Jennifer Marohasy

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New Future for the Last Great Savanna: A Note from Luke Walker

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A new report The Nature of Northern Australia** advocates responsible conservation and development of one of the world’s great ecological treasures – the northern Australian tropical savanna. This vast area represents some 25% of the world’s remaining tropical savanna woodlands and is still in good ecological condition, some 1.5 million km2 extending from Cairns and the Cape York Peninsula, through the Northern Territory to the Kimberley in north west Western Australia.

The Nature of Northern Australia is the result of almost three years of intensive research by authors Dr John Woinarski, Professor Brendan Mackey, Professor Henry Nix and Dr Barry Traill

Not only does the north have two thirds of Australia’s freshwater resources, it also contains abundant minerals, energy, unique iconic landscapes, including Kakadu and the Kimberley and unique aboriginal heritage.

Some of Australia’s largest, most undisturbed rivers, an abundance of plant and animal species not found anywhere else in the country, and nationally important areas of rainforest, mangroves and tropical heath lands are also located in the north.

Recent pressures with water supply and drought in southern Australia have refocused national development attention again on the north with a joint government and industry taskforce reviewing options for the future.

“In other parts of the world, tropical savanna is in decline due to land clearing, unsustainable grazing regimes and over population, but this vast area of northern Australia is remarkably intact,” co-author Professor Brendan Mackey from The Australian National University said.

However, there are mounting concerns about the biodiversity assets of this region documented in surveys in the report. Ecological threats such as changing fire regimes, overgrazing, feral animals, exotic weeds and climate change remain unresolved issues.

Scientists have singled out cattle grazing, above climate change and mining, as the most threatening process to northern Australia.

In an ABC interview Professor Brendan Mackey said 70 per cent of northern Australia is held under pastoral lease and cattle stations should do more to protect the ecology of tropical savannas.

“So what pastoralists do or choose not to do will have enormous bearing on the environmental health of northern Australia and its wonderful globally significant natural assets,” he said.

“What we are asking for is for what we call best management practice.”

Despite the difficulties associated with pastoralism in the north the report documents exciting developments at Trafalgar, at Charters Towers.

Joe Landsberg is demonstrating the benefits of ecological grazing in a most difficult environment. He says “we reduced our stocking rate by 60%. Then by spelling at least 20% of the property every wet season, we were able to restore native pasture species to greater than 80% within a few years. These lessons have now led us to our current management regime, where spelling 20% of the property annually, strategic use of small areas of exotic pasture, conservative stocking rates and intensive herd management have increased our productivity (i.e. higher calving rates, earlier and heavier turn-off weights, better meat quality) and therefore profit. Monitoring sites on the property also confirmed the improvement in pasture quality, soil health and water quality. We also have an annual control program for exotic weeds. Current research in natural resource management also confirms these strategies lead to improved biodiversity and ecosystem health. “

Premonitions of intensive irrigated agriculture development in the north have brought back memories of insect plagues and high pesticide use in the sensitive tropical environment.

Professor Henry Nix, another of the authors behind the report with Professor Mackey, says critics of the cotton industry are not aware genetically modified cotton has overcome challenges faced over a decade ago.

He says genetically modified cotton has proved it is sustainable.

“Cotton is regarded as a monster, and it certainly was 10-15 years ago, because of the very large amounts of chemicals – 17, 18 sprays per crop,” he said.

“Now that’s down to as low as one spray. Eighty per cent of their cotton crop is now a GMO crop.”

CSIRO has developed an entirely new 21st century agronomic package for cotton production in the Ord irrigation area using off-season production, transgenic cotton and beneficial insects

Another remarkable innovation for use of the savannas is a practical reduction in greenhouse emissions from a modified fire regime that reduces high intensity late season burning.

The SMH reports that Conoco, which operates a liquefied natural gas plant in Darwin, had entered into an agreement to offset some of the greenhouse gas emissions produced at its plant. In return for carbon credits, Conoco pays the West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement partners more than $1 million a year. Some 100,000 tonnes a year of greenhouse gas emissions can be saved by this approach which is verified by satellite monitoring.

