Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Commonwealth Games Mascot Not an Endangered Species

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The Commonwealth Games will begin tomorrow in Melbourne with an endangered subspecies as its mascot.

While the fine print in some of the promotional material explains that Karak belongs to a subspecies of red-tailed black cockatoo, the general impression is that the entire species is close to extinction with fewer than 1,000 red-tailed black cockatoos surviving in the whole of Australia.

The official Games website states:

“With fewer than 1,000 South-Eastern Red-Tailed Black Cockatoos in the wild, the Games has extended a lifeline to the species by adopting it as the mascot ‘Karak’.

As a result of the growing awareness of the species’ decreasing numbers, government and private industries have offered funds and resources to create a breeding programme to save the cockatoo.” (Emphasis added)

In reality the cockatoo is not uncommon across much of northern, western and north eastern Australian.

According to The Australian Parrot Society it is only the small and isolated population of Red-tailed Black Cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus banksii graptogyne) which occurs in south-western Victoria and adjacent parts of the south-east of South Australia that is considered vulnerable to extinction. There are about 1,000 of these birds, hence the official script.

Not that confusion about the proliferation of the species is uncommon – copies of letters dating back to 1997 have been posted at the society’s website complaining that the Queensland Department of Environment had issued permits to farmers to shoot the cockatoos because the birds were causing crop damage.

The Commonwealth Games, like the Olympic Games, is about the best, the strongest, the most competitive. Why choose the most threatened subspecies of Red-tailed cockatoo as the games mascot?

As a nation, as a people, we seem to have to focus on environmental disasters, even at a time when we are celebrating achievement.

In adopting an endangered subspecies as a mascot and pretending it represents the entire species, government has announced an additional funding allocation of $1.3 million for the cockatoo.

At the launch the federal government Ministers, probably unknowingly, reinforced the impression the entire species is endangered with some of the following quotes from the media release:

“Australian Ministers for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Peter McGauran, and the Environment and Heritage Senator Ian Campbell, said the work was vital to the future survival of the species. (emphasis added)

“With less than 1,000 of these birds remaining in the wild, this important work will safeguard one of our unique species – now recognised around the world thanks to Karak, the symbol of the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games,” Minister McGauran said.

… Victorian Minister for the Environment John Thwaites said the main threats to the cockatoo’s long-term survival were the loss of the large hollow trees that provide nesting opportunities, the clearing of buloke trees and extensive hot fires in stringybark forests.”

This is part 5 of a series of blog posts on Species Vulnerable to Extinction, beginning here.

Emissions Trading Just Another Tax: Ray Evans

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Last month The Lavoisier Society published a document titled ‘Nine Lies About Global Warming’ in which Ray Evans draws a comparison between the issuing of taxi licenses and carbon trading. He writes:

“A number of economists have climbed onto the global warming bandwagon in order to promote so-called market mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions. Emissions trading is a popular proposal. All of these schemes are variants on the market for taxi-cab licences. Every major city in Australia has a regime of taxi licensing in which the number of taxis allowed to operate is limited by State regulation. This creates a scarcity factor which increases the value of the taxi licence, and these licences are traded for sums in the order of $250,000. If the regulation requiring taxi drivers to have a licence for their taxi was abolished (as happened in New Zealand) the value of the licence would be zero.

These licences constitute a tax which has to be paid by taxi users. Emission licences for power stations or petrol refineries would operate in the same way. What is not known is how great the tax on carbon emissions would have to be to ensure that electricity users would reduce their consumption by the desired amount. In the first instance, large electricity users such as aluminium smelters and fertilizer plants would relocate to other countries. The Australian motor car industry, already under threat from international competition, would close. And the ripple effect would spread out through the Australian economy causing unemployment first in one industry and then in another. The impact of such price increases and consequent economic dislocation would have political consequences. No [Australian] government which introduced such a regime of carbon taxation would survive an election, but the damage that would be wrought in the meantime would be long-lasting.”

Of course the European Union has introduced a system of emissions trading and at least some European governments have survived. I don’t know how many, or how many industries have moved to other countries?

In September last year a glass factory in Valencia, Spain, was closed at least temporarily, because it did not have a valid permit to emit greenhouse gases. Spain is apparently not doing so well in terms of meeting its emissions targets under Kyoto with emissions about 50 percent above levels in 1990.

