Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for March 3, 2006

On Putting Out Bushfires

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“Part of bushfire fighting culture is that you control lightning strikes by 10 o’clock the next morning or you are in trouble. We have done that over the years and we have done it successfully. We had not lost them before. But nobody seemed to want to put these out. I do not know why. I keep asking myself why, in the middle of January, in the middle of a drought and with the highest fuel loads ever, nobody seemed to want to put those fires out. It is just sickening.”

Val Jeffrey was referring to the January 2003 fires that went on to burn 3 million hectares of south eastern Australia including much of Kosciousko National Park.

According to two new blog posts at HenryThornton.com,

“This summers’ fire season is not yet over but we hope not to see a major fire in the [Victorian] Otways.

The Victorian Government must urgently learn the lessons from 2003 that have not been learnt in the Grampians and Brisbane Ranges, and must apply improved practices to the management of the Otways and other parks in Victoria.”

Read more,

http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=3893
and

http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=3892.

SA Premier Pledges 60% Cut in Emissions

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South Australian Premier Mike Rann might be listening to the once-banned Solar Shop advertisements in which Tim Flannery says climate change is the greatest threat facing humanity.

According to ABC Online, just today he has pledged a whopping 60 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions if his government is re-elected on March 18.

He will even introduce new laws to make sure the target is achieved by 2050.

The policy was apparently announced at a wind farm this morning and includes $250,000 to set up a climate change research centre at the University of Adelaide and the installation of mini wind turbines on government buildings in the city.

So 2050 is how many elections away? How old will Mike Rann be in 2050?

(Sorry Joe, but one for Ender.)

How Green was My Subsidy?

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The European Union spends about A$5.6 billion a year on schemes aimed at encouraging less-intensive farming in order to increase biodiversity, improve water quality etcetera on farm. But it has delivered very little tangible environmental benefit according to a recent news feature in Nature by John Whitfield titled ‘How green was my subsidy’.

One of the problems according to the feature article is that “most of Europe’s agi-environmental schemes have very vague goals.”

And sometimes research results indicate that wildlife is not adverse to a bit of farming. For example, one of the first scientific audits of an agri-environment scheme, showed that in Holland a project intended to help ground-nesting meadow birds by delaying the mowing of fields was having no effect – in this region some birds actually seemed to prefer intensively farmed fields.

David Kleijn, an ecologist from Wageningen University in Holland, has spearheaded the research effort to document the benefits in a rigorous way.

This work has concluded that:

“Plants showed the most widespread benefits, with higher diversity on scheme fields in
every country except the Netherlands. Bees benefited in Germany and Switzerland, grasshoppers and crickets in Britain, and spiders in Spain. In cases where the biodiversity went up, nearly all the beneficiaries were common species; only one scheme – a Spanish programme aimed at making arable fields bird-friendly by leaving winter stubble – showed a positive effect on endangered species, one of which was the thekla lark (Galerida theklae).”

The Nature news feature article really emphasis the extent to which Europeans like to mix their nature and farming with the conclusion:

“Such schemes may not be the best way to promote the preservation of endangered species. … Europe might do better to allow some areas to revert to a state close to wilderness while others are intensively farmed, and then to manage the whole system so as to maximize leisure, flood protection, and water quality.

… biodiversity benefits would accrue even if not particularly targeted. But Europeans like farmland landscapes, and will probably continue to try and convince themselves that there are practical ways to keep areas that are rich in wildlife and pleasing to the eye, which also produce cheap food and don