Tasmania for at least 10,000 years by the waters of Bass Strait. The species is widely distributed across most of Tasmania, occupying lakes, ponds and glacial tarns as well as rivers and streams. Predation by salt water crocodiles and severe flooding in the wet season may both contribute to the platypus’s northern distributional limit in Queensland. In broad terms, the species is known to inhabit about 80% of the river basins in Victoria, all east-flowing river systems and about 80% of west-flowing systems in New South Wales, and around a third of river basins containing reliably flowing water bodies in Queensland. No subspecies are currently recognised anywhere in the range. An introduced population is found offshore on Kangaroo Island (marked in pink below), where platypus were released in Flinders Chase National Park between 19. Their current range (marked in blue below) extends along the east and southeast coast of mainland Australia from western Victoria to about as far north as Cooktown in Queensland, and also includes Tasmania and King Island. Platypus live only in Australia, inhabiting a diverse array of reliable freshwater habitats from sea level to an elevation of more than 1600 metres near the top of the Australian Alps. Some other animals that are listed as “Near Threatened” in Australia include the Daintree ringtail possum, southern hairy-nosed wombat, Bennett’s and Lumholtz’s tree-kangaroos, heath mouse, dugong, southern elephant seal and southern right whale.
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The platypus’s “Near Threatened” listing has been applied on the grounds that an overall decline in numbers has occurred and – although the decline is poorly defined and inconsistent across the platypus’s range – it may approach though probably not exceed 30% of total population size over three platypus generations (most recently estimated as a period of 21 years) if current threats are not addressed. In both cases, the status has been evaluated based on criteria that were defined by the IUCN in 2001 and continue to be used to assess the conservation status of animals across the world. The platypus’s conservation status is officially listed as “Near Threatened” both in Australia and internationally (as described in the IUCN Red List since 2016). In this section you can read about how many platypus are found in Australia and where they occur: