Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

jennifer

Latest NSW Farmers Campaign: Get Off Our Backs

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I have some sympathy for the farmers of Nyngan and Cobar in New South Wales and the newly formed Regional Community Survival Group in their struggle to manage invasive woody weeds. I have posted some information from this group, including a note on the recent blockade.

I have less sympathy for NSW Farmers Association and their new campaign “Get Off Our Backs”. The NSW Farmers Association never stood up to the Wentworth Group and they went along with the Greenpeace anti-GM canola campaign.

I detail my thoughts on the issue in my latest column in The Land:

“I hope NSW Farmers Association’s new campaign intended to improve the image of farmers with the slogan “Get off our backs” resonates in Sydney. But I doubt it.

The association’s website explains that the community “has been misled on green issues for too long. It’s time for the truth.”

So what is the truth?

The way a lot of people see it, just a year ago NSW Farmers was asking for drought aid.

Remember the 2000-strong drought rally in Parkes? It generated lots of interest in Sydney with stories about desperate farmers, dust and hungry animals.

Unfortunately, through the years these stories have reinforced a perception that many Australian farmers are environmental vandals flogging a dry landscape.

If farmers want governments off their back, they must realise Australia is a land of drought and flooding rains and not keeping claiming exceptional circumstances.

There is some concern at the moment about the Wilderness Society and its “Can’t find a billabong ‘cos they’ve bulldozed the Coolabah trees” campaign.

But in terms of long-term damage to the reputation of Australian farmers this campaign pales into insignificance next to the National Farmers Federation (NFF) campaign of 2000-2001. Back then NFF executive director, Wendy Craik, pleaded for a massive $65 billion to stop the spread of dryland salinity and repair 200 years of damage from claimed unsustainable European farming practices.

Not a month goes by now without a newspaper headline telling how bad it is in the bush.

On federal budget night, Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, announced another $500 million for the Murray River to reduce salinity levels — the centre-piece of the Government’s commitment to saving the Australian environment.

I was hoping some farm leader might have seized the initiative and issued a media releasing explaining that salt levels in the Murray are at historic lows and they don’t need to be artificially pushed any lower, but instead there was silence.

Last week I read how water levels in the Murray River are the lowest since records began more than 100 years ago.

But the article was confusing low water inflows with low water levels, the journalist apparently unaware that the Murray River ran dry in 1914.

In this drought, South Australian irrigators are receiving 80 percent of their water entitlements thanks to the dams and weirs upstream in NSW and Victoria, and the river is full of water all the way to South Australia.

The latest false claims about the Murray’s record low water levels also gave the ABC another opportunity to suggest agriculture is in trouble and lament yet another catastrophe in rural Australia.

If NSW farmers are going to have long-term success with their campaign, “Get off our backs”, then farm leaders need to try harder to correct such misinformation.

City dwellers would be surprised at how much they’ve been misled by the environment lobby (not to mention how many more trees there are now than at the time of European settlement), but more farmers will need to take more responsibility for their own businesses come drought or flood.

It’s no good telling people to leave you alone if they honestly believe, or have been hoodwinked into believing, you are wrecking the environment.“

Where has all the Marsh Water Gone?

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It has been suggested that before irrigation runoff into the Macquarie Marshes was 460,000 megalitres and that this has been reduced to 395,000ml by irrigation.

But Ian Mott has argued that pre-settlement runoff into the marshes would have been much less than 460,000ml and most likely less than 395,000ml because much of the upper catchment was once forested. Because it has since been cleared for pasture, runoff would have substantially increased.

Yet the opposite appears to be the case.

In an earlier thread Chris Hogendyk expained that: “Inflows to Burrendong (on the catchment of the Macquarie) for the 68 months from December 2000 to July 2006 was approximately 1700 GL which is the same as the driest similar period on record that occurred from December 1934 to July 1940. The next driest period was December 1903 to July 1909 that received approximately 1950 GL.

“The first data set are actual observations whilst the latter two are modelled. Out of interest, for every 10 megalitres that is captured by the dam, 4 megalitres come into the system as down stream tributaries.”

Interestingly rainfall history as plotted by Warwick Hughes suggests that it was drier during the late 1930s.

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This is Warwicks comment on the charts: “These show you some rainfall history for the region from the Bureau of Metereology high quality rain dataset and you can see the obvious cycles in all charts.

“Trangie data is the closest HQ station to the Macquarie Marshes and it shows that in the recent past conditions were similar to dry times times in the 1990’s and 1980’s, if you go back to the 1960’s rainfall was obviously less and even lower in the late 1930’s thru 40’s and earlier again WWI years into the 1920’s look the driest of all.

“The other graphic, also of HQ data, from Mudgee and Bathurst, could be a fair proxy for long term trends higher in the catchment.”

So it has been dry, but not that dry, and with fewer trees, why have inflows been so low lately?

Farmed Fish are our Future: Conference in Adelaide

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Aquaculture is the fastest growing food producing sector in the world according to those promoting a fish farmer’s conference in Adelaide this week.

Farm Online have reported that there are 1,000 delegates at the conference and aquaculture is being talked-up with conference organising committee chair, Bruce Zippel, saying, “Many Australian primary producers are looking to supplement their incomes or moving into a more rewarding vocation .. and fish farming is seen as very attractive”.

Aquaculture apparenty provides about 27 percent of total world seafood supply and some experts predict that within 25 years half of the fish we eat will be farmed.

Sea Levels Falling in the Arctic?

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According to an article entitled ‘Arctic dips as global waters rise’ published at BBC News, sea levels in the Arctic have been falling by a little over 2mm a year. It goes on to explain that while it is well known that the world’s oceans do not share a uniform height, the scientists are nevertheless puzzled by their findings. And so am I.

Read the full article here.

Shifting the Environmental Impact of Fishing Somewhere Else

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“Australia has the third largest fishery zone of any nation. It also has the most over-managed, heavily restricted and least productive fishery sector in the world,” according to marine biologist Dr Walter Starck.

“The total Australian wild caught fishery harvest is less than half that of New Zealand and less than a tenth that of Thailand which has a fisheries zone only 5 percent the size of Australia’s.

“Seventy percent of the seafood we consume is imported, all of it from regions far more heavily fished than our own.”

Dr Walter Starck will be in Brisbane on 23rd September to speak at the inaugural Australian Environment Foundation conference.

Show your support for the new more evidence-based approach to environmental issue advocated by the AEF and register for the conference: http://www.aefweb.info/display/conference2006.html .

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I’m a director of the AEF.

Rats Destroyed the Forests on Easter Island: Terry Hunt

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Easter Island has been described by Jared Diamond as the “clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources”.

Prof Diamond has told and retold the story and drawn a parallel between the ecological disaster he says befell Easter Island and our likely fate because we are cutting down too many trees and consuming too much energy.

In the September-October issue of American Scientist Online Terry Hunt details findings from his work on Easter Island.

It is an interesting read in which Hunt concludes that rats introduced by the Polynesians negatively impacted on recruitment in Jubaea palms resulting in forest decline. In contrast, Jared Diamond says the Polynesians simply cut down all the trees.

Furthermore Hunt suggests that the downfall of the original Polynesian civilization resulted not from internal strife associated with ecological disaster following destruction of the forest, but rather from contact with Europeans.

I read a lot of James Michener books when I was a bit younger. Civilizations destroyed by new arrivals is a consistent theme in Michener’s stories.