Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

jennifer

Save the Albatross

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There is a campaign to ‘save the albatross’ at www.savethealbatross.net . The website includes bits of information on the biology of these birds including that there are 21 different species with a mostly southern hemisphere distribution, that the wandering and royal albatross have the largest wingspan of any bird at 3.5metres, they mate for life, and will fly 10,000 kms in search of food for their chick.

The key message at the site is that albatrosses are at risk of extinction from long-line fishing boats particularly in the South Atlantic with the figure of 100,000 birds killed each year repeated.

I wonder how this figure was arrived at. While there are testimonials from celebrities at the site, it would be good if there was also some data from the various reports and studies referred to. For example, according to the BBC:

“Albatrosses on islands in the South Atlantic are being pushed to the brink of extinction, according to research. Populations of three species breeding on South Georgia and outlying islands have declined by about a third in the past 30 years.

Conservation groups say the major threat to the birds’ future is deep-sea fishing using a line with a number of baited hooks attached to it.

Up to 100,000 albatrosses a year drown on longline fishing hooks, they add.”

Why not provide a link to “research”?

According to www.savethealbatross.net the most threatened species is the Amsterdam Albatross with only 17 breeding pairs left on Amsterdam Island in the southern Indian Ocean. That’s not many birds!

Reflections on World Environment Day 2006

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It’s World Environment Day and I woke to hear Australia’s MInister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer talking up the possibility of the Australian Government building a nuclear power station to run a water desalination plant for Adelaide.

Adelaide is the capital of the driest state on this driest of continents. South Australia has plenty of uranium. Nuclear power is greenhouse neutral. Much of the water for Adelaide has been traditionally piped a couple of hundred kilomtres from the Murray River. It would all seem like a rather sensible idea me, but it is radical and of course the very conservative Australian Labor Party has already condemned it (click here for the response from Kevin Rudd on ABC Online).

Interestingly British Labor PM Tony Blair is talking about the possibility of a second generation of nuclear power stations for the UK, when Australia doesn’t yet have a single nuclear power station. And while the USA gets something like 20 percent of its water from desalination, desalination is also a novel idea for Australia.

My friend Phil Sawyer proposed both a desalination plant for Adelaide and a nuclear power station in his documentary ‘In Flinders Wake’ released in 2002 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the voyage of Matthew Fliners. It was shown on SBS TV about the same time.

Phil Sawyer.jpg
[Phil at the launch, photograph from the ABC SA website]

Phil has been a supporter of new environment group the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF) which was launched exactly a year ago in Tenterfield. The group has been fairly quiet over the last year, but there will be a big get together for the first Australian Environment Foundation AGM and conference on 23rd and 24th September at Rydges, Southbank in Brisbane. Mark that date in your diaries. Chances are Phil and copies of his video will also be there.

Reconciling with the Murray River

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I lived for the first six years of my life in a mud brick house up the hill a bit from a creek in the Northern Territory. I remember the water as black and very deep. I remember as a child jumping as far into the middle of that creek as I could, and staying there as long as I could.

When it came time to get out, my aboriginal friends and I would scramble up the step muddy banks as quickly as we could. We were frightened of the little yabbies that lived in the holes in the mud.

When I returned to Coomalie Creek for the first time just last year, the water was just as black as I remembered it. But that swimming hole was deserted. There was no path through the bamboo to the water’s edge.

When I showed the current owner of the property where we used to swim she was incredulous, “There are crocodiles.” she said.

I wonder why I was frightened of the yabbies and not the crocodiles when I was a kid?

My family left Coomlie Creek when I was six or seven years old. A year or two later we moved into a little house over looking the Mary River, the river the Queensland Government is now talking about damming.

My siblings and I made toy boats from styrene foam. We would spend hours swimming with our boats in the Mary River with the platypus. The water was so clear and also so shallow that we could see every pebble on the bottom of the stream.

Christopher Pearson writing in today’s Weekend Australian about my work on the Murray River suggests that:

“Marohasy thinks that catastrophist science regarding the Murray [River] is persuasive mostly because, apart from feeling absurdly guilty about our imagined impact on the natural world, we have a precarious grasp of its history as a waterway and tend to imagine that it’s quite like a European river.”

