Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Plants and Animals

Quolls for Sale Instead of Cats?

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I have been in Melbourne over the weekend.

I had the most magnificent meal of Kangaroo Saturday night over-looking the Yarra River. The choice of dish was perhaps influenced by the book I am reading. Michael Archer (Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of NSW) and Bob Beale (journalist) in ‘Going Native’write:

“Why must kangaroo meat – tasty, free range, low-fat, low-cholesterol, disease-free, high protein and environmentally superior as it is – still battle for a respected place at the dinner table?”

Archer and Beale complain that Portugal is the world’s largest producer of Eucalyptus oil (pg12). And that the US was the first nation to domesticate the unique tasty and nourishing Australian native macadamia nut.

Their general thesis that we should do more with our native plants and animals is spot-on.

Archer tells how he once had a pet quoll and suggests that these native animals would make better pets for Australians than cats (pg 267).

The problem is that environmental organizations are generally against the ‘exploitation’ of our native fauna and flora for commercial gain including as pets.

‘Going Native’was published last year by Hodder. I bought my copy for $35 from Dymocks.

Wollemi Elephants

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Where would you plant a Wollemi pine?

According to The Australian, fewer than 300 saplings of the relic giant tree which can live for 1,000 years are to be auctioned by Sotheby’s soon.

But why stop at a 90 million year old pine for the farm or acre block?

What about an elephant?

A couple of days ago The Australian gave a fair amount of space to the following story about introducing African wildlife into North America based on a Reuters story, based on an article in science magazine Nature:

Reintroducing the modern relatives of the Late Pleistocene losers to North America could spark fresh interest in conservation, contribute to biodiversity and begin to put right some of the wrongs caused by human activities.

“Establishing Asian asses and Przewalski’s horse in North America might help prevent the extinction of these endangered species and would restore equid species to their evolutionary homeland,” the scientists wrote.

They proposed a second phase that would include reintroducing African cheetahs, lions and Asian and African elephants to large private parks.

“Free-roaming, managed cheetahs in the southwestern United States could save the fastest carnivore from extinction, restore what must have been strong interactions with pronghorn and facilitate ecotourism as an alternative for ranchers.

“Managed elephant populations could similarly benefit ranchers through grassland maintenance and ecotourism,” they wrote, adding that reintroducing lions would represent the pinnacle of the Pleistocene re-wilding of North America.

They admitted the plan would be controversial but said it was a far better option than simply accepting the terminal decline of some of the world’s most impressive species due to human encroachment and global warming. end of quote.

As someone who spent years working for a research station dedicated to the control of weeds and feral animals – the mind boggles.

Perhaps elephants would do a good job of controlling the African exotic prickly acacia (Acacia nilotica) on the Mitchell grass downs of NW Queensland � I have seen first hand how damaging elephants can be to acacias in Africa.

But hey, America is going to save Africa’s wildlife in America?

ABC TV Got it Half Right on Rangeland Management

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ABC Television program Catalyst ran a story last night featuring the work of botanist Rod Fensham. Fensham has done some great research work on Queensland’s rangelands. But the program, by putting a popularist spin on it all, did our rangelands and Fensham no favours.

Catalyst started off by suggesting most of Queensland’s old growth forest had been cleared by graziers and then went on to explain how vegetation thickening is real. An overriding theme was that the bans on broad scale tree clearing are good and that current thickening is natural and a consequence of higher rainfall over the second half of the last century. Furthermore drought, not land clearing or fire, should be left to maintain the balance of nature.

I was left wondering what they meant by old growth forest, and how the old growth forest had survived the terrible drought to be destroyed by graziers. And wasn’t it generally acknowledged that these areas have been a fire mediated sub-climax ecosystem as in South Africa and the southern USA?

The following comment as part of the voice over was interesting:

But seeing the timbers dying in all districts of western Queensland it would seem not unreasonable to conclude that drought was the cause of thousands of miles of country in the never never to be denuded of scrub. …So there it was, proof that the climate had caused tree death and thinning.

The full transcript can be read at
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1435595.htm .

I used to have a beer with Fensham and other Brisbane-based botanists and entomologists on a Friday afternoon at the St Lucia golf links in the early to mid 1990s.

The Catalyst program suggested that Fensham was against the use of fire, as well as broad scale tree clearing. It didn’t ring true to me.

A link to a piece by him at the bottom of the Catalyst webpage also suggests otherwise.

In this piece titled ‘Trial by fire’ Fensham makes the following points:

1. The role of climate in shaping vegetation patterns should not be ignored in a land of notorious climatic extremes.

2. The structure and density of eucalypt woodlands in the Queensland pastoral zone is influenced by management (fire), land use (grazing) and climate (especially drought).

3. Appropriate burning regimes may offer Queensland pastoralists a management option that maintains productivity and is less devastating for biodiversity than tree clearing.

