9 posts tagged “conservation”

Saw a piece the other day that will gladden the hearts of messy gardeners (like me) and ease the strain on those who strive for garden perfection. It was a study of British gardens, but since most Australian gardens are a facsimile of British gardens, in style and content, the findings apply just as much to Sydney or Yass as they might do in Birmingham or Stockton on Forest. I can sum up the findings very briefly - "Untidy gardens are best". There, doesn't that make you feel better as the tidal wave of Spring weeds overwhelms your garden beds, lawns grow so fast they seem determined to singlehandedly reduce CO2 in the air to 350ppm, and shrubs and trees grow inches every night?

Here are the suggestions in more detail:
*Plant large shrubs and let them grow big. Shrubs and trees produce more vegetation where wildlife can live and eat.

*Allow at least some flowers to turn to seed and the lawn to grow tall. Don't be in a hurry to clear up fallen leaves. Don't be too tidy: don't be in a hurry to clear up everything when the garden stops flowering. Just leave a bit of stuff lying around.

*Create a pond for insects, frogs and toads. Think before stocking it with fish which will eat insect eggs and larvae.

*Don't illuminate your garden at night with bright lights. This will disturb many nocturnal creatures, such as moths.

*Create a compost heap – they are miniature nature reserves in themselves. Compost also enriches the soil.

*Keep hard surfaces (decking, paths, driveways, paved areas) to a minimum.

The author of the study, Ken Thompson of Sheffield University, said that Britain's 16 million gardens are a haven for hundreds of species of animals and plants that would find it impossible to survive on intensively farmed land  "Gardens are amazingly diverse even compared to natural habitats that are good for wildlife. Gardens are more interesting on a small scale because they are so variable. All the wildlife responds to these variables ... Compared with an equivalent area of modern intensive farming, gardens are much, much better in terms of everything you measure, whether it is spiders, bugs or birds," he said "It sounds heretical, but from a biodiversity perspective most farmland would be improved by having a housing estate built on it" . I don't think I can add much to that, except to say that most Australian farms could be improved by having some untidy areas too. In Britain the study found that it didn't matter whether native or exotic plants were used. Here, because of the nature of our bird species, a good proportion of native shrubs and flowers would be very important.

So no more tidy towns - let your hair down and your grass and shrubs up and help to maintain biodiversity in your area. Tell your wife I said so.

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

For many years now television channels, in order to avoid apparent overt bias in their reporting (as distinct from the every day subtle bias), insist generally that their reporters present "both sides of the story". There are exceptions - only the police view of a demonstration that "turned violent" is acceptable, only conservative economists get to talk about the economy - but usually the convention is followed even when it is mind-numbingly boring. A statement by the government that it is doing well is unerringly followed by a statement from the Opposition saying it isn't; motoring groups say petrol is too expensive, oil companies say it is so cheap they are about to become bankrupt. So far, so ho hum, "he said, she disagrees" reporting has become so all pervasive we are rarely aware of it any more - it is just the way things are done.

And, since it is just the way things are done, the reporters have extended it to every single story that is not about celebrities or car crashes. Extended it to stories where there is no controversy, but where the appearance of one can be given (and therefore the "bias" removed) by making the second interviewee a person who has a strong vested interest in the subject. Here are some examples - A scientific study finds that the alcopops tax increase has reduced consumption of alcohol among the young - an alcohol industry spokesperson says he doesn't think so. Research says GM food dangerous - a company producing GM food doesn't think so. Nuclear power risky - not according to the spokesperson for a nuclear power company. Fish stocks declining, need to be protected in refuges - no says  the president of a fishing club. Run off from sugar cane farms damaging the Great Barrier Reef - no way says a sugar cane farmer. An extensive scientific study on old growth forests around the world shows they are major factor in storing carbon, shouldn't be logged, but then we have "But the National Association of Forest Industries chief executive says...".

In story after story a scientific study conducted over a long period by highly qualifed people reaches a conclusion, only to be matched by someone with a major financial interest in the reverse - in no action being taken to correct a problem. The reporter reaches no conclusion, the presenter of the program provides no context, oh dear no, for to do so would be to introduce bias into the "debate". And so every effort by ecologists or health researchers to protect people and their planet is neutralised, turned into a brief exchange in which it is impossible to conclude what the problems and solutions are. Who can know the truth when there are, literally, two sides to every story? In a very real sense, television channels have created a world in which there is no truth about any serious issue.