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** The Nature of NorthernAustralia – Natural values, ecological processes and future prospects
By John Woinarski, Brendan Mackey, Henry Nix & Barry Traill
2007 ANU E Press Australian National University E Press
ISBN 9781921313301 (pbk.) ISBN 9781921313318 (online)
Read the e-book here: http://epress.anu.edu.au/nature_na/pdf/whole_book.pdf

Giant ocean current discovered around Australia and Tasmania

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Thanks to Luke for alerting us to this new research.

Following hot on the heels of recent climate revelations, such as the warming aerosols of Asian Brown Clouds, Climate Shifts, 1934 replacing 1998 as the warmest recorded year in the USA, and the new evidence for a large negative feedback due to the thinning of heat trapping clouds, Australian scientists at CSIRO have discovered a previously unrecognised deep ocean pathway linking the 3 southern hemisphere ocean basins, which is part of the global conveyer belt, or thermohaline circulation. Very important to global climate.

This is where I came in to the climate debate by initilally believing scare stories that the Gulf Stream was about to shut down and give europe a climate similar to Alaska. It turned out that the slowing down was a mis-calculation, plus ‘mean wind advection’ and the earth’s rotation are important factors in driving ocean circulations, according to Carl Wunsch.

The CSIRO news release is here:

Ocean ‘supergyre’ link to climate regulator

Also on CNN who unfortunately saw fit to introduce the now customary alarmism:

“The best known of the global ocean currents is the North Atlantic loop of the Great Ocean Conveyer, which brings warm water from the Equator to waters off northern Europe, ensuring relatively mild weather there. Scientists say if the conveyor collapsed, northern Europe would be plunged into an ice age.”

Of course, this new ocean ‘supergyre’ will have to be incorporated into those diagnostic tools known as ‘climate models,’ along with the results of other recent research.

Different Emotional Responses to Mining and Logging in Jarrah Forests: A Note from Boxer

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The response by our society to mining on one hand and logging on the other in the jarrah forests of Western Australia could not be more in contrast. Alcoa’s bauxite mining is met with silence, but to oppose logging of virtually any sort (even of plantations in some cases) has become a normal part of the moral foundation for all well-informed citizens. Yet if we look at other forms of economic activity that covers large tracts of land, only well-managed tourism could be said to have a similar or less environmental impact than well-managed commercial native forestry.

As Roger Underwood recently explained, bauxite mining causes total removal of all organisms from large tracts of the forest and removal of several metres of soil (bauxite ore), material that is the foundation upon which a forest exists. This is followed by re-establishment of the forest back onto the irreversibly altered soil profile. The changes that are imposed by mining are permanent in terms of geological time scales – these soils/ores were formed on-site by many millions of years of weathering of the underlying granite basement rock. Roger’s post gives additional important information.

Logging on the other hand is a short period of harvesting that occurs within a process that takes many decades: the forest is regenerated, managed by thinning, controlled burning and other practices, leading to the maturing of the overstorey trees over a period of between one and several human generations. Harvesting occurs again, followed by the same regeneration and management process. Many Australian native forests have been through two or three such cycles, yet they are now considered “high conservation value” forests by the greens and the public.

Harvesting may be either clear felling at one extreme to selective (individual tree) logging at the other, and there is a continuous spectrum of logging practices between the extremes. But most importantly, the soil is left almost undisturbed compared to mining, and the understory is not stripped away. No species has been recorded as having been driven to extinction by logging in Australia, though this is not a reason to be complacent. It does indicate that the commercial use of native Australian forests since European settlement has had less impact upon biodiversity than urban expansion or farming, or indeed the first arrival of humans tens of thousands of years ago.

Possibly the paradox arises because of three factors and our normal emotional responses to these factors. They are our perception of order versus chaos, a sense of time, and a sense of space.

