Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Of Cattle and Conservation

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…In another part of Australia, cattle grazing has been identified as detrimental to World Heritage values, by potentially initiating soil erosion, altering under-storey vegetation and fire regimes. Cattle grazing has also been associated with the introduction of weed species such as pasture crops and assisting in the spread of other weeds.

The Wet Tropics grazing policy is to phase out cattle grazing within the WHA as leases expire unless there is a demonstrated benefit for World Heritage management and no prudent and feasible alternatives are available. Some grazing is already being phased out under the State Forest transfer program.

Interestingly, cattle have historically played their part in establishing the conservation significance of Queensland’s Wet Tropics. In 1971, a couple of long-term Daintree rainforest residents returned home from a weekend in Mossman, to find four of their cattle dead. Suspecting foul play, they called in the Department of Primary Industry’s divisional veterinarian.

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Strychnine-like poisoning from alkaloids was found to have caused the deaths, from large, partially masticated seeds in the digestive systems of the cattle. Herbarium records revealed the re-discovery of a lost species of Calycanthus, but upon recognition of peculiarities and most significantly the variable expression of three or four cotyledons, the species became Idiospermum australiensis.

At the time, there were only eighteen families of primitive flowering plant known to exist world-wide; Idiospermaceae became the nineteenth family. Its discovery stimulated intense botanical interest in the rainforests of the Daintree, which in turn revealed a living museum of plants and animals of exceptional antiquity.

It is also interesting to note that from the early nineteen-hundreds until its re-discovery in seventy-one, the rainforest dinosaur Idiospermum australiensis was being selectively logged under its common name Ribbonwood. Axemen were familiar with special qualities of the plant, along with some seven hundred other species of rainforest cabinetwood timbers, as well as the complex rainforest habitats in which they grew.

Melbourne Benefits from Killing Barmah Brumbies

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Public submissions in response to the Draft Feral Horse Management Plan for Barmah Forest close today.

The plan proposes the removal of horses from the Barmah Forest firstly by using lure and trap techniques over two years, which will commence following the approval of a final plan. The removal program would be reviewed annually and all feral horses are proposed to be removed from the Barmah Forest within five years of the program commencing. The involvement of key stakeholders will be through comment on this draft plan. The feral horse removal program will be managed jointly by the Department of Sustainability and Environment and Parks Victoria.

In a note from Angela Downey of the Great Divide Team:

Earlier this morning we received notification that the Victorian Government and their able assistants, not content with killing the Legend of the Man from Snowy River, by their banning of the Mountain Cattlemen and their Barmah counterparts, it seems now they are set to remove another icon of Victoria’s heritage under the guise of saving the environment and questionable animal humanity reasons.

On Monday members of Parks Victoria will set about removing 150 brumbies from the Barmah Forest which covers an area of 75,000 acres. It is claimed this small number of horses are causing severe damage over this huge area.

A decision was made to remove the animals from the park following this years harsh drought and with another to possibly to follow, with the implication that this small number of brumbies would place the environment and the resident native fauna under undue stress due to competition for feed and water. Many of the horses live in small family groups and are spread throughout the park. No doubt it has been a harsh year for them and many of the other animals.

However no mention has also been made of the contribution to the lack of feed made by other feral animals such rabbits, wild pigs, goats, foxes, dogs and cats all of which inhabit the forest. Such other feral animals often have massive explosive populations and cause direct and monumental damage to the environment.

An option of using helicopters with snipers on board to do the deed was considered but due to the potential of a similar outcry such as the furor over the Guy Fawkes National Park slaughter of 2000. During that episode many horses were shot but died a slow and agonising death from bullet wounds.

The Victorian National Parks propose to round up the Barmah brumbries, destroy any stressed and old animals on site and remove the rest to the abattoirs.

These animals would be obviously suffering due to the current dry conditions as would the native fauna. . They are more than happy to leave the suffering native fauna to their own devices in the Park while also making little impact on the removal of other feral fauna with populations of thousands which happily munch their way through tonnes of native flora and fauna, digging holes, slopping around in bogs, and bulldozing their way around the Park.

The removal of the Brumbies will have little impact on the environment of the Park. One has to question the governments motives in removing this small population of an Australian icon and part of our heritage.

If Parks Victoria are actually so concerned with the plight of the brumbies there are other options out there.

