"The status of the African golden cat in the wild has never been rigorously assessed, but the species is increasingly threatened by habitat degradation, loss and fragmentation, and by unsustainable hunting," according to one study.
And it came as the new prime minister Kevin Rudd also said he was worried that the constant arrival of asylum seekers by boat would see "the fragmentation of support" for Australia's migration system.
Compromise is increasingly inescapable in the fragmentation of modern British electoral politics.
The slump in audience numbers is a further sign of the fragmentation of TV viewing.
The scourge of modern medicine is fragmentation, over-investigation, poly pharmacy and repeated hospital admissions.
In another of the big manifesto areas, education, as always after a period of Tory government, Labour promises to roll back what it regards as structural fragmentation and an assault on the teachers' unions.
Ever greater fragmentation and atomisation, more schools with unqualified teachers and no local oversight, the centralisation of power in an unwieldy Department for Education can only exacerbate the risk of further problems.
The fragmentation of the Liberal Democrat protest vote has nurtured the Greens and nationalist parties: Plaid Cymru, Ukip (a reactionary English movement in spite of its unionist name) and, most conspicuously, the SNP.
Even more ominous is the fragmentation of the global news agenda, and with it public opinion, into clear propaganda blocs.
However, critics say that with different providers up and down the country, there is a risk of fragmentation from the existing service delivered by NHS Direct.
And, while the internationalisation of the BBC News channel or the digital fragmentation of Sky News might be inevitable, they could potentially leave big gaps in British TV's capacity to report rolling news – not least during election campaigns.