Order versus chaos

Order and chaos are easy to recognise. In this context, logging is chaotic. The jumble of smashed limbs and small trees presents a confronting image. Furthermore, as timber has a relatively low economic value and the yields per hectare are relatively low, the logging debris is left in place for a year or so and then burnt (more chaos), which means that chaos interacts with time to create the impression of lasting destruction. There is plenty of time for Bob Brown to get up on top of the biggest stump (“big” being related to our sense of space) for photo opportunities.

In contrast mining demonstrates a good deal of order. After logging, the debris, stumps, and all the understorey is heaped and mulched and removed promptly. Access to the entire mining “envelope” is prohibited for safety reasons. Some of this biomass debris is sold for renewable energy and charcoal, whereas native forest logging residues from normal logging are ruled to be non-renewable. This is known as “painting with the Alcoa brush”, because this is all it takes to change a commodity from dirty and undesirable to green and renewable. This simple self-deception occurs at senior corporate and political levels, as well as at the general public level. I maintain that it makes more sense to consider all the biomass residues from logging and mining to be renewable, as occurs across Europe and North America.

The sense of order in mining continues because after the removal of the biomass residues the open mine area looks like a ploughed paddock. The boundary of the surrounding forest is clearly and cleanly defined and looking into a tall forest from the side is an emotionally pleasant experience. As the site is stripped, drilled, blasted and the ore removed, there is little confronting imagery of chaos, though many people find the instant of blasting very confronting if they can see it. By the time the public are allowed back (after the mining envelope moves away through the bush) the pit has been rehabilitated and order continues to reign – smoothed contours, curved parallel rip lines, young plants germinating under-foot. It’s a positively pastoral image.

The importance of time comes up in several ways. During the time of public exclusion from a mining envelope, the public is unaware of the time passing for this particular point in the forest. A tour of Alcoa’s operations takes you from one point in the process to the next by bus: this step is followed by this step, by this step etc, and then … here is the rehabilitated pit. The emotional response of the viewer is influenced by the rapidity of the tour. You’re back home in time for tea. The same occurs if foresters take you on a tour of forest operations, but the demand for such tours is non-existent. The public do not wish to be further informed about commercial forestry and the political arm of government would be reluctant to fund such public relations exercises for an industry that the public tells them should be closed down.

In contrast, the campaigns against forestry always leave the observer with the impression that this smashed up post-logging condition is the end result, rather than the end of one week’s work in a cycle that spans many decades. You are never shown photos of the stump Bob Brown stood on ten years after the logging, because the regrowth at that stage is so thick, it would tend to detract from the message of “devastation, forever”. Bob wouldn’t even be able to find the same stump.

A sense of time

Time can also be influential in other ways; telling people that the devastation in this photo will look like the young forest in that tourist brochure in three decades has little emotional impact. A trivial immediate benefit is of much greater emotional consequence than a major benefit in the next decade. So long periods of time can make it harder to portray the concept of an environmental impact now (logging) being followed by a positive response a human generation in the future.

It is interesting how green activism often involves the use of photos taken in regrowth forest. In this case, the beauty of the tall evenly-spaced trees (the sense of order again, but did you realise they are spaced that way because of thinning?) is used to convey the impression of permanence, and the permanence of a good thing being desirable. Senescing forest, with it’s dead tops and crooked old trees, is rarely used for this type of publicity, because to do so would disrupt the sense of order and implies decay, and so undermines the association between the attractive forest and permanence. However if you take people to that same patch of regrowth forest and show them a photo of what the exact same spot looked like immediately after it was last logged, or killed by wildfire, they are astounded and often excited. In this case it is possible to use a long period of time from the past devastation to convey the understanding that the forest is a vibrant dynamic system. I find young forests uplifting.

