Plants and Animals

Dear Jennifer,

I would like to share an example of the absurdity and wastage which goes under the name of endangered or threatened species management in southwestern forests [of western Australia], part of the ‘great diversity hotspot’ referred to by Professor Myer and others.

A few months ago I visited the karri forest and drove out with a former colleague to have a wander in the Warren and Dombakup State forests, south of the Warren National Park. I once knew these areas very well; I had been the District Forester at Pemberton in the 1960s and 1970s. The Warren and Dombakup State forests were at the time being cutover to supply sawlogs to the big sawmill at Pemberton. Part of my job was the preparation of the logging plans for the mill, supervision of the treemarking (selection of seed trees), quality control of logging operations and the post-logging regeneration of the cutover forest. The clearfelling took place over two or three years, and the regeneration operations in the summer of 1971/72. This involved a process of “scrub-rolling” (using a bulldozer to flatten the tall dense understorey of karri wattle so we would get an even seedbed) and then burning to create an ashbed at a time when there was ripe seed in the crowns of the retained seed trees.

Karri trees only produce seed every 4 or 5 years, so the timing of regeneration operations is very critical. The burns themselves were a tremendous challenge, because of the heavy fuels in the national parks to the north and west, but we had a good handle on the seed cycle, and I had a cadre of very experienced field staff and forest workmen. The whole business succeeded wonderfully. The following winter we got a mass germination of karri seedlings, plus all the other plants which come away after fire in this country. The log landings and some of the old snigging tracks were planted with karri seedlings from the nursery at West Manjimup.

It was great to revisit this forest 35 years later. The hillsides are now covered with tall (>40 metres), swaying karri trees as far as the eye can see, and the day I was there the bush was alive with birdsong and rich with wildflowers. I was told the fauna (which is mostly nocturnal) is abundant, and I sampled for myself the good clear water running in the streams. In one section there was a commercial thinning operation going on, taking out the smaller less vigorous trees to free up the bigger and better trees, and enhance their maturity. The logs were being sold to a sawmill for the production of tile battens, and the thinned stands looked absolutely magnificent.

The whole thing appeared to me to be a working example of ecologically sustainable forest management, with the new forest replacing the old and already providing environmental services as well as commercial values, and growing sturdily into the Old Growth of the future. It seemed to me that here was a scene of beauty and productivity, something of which we could all be proud. Not so.

To my surprise I noticed that all through the regrowth, officers from the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) had been designating areas in which the thinning operations were banned. These were marked with plastic tape. When I asked what was going on, it was explained to me that a CALM officer had discovered “rare” species of cryptogams (liverworts) growing on the karri wattle in the regrowth forest in this area.

A liverwort is a primitive green, moss-like slime which grows on the trunks of woody shrubs in higher rainfall forest areas all over the world).

CALM feared that the liverworts would be destroyed in the thinning operation and become extinct. So in these areas the thinning was banned. This will have a number of downsides, including a reduction in the rate of development of the stand, loss of commercial value and income, demand for officer time to delineate the exclusion zones and police them, loss of profit to thinning contractors and a much more difficult forest in which to carry out green burning for wildfire mitigation (unthinned karri regrowth is tricky to burn). Carried forward, it will mean that the areas can never be logged again and are more vulnerable to high intensity summer bushfires.

To put this into context: on an evolutionary scale, liverworts are a very ancient type of plant. They have undoubtedly lived in the karri forest for as long as there has been karri forest, and that is countless thousands of years. Certainly they have not evolved in this area during the last 35 years. Over the eons they would have survived thousands of bushfires, including mild burns lit by Aborigines and high intensity stand replacement fires lit by lightning. By their very presence in the regrowth forest, these liverworts demonstrate that they were quite able to survive the forest being clearfelled, scrub-rolled and given a hot regeneration burn and converted from old growth to regrowth. While CALM admit that the liverworts may well have recovered after the clearfelling and hot regeneration fire, they regard them as too delicate to survive selective thinning of the subsequent regrowth forest.