Further recommendations have been made by the Victorian Environment Assessment Council in its River Red Gum Forests Investigation Draft Proposals Paper (which states):

Domestic stock grazing has occurred in Barmah forest for several generations. The average of 2000 (summer) and 800 (winter) head of cattle agisted in the forest has been reduced in response to recent drought conditions, culminating in the destocking of the forest for the 2007 winter term. There are also 7 current grazing licences covering a total of 78 hectares and with a total carrying capacity of 112 Dry Sheep Equivalent that would be included in the proposed national park. Grazing with domestic stock is incompatible with national park status and will not be permitted in the proposed park. As well as domestic stock, Barmah forest is also grazed by feral horses and deer which, together with feral pigs, should also be promptly removed from the proposed national park to protect its highly significant natural values.

In Chapter 4 of the report, Social, economic and environmental implications, a candid expression of economic impact is made:

A team of consultants led by Gillespie Economics was commissioned by VEAC to independently assess the social and economic implications of VEAC’s proposed recommendations. The consultants concluded that the proposed recommendations would result in a net increase in economic value to Victoria of $92 million per year excluding the costs of environmental water. The breakeven price for environmental water would be between $1320 and $2880 per megalitre. Most of the benefits from the proposed recommendations result from non-use values for environmental protection, which are heavily dependent on adequate environmental water. These benefits would accrue mostly to people outside the Investigation area, especially in Melbourne, while the costs of the proposed recommendations would be largely borne within the Investigation area particularly in the areas near where public land timber harvesting and grazing are focussed. The towns of Cohuna, Koondrook, Nathalia and Picola are likely to be most sensitive to these effects, as they would be occurring in the context of the contraction of local economies and populations in these areas that has been experienced in recent years.

This is yet another abrogation of environmental responsibility in a seemingly endless succession, as defined within the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment 1992.

As people and communities are included in the definition of the environment, the threat of serious or irreversible socio-economic damage (as identified by the consultants) should bring the precautionary principle into play. Under the policy principle of intergenerational equity, the present generation should ensure that the health, diversity and productivity of the environment is maintained or enhanced for the benefit of future generations. And, environmental goals, having been established, should be pursued in the most cost effective way, by establishing incentive structures, including market mechanisms, which enable those best placed to maximise benefits and/or minimise costs to develop their own solutions and responses to environmental problems.

Czech President Václav Klaus to the UN: Global Warming Hysteria or Freedom and Prosperity?

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One can tell – with a high degree of confidence – what topics are expected to be raised here, this morning when it comes to discussing the key challenges of today’s world. The selection of the moderator and my fellow-panelists only confirms it. I guess it is either international terrorism or poverty in Africa. Talking about both of these topics is necessary because they are real dangers but it is relatively easy to talk about them because it is politically correct. I do see those dangers and do not in any way underestimate them. I do, however, see another major threat which deserves our attention – and I am afraid it does not get sufficient attention because to discuss it is politically incorrect these days.

The threat I have in mind is the irrationality with which the world has accepted the climate change (or global warming) as a real danger to the future of mankind and the irrationality of suggested and partly already implemented measures because they will fatally endanger our freedom and prosperity, the two goals we consider – I do believe – our priorities.

We have to face many prejudices and misunderstandings in this respect. The climate change debate is basically not about science; it is about ideology. It is not about global temperature; it is about the concept of human society. It is not about nature or scientific ecology; it is about environmentalism, about one – recently born – dirigistic and collectivistic ideology, which goes against freedom and free markets.

I spent most of my life in a communist society which makes me particularly sensitive to the dangers, traps and pitfalls connected with it. Several points have to be clarified to make the discussion easier:

1. Contrary to the currently prevailing views promoted by global warming alarmists, Al Gore’s preaching, the IPCC, or the Stern Report, the increase in global temperatures in the last years, decades and centuries has been very small and because of its size practically negligible in its actual impact upon human beings and their activities. (The difference of temperatures between Prague where I was yesterday and Cernobbio where I am now is larger than the expected increase in global temperatures in the next century.)

2. As I said, the empirical evidence is not alarming. The arguments of global warming alarmists rely exclusively upon forecasts, not upon past experience. Their forecasts originate in experimental simulations of very complicated forecasting models that have not been found very reliable when explaining past developments.

3. It is, of course, not only about ideology. The problem has its important scientific aspect but it should be stressed that the scientific dispute about the causes of recent climate changes continues. The attempt to proclaim a scientific consensus on this issue is a tragic mistake, because there is none.

