Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for November 2007

After the ‘Top Island’ Fire in the Barmah Red Gum Forest

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Aborigines managed much of the Australian landscape with fire. This management strategy favoured fire tolerant and fire resistant species – perhaps why gum trees dominate so much of the Australian landscape. But river red gums, Eucalyptus camaldulensis ssp., unlike most gum trees, are not particularly fire tolerant.

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A boat on the Murray River in the Barmah Forest. Photograph taken last Tuesday.*

The timber cutters and cattlemen who live and work along the middle Murray (river) have gone to great lengths to keep fuel-loads in red gum forests low through controlled grazing and the collection of firewood. This, combined with a network of rural fire fighting brigades, has made it possible to stomp out fires started from lightening strikes or camp fires.

This may explain why some foresters and aboriginal elders call river red gums ‘white fellas’ weed’ and why areas which were once open woodland are now covered in dense red gum forests including at Barmah.

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This area in Barmah Forest was once known as Duck Hole Plains

But the situation is changing. The Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC) wants more wood and grass on the forest floor apparently to increase biodiversity. This means higher fuel loads and according to some white fellas** the forests will ultimately be severely degraded by uncontrolled and uncontrollable feral fires.

A wildfire in the Barmah Forest, in an area known as Top Island, burnt out 800 hectares last October.

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Burnt forest at Top Island in October 2006, photograph taken Tuesday November 6, 2007.

Old habitat trees are apparently the first to go when a hot wildfire burns through red gum forest. Last week the Barmah woodcutters showed me how the old trees ‘burnt like chimneys’ from the inside – out.

Parts of ‘Top Island’ look like they are regenerating. But I’m told that the green coppice growth will eventually fall off – that these fire-damaged trees will never develop as habitat trees. Habitat trees have hollows for wildlife.

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Coppice and a burnt-out old habitat tree.

Where the forest has been completely burnt, for example after the sand-spit fire of the late 1960s, and where there has been no management, the red gum regrowth can be very dense.

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Regrowth from the 1968 Sand-spit fire, Photograph taken November 6, 2007.

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* All the photographs in this blog post were taken in Barmah forest last Tuesday – on Melbourne cup day.
** I use the term ‘white fellas’ to refer to the guardians of traditional European knowledge in the Barmah forest.

Glacier Dynamics and Why Greenland Not in Danger of Collapse

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Dear Jennifer,

Professor Ollier takes on James Hansen’s claim that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are in danger of collapse due to global warming. Hansen’s claims are the basis for Al Gore’s suggestion, in An Inconventient Truth, that the seas may rise by 20 feet in the near future.

Professor Ollier argues that, “Hansen’s seeming ignorance of the mechanism by which glaciers flow leads him into major errors.”

You may have seen Professor Cliff Ollier’s write up of glacier dynamics originally circulated by Benny Peiser’s excellent CCNet newsletter. The Center for Science & Public Policy has published a paper adapted from the original article with expanatory footnotes and diagram added to clarify some of the more technical parts of the article.

This paper describes glacier dynamics, such as the glacier budget, how glaciers flow (through a process known as “creep”), how creep is related to temperature and stress, and how the simple rules of creep allow us to understnad some observations of glaciers.

We hope you find this paper useful.

http://ff.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=396&Itemid=77

Paul Georgia
Center for Science & Public Policy
Frontiers of Freedom

Bias and Concealment in the IPCC Process

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The climatic “hockey stick” hypothesis has systemic problems. I review how the IPCC came to adopt the “hockey stick” as scientific evidence of human interference with the climate. I report also on independent peer reviewed studies of the “hockey stick” that were instigated by the US House of Representatives in 2006, and which comprehensively invalidated it. The “divergence” problem and the selective and unreliable nature of tree ring reconstructions are discussed, as is the unsatisfactory review process of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report that ignored the invalidation of the “hockey stick”. The error found recently in the GISS temperature series is also noted. It is concluded that the IPCC has neither the structure nor the necessary independence and supervision of its processes to be acceptable as the monopoly authority on climate science. Suggestions are made as to how the IPCC could improve its procedures towards producing reports and recommendations that are more scientifically sound.

