Plants and Animals

National Parks Reviewed:

My colleague Jim Hoggett who worked for the Commonwealth Treasury for 16 years and now runs a successful cheese producing goat farm in north-eastern NSW has just written “The Uses and Value of National Parks: Does More Mean Worse?”

The 15 pager is well worth a read. It includes the comment: “Given the sheer size of the real estate involved, we ought to look beyond the idealized views and seek to know more about the function that parks perform and how well they are managed to do this. We need to examine whether there is a mismatch between our expectations of the park system and the resources we are prepared to apply to it. And, if there is a mismatch, what the different approaches to park management are that would allow us to better match the two. These approaches could involve lowering expectations and providing more finance. They could also involve more diverse use of parks than occurs now.”

A Century of Weed Biological Control:

I have just received in the mail “Reclaiming lost provinces: A century of weed biological control in Queensland” (published by Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Queensland, and soon to be on sale for $35 from www.dpi.qld.gov.au).

Written by Craig Walton it mixes an understanding of the science of weed biocontrol with a history of the researchers and their work.

It includes a 1936 quote about the successful control of prickly pear: “The retrieving of 26,000 acres of some of Queensland’s richest territory from a wilderness of prickly pear by the aid of insect colonies when all human agencies had failed is surely one of the wonders of the age.”

I have pondered that no ecologist working today, without a knowledge of the past history, would come to the correct conclusion that the distribution of prickly pear in south west Queensland is limited/determined by the search behaviour and population dynamics of a moth.

My work towards the biocontrol of rubbervine (Cryptostegia grandiflora) is featured in the book as a ‘case study’ and includes a 1986 picture of me on a bullock cart in southwest Madagascar. And it is great to read that there are some monitoring programs in place measuring the impact of the rust on the weed(pg. 60). There has also been an economic review indicating the biocontrol program against rubbervine has returned a benefit-to-cost ratio of $80 for every dollar spent.

There are competing theories about how male koalas go about procreating. The ‘king koala’ theory proposes that a powerful male dominates breeding and ‘holds the fabric of koala society in the palm of his mighty paw’, to quote Koala expert Dr Bill Ellis. In contrast the ‘traveling salesman’ model suggests that well, it can be more opportunistic and egalitarian. I gather the ‘traveling salesman’ model is supported by DNA analysis but the ‘king koala’ believers have the numbers.

There are obviously significant implications for Koala conservation planning depending on the model used/applied.

It would also seem important for conservation planning that we know something about how many koalas there are in Australia and also where they are.

The Australian Koala Foundation claims there are fewer than 100,000 Koalas in Australia with numbers on the decline.

I get a total of 120,000 just by counting up a few know populations:
59,000 mulgalands of southwest Queensland,
25,00 southeast Queensland,
8,200 NSW North Coast, and
27,000 Kangaroo Island, South Australia.

According to Simon Baltais from the Wildlife Preservation Society the population in Redlands Shire (just south of Brisbane) is the premier koala population in Australia.” I wonder what he means?

I would be interested to know if anyone has any information regarding the size of the Koala population in Victoria? I gather it is/was huge? Has it recovered from the bushfires?

Also how many Koalas are there in the Pillaga-Goonoo forests of NW NSW?

I am right now trying to writing a piece on Koalas for the next IPA Review. Given the interest generated by my column in The Land some weeks ago.

I was rather excited to read this morning that a woodpecker considered extinct since 1944 has been rediscovered. The story is at ABC Online.

According to Cornell University ornithologist Tim Gallagher, “Its like a funeral shroud has been pulled back, giving us a glimpse of a living bird, rising Lazarus-like from the grave.”

I just thought, “How Wonderful!”

It reminded me of rediscoveries in Australia: Mahogany glider, North Queensland, 1988; Leadbeaters possum, Central Highlands, Victoria, 1966.

Does anyone know of others?

Also what about recent extinctions? Does anyone know of any?

According to the 2002 ABS Measuring Australia’s Progress Report there don’t appear to have been any official extinctions in Australia during the last two decades.