THE CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF BIODIVERSITY

When debating weighty matters of state, our political elite rate environmental matters way behind national security, economic growth and getting re-elected. Meanwhile, the business community views biodiversity as a resource to be plundered to the extent that laws allow, or beyond if they feel they can get away with it.

Most of the remainder, it seems, have little understanding of nature and biodiversity, focusing instead on mortgages, energy costs, and the pressures of just surviving in this man-made “rat race”. 

It isn't as though the importance of biodiversity isn't known.  It's simply that those natural values come a distant last, behind social and economic considerations.

The critical importance of biodiversity is summed up well in the national biodiversity plan, “Australia’s Biodiversity Conservation Strategy, 2010–2030”, which states: “Conserving biodiversity is an essential part of safeguarding the biological life support systems on Earth. All living creatures, including humans, depend on these life support systems for the necessities of life”.

One would think that statement alone would grab the attention of policy makers, but it seems it hasn't. If, on the other hand, policy makers have received and understood that message, their subsequent actions allowing, and in some instances encouraging the ongoing destruction of biodiversity, can only be described as criminally negligent.

That federal biodiversity strategy accurately sums up the current situation, with “biodiversity continues to decline”. We are now halfway through the period during which that strategy was supposed to turn things around.

So how are we doing?

Not too well. An accelerating number of listed threatened species, a Murray – Darling River system reduced to a series of toxic puddles, courtesy of taxpayer funded water theft, increased CO2 emissions, and a world heritage reef dying before our eyes.

We have a government whose leader brings a lump of coal into parliament telling the world that we've nothing to fear from it, and both major political parties espousing an increase in mining and burning of coal. All this despite acknowledging the scientific evidence that the subsequent emissions will lead to catastrophic global heating. This is insanity!

            - John Edwards

 This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on October 28,  2019

DIRK HARTOG ISLAND SANCTUARY IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Dirk Hartog Island, a National Park in the Shark Bay World Heritage Area, is Western Australia’s largest island.  It is 80 km long and 15 km at its widest point with an area of about 63,000 ha.

The island is named after its first European visitor, a captain with the Dutch East India Company,  who landed there in 1616.  Scientists have established that at that time there were 13 native mammal species living there.  These included the Woylie, Chuditch (Western Quoll), Dibbler and Western Barred Bandicoot.

The island became a pastoral lease in 1869. When it became a national park in 2009, there were only three of the native mammal species still living there.  The local extinctions were the result of human activity including the introduction of goats, sheep and cats. By 2009 the island’s goat population had expanded to an estimated 10,000 and the impact of these animals grazing and trampling on the native vegetation had been severe.

An ambitious twenty year project “Return to 1616” (costed at $16.3 million) has recently achieved its first major milestone – the removal of thousands of feral cats, goats and sheep. The way is now clear for the re-introduction of threatened native species to a sanctuary in which it is hoped they will thrive.

A fence was put across the island to divide it into two cells.  The island was then baited and the southern section was monitored to gauge its success and then this process was continued in the north.

The first native animals to be reintroduced were 140 Rufous and Banded Hare-wallabies from nearby Bernier and Dorre islands.  The remaining species will be reintroduced in the coming years.

Stephen Dawson, the WA Environment Minister, said that the project was part of a broader suite of measures the State Government was undertaking to create animal sanctuaries for threatened species around the state.

“Over the past 200 years, we’ve seen our species threatened because of land clearing, because of urbanisation, so to have arks like this available in the state where we can restore the animals is very important,” Mr Dawson said.        

            - Leonie Blain

 This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on October 22, 2018.  

Relocating Banded Hare Wallabies on Dirk Hartog Island