A world well suited to those whose interests are served by things remaining just as they are, and indeed such people help to maintain the "he says she says" format, will scream "bias" if a spokesperson for the vested interest is not included. Last week on a blog I saw someone say that it was appalling that the Department of Climate Change was providing warnings about future damage to Australia as a result of global warming without consulting the climate change denier web sites and publications for an opposing view. Any day now I expect demands that the Health Department should consult faith healers instead of being biased against them.

All I can say is that if I ever see a television program with some fool announcing that the sun rises in the East, without a spokesperson from the "West Sun Research Institute" there to present the alternative view I will be on the phone so quick they will think they have been hit by a weapon of mass destruction from Iraq. No argument about that, I can tell you.

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

The position of climate change denialists these days is roughly the same as that of Flat Earthers from the day that Yuri Gargarin circled the Earth in a capsule. That is a continual denial of something which it is no longer tenable to deny, and being something of a student of human nature in all its aberrations, I ask myself, as many have before me, "Why are they so?".

There are many answers: a deep faith in unregulated market forces; a deep faith in big energy companies; a deep faith that a god created the world in a perfect form 6000 years ago, and humans are too puny to damage that creation; a hatred of those dirty hippies who should all have been shot in the Sixties. But there is another thread running through all of those - a belief that no environmental issue, no conservation cause, no piece of the natural world, must ever be allowed to get in the way of big profits for big business or of the ever accelerating human population.

Everywhere you look around the world, forests are being smashed and burned, species hunted to extinction, ocean floors ravaged, rivers polluted, sand dunes paved over, coral reefs bombed, mountain tops blasted. And everywhere a new problem becomes evident, and people concerned for our world mobilize to try to protect some vestige of creation, the forces of big business bring to bear financial and legal and lobbyist and union and media and political pressure and ensure that no conservation cause can ever succeed.

And they get away with this because they convince Joe Public that it is "jobs or the environment" and because "saving spotted owls" can be made to seem of concern only to tree huggers, and because there is always the impression, promoted by the media and the tourism industry, that there are plenty of wild places left, just over the hill, just around the river bend, just on the next island. The world can be made to seem inexhaustible.

But along come scientists, not those soft girly greenie sympathizer biologists, but hard real men physicists in white coats, to tell us that the actual planet as a whole is in trouble. Not just piece meal battles for a patch of forest here, a beach there, but an invisible gas permeating the atmosphere, rising inexorably in concentration, and warming the planet towards a tipping point or two which could make the planet unlivable for humans in the sense that we have understood living in the last 100,000 years or so. And suddenly big business, and the politicians they have nurtured, and the peasants hoping for crumbs from the rich man's table, one day, and their enablers on talk back radio and Murdoch Media, are faced with the prospect that having won every battle in their drive to totally exploit the planet they may, finally, lose the war.

And so the chorus of anti-global warming propaganda, already high enough to prevent action these long ten years, is suddenly ratcheted up to a new level, as the destroyers of worlds fear that the public will, finally, like 6 billion Yuri Gargarins, see for themselves the reality of the world around them.

Cross-posted at Huffington Post.

Too much reality on the Watermelon Blog.

