No Australian is unaware how one of this country's most-loved iconic species came under threat in 2020.
Thousands of koalas died during wildfires last summer and much of their habitat was destroyed.
Volunteer koala tracker Kate Banister warns the future for the famous marsupial could be bleak.
Douglas Thron, a drone cinematographer from California was working in the Bahamas using his drone to locate and rescue animals after Hurricane Dorian.
While there, he was deeply affected by footage of the bush fires unfolding in Australia.
But it wasn't just Australia where the environment was in distress and causing problems for human kind.
The worst locust outbreak in decades descended on Kenya and its neighbors in 2020, bearing billions of the voracious insects.
2020 has seen locust plagues affecting millions of people across the globe in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Eritrea, India, Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia as well as Somalia.
During plagues, the pests can spread over an area of 29 million square kilometres with the potential to damage the livelihoods of a tenth of the world's population, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature ((IUCN)) updated its "red list" of threatened species in December, saying that the wild population of European bison - once extinct in the wild - grew from around 1,800 in 2003 to over 6,200 last year.
So, its status has been improved, from "vulnerable" to "near threatened".
Organizers released the European bison five years ago at what was once a Soviet military base during the Communist era and is now a nature reserve hosting three types of large hoofed animals; European bison, an ancient bovine species called tauros and wild horses.
One naturalist who has consistently raised concerns about what mankind is doing with the planet is Sir David Attenborough.
Through his TV series he has inspired generations with a new appreciation of the world around them.
But this year, Sir David's 94th, his warnings have become more insistent - such as in this interview recorded for the World Wide Fund for Nature, when he talks about the changes he has seen in Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