There was an interesting article in yesterday’s Financial Times explaining that in Britain, under the mandatory emission’s trading scheme, companies are issued with allowances for each tonne of carbon dioxide they may emit. But that Britain hasn’t determined its overall plan for the 2008-2012 period, so I guess glass factories in Britain won’t yet be able to plan for the period 2008-2012.

The European Union Commission is apparently already in dispute with the British government over its attempt to raise the amount of carbon dioxide British businesses can emit under the first phase of the scheme which runs from 2005-2008.

Would this be equivalent to Tony Blair wanting to increasing the number of taxi licences?

Australian Farmers Losing Competitive Edge

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David Tribe writing about the latest issue of the Australian Farm Policy Journal and quoting Executive Director Mick Keogh notes there has been little real growth in total annual agricultural research and development investment levels in Australia since the 1980s, and the level of government investment in agricultural research and development is falling.

“Given the extended lag times that are known to occur between agricultural R&D investment and subsequent farm productivity growth, this raises doubts about the ability of Australian farmers to maintain the high levels of productivity growth in the future that will be necessary to remain competitive in global markets,” Mr Keogh said.

The focus on production research has been replaced to some extent with a greater emphasis being placed on environmental issues.

Species Vulnerable to Extinction (Part 4): Incorrect Listings

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Following is a note from a reader on the subject of species incorrectly listed as vulnerable to exinction in Australia. The reader, who I will call Matthew for convenience*, makes the point that both state and federal lists of threatened speces are notoriously unreliable and tend to over estimate the number of rare, vulnerable and threatened species because they include populations at the edge of their natural range.

“Jennifer,

In your blog post titled ‘Species Vulnerable to Extinction: Part 1, The Daintree’ you asked for details of some fauna or flora species which are incorrectly listed as threatened.

The threatened species lists of the [Australian] states are littered to varying degrees with species which are incorrectly listed. New South Wales (NSW) in particular lists many species which are on the edge or beyond of their natural distributions in this Australian state.

Here are a few:

Black-necked Stork (E), Cotton Pygmy-goose (E), Magpie Goose (V), Red-tailed Tropic bird (V), Masked Booby (V), Collared Kingfisher (V).

These species aren’t under any threat in NSW. They just don’t occur in the state or are right on the edge of their distribution near the NSW border.

Most only ever show up in NSW as strays or birds blown in by large storms and do not require any protection in that state. Similarly Queensland lists the Common wombat as Rare. It only occurs in a tiny part of the state near Stanthorpe.

The Australian federal government’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBS) listings are mixed up because the feds take their listings from the states and filter out most of the kind of listings mentioned above. Just to make things interesting they list some species differently from the states, for example the Queensland lungfish. It only occurs in Queensland and is not under threat or listed in that state, but for some reason is listed federally.

In general they are interested in the species as a whole but get confused with listings for a lot of subspecies and particular populations. So you get the glossy-back cockatoo not listed under the EPBC Act except on Kangaroo Island and many similar listings.

Your Tasmanian wedgetail eagle is another but the Tasmanian Azure kingfisher has managed to avoid EPBC listing so far and is only listed on the Tasmanian state list.

You’ve labeled Thinksy’s list as critically endangered bird species but this is misleading. Many of the birds are not critically endangered species at all. They are subspecies or regional populations. I note that Birds Australia have labeled it as critically endangered birds.

Other species are listed based on poor knowledge of the species originally followed by the states and Canberra being slow to update their lists in line with the real situation. One I have worked with is a Brachychiton vitifolius, a small shrub from Cape York Peninsula. It is reasonably common, spread over 500 km of the peninsula in most areas where Darwin stringybark woodland (one of the most common ecosystems in the region) occurs. It loses its leaves in the dry season so it looks like a bunch of twigs when most people visit the area and is difficult to find unless you know what to look for. It commonly grows on eroding creekbanks and thrives on road edges, fencelines and other disturbed areas. It was formerly listed by Queensland as ‘Vulnerable’ but nowdays has been dropped to ‘Rare’.

It should and probably will be dropped altogether but the process is slow. Meantime it is still listed under the EPBC act as ‘Vulnerable’.

Matthew*”

Thanks for this information, Matthew*. But if the Azure Kingfisher is only on the state list, why is it listed by Environment Australia as critically endangered?