A friend of mine recently returned from a holiday in France. She had a great time travelling around the Dordogne region in southern France, her only complaint being that she couldn't get to see the Lascaux Cave. The real cave has been closed to tourists for a long time, and next door to it has been built a replica for tourists to see. The cave was only discovered in 1940 (when a dog, Robot, crawled into a hole revealed by a fallen tree and was followed by his owner), and the first people to see it were amazed by the art on the walls, painted (it turned out) around 17,000 years ago. There were hundreds of vivid paintings of the animals hunted by the local people at the end of the last Ice Age, all as fresh as if they had been done the day before, and revealing much information about the fauna of the time, long extinct (including mammoths, horses, bison, giant cattle and so on), and about the behaviour and beliefs of the humans who lived there. The site was a treasure trove for archaeologists, but also quickly became a tourist attraction. A treasure trove, I'm guessing, for local businesses, who demanded it be opened as a tourist attraction. The entrance was opened up, water diverted, car parks built, the cave floored with concrete, bright lights installed - and up to 1700 visitors a day tramped through, bringing in, as it turned out, bacteria and fungi on shoes, clothes, and in the humid air they breathed out. After just 15 years the combination of all these factors was beginning to destroy paintings that had survived 17,000 years, and in 1963 visitor numbers were greatly limited, and a system to move air throughout the caves was installed and worked quite well. Then in 2001, in a misguided attempt to improve things, a new air conditioner replaced the old one and since then fungus and bacteria have again begun eating away at the pantings and walls, and a major conservation effort is needed to try to slow down the destruction.

I was reminded of this story last week when I watched a news item about the Bay of Fires in Tasmania. This beautiful spot was named, by Lonely Planet, as the world's top spot for tourists in 2009. It's attractions included its isolation, few visitors, unspoilt white beaches fringed with forests. The guide urges "travellers looking for a slice of paradise to visit Bay of Fires right now, before the crowds take hold". Now you might think, and you would be right, that listing a place like this whose value lies in its isolation, few visitors, and consequently unspoilt environment would be inviting its destruction and you would be right. Presumably next year other unspoilt destinations, in their turn, will be brought to the world's attention.

But in the meantime the Tasmanian government, in a rare example of conservation concern on the island, decided to declare the area a National Park in order to afford it some protection from the Lonely Planet crowds. Immediate outrage from both local businessmen, and an Aboriginal group led by Michael Mansell. The businessmen want development to take advantage of the Lonely Planet listing, which "gives the tourism and hospitality industries a unique opportunity to grow their business" according to a tourist industry leader, and I am picturing roads and paths and trail bikes and restaurants and marinas and adventure playgrounds and big air conditioned hotels. It's not clear what the Aboriginal group wants, but since it doesn't want a National Park, I guess it is also seeking development of some kind. In Cape York, Noel Pearson is similarly outraged by the Queensland government trying to protect some of the last wild rivers on Cape York, because Aboriginal people want to develop them. Strange that Aborigines and developers could both be enemies of conservation.

But whoever is pushing development of undeveloped areas, it really has to stop. Maybe okay 60 years ago (as Lascaux was opened to tourism), when there were still many untouched areas, but now they have dwindled down to a precious few, and the parade of Labor, Liberal and National politicians, marching robotically in step behind the developer drummers, chanting "money money money" and, hypocritically, "jobs jobs jobs", should be redirected to the redevelopment of already ruined places.

I don't know if the Lonely Planet writer had a dog who ran over the sand dunes and discovered a beautiful place ripe for exploitation, but if he did he should have called the dog back and gone on his way. If only that French boy had called his dog back instead of following him in. Perhaps whenever a place is lined up for development a talking statue of Robot the dog should be placed at the entrance as a reminder and a warning. "Woof woof" he would bark when he sensed a developer "woof woof". "Keep out".

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

The other day there was a news item about attempts to stop 4WD vehicles (SUVs) driving around on some Queensland beaches because of the environmental damage they cause. Everybody, even SUV drivers, knows that soil contains thousands of living organisms that keep the soil functioning and healthy allowing plants to grow in it and animals to live off those plants. Everybody, except SUV drivers, knows that beach sand is just as much a living organism as the most productive soil in the Yass River Valley. The white or golden sands, beloved of tourist operators, have a whole community of small animals living in them, animals important in both the ocean ecosystem and that of the shoreline. But an interviewed driver was outraged at any attempt to stop him driving on the beach (instead of walking from the parking area) asked the reporter "who are you going to look after - human beings or tiny critters in the sand?"

Same story on the Murray River where attempts to stop the red gum forests being destroyed by logging (and therefore driving to extinction thousands more invisible tiny critters as well as more photogenic ones like the superb parrot) were met by outrage from people like the local mayor who asked essentially "who are you going to look after - human beings or tiny critters in the trees?"