There are a couple of errors in the article, including reference to Mannum — it should be Morgan — but I think it’s the first time I’ve read someone fairly accurately report my feeling, that as Australians, we are ridiculously guilty about our impact on the environment and at the same time we have a “precarious grasp of its history”, true nature or current state.

I wonder how much my general approach to life has been influenced by the different rivers that I’ve had the privilege to live beside, wander along, and swim in?

I now live near the Brisbane River, it’s just at the end of my street. In Madagascar I lived near the Fiherenana River which was mostly empty of water. It was just a very wide sandy bed. But when I looked very carefully after rain I could usually find egg shell from the now extinct Aepyornis along its banks.

The Brisbane River is not the Murray River, and the Murray is very different from the Mary, and neither are anything like Coomalie Creek.

As a people, Australian’s probably identify most with the Murray. But have we reconciled ourselves with how this river really is? Would we like it to be more like the Mary?

Christopher Pearson finishes his piece about the Murray and me by suggesting:

“If we were to stop fantasising about a clear, fresh blue stream coursing through the Australian equivalent of meadows and thought instead of an old waterway, often a bit murky and sometimes salty, meandering to its lower arid land reaches, we might be less surprised by its resilience and prone to imagining that it needs somehow to be transformed by a technological quick fix.”

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You can read the full article here: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19341984-7583,00.html .

More on Salt: Badly Wrong Public Science

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Since last Sunday’s feature story ‘Australia’s Salinity Crisis, What Crisis?‘, I’ve pondered whether Wendy Craik’s claim on the program that decisions in the past were based on the best available information really hold’s up to scrutiny.

If funding is secured on the basis of the best available information, even if it is subsequently shown to be wrong, then there is no case for deceit or fraud. However, if an organisation or individual secures public money on the perception that salt levels are rising, that dryland salinity is spreading, or that an area is at risk of salinity, while withholding information that shows the opposite to be true, then there is a case for fraud. And I would suggest the culprits be treated no differently to the former Enron executives.

Professor David Pannell, University of Western Australia, made the following comments at John Quiggin’s blog in response to a question about how the scientists managed to be so wrong on salinity::

“I’ve spoken to people who know exactly how it happened. It was a mixture of several things: failure to anticipate the dire political consequences of defining salinity hazard in the broad way they did (although they were warned); succumbing to pressure to provide results despite a lack of data; and in at least one state, yes, a shameless determination to ride the political wave right to the money-laden beach.”

It is not a well kept secret that senior Queensland bureacrats generated maps that falsely suggested large areas were at risk of dryland salinity simply to secure money from the federal government under the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality. If the same individuals were heading corporations, there would probably be more interest from the Australian media and other bloggers.

That’s not to say there aren’t some companies that have pocketed money from the same “political wave”, to quote from one email received yesterday:

“The bad guys are not limited to the public sector either. Some of the worst abuses I’ve seen have been by private consulting firms shamelessly providing the answer that they perceived a state government wanted.”

But the amount these companies have received is probably minuscule relative to what state governments have pocketed.

Last Sunday on Channel Nine, Nick Farrow and Ross Colthart went further than anyone has ever gone in exposing the politics of salinity in Australia. They began the program by suggesting that:

“Things are going badly wrong in public science.”

Perhaps the next step is a judicial inquiry.

More on Salt: What is the ‘Rising Ground Water’ Theory?

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Since last Sunday’s feature story ‘Australia’s Salinity Crisis, What Crisis?’, I’ve received comment that it is difficult to understand the different models and theories explaining dryland salinity. The dominant theory has been the rising ground water theory which Dr Brian Tunstall suggested was complete “bunkum” on Sunday.

In my opinion the model has some application, but lets start with a basic description of the theory:

If you dig a hole in the sand at the beach, or a bore in your backyard, chances are you will strike water at some depth. This water is often referred to as ‘ground water’.

The ‘rising ground water’ theory is essentially based on the idea that if you remove lots of trees from an area or irrigate an area, then more water will percolate down than would occur naturally and the ground water will eventually rise. If there is a lot of salt in the landscape the rising groundwater will be salty.

The theory is applicable to many irrigation areas and I have previously written about how Murray Irrigation Ltd, in the NSW Riverina, has dramatically reduced the area at risk of salinity working from this model (click here for that blog post).

