Author Archives: AWPC

Major plan launched to avert species extinction

The country’s flora and fauna draws millions of tourists from around the world. But scientists say Australia’s native species are under threat of extinction.

20 per cent of mammals and many more plant species are under threat. And scientists fear much of the country’s unique flora and fauna may not be around for future generations. Habitat loss, hunting and changes in fire regimes have contributed to the decline, with invasive species considered a primary ongoing threat.

A major bush conservation plan has been launched to help save native animals and plants under threat of extinction.

For example, Queensland School of Agriculture and Food Sciences Ecology Lecturer and PhD candidate Rebecca Diete said population estimates of some of Australia’s most elusive native animals often relied on indirect and potentially inaccurate measures. A tiny mammal, the endangered hopping mouse, could be closer to the brink of extinction than previously thought. Diete found that population estimates have relied on counting spoil heaps – the piles of sand left behind when the mouse digs burrows. However, she discovered that some spoil heaps believed to belong to the northern hopping mouse were made by a different animal – the delicate mouse (Pseudomys delicatulus). “Estimates of hopping mouse numbers made only from spoil heap assessments could be much higher than the reality,” she said.

Bush Heritage Science Plan

Since 1991, Bush Heritage Australia has applied a proven, practical approach to conserving Australia’s environment and unique plants and animals. One in five of Australia’s surviving mammals and 12% of Australia’s birds are now threatened with extinction. There remains an estimated shortfall of 70 million hectares of habitat across Australia (WWF, 2013) to secure a comprehensive, adequate and representative national reserve system.

Download from Bush Heritage Australia website.

This alone will not be enough. BHA believe we also require more effective management in need of protection of the extensive and pervasive threats impacting the viability of native animals, plants and ecosystems.

This ten-year Science Plan aims to build sustainable research partnerships in each state and territory and double the number of collaborative research projects we undertake by 2025. Their research will be focused on six flagship research themes, each pivotal to our work, and which address key biodiversity conservation issues in Australia.

African lovegrass is a weed which dominates the heavily cultivated soils of Scottsdale Reserve, a former grazing property 75 kilometres south of Canberra. Few trees have survived decades of farming. Instead it’s the introduced thistles with their dried, discoloured flowers which stand tall.

In some countries African lovegrass is regarded as valuable for animal production and soil conservation but in others, such as Australia, it is regarded as a weed due to its low feed quality and acceptance by livestock.

Bush Heritage Australia started rehabilitating the land after purchasing the 1328-hectare property in 2006. Scottsdale Reserve was the launch site (8th April, 2015) for an ambitious project to study the reasons behind Australia’s massive rate of biodiversity loss. Australian National University ecologist Dr David Freudenberger is among 50 scientists collaborating on the project. “Scottsdale Reserve is a living classroom for my students, at understanding the challenges of restoring the grassy woodland,” he said.

The existing long-term research project on Scottsdale Reserve involves restoring grassy eucalypt woodlands. They engaged 500 volunteers, who hand-planted native shrubs and trees in one of the largest woodland restoration efforts in the nation.

scottsdale-planting(image:Scottsdale Reserve planting)

Dr Jim Radford, science and research manager at Bush Heritage Australia said native mammals, such as bilbies, bettongs, bandicoots and gliders, are in an “absolutely dire” situation. One key priority is adding up to 70 million extra hectares to Australia’s national parks and reserve system.

Rufus_bettong(image: Rufus Bettong)

Research Themes

Research theme 1: Landscape connectivity

Research theme 2: Threatened species

Research theme 3: Habitat refugia

Research theme 4: Fire ecology

Research theme 5: Restoration evaluation

Research theme 6: Introduced species/feral animals

The Bush Heritage Science Plan aims to double their science and research output by 2025 through building sustainable long-term research partnerships and doubling the number of collaborative research projects they undertake. Funding will be through scholarships, grants and internships. As part of the plan, 50 scientists from 15 universities across the country will collaborate on 55 conservation projects, and they hope to raise $20 million to fund it.