These are stories that are becoming increasingly common. Organisms that took millions of years to evolve, ecosystems that took tens of thousands of years to develop and which have been living in the same spot for 10,000 years, are happily destroyed, permanently, by people who want to hoon around on beaches and sand dunes, or to avoid walking a hundred metres or so from the road to the beach to fish. or destroyed in the name of jobs that will disappear anyway with the last red gum to be felled. And ecosystems that made the Earth suitable for human beings to live on, unlike the deserts of Mars, are willfully and unthinkingly destroyed because "tiny critters" and their activities are invisible to casual inspection.

Wouldn't it be refreshing if the SUV man had said "Oh, I hadn't realised what was happening, we must stop immediately, I love the beach and want to see it survive forever". And if the mayor had said "Look we have always known that we couldn't go on logging forever, and now the fate of the superb parrot, symbolic of all the other creatures, is a final wake up call. As Mayor it is my job to look after the interests of everything on my patch. We support the ending of logging, and call on Mr Garrett to fund and facilitate new  enterprises in this shire."

Human interests and environmental interests are not alternatives but corollaries. There is always an alternative to destroying the world we live in, and we need to be vigorous in finding it. The game's afoot.

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

Imagine, for a moment (it isn't hard to do), that Australia, in addition to the hard graft states like NSW and Victoria, had a state which was perfect one day and even more perfect the next. A state that made Camelot look like inland South Australia. Picture a postcard with gleaming white beaches, extending forever, sparkling blue seas, two thousand kilometres of a reef known as one of the wonders of the world, rich and diverse rainforests with ancient species found nowhere else, luxurious mangroves providing spawning ground for millions of fish, hundreds of tropical islands each one a perfect gem. If you and I lived in such a fabulous place we would I think make sure it was conserved both for ourselves, and our children's children's children, and for visitors from all around the world, leaving places that are less than Camelot-like to spend a little time in paradise, perfect day after perfect day.

Impossible to imagine that people responsible for governing such a place would not set up a system of advisers  - the very best ecologists, marine biologists, oceanographers - to give advice on potential threats to, well, let's call it something royal, like, oh I don't know, Queensland. And having received the advice, would establish the most stringent regulations to prevent damage occurring. A kind of global war on ecological catastrophe.

The advice would cover all kinds of threats. Would warn of the dangers of silt run-off (containing fertilisers and pesticides and herbicides) into rivers or directly into the sea from farms built on cleared rainforest; would point out that global warming was already damaging coral species; would note that fish stocks were under threat from over-fishing; would observe the extensive clearing of mangroves and rain forests and sand dunes for development; would sound warnings about the movement of shipping through the reef and close to beaches, and point out that tropical storms were likely to result in damage to such shipping and the release of oil and toxic cargo. And once such warnings were received the government would swing into action, perhaps declaring no-fishing zones; perhaps regulating pesticide and fertiliser use; perhaps putting a hold on coastal development; perhaps stringently monitoring the safety standards on ships, reducing the number of shipping channels in use, and greatly limiting ship movements during major storms.

The public would rise up to support such action and demand ever more application of the precautionary principle, recognising that it only takes one major incident to undo thousands of years of evolution and ecology. And knowing that anything involving human action also involves human fallibility, and that short cuts and money saving and greed can and will lead to mistakes, risk taking, equipment failure. Will be supported in their concern by all interested parties such as fishermen, sugar cane farmers, ship owners, developers, miners, Labor and National Party politicians; all working together to look after the future of this amazing northern corner of the continent. Oh sure, I'm a realist, I know that every barrel of mangoes can have a bad one that spoils the rest, I know that greedy and foolish and short-sighted and ignorant people can be found in tiny minorities everywhere. And they will demand unlimited fishing, unregulated development and commerce, self-regulated farming, unrestricted shipping movements. But they will be howled down by the rest of the Queenslanders, who are certain they don't want to wake up one morning to discover, say, 60km of white beaches now black with oil, and nitrates dissolving into clear blue seas. Couldn't happen of course (can you imagine!), just a conservationist's nightmare, but we all need to stay alert. Prevention is always better than cure, as they say.

What a pity Australia doesn't have a state like that.