I have also acknowledged the value of salt interception schemes along the Murray River (click here for an article recently published by Online Opinion). These schemes are based on the idea that if the rising ground water is intercepted, and the water evaporated and salt collected, the amount of salt entering the Murray River will be reduced and salt levels will fall.

But a potential problem with salt interception schemes is that they can draw groundwater from a distance away, and in this way potentially suck the soil profile dry of water.

It really depends on whether the groundwater is confined or whether the ground water covers a much larger area and may be flowing underground along, for example, old river beds.

A fellow called Geoff emailed the following comment yesterday:

“As I see it and please correct me if I am wrong, there has been a blanket campaign to lower water tables to combat salinity. In reality, some areas need to lower their water tables while others have no water table problems. In fact these areas need to increase the water infiltration to leach the root zone salt down the profile.

Chisel plowing, stubble retention, avoiding excessive grazing are all well established and accepted ways of increasing this water infiltration by increasing the organic matter and bacterial activity in the soil. And, dare I say it; clearing trees followed by careful soil husbandry would be the preferred option in many areas.”

It is worth remembering that many people in rural and regional Australian rely on groundwater for ‘stock and domestic’ as well as irrigation and that groundwater is not necessarily salty. Groundwater is mostly a very valuable resource and while the National Land and Water Audit gave the impression it is everywhere increasing in abundance, the reality is quite the opposite (click here for a Land column I wrote on this issue).

In summary the rising ground water model has some application, but I don’t believe it has general application outside of irrigation areas in eastern Australia. I am less familiar with the situation in Western Australia. The model probably has limited application through most of Queensland and NSW and yet it has been applied inappropriately across this landscape including through the National Land and Water Audit, and specifically at places like Dick Creek (click here for BrianTunstall’s explanation as to why Dick’s Creek is a soil heath rather than rising ground water issue).

Professor Pannell, from Western Australia, has a different view. He has posted comment at his website defending the rising groundwater model and suggesting it has general application including in eastern Australia. He also supports Wendy Craik’s view that the drought has lowered water tables. But hang on, which drought? Despite all the hype, the rainfall record for the Murray Darling Basin as recorded by the Australian Bureau of Meterology does not suggest the last few years have been partiucularly dry:

BOM MDB.JPG

The last very dry year was 2002 and that wasn’t unusually dry in the scheme of things.

Professor Pannell writes:

“Contrary to the claims expressed on the [Sunday] program, there is copious evidence in support of the rising groundwater model, including a catchment in WA [Western Australia] where groundwater and stream salinity levels have been monitored ever since the land was cleared. There are numerous areas where establishment of perennial vegetation has lowered watertables and thereby mitigated salinity (e.g. Burke’s Flat in Victoria, the Denmark River in WA).

Powerful recent evidence in the Murray-Darling Basin has been the decline in saline discharge in many areas, due to extended periods of below-average rainfall. For example, in a site at Kamarooka (northern Victoria), there was formerly a large area of saline discharge, but the recent dry period has lowered saline groundwaters to 2 metres or more below the surface for the first time in 50 years. This widely observed recent phenomenon is completely consistent with the groundwater model of salinity, and (unless I’ve misunderstood it) completely inconsistent with the soil-health model. The same is true of the fall in salinity in the Murray River, which was rightly emphasised in the program.

… I’d also be very interested to know how the alternative model explains the onset of salinity affecting roads and buildings in the middle of rural towns, or occurring within remnant native vegetation (where soil health is presumably pretty good). It seems to me that these things can only be explained by rising groundwater.”

In fact a bit has been written about ‘lateral flow’ and ‘soil health’ to explain impacts on roads and other infrastructure from salt, click here for a piece by Ken Tretheway and Rob Gourlay.

Polar Bear Politics: Misrepresenting the Nature of One Smart Bear

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Does the end ever justify the means?

Some activists concerned about global warming, and who want the rest of the world to be as concerned as they are, recognise people care about polar bears and want to exploit them as a ‘victim’ of climate change. But if I was a polar bear I reckon I’d rather be appreciated for my true nature.

