Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Plants and Animals

Platypuses Can Live with Supermarkets

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There seems to be much excitment about the discovery of lots and lots of playtpuses at Maleny, 100 odd kms north of Brisbane, where some locals have been trying to stop the building of a Woolies for many, many months.

The ideas is that because there are Platypuses there should be no supermarket. Indeed according to ABC Online:

Opponents of the development of a major supermarket at Maleny, in south-east Queensland’s Sunshine Coast hinterland, are hailing extensive research they believe may sound the death knell for the development.

They say a team of scientists has irrefutable proof of a large colony of platypuses, living under the site and they have called on Environment Minister Desley Boyle to intervene to stop construction of the supermarket.

Under the Nature Conservation Act it is an offence to knowingly disturb a platypus habitat.

One of the scientists, Graham Kell, says more than 50 platypus burrows have been discovered on the site and all have been photographed and their location fixed by satellite tracking.

Mr Kell says it is a remarkable discovery.

“There’s a lot more activity at the proposed Woolworths site than I’ve seen in many regions before…the burrow activity at Maleny is just phenomenal,” he said.

Yeah, And isn’t the development well back from the watercourse and aren’t there platypuses in the Yarra as far downstream as the suburb of Heidelberg in Melbourne.

The idea that wild animals can’t coexist with development, and using the presence of wild animals to block development, may not be in the longer term interests of this and other platypus colonies.

Eating Whales (Part 2)

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Whalers in Norway, Iceland and Greenland have called Australia’s attempts to ban commercial whaling “ridiculous”, according to a report on ABC Online.

Federal Environment Minister Senator Ian Campbell is lobbying in Europe and the Pacific to get an international ban on whaling. But the whalers are suggesting that Australia’s environmental record and opposition to the Kyoto protocol leave it in no position to argue.

Anthropologist Ron Brunton wrote an insightful piece on the subject for the Courier Mail in 2001. Extract follows:

They (governments of Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain and the United States) become indignant when they are accused of cultural imperialism by people who wish to continue eating whale meat, like the Japanese. As these governments and the anti-whaling activists who support them see it, they are fighting for a universal ethical principle, not a recently developed cultural preference. And they are angry about Japan’s success in thwarting a proposal for a South Pacific whale sanctuary at the recently concluded meeting of the International Whaling Commission by using aid to bribe Caribbean members of the IWC.

There is a considerable amount of effrontery in their response to Japan. The IWC was established in 1946 by fourteen whaling nations to assist the orderly development of the industry by encouraging the proper conservation of whale stocks. But as whale devotion gathered momentum in the 1970s, the United States and environmentalist NGOs induced a number of non-whaling nations to join the IWC, intending to create a majority in favour of ending the whaling industry, in contravention of the IWC’s own charter.

In 1982 this expanded IWC instituted a moratorium on all commercial whaling, to take effect from 1986. Japan and its pro-whaling allies such as Norway have merely used tactics that are little different from those that the anti-whalers earlier used against them.

Despite various attempts by animal rights and conservation organisations to obfuscate the issue, only a few whale species, such as the blue and the humpback, can be portrayed as endangered. Most of the other commercially valued species are abundant, and would face no threat of extinction under a properly controlled resumption of the whaling industry.

A good illustration of the kind of humbug that often characterises the anti-whaling forces came from New Zealand’s leftist Minister of Conservation, Sandra Lee, at last year’s IWC meeting. Vowing that she would never stop seeking to protect whales, Ms Lee told delegates that in Maori legend the great whales were portrayed as guides and guardians of humans on the oceans, ‘treasure, to be preserved … the chiefly peoples of the ocean world’.

This is true. But Ms Lee, who is a Maori herself, seems to have omitted a crucial fact from her impassioned speech. Their legends did not prevent the Maori from being avid consumers of the meat, oil and other products of cetaceans. Beached whales were butchered and became the property of the local chief, who would share the carcass with his group. Smaller cetaceans were actively hunted with harpoons and nets.
Furthermore, the official Maori position, as expressed by Te Ohu Kai Moana, the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission, is opposed to the New Zealand government’s backing of the South Pacific whale sanctuary. Te Ohu Kai Moana supports the right of ‘indigenous and coastal peoples’ around the world to engage in sustainable commercial whaling, and condemns the New Zealand government for not consulting properly with Maori about the whale sanctuary proposal.

Talking Veg Tomorrow in Both Blackall & Canberra

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The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meets tomorrow (Friday) in Canberra. On the agenda is the need for an intergovernmental agreement on native vegetation.

This follows on from the findings of an August 2004 Productivity Commission Report on ‘The Impacts of Vegetation Management and Biodiversity Regulations’ which concluded that much of the legislation enacted to protect native vegetation has actually become an impediment to native vegetation protection.

A report by James Whelan and Kristen Lyons titled ‘Rethinking deliberative governance: dissecting the Queensland landclearing campaign’ gives some insight into what drove the campaigning in Queensland that drove the legislation in Queensland. (It would be great if the Queensland Conservation Council made the entire report accessible from their website as it is a fascinating read.) And I quote from their report:

Firstly, it (the legislation) represents a significant shift in Queensland, and indeed Australian history, by establishing a framework for the regulation of land use on both leasehold and freehold land. This represents a significant departure from dominant ideologies that accept private landowners retain sovereignty over land management.