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

Just a short blog while you wait for the next piece of Watermelon. You will remember that an earlier blog talked about our responsibilities not just for our own backyard but for the world as a whole, and another recommended helping the Americans begin to undo some of the worst of Bush's environmental vandalism. I remain puzzled, and will one day try to explore the subject, as to why some people hate the world they live in so much they are not just indifferent to its destruction but actively complicit in it. Rather in the way the crowd at the Colosseum voted with outstretched fists that wounded gladiators be dispatched.

But I digress. Here are some new sites I have discovered in recent times. The Alaska Progressive Review is an interesting site from the other side of the world and the opposite end of the climate change spectrum. Oddly one of its writers spent time in Sydney recently working to predict fire conditions (we don't it seems have enough fire forecasters, and have to import them in Summer - who knew?), and writes at length about the Victorian fires. The site suffers from green and red text on a black background but take a look.

Also on the other side of the world, but as close as a mouse click, is Wildlife Focus for the World Land Trust. This worthy organisation (somewhat similar to our Bush Heritage) helps preserve areas of significance for particular endangered species. The site includes (and I can never get used to this stuff) a webcam at a bird watering/feeding station in the jungle of Ecuador, where you can watch, wherever you are, rare hummingbirds fluttering in to feed.

A similar love of nature, particularly birds, but much more local, is Natural Newstead. Geoff Park has lovingly compiled, and finely observed, the birds (and some other animals) of his central Victorian district. If you love birds you will like this.

And now for something completely different, and no, it is not a dead parrot. Ben Pobjie's wonderful world of objects is worth a look. Ben writes for a number of organisations, with biting satire that picks up the likes of Miranda Devine and Andrew Bolt, and raps them a number of times on the counter to make sure they are really dead. Smart, and lethal, as a whip, our Ben.

So, there you are, something to go on with while you anxiously await the acquired taste of a Watermelon view of the Queensland oil spill, and the Victorian bushfires, coming soon to a blog very much like this one.

"Like watching paint dry" is another way of describing something as really boring. Fans of the different football codes use it to describe each other's game, all would agree in using it to describe cricket.

Saw a "news item' (I use the term loosely) the other day about a car race in England involving cars towing caravans around the track, the object being, to the excited cheers of the crowd, to smash the caravans during the race. Another item was the very sad case of a child killed while watching one of those events where monster trucks crush cars in an arena. A bit like the awful case some years back where the demolition of the old Canberra Hospital was made the subject of a public event, bringing crowds of people to the shores of the lake to watch explosives set off and the building turned to rubble, when something went horribly wrong, chunks of concrete and steel showered the crowd, and a young girl was killed.

Not just Canberra Hospital though, it seems that any building of sufficient size, demolished anywhere in the world, will appear on the nightly news bulletin. And not just monster trucks, but every motor sport event depends upon destruction. Watch the news coverage of motor bikes, or formula 1, or CART, or V8s, or drag racers, and you may or may not see the winner cross the line, but you will certainly see a compilation of the day's crashes. The more flames, and rolling wheels, and somersaults, and rolls, and disintegrating car bodies, and riders sliding, and spectators ducking, and fences impacted you can show the better. The point of the race is not the sport but the carnage and destruction. And from all round the world come images (at times accompanied by a chuckle from a newsreader) of train wrecks, plane crashes, boat collisions, cars crashing into buildings, motorway pile-ups, explosions, fires, building collapses.

I seem to be the only person in the world who finds this stuff distasteful. Indeed our whole society has changed from one in which things were patched up, repaired, reused, handed on, made-do-with, to one in which moving into a house involves gutting it and starting all over. And one in which city buildings a few years old are demolished to make way for new ones. A world where trees are cleared, sand dunes flattened, creeks filled in, parks turned into car parks, rivers re-directed; a world where every endeavour begins with a bulldozer and a wrecking crew. A world where pulp mills are fed with old growth forests, where long line fishing kills more than just tuna, where endangered species are a joke, and environmental protection legislation is no longer even a challenge to lobbyists. For developers who stand to make money the destruction is just part of doing business.