Is the Tasmanian population really a distinct subspecies?

Interestingly the species has a distribution that extends from Papua and New Guinea right down the east coast of Australia but the map next to the listing at Birds Australia only shows it occuring in Tasmania. On careful reading it is evident that this listing only refers to the Tasmanian subspecies, but hey it could be construed as misleading.

How does the average person work out which species are really vulnerable to extinction – really needing of special care and attention?

Which species on Thinksy’s list are really critically endangered?

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* Matthew is the pen name that I have given this reader who wishes to remain anonymous.

Species Vulnerable to Extinction: Part 3, SW Western Australia

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Southern Brown Bandicoot, Image from Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

According to Professor Norman Myers earth is experiencing the largest mass extinction in 65 million years with the loss of species more severe than the five mass extinctions of the geological past.

As mentioned at a previous blog post, south-western Western Australia has been listed as one of the hotspots in Australia. I asked David Ward from Western Australia for comment and he replied:

“Hello Jen,

I am not an expert on extinctions, but I believe there have been a lot in south-western Australia, especially in the cleared wheat belt.

The forests have had, as far as I know, very few losses, despite logging and regular burning for many years. I would say that lack of regular burning, followed by very fierce fires, is the main threat to forest species.

Several times, plants have been reported extinct, or endangered, only to reappear profusely after a fire. Native animals are, if anything, making a comeback, due to CALM’s fox-baiting.

The supposedly endangered Brown Bandicoot is common in the semi-rural suburb where I live, and is even regarded by some as a nuisance, digging up gardens.

A nearby golf course is swarming with kangaroos.

There is a problem with loss of habitat and species, but we should take a balanced view.

Does Norman Myers mention inappropriate fire exclusion as a threat to biota? I would say it is at least as worthy of attention as clearing.

Oddly, few university researchers have tackled it, concentrating instead on the effects of frequent burning.

Scientists may be objective in a particular study, but the choice of research question is far from objective. Four legs good, two legs bad?

Regards
David Ward“

Alan Ashbarry

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Alan Ashbarry has a deep commitment to people in communities that depend upon the sustainable management of Australian forests and acknowledges the pride that forest scientists, professional foresters and timber workers have in providing a renewable resource and in creating jobs that have long term benefit for society, the economy and the environment.

Alan was a researcher for the 15 branches of Timber Communities Australia (TCA) in Tasmania and describes himself as more of a people person than a technician. He has told me that he got involved with TCA intially through “helping a mate”.

If you are trying to find a forestry related statistic, I discovered some months ago that an email to Alan was a good place to start.

When I first asked Alan to tell readers of this blog something about himself he declined. He said he prefered to stay in the background. But he’s since decided to come out and tell us that he occasionally posts a comment at this blog under the pen name “Cinders”.

Alan is concerned that the people who know the forest best and depend upon it for their daily family income are often dwarfed by the media coverage of well orchestrated campaigns.

Cinders posted the following comment last December at this blog:

“For those interested in propaganda icons by the extreme green movement this boastful extract from one of their books is worth a read.

THE REST OF THE WORLD IS WATCHING GREEN IMAGES
by Richard Flanagan and Cassandra Pybus

Innovation has been a hallmark of the Tasmanian Green movement, not only in its political orientation, but also in its appropriation of the marketing methods of capitalism to win its battles. Long before any other radical movement in Australia, the Tasmanian Greens were using market research, sophisticated advertising techniques, direct-sell catalogues and photographic images of the highest quality to sell their message. “We have grabbed ideas from wherever we could,” Bob Brown explained in a 1983 interview. “We looked at the way other people who sell cheese and paper tissues, how they do it, and thought that if that sells an idea then how much more important that [it] be grafted by us into saving wilderness”. In an era vaunted as the age of communications (and all the contradictions that this implies) the Tasmanian Greens have been a measure of their time.

… The campaign to protect Lake Pedder brought forth a range of aesthetic responses which drew from the Romantic tradition and also the newer modernist abstract aesthetics. The most potent expression of the beauty of Pedder was in the work of Lithuanian-born bushwalker, Olegas Truchanas, who regularly packed the Town Hall with his slide shows. Truchanas’ magnificent collections of photographs of the Tasmanian wilderness had been lost, along with his home, in the 1967 bushfires. He determined to rebuild his collection to show people just what it was that would be destroyed by hydro schemes in the south-west.