$20 million in Treasury terms is very small, and is minute compared to infrastructure spending on our own habitats, and what’s spent to propagate our own species! Donating and participating in this Science Plan is an investment into our natural heritage, and ensure that future generations are condemned to only seeing once common native species in museums, or in zoos!

Donate to Bush Heritage Australia:

Share This:

Meat-eating rainbow lorikeets?

5 comments

A Brisbane professor conducting the world’s first study into meat-eating rainbow lorikeets says he is shocked to discover more species of herbivorous birds are also changing their diets.

rainbow-lorikeet

ABC revealed a population of rainbow lorikeets were eating meat from a backyard feeding station on a property at Elimbah, north of Brisbane. Griffith University’s Professor Darryl Jones is shocked. He said lorikeets usually eat nectar and pollen which they obtain from native plants and shrubs.

Lorikeets typically feed on nectar and pollen and only require a small amount of protein from an occasional insect.

At this stage, no ill-effects have been documented. Along with rainbow lorikeets, eastern and crimson galahs and cockatoos have also been spotted eating meat.

“I have researched what birds feed on all around the world,” Professor Jones said. “I’m up to date with all the kinds of crazy things that birds are eating all over Australia. To see a lorikeet eating meat astonishes me completely. I have never heard of such a thing before.”

“The move for a bird that normally eats pollen and nectar to eating primarily meat is absolutely extraordinary,” he said. “It is of international significance, this is a truly large and major project that we’ve got on here.”

Bill, who owns the Elimbah property, has put out pets mince for magpies, currawongs and kookaburras. He also puts out seed for vegetarian birds like galahs, king parrots and the lorikeets. The birds are spoilt for choice when it comes to food! “At first they went for the seed but then they started chasing the other birds away from the meat, which surprised me,” he said.

“It makes no sense at all” said Professor Jones. “The Lorikeets are chasing magpies and kookaburras away from the meat”. He said the lorikeet population had increased dramatically in south-east Queensland in the past decade. Lorikeets are also being fed by thousands of Queenslanders in backyard feeders. So, they are not adapting to deprivation, or survival!

Professor Darryl Jones would like to hear from anyone who has observed lorikeets eating meat. “We also really want to find out whether it’s a harmful practice because it’s (backyard feeding) very widespread”.

“If it’s harmful for the birds, then everyone needs to know that.”

He can be reached at d.jones@griffith.edu.au

(featured image: OzAnimals.com )

Share This:

Media Release Self-culling dingo proposal morally and environmentally bankrupt

4 comments

 

National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program (Inc. A0051763G )
Date: Thursday June 30, 2016

Secretary of the National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program Inc. (NDPRP Inc.), Dr Ernest Healy, today slammed the idea of releasing dingoes with pre-timed poison devices implanted inside them as morally and environmentally bankrupt.

This week, it has been reported that dingoes have been released on Pelorus Island in Queensland to rid the Island of its population of feral goats. The dingoes, which have been neutered, have also had capsules of deadly 1080 poison implanted under their skin, designed to dissolve in about two years time. The advocates clearly expect that this approach will be used more widely across Australia.

Dr Healy stated:
“First, the use of 1080 poison for the pre-timed killing of the dingoes is cruel. 1080 poison is widely considered to result in a prolonged and agonising death. How such a proposal got past any credible animal research ethics approval process, either within a university or government department, beggars belief.”

“Second, despite the claim that this use of dingoes would be environmentally beneficial, it is really designed to sidestep a genuinely satisfactory environmental outcome, which would include the permanent reintroduction of dingo populations to their former range where the habitat is suitable.”

Increasingly, major conservation organisations and prominent environmental scientists have advocated for the reintroduction of dingoes into their former range as a way to help restore ecosystem health. In the view of these scientists, the historical removal of dingoes as farming activity expanded has contributed to the fragility of Australian ecosystems and to Australia’s appalling extinction rate of native species, particularly small mammal species.

However, because of the long-term hostility of the sheep industry to dingoes, inherited from the colonial period, dingoes have continued to be purged from vast areas near to sheep farming and the well-being of the natural environment has remained a lower-order priority for governments.