4. We are rational and responsible people and have to act when necessary. But we know that a rational response to any danger depends on the size and probability of the eventual risk and on the magnitude of the costs of its avoidance. As a responsible politician, as an academic economist, as an author of a book about the economics of climate change, I feel obliged to say that – based on our current knowledge – the risk is too small and the costs of eliminating it too high. The application of the so called “precautionary principle,” advocated by the environmentalists, is – conceptually – a wrong strategy.

5. The deindustrialization and similar restrictive policies will be of no help. Instead of blocking economic growth, the increase of wealth all over the world and fast technical progress – all connected with freedom and free markets – we should leave them to proceed unhampered. They represent the solution to any eventual climate changes, not their cause. We should promote adaptation, modernization, technical progress. We should trust in the rationality of free people.

6. It has a very important North-South and West-East dimension. The developed countries do not have the right to impose any additional burden on the less developed countries. Imposing overambitious and – for such countries – economically disastrous environmental standards on them is unfair.

No radical measures are necessary. We need something “quite normal.” We have to get rid of the one-sided monopoly, both in the field of climatology and in the public debate. We have to listen to arguments. We have to forget fashionable political correctness. We should provide the same or comparable financial backing to those scientists who do not accept the global warming alarmism.

I really do see environmentalism as a threat to our freedom and prosperity. I see it as “the world key current challenge.”

www.klaus.cz

Global Warming and The Karri Forest: A Note from Roger Underwood

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Articles in The West Australian newspaper on 15th and 17th September 2007 suggested that global warming will lead to the virtual disappearance of Western Australia’s iconic karri forest. The articles quote Dr Ray Wills, a research scientist at the University of Western Australia’s Geography Department, who asserts that karri forests could be reduced to small pockets and marginal remnants in the years to come. He bases this view on projections that the southwest of Western Australia (WA) will become warmer by 2 to 3 degrees in the years ahead, and on the assumption that this warming will in turn lead to a decline in rainfall to the extent that karri will basically die out.

Karri forests are part of the so-called “southern forests” of Australia’s southwest corner. They comprise about 1.3 million hectares of pure karri and karri mixed with jarrah, marri and red and yellow tingle. Apart from several outliers, such as at Boranup (near Margaret River) and Porongorup (east of Mt Barker), all of the present karri forest is found in areas with a long-term annual rainfall of >1100 mm.

However, the present karri forest is also a remnant. Analysis of pollen in geological strata has demonstrated that karri once occupied a very much wider area; indeed it is still possible to find typical karri forest understorey in moist gullies in the northern jarrah forest. The shrinkage of the karri forest appears to have resulted mainly from a decline in rainfall many thousands of years ago.

Karri is well able to survive much higher temperatures than those predicted. The species is adapted to a present-day climate which every summer experiences well above the average temperature, including days over 40 degrees. I have successfully grown karri in Perth and the Darling Ranges, regions with much warmer average temperatures than the lower southwest, and I even succeeded in establishing karri in my arboretum in the Avon Valley where the temperature exceeds 40 degrees day after day from January through to March. Karri was unaffected by these high temperatures. What killed them was winter frosts not summer heat. A feature of the current natural distribution of karri is that frost is very rare and when it does occur it is relatively mild and short-lived.

I believe that a predicted rise in average annual temperature of 2-3 degrees per se will not worry karri, especially if this occurs as a result of milder winters rather than hotter summers.

The problem of lower rainfall is another matter, and already forests all over the southwest of WA (especially wandoo and tuart) are observed declining in the face of below-average rainfall in recent years. The karri forest has also experienced a similar reduction in rainfall, but is not yet showing the same drought symptoms as wandoo and tuart. If there is another substantial decline in the current rainfall pattern, it probably will, unless some action is taken by forest managers.

Luckily something can be done to ameliorate the impact on the karri forest of lower rainfall. This is a well-planned and professionally conducted program of thinning of overstocked regrowth forests plus regular (7-9 year rotation) mild prescribed burning across the whole forest area. Such a program will lead to a higher proportion of rainfall getting through to recharge soil moisture, and will ensure less competition for water at the root zone. Prescribed burning will also reduce bushfire fuels and render old growth forests less susceptible to conversion to dense rainfall-gulping regrowth by high intensity summer fires.

Opponents of thinning and prescribed burning will immediately rise up and condemn this strategy, claiming that it will cause “a loss of biodiversity”. There is no scientific basis for this fear. But if no action is taken and Dr Wills’ doomsday predictions are correct, the biodiversity is going down the tube anyway. Even a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will not stop the 2-3 degree killer temperature rise according to Dr Wills.