Truchanas returned again and again to the southwest. In 1972 he lost his life in the Gordon River he wished to save. “He had been destroyed by biblical simplicity by two of the elements: fire and water,” wrote his friend, artist Max Angus. “Classical mythology affords no stronger example of the drama of the incorruptible man who passes into legend.”

Olegas Truchanas became the Greens’ archetypal hero: the man who returns from of the wilderness with an aesthetic and a political vision which challenges the established order, and then is returned to the wilderness in the most profound and final way. It is a reincarnation of the great Romantic figure: the artist as hero, the essence of which is starkly captured in Ralph Hope-Johnstone’s photograph of Truchanas taken days before his death.

The posthumous publication of Truchanas’ seminal work in The World of Olegas Truchanas (1975) was an impressive beginning to the Greens’ role as a major cultural interpreter. Books, films, photographic ephemera poured out of the movement during the late 1970s and early 1980s. These were the nub of a political-commercial-aesthetic nexus which the Tasmanian Greens skillfully nurtured, creating their own national distribution through the very successful Wilderness shops. The Greens made wilderness a commodity whose commercial nakedness they clothed in the Romantic aesthetic borrowed from Piguenit and refined by the wilderness photographers who followed in Truchanas’ footsteps.

The leading exponent of this school was Truchanas’ student and disciple, Peter Dombrovskis. The political Romantic vision has its apotheosis in his photo of Rock Island Bend, the most famous photograph ever taken of the Franklin River. It was used to illustrate a full-colour supplement in all major newspapers on the eve of the 1983 federal election. The ALP judged the Franklin issue to have been critical in the outcome of that election. In 1990, when once again Green issues looked to determine the federal election outcome, Rock Island Bend was prominent in glossy advertising promoting the ALP as the environmentally responsible choice.
Amanda Lohrey has suggested that in Tasmania the Greens have fused the Utopian and Romantic visions of Tasmania into a new vision that is greater and different from both of them. This new vision finds eloquent expression in a well-publicised photo of Christine Milne taken at the height of the Wesley Vale controversy. This high Romantic image – a solitary woman on a blasted heath – became charged, in the context of a highly charged environmental and political battle, with a whole new array of rich meanings.

In this image is also the idea of the Green leader as a solitary prophet, remote from the movement which creates and sustains such leaders. Images of mass action, such as the 20,000-strong rally in Hobart in 1983, have never fascinated the media in the same way as the image of a messianic leader.

Long-time Green strategist, Chris Harries, has written of the problems and contradictions of using the media during the Franklin campaign. Faced with a media “which demands superstars and which has conditioned society to think in terms of hierarchies and heroes … Bob Brown played out The Life of Brian. His pre-eminence in the media campaign was always understood as a means to an end, not an end in itself, and he was painfully aware of the contradiction”.

A media that creates a messiah must logically have its tale told in full, replete with a crucifixion. When forestry workers at Farmhouse Creek dragged Bob Brown (one of many protesters) away from the bulldozer, they were enacting their set roles in a passion play cum photo opportunity par excellence- The powerful image of this photo, shown over and over again across the nation and across the world, is full of falsities, not the least of which is the idea of the prophet being destroyed by a stupid and vicious common people.

The Farmhouse Creek photo does also point to a change in the political aesthetic in Green promotion in the late 1980s. Forests do not lend themselves to Romantic vistas in quite the same way as do wild rivers, but images of the violence done to majestic native forests do, and these became more prominent than the images of the forests themselves.

Stark monochrome vistas of burnt-over clearfells became the staple of Green publications throughout the forestry battles. Likewise, as the forestry industry and government strengthened their armoury against the Green protest, images of confrontation loomed large, both in the media and the Green press. The workers, not the bosses, are portrayed as the enemy in graphic close-ups of chainsaw-wielding forestry workers or alarmed police cordons.“

Alan left TCA at the end of 2007 and now is an independent consultant specialising in Tasmania’s forest and natural resource management sector

Alan Ashbarry lives in Tasmania with his wife and four inspirational children.

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This post will be filed under a category titled ‘people’. As a reader and/or commentator at this blog you may like to tell us something about yourself. Contributions encouraged please email to jennifermarohasy@jennifermarohasy.com.

This post was updated on May 14, 2008