Read the complete article here
http://www.lwa.gov.au/downloads/publications_pdf/PN040707_trial_by_fire.pdf .

Earlier in the week I was sent this link
http://www.amonline.net.au/eureka/environmental_research/2005_winner.htm .

It came with the note, “An interesting rewrite of history – a negative reality inversion.”

The link is to an announcement titled ‘Research that shaped new bush clearing laws’ and is about how Fensham has won the Eureka prize for Environmental research and includes the following text:

The recent debate on land clearing in Queensland was fierce, with the arguments often unsupported by clear scientific evidence. Dr Rod Fensham and Russell Fairfax changed that. Over ten years, these two scientists from the Queensland Herbarium have methodically developed a scientific foundation to measure and understand the fate of Queensland’s native rangelands. Their research, and their science advocacy, gave the Queensland Government the information it needed to create stronger laws on land clearing. Their work now earns them the $10,000 Sherman Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.

I observed at close range the politics that drove the bans on broad scale tree clearing in Queensland including as a member of the Ministerial Advisory Council – Vegetation Management (MAC-VM). Fensham’s work didn’t enter this policy debate which was driven almost exclusively by very dumb (but effective) campaigning by a coalition of environment groups spearheaded by the Wilderness Society and Queensland Conservation Council and supported by a Queensland University Professor.

Had Fensham’s work been influential, the clearing laws may have turned out at least half reasonable.
……………

Update 2pm

Following discussions with Rod I have the following additional comment, and I hope Rod might do a guest post for me/us:

The Eureka Award was in recognition of Rod’s contribution to our understanding of regional ecosystems and how they can be mapped. This mapping work occurred independently of the campaigning by the Wilderness Society and the mapping is critical to the current legislation and important if the current legislation is to ever deliver reasonable rangeland protection and management.

I have also updated the title for this post from ‘ABC TV and Eureka Awards Got it Wrong on Fensham’ to ‘ABC TV Got it Half Right on Rangeland Management’.

Uranium Mining, but Not Croc Hunting

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The NT government has conceded the Federal government has ultimate power of approval over new uranium mines – making the NT ban on new mines ineffective. And according to today’s Financial Review, this concession could result in new uranium exports of $12 billion with strong demand for uranium coming from China, Europe and Russia.

While crocodile hunting may never be worth very much relative to uranium mining, it is interesting that the NT government has a plan for limited and regulated safari hunting of crocodiles, but in this instance can’t get federal government approval. Federal government approval is apparently needed in order to be able to export “the products of the safari hunts”, see
http://www.nt.gov.au/ocm/media_releases/2005/07%20July/20050713_ScrymgourCrocSafaris.pdf .

UPDATE 4PM
Uranium miners are confused at
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1431171.htm and
Queensland stand by opposition to uranium mining at
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1431258.htm

National Tree Day 2005

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Today is National Tree Day. The day we are meant to plant trees. Two days ago New Scientist published an article titled ‘Planting trees may create deserts’. It went on,

Planting trees can create deserts, lower water tables and drain rivers, rather than filling them, claims a new report supported by the UK government.

Indeed studies in WA have indicated that clearing regrowth in the Perth catchment could increase runoff to dams by 40 gigalitres. This would almost replace the need for the desalination plant?

According to ABC Online,

More than 300,000 green thumbs will descend on sites around the country today to participate in National Tree Day.

Organisers say they have been heartened by an increase of almost one-third in the number of volunteers planting trees and shrubs to restore biodiversity.

Yeah. There are some places that will really benefit from more trees. But let’s also recognise that too many trees can destroy biodiversity.

Michael Duffy makes some reference to this in his piece in yesterday’s SMH titled ‘Carr’s green legacy is a black mark’:

Creating a national park and then, as this Government has done, largely letting “nature take its course”, means this history stops. Gradually the vegetation thickens, the fuel load grows, the animal populations expand, and weeds proliferate. The park becomes a sort of toxic ecological volcano, spewing out fire, kangaroos, weed seeds, and feral animals such as wild dogs into the surrounding countryside. It takes a few decades to reach this point. A lot of our national parks were created in the 1970s and 1980s, which is why these problems started to become acute in the 1990s.
We can expect these problems to occur at Yanga, where (according to the station’s website) the environment of two endangered species – the Australian bittern and the southern bell frog – depends on keeping the red-gum forests open by logging, which will now cease.

Thanks to J.F. Beck at http://rwdb.blogspot.com/2005/07/killer-trees.html for alerting me to the piece in New Scientist.

Biodiversity for Dummies

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What is biodiversity and does the non-expert have a right to a say in which bits are conserved?

Following are three views. I have designated them as 1. from the expert, 2. from the technologist, and 3. for the dummy:

1. Biodiveristy for the Expert

…. Let me give you an example of the problem. I was recently involved in a government-funded project that was designed to find out how much the public values biodiversity (and hence how much they would be willing to pay to support nature reserves, or more environmentally friendly farming and so on). The problem with this is that many members of the public have virtually no understanding of what biodiversity is.

