Canberra, Sep 7 (IANS): Australia is failing to protect its native plants and animals from extinction, a report has found.

The Australian branch of the WWF on Saturday released its second Threatened Species Report Card to coincide with National Threatened Species Day, Xinhua news agency reported.

The updated report scored Australia an 'F' for funding, recovery planning and improving the threat status of species at risk of extinction.

It said that 163 species have been added to the federal government's threatened species list since the first report card was released in 2022.

Nationally, Australia scored a 'B' for persistence - the likelihood that species will become extinct - while the grade for habitat protection improved from a ‘D’ in 2022 to a ‘C’.

The Northern Territory (NT) was the only state or territory to score better than a 'C' on habitat protection and Tasmania the only one not graded an 'F' for recovery planning.

"The federal government needs to urgently fix broken nature laws and boost funding for our threatened plants and animals," Tracy Rout, Science and Research Lead at WWF-Australia and co-author of the report, said in a media release.

"Our existing laws allow the continued destruction of habitat."

She said that only nine per cent of threatened species have received dedicated funding from the federal government in the last five years and only seven per cent have a current recovery plan.

Tanya Plibersek, the Minister for Environment and Water, on Saturday announced an 11.4 million Australian dollar ($7.6 million) grant program to better protect threatened plants and animals.

Ten research projects will share in the funding to improve existing conservation tools and technologies.

"We all need to work together to find new and innovative solutions to stay ahead in the fight to protect our threatened species and biodiversity," she said in a statement.

Threatened Species Day was first declared in 1996 to raise awareness of plants and animals at risk of extinction. It is held on September 7 every year to mark the anniversary of the death of the last Tasmanian tiger at Hobart Zoo in Tasmania in 1936.