Birdlife Australia – Page 2 – Australian Wildlife Protection Council

Perth’s lethal urban sprawl killing off Carnaby’s Black Cockatoos

04/11/2015 AWPC 5 comments

Flocks of Carnaby’s Black-Cockatoos winging their way to their evening roost sites has been a familiar sight around Perth for decades. Their days are numbered!
Updated research from BirdLife Australia shows that flocks are getting smaller as the population of these large, white-tailed, black-cockatoos declines each year.

600 people took part in Birdlife Australia’s Great Cocky Count, earlier this year, but the minimum number of Carnaby’s Black-Cockatoos recorded in the Greater Perth–Peel Region was 5518 birds, continuing the drop in numbers from previous years’ counts. Records have shown a significant, ongoing decline in their population, a reduction in flock size as well as fewer occupied roost sites around Perth.

(image: Birdlife Australia- http://birdlife.org.au/projects/southwest-black-cockatoo-recovery)

This is not an evolutionary trend, due to climate change or other environmental trends, but deliberate habitat destruction! “Perth suburbs continue to expand into the bushland that traditionally supported black-cockatoos. So the black-cockatoos moved into the pine plantations for food and shelter, but now these plantations are being cleared and not replaced.” Thanks mainly to ridiculously high immigration levels, the human population continue to swell, and the deadly threat of urban sprawl spreads like the metastasis of cancer!

Perth’s deadly urban sprawl is heating up the metropolitan area and driving out native animal species, according to an Environmental Protection Authority report. The EPA said species that were present at the time of settlement had disappeared from the region, including 12 mammals such as the numbat, while 46 bird species were in decline and many plants were threatened with extinction. Between 2001 and 2009, some 6,812 hectares of natural bush were cleared within the Perth metropolitan region alone.

Perth’s human population grew by 2.5 per cent in the 12 months to June 2014 – an extra 48,400 people – with 2.02 million people now calling Greater Perth home. New plans mapping out locations to develop 800,000 new homes in Perth and Peel to accommodate for a future population of 3.5 million have been released by the WA Government. The cost of “progress” ignores the environmental costs, and the loss to native species!

Perth’s urban sprawl could be stopped if some of the city’s open space including parks and gardens – is sacrificed for housing! There’s never the option of slowing down our population growth! The pressure is to make the city “more compact”.

The Carnaby’s black cockatoo is one of only two species of white-tailed black cockatoo in the world. The other is the Baudin’s black cockatoo. Both are unique to Southwest Australia.

Half of Perth’s bird species have suffered declines since European settlement. Department of Parks and Wildlife senior wildlife officer Rick Dawson said at the time that 85 Carnaby’s Cockatoos had been killed on the road in eight weeks – a major blow for a species that’s declined from a wild population of 150,000 to between 20,000 and 60,0000 in 30 years.

Black Cockatoos are just another victim of ongoing human greed for economic growth, capitalistic growth, a Colonial frontier mentality, over-population destroying Nature and adding more species to our threatened/extinct list!

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The species that defeated the Carmichael coal mine

23/08/2015 AWPC Leave a comment

The Abbott government is pushing its plan to change environment laws after so-called “vigilante litigation” overturned the massive Carmichael coal mine. The plan was defeated because the Federal court found Environment Minister Greg Hunt had not properly considered advice about two threatened species, the yakka skink and the ornamental snake. The law requires that the Minister consider these conservation advices so that he understands the impacts of the decision that he is making on matters of National Environmental Significance, in this case the threatened species.

Yakka Skink

The yakka skink is a robust lizard around the same size as a blue tongue lizard. The average size from head to tail tip is 40cm, making it one of the largest skinks in the region. Its body colour ranges from pale to dark brown, usually with a broad dark brown stripe extending along the back from the neck to the tail. Yakka skinks occur in a wide variety of vegetation types including poplar box, ironbark, brigalow, white cypress pine, mulga, bendee and lancewood woodlands and open forests. Substrates include rock, sand, clay and loamy red earth.

(image: Australia Zoo )

Ornamental Snake

The Ornamental Snake is a brown, grey-brown or black snake growing up to 50 cm in length with lighter coloured body scales, often with darker streaks/flecks. The crown of the head is darker brown/black with lighter flecks, it has distinctly barred lips, a white/cream belly with dark spots/flecks on the outer edges, and smooth scales (Cogger 2000). The Ornamental Snake’s preferred habitat is within, or close to, habitat that is favoured by its prey – frogs. The species is known to prefer woodlands and open forests associated with moist areas, particularly gilgai (melon-hole) mounds and depressions in Queensland Regional Ecosystem Land Zone 4, but also lake margins and wetlands.

(image: Ornamental snake )

The country’s top legal officer, Attorney General George Brandis, wants to make it harder for people to challenge large scale developments like the Adani coal mine.

Australia is already infamous for species extinctions and threatening processes. The area is the home of the endangered Black-throated finch, threatened Waxy Cabbage Palm, the Mellaluka Springs and koalas. These are important to the case because they are each expected to be impacted by the mine should it proceed.

Greenhouse gas emissions from the mine, and Adani’s environmental track record, had not been taken into account. “Not taken into account” would be the new “norm” if our government had its way!

The plan to change environment laws to stop green groups mounting legal challenges to big developments is an admission that our environmental policies and protective laws are not entrenched, or enshrined, as part of our constitution, but vulnerable to political sway and corporate pressure. The incremental process of dismantling our biodiversity protection policies, and environmental security, can’t be compensated for by economic benefits.

Abbott’s rant of “jobs and growth” is shallow, self-destructive and counter-productive if our life-supporting environment, natural resources and heritage are all obliterated in the process.

(featured image: Black-throated Finch. The southern race of the Black-throated Finch is listed as Endangered under national, Queensland and NSW laws. It is thought to have become extinct in NSW, where it was last seen in 1994 and according to the Black-throated Finch Recovery Team, the extent of its occurrence has contracted by 80 per cent over the last 30 years.)

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