A sense of space

Space is critical. Big is always better in emotional terms if you are contemplating an object of which you approve, but the reverse applies if you are contemplating something of which you disapprove. (If you want to minimise the effect of a traumatic memory, you repeatedly visualise it and then make the image smaller in your mind.) A tall dominant tree species is generally much more emotionally influential than a dumpy sub-dominant species. A tall straight tree is more valuable than a crooked or heavily forked tree, which comes back to the sense of order and possibly the perception of beauty being related to symmetry.

Selective, or single-tree logging is widely perceived to be more benign than clear-felling, because the area of chaos is smaller. The small clearing created by the tree’s falling crown is surrounded by undisturbed forest. The big stump used for the anti-logging photo opportunity is always taken against a background of an open space caused by clear felling, and that space always continues to the local horizon, which creates the impression that this chaos extends, if not to the nearest coastline, certainly as far as the eye can see. A short camera lens is used and the image cropped to convey the impression of perhaps a thousand metres to the cleared horizon. It is never taken with the 50 year old regrowth just behind the photographer in the shot.

But this use of space to engender a feeling of anxiety about total destruction over vast tracts of land may be at odds with the evidence of forest science. In some forests (typically the tall wet forest types in Australia) it is better to regenerate blocks of forest as even aged self-sown seedlings over areas of perhaps 10 to 30 hectares to reduce competition between established trees and seedlings. And 10 hectares, photographed from the right angle with a short lens, carries a strong emotional impact. The data that demonstrates the degrading influence of selective logging in some forests has no appeal at the emotional level.

It is a curious contrast between public and activist reactions to logging and mining. Examining the basic differences in perceptions of logging and mining, for example, the perceptions of space, time and order/chaos, demonstrate that the emotional responses to logging are not related to the fundamentals of conservation.

In the context of this discussion, none of these factors directly relate to the fundamental principle of conservation of protecting biodiversity. To prevent the extinction of any species seems to me to be the inviolable principle of conservation. If we were really honest with ourselves, then our emotional responses to these three factors would have little relevance to the preservation of biodiversity.

Boxer is a regular reader and sometimes contributor to this blog.

Scientific Hypothesis as Ideological Dogma: And More from Benny Peiser

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On Monday Benny Peiser quoted from the teachings of Marcus Aurelius: “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

Benny Peiser publishes CCNet, an e-newsletter with links to various opinion pieces, reports and new technical papers .

Yesterday there was more food for thought:

What is the optimal climate change policy – the one that sets future emissions reductions to maximize the economic welfare of humans? Yale University economist William Nordhaus, perhaps the world’s leading expert on the economics of climate change, has just released a new study, The Challenge of Global Warming: Economic Models and Environmental Policy, which estimates the costs of various proposed trajectories for limiting carbon dioxide over the next couple of centuries. So what did Nordhaus find? First, the Stern proposal for rapid deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions would reduce the future damage from global warming by $13 trillion, but at a cost of $27 trillion dollars. That’s not a good deal. For an even worse deal, the DICE-2007 model estimates that the Gore proposal would reduce climate change damages by $12 trillion, but at a cost of nearly $34 trillion.
–Ronald Bailey, Reason Online, 14 August 2007

Today, the peer reviewed process of funding and validation of scientific research in climatology is equally controlled by the modern equivalent of the Collegium Romanum (the Vatican’s Institute of Research), the Inter-government Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). They in turn answer to the equivalent of the Inquisition, the Green ideologists, who, mercifully, can only torment through derision or denying the heretics research funding, and not the frightening instruments of torture.
–Deepak Lal, Business Standard, 15 August 2007

Some of the hysteric and extreme claims about global warming are also a symptom of pagan emptiness, of Western fear when confronted by the immense and basically uncontrollable forces of nature. Belief in a benign God who is master of the universe has a steadying psychological effect, although it is no guarantee of Utopia, no guarantee that the continuing climate and geographic changes will be benign. In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today
they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
–Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, 2006