Here’s an example of polar bear as victim in an article by Clifford Krauss in the New York Times :

“People care about polar bears — they’re iconic,” noted Kassie Siegel, a lawyer at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The reality of the threat to polar bears is helping to get the word out,” she said, about the effects of climate change.

Her group, along with Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council, filed a petition with the United States government to list the polar bear as threatened as a way to push the American authorities to control greenhouse gas emissions, like carbon dioxide from cars.

The message has alarmed American polar bear hunters, who could be barred from bringing their trophies home from Canada, the only country from which they can legally do so. It has also run up against unbending opposition from local communities of Inuit, also known as Eskimos, and the Nunavut territorial government, which has expanded sport hunting in recent years.”

So Kassie Siegel is just an activist lawyer; making martyrs of everyone and everything is what activists do? But what about when scientists go along with the deal? What about when dubious claims are made by scientists to justify listing polar bears as a threatened species because of global warming?

The recent listing by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) includes the following paragraph:

“There is little doubt that polar bears will have a lesser AOO [area of occupancy], EOO [extent of occupancy] and habitat quality in the future. However, no direct relation exists between these measures and the abundance of polar bears. While some have speculated that polar bears might become extinct within 100 years from now, which would indicate a population decrease of >50% in 45 years based on a precautionary approach due to data uncertainty. A more realistic evaluation of the risk involved in the assessment makes it fair to suspect population reduction of >30%.”

The reference to “Area of occupancy” and “extent of occurrence” by the scientists is presumably just long hand for saying “the area of sea ice has reduced”.

So there is no direct relationship between measures of “area of occupancy” and “extent of occurrence” and polar bear abundance.

This paragraph (and a following paragraph that makes reference to shipping and oil exploration) was then summarized as follows to justify the listing which made headlines all over the world:

“The assessment is based on a suspected population reduction of >30% within three generations (45 years) due to decline in area of occupancy (AOO), extent of occurrence (EOO) and habitat quality.

Does it all seem very logical and scientific?

If we look at sea ice extent and area, well it has declined over recent decades, or at least since 1978, and was apparently at a 20 year minimum in 2002 (Serreze et al. 2003, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol 30, No. 3). Yet polar bear numbers might have increased over this same time period?

Why doesn’t the IUCN provide any data on actual numbers of polar bears?

I understand that not so many decades ago polar bear populations had been significantly reduced by hunters? In the article by Clifford Krauss in the New York Times it is suggested that the global population, now estimated at 20,000 bears, was just 5,000 only 40 years ago.

Then in the 1970s, Canada, Denmark, Norway, the United States and the Soviet Union all agreed to restrict hunting and perhaps as a consequence population numbers have increased.

Would numbers be even higher if there was more sea ice? Who knows? Do we want more polar bears?

If over the last 40 years population numbers have increased, while sea ice extent and area has decreased, then it would seem there is a correlation between global warming and polar bear numbers that runs counter to the argument present by the IUCN scientists?

But, someone is about to tell me, the IUCN argument is all about the future and an assumed inability of polar bears to adapt to climate change?

But, as Jane George explains in an article title ‘Global warming won’t hurt polar bears’ in the Nunatiaq News, polar bears are intelligent, quick to adapt to new circumstances and warmer temperatures could even increase food sources.

The bottomline is that while polar bears have more than sea ice to contend with, they are by nature resourceful and to quote from the display at Sea World, a theme park at Queensland’s Gold Coast, “polar bears are [probably] capable of flourishing in the wild under climatic conditions which are most un-Arctic”.

Indeed there are polar bears successfully living and breeding in zoos in Arizona, Singapore and just an hour’s drive from me at Sea World. The polar bears at the subtropical Gold Coast have their swimming pool cooled to just 15 degrees and their favourite food is apparently watermelon.

Suggesting global warming is a significant threat to polar bears is really telling lies about polar bears and misrepresenting their true nature. This continual rewrite of how things are on the basis we should worry more about global warming, is as sad as it is insidious. That’s not to say we shouldn’t care about global warming, but that we shouldn’t tell lies about polar bears! should tell it as it is.

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Changes were made (words crossed out, words added are underlined) at the request of Peter Corkeron. The blog post is intended to draw attention to the difference between the available data and IUCN statement justifying the listing of polar bears as a species threatened with extinction. It is not a personal criticism of particular IUCN scientists.