Rather than search for a workable historic compromise between the interests of the sheep farming industry and ecosystem health, which would involve the permanent reintroduction of dingoes and acknowledgement of their important environmental role, the proposal to program introduced dingoes for a pre-scheduled cruel death relies upon and perpetuates the worst misconceptions about the dingo, that it too is just a pest animal with no intrinsic environmental value – to be eradicated.

Dr Healy stated:
“The Orwellian concept of using ‘self-culling’ dingoes to kill introduced pests, and that they too then be exterminated as pests by a pre-programmed poison device after having done their good work, is not only cruel, but merely avoids the need for a mature and genuine historic resolution of the conflict between sheep farming and the natural environment in Australia. Many Australians would correctly find such a callous misuse of an iconic native animal to be repugnant.”

Contact:
Dr Ernest Healy, Secretary NDPRP Inc., 0438378430 (mob.), ernest.healy@monash.edu
Dr Ian Gunn BVSc. FACVSc. President NDPRP, 0427 387778 (mob.) ian.gunn@monash.edu

Share This:

Media Release: “Canberra Kangaroo culls rely on stale politicized science”

4 comments

MEDIA RELEASE: 15 May 2016: “Canberra Kangaroo culls rely on stale politicized science”: Australian Wildlife Protection Council says

Today, Maryland Wilson, AWPC President, said that Evolutionary Sociologist, Sheila Newman recently reviewed the government science behind the ACT culls, which will begin anew on Monday 16 April 2016. Newman found it excessively narrow, self-referencing, mechanistic and old-fashioned.   Newman reported in Conference Paper: REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF CANBERRA’S KANGAROO CULLS that:

“Harvesting, damage mitigation and culling probably actually accelerate population growth in roos because the smaller ones survive and adapt by sexually maturing earlier – which speeds up fertility turnover.

Since 2003 DNA studies have shown that ACT and southern NSW roos, both male and female, migrate at significant rates and for longer distances than the ACT model assumes. Migration has probably been mistaken for fertility, rendering ACT roo counts unreliable and invalid. The ACT needs to stop culling and widen its research base to consider various genetically based algorithms that naturally restrain fertility opportunities in kangaroos.”

Examples of such algorithms include separate gender pathways, with ‘sexual segregation’ where male and female populations live apart. It is likely that the stable presence of mature dominant males and females in family and mob organisation inhibits sexual maturity and activity as has been shown in studies of other species, such as macaques and superb fairy wrens (the latter cooperative breeders). In humans, girls brought up with step-fathers who came late to the family were more likely to mature sexually earlier due to absence of Westermarck Effect.)”

“The ACT’s senior Ecologist, Donald Fletcher, found in his Phd that local kangaroos lived without damaging pasture or starving at densities of 5 per hectare, yet he had supported the ACT program that deems kangaroos at more than one per hectare to be in danger of starving and a threat to their own habitat.” 

crueltyillegalherdingcrashing

The ACT government in Canberra is pursuing a policy of rapid human population growth, mostly through publicly invited economic immigration, yet it blames kangaroos for being crowded out of the suburbs.

In June 2016 ACT – South West Australian Capital Territory was the fastest growing area in Australia and grew by 127.3%. (ABS http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3218.0)

“Planned wildlife corridors need to be made safe and long-term viable to cope with people, car and kangaroo population movements. Most Australians love kangaroos and don’t want rapid human population growth. Australia’s capital needs to revise its growth policy in line with sustainability, democracy and appreciation of our unique ecology,” said Maryland Wilson, President, AWPC.

CONTACT: MARYLAND WILSON: 613 359788570 and 61417148501 and SHEILA NEWMAN 0412319669

Share This:

Media Release: Land Clearing wrecking our environment

Environment Minister Greg Hunt

Dear Greg

This week media reports have detailed the Federal Government’s approval for significant clearing of Critically Endangered woodlands in the Hunter Valley and lack of oversight on potentially illegal broad-scale clearing in Cape York, permitted by the former Queensland Government in direct contravention of national environment law.

The Federal Environment Department has just given mining company Coal and Allied the green light to clear 535 hectares of White Box-Yellow Box-Blakely’s Red Gum Grassy Woodland and Derived Native Grassland, a Critically Endangered ecological community listed under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).