It is my understanding that the jury is still out on the link between a projected higher temperature due to global warming and a projected lower rainfall. Never mind. Even if “normal” rainfall patterns return to south-western WA, the forests will be healthier and more biologically diverse if overstocked regrowth stands have been thinned and mild burning undertaken to reduce fuels and thus minimise high intensity wildfires. And if the predictions of Dr Wills and his colleagues are right, well-managed forests will be better able to cope if a still-drier climate eventuates. The other good thing is that both thinning and burning are standard forestry operations which have been conducted for generations and subject to a great deal of research and monitoring. We know how to do it and that it will work, with no environmental downside.

Incidentally, Dr Wills is by not the first distinguished scientist to predict the extinction of Australia’s southwest forests. In the 1970s geography Professor Arthur Connacher predicted that logging for woodchip-quality logs would result in the “desertification” of the karri forest. Thankfully this has not occurred. And in the 1980s ecologist Dr Wardell-Johnson warned of the imminent loss of the tingle forests on the south coast due to “continental drift”. Australia was at that time thought to be drifting towards the equator at a rate of a few millimetres per century. It has also been too early to detect any evidence of this calamity.

Roger Underwood worked as a forester in the karri forest in the 1960s and 1970s.

James Bond versus Norweigan Whalers: A Translation from Ann Novek

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Following is my summary from an editorial in Norwegian paper Fiskaren:

“In October many celebrities will gather to celebrate 30 years with Sea Shepherd, including Mick Jagger, Martin Sheen, Orlando Bloom , Uma Thurman and Pierce Brosnan among other super stars together with their cheque books.

Norway has been under heavy international criticism for its whaling policy. To counter this , Norway has presented facts after facts to defend its whaling policy. Even if the Embassies will not be attacked by anti-whalers, what consequences will show up if a new “whale war” blows up?

Probably it will mainly harm the seafood industry and the country’s image.

Sea Shepherd will arrange the history’s biggest “ Save the Whale’s Party”.

Sea Shepherd might feature images of the attacked whalers “ the Nybraena”, “ the Willassen Senior” and “ the Elin –Torild” on the big screen and as well featuring video sequences of whale’s dying in agony to the tunes of Rolling Stones.

The revenues from this gala evening will be bigger than the revenues from Norwegian whaling. Revenues that can pay new ships, direct actions and media campaigns.

With James Bond and Mick Jagger in the frontlines it might be a tough battle for Norway.

However, the Coastal Party, that represents most whalers, made this statement after the sinking of the Norwegian whaler, “Norwegian authorities must now act to promote minke whaling , as a means to save fisheries in the North. It’s a traditional, sustainable and eco-friendly industry that international extreme animal rights activists mustn’t ruin”.

Ann Novek
Sweden

More and More Polar Bears in Davis Strait

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There was some discussion earlier this year at this blog about polar bear numbers. We couldn’t seem to agree whether numbers were increasing or decreasing and what would happen to bears if all the sea ice melted.

Well according to Dr. Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist who has just completed a three-year survey, polar bear populations along the Davis Strait are healthy and their numbers increasing.

According to Stephanie McDonald writing for The Northern News Service:

“Taylor and co-worker Dr. Lily Peacock have been working for the past three years on a polar bear inventory in the Davis Strait, the first in the area in 20 years. The Davis Strait encompasses the area from Cape Dyer on the eastern side of Baffin Island, through Cumberland Sound, and continues on to the area surrounding Kimmirut.

“Parts of Ungava Bay in Quebec and sections of Labrador are also included in the Davis Strait.

“The results of their study have yet to be released, but Taylor revealed last week that the numbers would be contrary to those released by the U.S. Geological Survey.

“Results will confirm hunters’ impressions, that the polar bear population is productive,” Taylor said.

Last year 841 polar bears were counted in the survey area and halfway through this year’s survey, approximately 600 have been counted. Taylor estimates that this year’s number could be as high as 1,000.

“When he started working for the Department of Environment 12 years ago, Sowdlooapik said that only one or two polar bears would wander through Pangnirtung in a year. Now, he receives almost daily reports of polar bears in popular camping sites, in outpost camps, and in the vicinity of the community.

“We could be looking at the possibility of increasing (hunting) quotas,” Taylor said. “We are seeing high densities of bears in great shape.”