Anthropogenic global warming is a scientific hypothesis, not an article of religious or ideological dogma. Skepticism and doubt are entirely appropriate in the realm of science, in which truth is determined by evidence, experimentation, and observation, not by consensus or revelation. Yet when it comes to global warming, dissent is treated as heresy — as a pernicious belief whose exponents must be shamed, shunned, or silenced. The issue of global warming isn’t a closed book. Smearing those who buck the “scientific consensus” as traitors, toadies, or enemies of humankind may be emotionally satisfying and even professionally lucrative. It is also indefensible, hyperbolic bullying.
–Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, 15 August 2007

But the overriding reality seems almost un-American: We simply don’t have a solution for this problem. As we debate it, journalists should resist the temptation to portray global warming as a morality tale — as Newsweek did — in which anyone who questions its gravity or proposed solutions may be ridiculed as a fool, a crank or an industry stooge. Dissent is, or should be, the lifeblood of a free society.
–Robert J. Samuelson, The Washington Post, 15 August 2007

To subscribe to CCNet send an e-mail to listserver@livjm.ac.uk (“subscribe cambridge-conference”).

Water Diversions in the Marshes: Finally a Mainstream Issue

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Chris and Gill Hogendyk, with a bit of help from this blog, have been working hard to draw attention to the levy banks in the Macquarie Marshes starving the two nature reserves of water.

It seems the mainstream media have finally caught-on with an article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald entitled Cattlemen stealing water, irrigators say .

The piece by Daniel Lewis includes comment from Chris:

“Chris Hogendyk, the head of the irrigator group Macquarie River Food and Fibre, said the Gum Cowal-Terrigal branch of the marshes received less than 10 per cent of flood flows before 1980 but now got up to 30 per cent of what previously went to the nature reserves. There were once no large bird breeding colonies on the system, he said, but now there were several.

“The water should be going to the nature reserves, not onto private land. Once water enters the Gum Cowal-Terrigal system it is diverted and banked up across the floodplain by no less than 30 banks and channels.

“This water creates wonderful feed for fattening cattle, but kills the trees that are flooded. The resulting man-made wetlands are grazed bare.”

“Mr Hogendyk said rather than buying more water, the Government had to get rid of the banks and channels or buy the private land being flooded and set it aside for conservation.”

I understand that contrary to the Sydney Morning Herald article, Chris and Gill are keen for land to be purchased by The Australian Wildlife Conservancy or Bush Heritage – not government.

I am not sure that land needs to be purchased. But some of the levy banks need to be removed and some controls placed on grazing.

Bunny fence prompts land use study in Western Australia

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There’s an interesting article in The New York Times entitled ‘At Australia’s Bunny Fence, Variable Cloudiness Prompts Climate Study.’

“A fence built to prevent rabbits from entering the Australian outback has unintentionally allowed scientists to study the effects of land use on regional climates.

The rabbit-proof fence in Western Australia was completed in 1907 and stretches about 2,000 miles. It acts as a boundary separating native vegetation from farmland. Within the fence area, scientists have observed a strange phenomenon: above the native vegetation, the sky is rich in rain-producing clouds. But the sky on the farmland side is clear.

Researchers led by Tom Lyons of Murdoch University in Australia and Udaysankar S. Nair of the University of Alabama in Huntsville have come up with three possible explanations for this difference in cloudiness.

One theory is that the dark native vegetation absorbs and releases more heat into the atmosphere than the light-colored crops. These native plants release heat that combines with water vapor from the lower atmosphere, resulting in cloud formation.

Another hypothesis is that the warmer air on the native scrubland rises, creating a vacuum in the lower atmosphere that is then filled by cooler air from cropland across the fence. As a result, clouds form on the scrubland side.

A third idea is that a high concentration of aerosols — particles suspended in the atmosphere — on the agricultural side results in small water droplets and a decrease in the probability of rainfall. On the native landscape, the concentration of aerosols is lower, translating into larger droplets and more rainfall.

Within the last few decades, about 32 million acres of native vegetation have been converted to croplands west of the bunny fence. On the agricultural side of the fence, rainfall has been reduced by 20 percent since the 1970s.”