Secondly, it indicates conditional support for regional governance processes by conservationists. In this case they were unwilling to support those with limited or flawed terms of reference despite acknowledging the potential for collaborative natural resource management to foster civil society, social capital and democratic legitimacy of land management decisions. These outcomes are important prerequisites for the implementation of regulation. However, the macro settings for these consultative processes attracted strident critique from the conservation movement. Regional processes, were identified as a “business as usual” approach to land use, which established a narrow framework for policy setting that limited the possibility of achieving significant positive conservation outcomes. Many ENGOs were consequently highly critical of these so-called collaborative models, and refused to participate.

The third insight to emerge from this landclearing campaign related to concerned the powerful impact of community action and political contestation by ENGOs. Rather than relying on partnership models of governance which may have been conducive to local ownership of management decisions and enhance social capital, the landclearing campaign was resolved through conflict and contestation. Rather than directing energies into collaborating within a flawed framework, and risk being captured by a process with a narrow and restricted agenda, ENGOs engaged in a diverse range of campaign strategies to pressure government to govern. Importantly, the landclearing case demonstrates the determination of the conservation movement to hold government accountable for responsible natural resource management, rather than deferring to problematic consultative processes. In conclusion, the success of this campaign suggests that the emphasis placed on a narrowly defined set of social capital indicators in prevailing natural resource management arrangements may overlook the broader range of political and social strategies that can effect social change.

Some western Queensland landholders will meet tomorrow to consider their options, their campaign, to get the legislation changed. They believe that in its current form it is impractical, and concurr with the Productivity Commission report that it is also an impediment to environmental protection. I will be a speaker at the meeting to be held at 2.00pm in the Memorial Sports Club, Blackall. BBQ and drinks to follow. All welcome.

Exclude Cattle from National Parks?

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Cattle can destroy a landscape. The Victorian Premier last week banned grazing in the Alpine National Park on the basis that:
Cattle:
* trample streambanks, springs and soaks
* damage and destroy fragile alpine mossbeds
* create bare ground, disturb soil and cause erosion
* pollute water
* are a significant threat to a number of rare and threatened plants and animals and plant communities
* reduce what should be spectacular wildflower displays
* spread weeds
* cover the landscape in cowpats and spoil the enjoyment of the area for visitors.

Incredibly the areas that have sustained this ‘degradation’ associated with grazing for about 170 years, are so ecologically important, that the Victorian Government will now seek World Heritage listing.

A key government report acknowledges that “Seasonal high country grazing is a long and ongoing tradition both within the park and in areas of the high country outside the park.”

The report suggests that this cultural heritage can be maintained and celebrated into the future in a variety of ways including “through books, poetry, films and festivals.”

Imagine the outcry if the Victorian Government proposed to “maintained and celebrated” mossbeds through books and festivals.

…………………………….
Some Background and a Question:

I was interested to learn that grazing in the High Country has been increasingly regulated since the 1940s including a ban on sheep and horses and burning-off, restrictions on the length of the grazing season, maximum stocking levels set, and grazing progressively removed from several areas including the highest peaks.

According to the same Victorian Government Fact Sheet, 47 percent of the Alpine National Park has been licensed for grazing.

But according to member for the Central Highlands, Hon. E.G. Stoney, speaking in the Victorian Parliament last Wednesday, “The announcement of the total removal of the cattle from the park breaks a legislated promise to have seven-year renewable licences. The promise was made by the Cain government in order that agreement could be reached to create the massive Alpine National Park, and that happened in 1989. Part of the agreement was that cattle were to be taken off the higher exposed peaks on the north Bogongs and the Bluff. The cattlemen sacrificed vast tracts of grazing land, with 10 families losing everything, which meant 90 per cent of the new park was closed to grazing back then. The Bracks government has broken the agreement; it has now taken the remaining 10 per cent of the land for cheap political gain.”

So up until now has grazing been allowed in 47 percent or 10 percent of the Alpine National Park?

A Conservation Economy

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Neil Hewitt posted the following comment after my post of 19th May titled Just Released on Parks and Weeds:

“My suggestion … is that public administration of protected area estate be removed of its exclusionary influences to fair trade, by requiring that conservation management is completely self-funded from the natural and cultural resources of the reserve without subsidy or budgetary allocation.

Afterall, many were viable working properties before acquisition under the pretence of conservation and if Australia is serious about conserving its natural and cultural wealth across all tenures, a conservation economy will need to be cultivated.”

There is also an argument that sustainable harvesting programs focused on native species can enhance conservation.

Bob Beale and Mike Archer argued in the Australian Financial Review (23-28th December 2004) that mallee fowl and giant bustard would not be “facing oblivion if we served them up for Christmas dinner instead of Asian chicken and North American turkey”. Crocodile populations in northern Australia have increased from less than 5,000 in the early 1970s to over 70,000 today. This increase coincided with the development of croc farms for meat and skin export as well as a ban on shooting.

What has happened to the concept of growing the trade in Kangaroo meat? A SW Queensland grazier has suggested that without the kangaroos on his property he could probably lift his stocking rate by a quarter. Is he exaggerating? He has also suggested I write something about the value of harvesting native animals.

And I received an email from NSW landholder Kathryn Varrica asking for information about “non regulatory (as in “lock ’em up)” solutions for nature conservation.

Your thoughts?

Save the Bustard

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Ian Beale from Mungallala, SW Queensland, emailed me this picture with the headline:
Save the poor bustard – stop tree thickening.
He also wrote,
Our area has the widespread problem of thickening of woody species, but we have an increasing number of these birds in areas where timber has been controlled. One of our older district residents on a return visit noted (in the presence of our numerous plains turkeys) that the last time he’d seen one in the area was 1935.

Bustard.JPG

The picture is from Readers Digest Complete Book of Australian Birds 1993.