NSW Flood March to April 2010

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Feo4UJQ-diw&feature=youtube_gdata

Kangaroo misconceptions

The first misconception is that kangaroos compete with livestock for resources and should therefore be extensively culled. Scientific research has been conducted on this important issue for over 30 years, primarily in Australia's rangelands. It's been well established that the total grazing and water use pressure of a kangaroo is only a small fraction of that of sheep and cattle.

Scientific research informs us that noteworthy competition with sheep and cattle is only likely under extreme drought conditions in the rangelands. Additionally, economic analysis shows any realised loss of livestock productivity, due to competition from kangaroos, is significantly outweighed by fluctuations in meat and wool prices. Furthermore, there is no ecological evidence to indicate whether there are more or less kangaroos today than pre-European settlement.

Secondly, it's been claimed that with high enough prices for kangaroo meat and skins, farmers could viably switch from livestock to kangaroos with great benefit to the environment. More recently, it has also been suggested greenhouse gasses would decrease as a result, a view endorsed and promoted by the Garnaut Climate Change Review.

However, this is not the case. Kangaroos produce far less human consumable meat than livestock. Our estimates suggest only three kilograms per animal is of good quality, which contrasts vastly with industry estimates of 12 kilograms. Taking the latter figure, a single carcass could feed 48 people with a 250 gram portion. This would require 24 million kangaroos to be culled annually to provide one meal, for every Australian, per week.

As quotas are restricted by sustainable yields of around 18 per cent, this would require populations of the four harvested kangaroo species to reach 133 million. At no time have such populations existed. Not only is it unfeasible, but there would be considerable environmental implications and increased danger of crashing while driving on rural roads.

In 2008, Australian Government estimates indicated a population of around 26 million harvestable kangaroos nationally, although records show that populations can reach 50 million when times are good. Of these, only between 2 and 6 million are currently harvested.

Considering this fact, and that most livestock products are imported as processed meat, live shipment and wool, it is unlikely that a marginal or partial uptake of kangaroo meat will decrease the number of sheep and cattle on the land.

Finally, eating kangaroo is thought by some to be supportive of a free range, cruelty-free and environmentally-friendly food source. However, the National Code of Practice for the Humane Shooting of Kangaroos and Wallabies for Commercial Purposes is currently inadequate and remains unenforceable.

Contrary to claims by regulatory agencies, the industry is not fully professional, with a large proportion of casual shooters amongst licensees.

Kangaroos that are inaccurately targeted (not hit in the head from 80 to 200 metres at night) may suffer a painful, protracted death and their carcasses will not be utilised. Pouch-young joeys are clubbed on the head. Young-at-foot are supposed to be shot, but since the industry is self-regulated, they are often left to die of starvation or predation.

Taken together, it is likely that up to a million young are killed annually as collateral damage and their carcasses not used. This is an unacceptable practice by international standards. In a similar case of harvested terrestrial wildlife, the products derived from young Canadian Harp Seals – which are clubbed to death – have been banned in most westernised countries.

Using kangaroos to solve environmental problems and the ethical dilemmas of eating meat may seem at first glance like a good idea. However, closer scrutiny provides a significant challenge to this common view.

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20100505-20921.html

Wetland bird numbers fall - a study based in the Macquarie Marshes

The slow death of one of Australia's iconic wetlands is causing dramatic upheavals in its bird populations, with species from surrounding farmland moving in to replace many small woodland birds as they lose their habitat, a new study has found.

Their loss is adding to the widespread decline of woodland birds as a result of land-clearing and also reveals how regulation of rivers and diversion of water are having serious unintended consequences for bird communities, say researchers at the UNSW Australian Rivers and Wetlands Centre (ARWC).

The study was based in the Macquarie Marshes, where large areas of river red gums are stressed or dead. Water diversion from river systems has meant that they are no longer receiving the critical floodwaters they need to survive and regenerate.

Woodland birds that usually forage for insects among river red gum canopies, such as crested shrike-tits, white-plumed honeyeaters and little friarbirds, are disappearing from this and probably other similarly affected wetlands in eastern Australia.

River red gum woodlands provide habitat for a diverse group of woodland bird species, including four that are listed as vulnerable in NSW: the brown treecreeper, diamond firetail, hooded robin and grey-crowned babbler.

The study found that the species making up the woodland bird community are changing as river red gums decline in health. Small insect-eating birds, such as the rufous whistler and grey fantail, that forage in foliage are most affected by these changes and declined in numbers. Some species - such as jacky winters and crested pigeons - that favour cleared areas have increased in number.

In the long term, as dead red gum trees fall and decompose, the habitat is likely to be less suitable even for some of these birds.

"When you stand in a forest of dead trees, you get a stark view of the impact of our water policies on these systems," says one of the researchers, Alice Blackwood. "The entire habitat is changing. As the trees are dying, dense native shrubs are moving in, while the coverage of herbs, leaf litter and aquatic plants is decreasing. These represent huge changes for small woodland birds."

AWRC Director Professor Richard Kingsford says significant changes to aquatic ecosystems in the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin are well known, "but this is one of the first times we have found much wider impacts into birds that aren't normally associated with rivers."

River red gum decline is already widespread in the Murray-Darling Basin, and it is likely that birds are being similarly affected in these areas, says Blackwood: "Given that woodland birds are already declining throughout south-east Australia it is important that action is taken to ensure the future of remaining habitat,"

Professor Kingsford comments: "Governments are addressing these issues by buying back water, which will certainly improve the amount of environmental flow to these red gum forests but it is also important that such broad issues are considered in the new Murray-Darling Basin plan."

The bird species declining are:
white-plumed honeyeater; brown treecreeper; eastern yellow robin; rufous whistler; little friarbird; crested shrike-tit; grey faintail.

The bird species increasing are:
Jacky winter; crested pigeon; rufous songlark; hooded robin; yellow thornbill; diamond dove.

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20100505-20926.html