Continue reading: BIAS AND CONCEALMENT IN THE IPCC PROCESS: THE “HOCKEY-STICK” AFFAIR AND ITS IMPLICATIONS by David Holland

Weather Channel Founder Calls Global Warming ‘A Scam’

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Environmental extremist, notable politicians among them then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild “scientific” scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda.

Now their ridicules manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment.

I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party.

However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you “believe in.” It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a nonevent, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

Read the rest of John Coleman’s comments about global warming.

Thinning Red Gum Forests at Koondrook

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I’ve been staying with friends who live on the Murray River in western New South Wales and I’ve seen a lot of river red gums – beautiful old habitat trees, thickets of young saplings, healthy forests, water-stressed forests, bushfire- damaged forests, trees ready to be made into railway sleepers, others into veneer.

Many of the forests are suffering from the drought. While some activists claim the solution is more environmental flow water allocation, this is unlikely until the drought breaks. In the meantime some believe some forests can be ‘drought proofed’ through thinning.

In the following picture the density of red gums has been reduced through a thinning operation on private land. On the other side of the fenceline the trees have not been thinned.

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Koondrook Forest, 3rd November 2007

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Habitat tree clearly marked for saving.

A recent Victorian Environmental Advisory Council (VEAC) report proposes that more red gum forest along the Murray River be converted to national park – this time about 100,000 hectares.

The report states that many forests are severely stressed and that there is evidence that without improved environmental flows many of these forests may be lost over time.

But locking them up as national parks may only exacerbate the situation. Indeed what many forests appear to need now is thinning, to reduce competition for water between trees.

Some of the forests along the Murray River in the best condition right now are the more actively managed forests – with lower tree densities from thinning as well as forests that received environmental flow allocations in the last few years.

Ferals go Crazy on Australian Sub-Antarctic Island: Who Cares? A Note from Luke Walker

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Rabbits and rats are posing a severe threat to World Heritage values on Macquarie Island, as research reveals widespread damage to terrestrial ecosystems. This includes destruction of vegetation (habitat for threatened albatross species and other seabirds), and catastrophic erosion.

Macquarie Island Under Threat

Erosion and heavy spring rains have caused a large landslip on Macquarie Island, in the Southern Ocean about 1500 kilometres south-east of Tasmania, killing penguins in an important colony.

Rabbits blamed for penguin deaths in landslide

The finer details of introducing dogs to rid a sub Antarctic island of rodents are still be worked through.

Macquarie Island dog plan still in the works

Turnbull to the rescue:

MEDIA RELEASE
The Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP
Minister for the Environment and Water Resources

T76 /07

4 June 2007

AGREEMENT TO ERADICATE RABBITS ON MACQUARIE ISLAND
The Australian and Tasmanian Governments have today reached an agreement to jointly fund the eradication of rodent pests on Macquarie Island to protect its World Heritage values.

The seabird populations and vegetation of the Island are under serious threat from plagues of rabbits, rats and mice.
Following from discussions between our Governments, I am please to announce that we have agreed in principle to provide funding of $24.6 million in equal shares to implement the Plan for the Eradication of Rabbits and Rodents on Subantarctic Macquarie Island.

The Prime Minister has today written to the Premier Lennon confirming the agreement under which the Australian and Tasmanian Governments will provide $12.3 million each to implement the eradication plan.

As Macquarie Island is part of Tasmania, the plan will be implemented by the Tasmanian Government, which will also meet any costs in excess of $24.6 million agreed funding.

The Australian Government funding is conditional on the eradication being managed by a joint Government steering committee supported by a scientific advisory committee.

As it takes two years for the for specialised training of dogs to hunt rabbits without impacting on the wildlife, our Governments have agreed that Tasmania will let contracts for this training and commence all other long-lead work immediately.

The Australian Government provided funding for the development of the eradication plan and in addition will continue to provide $1.6 million per year to support Tasmanian rangers who manage the nature reserve.
Macquarie Island was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1997 on the basis of its outstanding natural universal values:

• as an outstanding example representing major stages of the earth’s evolutionary history, including the record of life, significant on-going geological processes in the development of landforms, or significant geomorphic or physiographic features; and

• containing superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance.
Macquarie Island is situated about 1500 km south-south-east of Tasmania, about half way between Tasmania and Antarctica at around 55 degrees south. The main island is approximately 34 km long and 5.5 km wide at its broadest point.

Media contact: (02) 6277 7640 – Minister’s office.