I can turn away from all the car crashes - in sport or real life. Refuse to take part in the media obsession with destruction and pain. But none of us can turn away from the slow motion train wreck that is a warming planet. Night after night come images of retreating glaciers, severe weather events, species under threat, farmlands turning to dust, forests dying, rivers drying. Every night is another example of the way that the energy and mining and manufacturing companies of the world are such fans of destruction that they seem happy to watch a whole planet being destroyed, along with a billion years of evolution and ten thousand years of civilisation, rather than reduce greenhouse gas production.

Don't know whether Warren Truss and Malcolm Turnbull are fans of motor sports. Hard to imagine them in the pits at Bathurst, but you never know I suppose. But they must both be fans of watching slow motion train wrecks because both, last week, were calling for a delay in any action on climate change (even the miserable excuse for pretend action that is the Rudd emissions trading scheme) until after the serious business of making rich people richer can resume. Then Malcolm came up with an idea roughly comparable to offsetting the petrol chewed up by racing cars at Bathurst by burying their waste engine oil.

Some time it would be good if people began to think that watching paint dry on a renovated buildng, watching things being repaired, watching things being conserved, watching the planet being saved, was as exciting as watching a collapsing baseball stadium, an exploding drag racer.

Many of us on the southern tablelands would be happy watching grass grow in the coming decades.

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog.

You will probably laugh at me when you hear that I often bump into things because I walk around looking intently on the ground in front of me in order to avoid treading on and hurting spiders, or ants, or beetles, or snakes (the latter, I must confess, more for my benefit than for their's, although it can't be fun to have your tail trodden on by my large boots). So I try to tread lightly on the ground, just like Aborigines did in a more general sense (although I do try to tread lightly in general as well). I would also be laughed at if people knew I rescue moths and bees and grasshoppers from water troughs so I don't tell anyone about that.

I guess everyone who loves the bush, loves the natural world, behaves the same way. Just as we all automatically pick up our rubbish after a picnic and take it home, put out camp fires, try to leave things just as we found them. Are all outraged by people removing mossy rocks, stealing baby parrots from nests, chopping up hollow logs, digging up ground orchids. This is all like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs (though why she would want to I have never understood) - everyone knows the bush is fragile, under more threat than it has ever been, and the last thing any of us should be doing is adding to the threat.

So I was puzzled the other day to see that the latest advert for one of the new recreational four wheel drive vehicles (what the Americans call SUVs, and we seem to be adopting this) didn't promote their quietness, their lightness, their ability to slip in and out of a camping ground barely leaving a tyre print behind. It wasn't a cartoon of an SUV tip-toeing in on its four wheels, carefully avoiding ant trails and spider burrows and ground-nesting pipits, while recycling its own exhaust. It wasn't, in short, the kind of thing that would appeal to bush lovers who want to visit the bush and return without a sign of their passing.

No, just like all the other SUV adverts, for all the car companies, I have seen over the last ten years, it involved a big noisy heavy vehicle smashing its way through "pristine" wilderness. The images from all these adverts haunt me years later - close ups of wheels smashing through the rocks on the bed of a mountain stream, or skidding through a salt lake, or breaking down a sand dune, or flinging dirt up from a dirt track in a forest, or skidding across a white beach, or splintering logs, or running over mossy rocks. Loud music (could it be "Ride of the Valkyries" or am I thinking of another movie?) plays in the back ground as engines rev up to tackle the next environmental obstacle. All of the voiceover script is to do with conquering nature, beating it into submission, letting nothing stand in your way.

Why is it so? Well, I guess either the advertising agencies have it all back to front, and are aiming at totally the wrong audience, or these vehicles are not being bought by people who rescue moths from water troughs. I'm guessing the second option is correct, and if it is then we have a problem. Well, tens of thousands of problems.

Look I know that advertising has absolutely no effect on public behaviour, as advertisers keep telling us in relation to alcohol abuse, and childhood obesity, and teenage body image, and used to tell us about cigarettes. But just on the off chance that this is a case where it does, could someone please tell the advertisers that they should show SUVs not damaging the environment (hey, they can use my cartoon idea, free of charge), should show them treading softly, running silently, their owners walking to mountain streams instead of splashing through them.

Maybe they can help maintain some of those pristine environments a little longer. And maybe they will start selling some cars to moth rescuers.

All David Horton's writing is on The Watermelon Blog