I did some checking and discovered that these liverwort species are well known from as far afield as the Stirling Ranges and are widespread (though scattered, and their distribution is not mapped) throughout the southern forests. They may not be “rare”, but CALM has decided they are “threatened”. So that’s that.

I challenged CALM over the idiocy of their policy, thinking that perhaps they did not understand the history of the area. Far from it. They knew, but it made not one iota of difference. The good old Precautionary Principle was duly trotted out, and as usual presented as unchallengeable. Neither did the disgraceful waste of staff resources involved in the “protection” of these non-rare and non-threatened species worry anyone. I was left wondering whether CALM has too many staff, with not enough to do.

I don’t go so far (as some Old Growth Foresters do) as to suggest that the environmental ideologues in government are deliberately playing the threatened species card to stop timber cutting in the karri forest. I think it is more likely that inexperienced young CALM staff with an academic background in environmental science rather than forestry, and with a burning desire to do something for the environment suddenly found themselves with an opportunity, and went for it, without thinking through the logic or the consequences. I have observed many young people in the new environmental and land management agencies, and they share a common characteristic: they know what they are against, but they do not know what they are for.

The multipurpose-multivalue and pro-active forest management system I was taught and then practiced as a young forester has been replaced by a vacuum, and in groping for something to do (as opposed to something to stop), they come up with something silly. The worst thing about all this, to my mind, is that the senior people in government, the people who are running the show, let it happen.

Yours sincerely,

Roger Underwood.

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.

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?

————-

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

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“

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, Tasmania has been listed as one of the hotspots in Australia.

Thinksy provided this link to a list of critically endangered bird species. The list includes three species from Tasmania – the masked owl, the azure kingfisher and the wedge-tailed eagle. Habitat clearing including for pine forest (1), competition with brown trout which have reduced the availability natural prey (2), and shooting (3), are listed as the most likely reasons for decline of the three species respectively.

Alan Ashbarry who describes himself as a Tasmanian researcher with Timber Communities Australia sent in the following note:

“Recent media reports on a new list of 20 hot spots for species extinction of terrestrial mammals are based on a new report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately such an important report is available by subscription only and the general public has to rely on snippets fed to it by the media.

Lead author Marcel Cardillo uses phylogenetics to answer questions in ecology and conservation. Phylogenetics treats a species as a group of lineage-connected individuals over time. On this basis it is hardly surprising that the isolated islands of Bass Strait and Tasmania would have a “latent extinction risk”.

The media reports refer to the Convention on Biological Diversity to reduce the rate of world biodiversity loss by 2010, as part of this plan the Conference of Parties to the convention has adopted the following target:

Goal 1. Promote the conservation of the biological diversity of ecosystems, habitats and biomes

Target 1.1: At least 10% of each of the world’s ecological regions effectively conserved.

In Tasmania this target has been achieved and exceeded with the State having 42% of its land mass in conservation reserves. There is no indication that the authors of the Hot Spot report accounted for this outstanding achievement.

If there was it would be unlikely for the report to conclude that “Human population growth in hotspot areas is one of the greatest threats to vulnerable animals,” for Tasmania as human population development is banned in these areas.

The media reports also refer to an environmental scientist Professor Norman Myers claiming that Earth is experiencing the largest mass extinction in 65 million years.

The media report Myers as claiming 33 extinction hotspots around the world, 13 more than the report in the Proceedings of National Academy of Science.

Professor Myers says if governments do not do more, the planet will continue to lose 50 species per day compared to the natural extinction rate of one species every five years. Yet the Professor fails to state that his trip to Australia is partly sponsored by the Federal Government as part of it biological diversity program. He also fails to quote sources for this alarmist claim to determine if it is a real, or a theoretical claim based upon un-described and notional species.”

Alan also sent a couple of links that he said showed that Tasmania and the Bass Strait islands and those other hotspots have the lowest attrition rates for terrestrial mammals.

Maps here: http://audit.ea.gov.au/anra/vegetation/bio_asses/popup.cfm?case_no=fig_6_7.

And see also commentary here: http://audit.ea.gov.au/anra/vegetation/vegetation_frame.cfm?region_type=AUS&region_code=AUS&info=bio_asses.