So before we could ask them how much they valued it, first we had to tell them what we, as scientists, mean by biodiversity. This is true focus group democracy and it’s crackers, because the value that the public ascribed to biodiversity was simply a reflection of how important we told them it was the minute before.

Democracy is about informed choice, but science is now so vast and complex, that no single individual could ever be well enough informed to make this level of dialogue feasible.

“What arrogance!” I hear you call, in thinking that only scientists are well-informed enough to make such important decisions. But actually that’s not the point: the nonsense of the biodiversity example is that nobody knows the answer, but there might be a correct answer. But we just don’t know enough about biodiversity to know exactly what it does yet.

It’s a bit like me asking you: how much would you pay to stop me throwing away a component from under the bonnet of your car? The answer is, it depends on the component, I guess you would value the spark plugs more highly than the lead to the seat warmer. But you are not going to identify what it is by asking 100 members of the public to guess and then taking the average, it much better to ask one mechanic to find out.

read the complete text here http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,9828,1501273,00.html

2. Biodiversity for the Technologist

… for many who equate “nature” with the “Sacred” the idea of biodiversity arising from human intentionality (through biotechnology) verges on blasphemous, despite the fact that existing patterns of biodiversity already reflect human activities, and have done so for a long time.

But there is a high cost to refusing to perceive, or consider the implications of, the possibility that biodiversity is not in crisis, but in transition. If this trend is real, there are many profound consequences, from the religious and the ethical to the severely practical (e.g., how can humans purport to create anthropogenic biodiversity when we have so little knowledge of the structure and dynamics of the systems involved?). Such implications require considered thought and dialog from a number of perspectives, not just the technical.

read the complete text here http://www.greenbiz.com/news/columns_third.cfm?NewsID=27508

3. Biodiversity for Dummies

The following contribution is from a smart guy, David Ward in WA.

Planzen Annimoo Nat

“How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.”
Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher, 1820-1903

A few weeks ago, in our local shopping centre, an uncombed youth shook a tin at me. The tin was labelled Save Our Biodiversity. I asked him what he meant. He was a bit gobsmacked at my geriatric ignorance, then said “Planzen Annimoo Nat”. As an old infantryman, my hearing is not the best, so I did not ask him to say again.

When I got home, I looked in my OED. It said that biodiversity is the “diversity of plant and animal life”. The same dictionary defines diversity as “various kinds”. So we have various kinds of plants and animals, and presumably other life forms, such as fungi and bacteria. How amazing.

However, the five letter word biota includes all life forms, and, being plural, implies that there are various kinds. I wonder why the uncombed one did not save himself seven letters, by labelling his tin Save Our Biota?

As far as I can remember, the word biodiversity was popularised in the early 1990s, by Edward O. Wilson, an American biologist, with a great talent for rhetoric. I believe, however, that Professor Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician, was unimpressed by Professor Wilson’s statistics.

From further searching, it seems Professor Wilson merely shortened the term biological diversity, coined in the 1930s by the English ecologist, Sir Arthur Tansley. In the later 1990s, a Russian academician called Ghilarov entered the fray, claiming a much older history for the concept, and astutely questioning the status of biodiversity as a precise, scientific parameter. He suggested that its liberal use in recent scientific writing is often simply a bid for status or funding. Clearly, my uncombed youth was an example of the latter.

The introduction of the terms genes, species & communities is seen by some as clear evidence that this is a deep scientific debate. Those three levels exist, at least in the human mind, but what about all the other levels? We may suspect an infinite number of nested levels, or scales, of organism and process, each with its own internal diversity, and ever changing. Perhaps like an infinite set of Russian baboushka dolls, but with each doll different, and changed, each time it is unpacked. And what about the myriad interactions between organisms and processes?

For me, the interactions are a matter for hope. There lies endless potential for human enquiry. If we ever understood them all, we might no longer have any intellectual purpose in the world, as suggested by John Horgan in his book, The End of Science. Perhaps I might just as well have asked my scraggly haired friend “How long is a piece of string?”

If anyone can give me a snappy, precise, mathematical definition of biodiversity, or a precise way of measuring it, I shall be delighted. But I suspect that it is a wild goose chase. Please don’t bring poor old Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener into it. They intended their index for signals, not ecology, and I suspect would turn in their graves if they saw its naive misapplication by biologists.

In the mean time, I will stick, wherever possible, to the shorter, simpler words nature and biota. The word nature has the advantage of including the intangibles, such as silence, beauty, and awe. Various Biodiversity Conservation Acts could, with advantage, be rewritten as Nature Conservation Acts.

The word biodiversity may have its uses, but it is not a precise scientific parameter. It has, for me, been tainted by its dishonest use. Maybe I’ll stick to the colloquial, Planzen Annimoo Nat�

Copyright David Ward 2005.