The community has been recognised as Critically Endangered since 2006, primarily due to a decline in geographic distribution, and since that time numerous developments have chipped away at what remains. Permitting a further 535 vital hectares to be cleared for a single project indicates the Government is loath to use its habitat protection powers effectively.

“This is a unique and incredibly important ecosystem that has been absolutely smashed by development. More than 93% of the woodlands have been cleared since European settlement, yet the Commonwealth has justified the destruction of a further 535 hectares by requiring a biodiversity offset management plan and vegetation clearance protocols – simply inappropriate measures for Critically Endangered habitats,” said Humane Society International.

Similarly bad news has surfaced in Cape York, where clearing of 33,000 hectares of habitat for the buff-breasted button-quail (the only known Australian bird to have never been photographed in the wild) and at least 17 other threatened species listed under the EPBC Act was permitted in the dying days of the former Queensland Government.

BlkBrstdHemipode

(image: http://www.magiclunchbox.com/mus_profF/robchild/birds.html)

The EPBC Act is not meant to be used in this farcical way – Maryland Wilson Australian Wildlife Protection Council Inc.

Share This:

Media Release: WILDLIFE PLANNING OFFICER SAYS “DON’T’ CULL ROOS; PLAN WILDLIFE CORRIDORS!”

4 comments

 “Avoid culling roos for development by planning wildlife corridors,” says Craig Thomson, AWPC’s new Wildlife Planning Officer.

Today, 7 December 2015, the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC) announced its appointment of Mr Craig Thomson, of Wildlife Ecosystems Retention and Restoration, as their Wildlife Planning Officer.

“It’s a great privilege to work with AWPC,” said Mr Thomson. “Currently with land clearing for development, councils require ‘offsets’. But offsets very rarely consider what happens to displaced wildlife, except for ‘managing’ it, which is a euphemism for conducting ‘cull’ or ‘fertility’ programs.

Craig-Thomson-Wildlife Planner

Maryland Wilson, AWPC President, said she was shocked to read of Ian Temby’s recent call to cull kangaroos ahead of development as the only option for roos displaced by Melbourne’s expansion. (“Call for kangaroos to be culled along Melbourne’s urban fringe,”by Simon Lauder, ABC, 30 Nov 2015).

“There is another non-violent solution,” she said. “It is a scandal that we have suffered through a succession of planning documents for Melbourne, without any allocating land for habitat with interconnecting continuous wildlife corridors that would enable safe passage for native animals. They have also failed to provide more than a tiny handful of animal bridges and underpasses at significant points on roads where wildlife often cross. Kangaroos, koalas, and other wildlife are increasingly road accident victims. As Melbourne expands to accommodate its human population growth program, suburban development pushes them out onto roads. This is planning negligence. “

AWPC says it has repeatedly engaged with councils in devising detailed plans for wildlife corridors. To date, however, no state government has cooperated with these plans, despite obligations to protect wildlife under the Fauna and Flora Guarantee Act.

“Instead, we have been repeatedly stone-walled. The result is the carnage Mr Temby suggests can only be avoided through culls. AWPC will be seeking a meeting with the Andrews State Government to negotiate for wildlife corridors instead of culling,” said President Maryland Wilson.

Mr Thomson spoke of an imminent campaign to buy land on the Mornington Peninsula through crowd-funding. The aim is to create a private land reserve system for a wildlife corridor between national parks to sustain wildlife in the future. He says the matter is urgent as suburban development and a recent spate of farm-fencing are blocking the kangaroos’ natural behaviour on the Peninsula.

Mr Thomson added, “It is ironic that some farmers are paying a lot of money for services that kangaroos would provide for free. For instance, vineyards spend much time and money keeping grass and weeds down between the vines. But, if they took down the fences and let the kangaroos in, the roos would not eat the vines, but they would keep the grass short.”

CONTACT: Mr Craig Thomson, Wildlife Planning Officer, AWPC: 0474651292; Maryland Wilson, President, AWPC: 61359788570

Share This:

1 … 22 23 24 25 26 … 37