The precarious nature of endangered species
Crikey intern Laura Griffin writes: Biodiversity is the variety of life forms on earth, including plants, animals and micro-organisms (and their genetic material) and the often finely balanced, fragile and interconnected ecosystems that they connect. But how do governments and science organisations help to maintain biodiversity and limit the extinction of species?
Reuters recently reported a study that showed, for example, that eight species of algae removed nitrate (a common pollutant) from (artificial) streams 4.5 times faster, on average, than a single species alone.
Since colonisation, Australia has suffered the largest recorded decline in biodiversity of any continent. Species continue to die out.
Australian scientists recently announced a world-first index to determine how close species are to extinction that will be used with the IUCN ‘Red’ list. Corey Bradshaw, the director of ecological modeling at Adelaide University’s Environmental Institute, explained that the Species Ability to Forestall Extinction index — or SAFE — showed how close species were to the minimum number needed to survive in the wild.
If populations were lower than about 5,000 individuals, there is a heightened risk of extinction. This is because the whole populations can be wiped out in chance events like natural disasters.
Bradshaw, with scientists from James Cook University, found of 95 species of mammals they studied, nearly 20% were at risk of being extinct. And sadly, Australia epitomises the trend.
But some conservationists fear species index may actually lead to extinctions because some efforts will be deemed not cost effective (and possibly no longer funded).
Patrick Medway, secretary of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Australia said on ABC’s PM:“We could not accept that even any or some of these species should be allowed to become extinct. It would be against the grain of our members and our organisation who have worked so hard to save and conserve Australia’s wildlife for the next generation.”
Endangered animal species have also made the news in America this week.
Last week, when I saw The New York Times tweet ‘Congress, in a First, Removes an Animal From the Endangered Species List’, I assumed it was a positive story of conservation methods saving a species from the threat of extinction.
But, the article instead reports that the Congress ceded to political and economic pressures, and agreed to take the Rocky Mountain Wolf off the endangered species list.
It will now be managed by state wildlife agencies, which it seems, could cull it or at least allow it to be hunted. According to the article:
“While the language on the Rocky Mountain wolves was a tiny item in budgetary terms, environmental groups said it set an unnerving precedent by letting Congress, rather than a science-based federal agency, remove endangered species protections.”
It was the first known instance of Congress’ directly intervening in the list of endangered animals in the United States. The Endangered Species list is still, at least nominally, managed by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. There is no mention of the Congress intervention on its website.
The website does, however, explain that “Endangered” means a species is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range. “Threatened” means a species is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future.
According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service summary of endangered and threatened species, 580 animals are listed in the US (including 84 mammals and 139 fish species) and 792 plant species.
Globally, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) manages the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of plant and animal species. This organisation was founded in 1948 as the world’s first global environmental organisation and is an official observer at the United Nations General Assembly.
Its summary table, which groups critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable species as ‘threatened’, shows that the number of species listed has dramatically increased since 1996/8 (10,533) to last year (18,351) — although, a much larger number of species overall have been recorded.
Such statistics have prompted talk of another period of mass extinction.
Palaeontologists define mass extinctions as times when the Earth loses more than three-quarters of its species in a geologically short interval. A study published in the journal Nature shows that current extinction rates (including those of the last centuries and millennia) are much higher than would be expected from the fossil record.
The rates of extinction now are between 100 to 1,000 times faster than normal, and between a third and a half of species could be lost by the end of this century.
Dr Brad Cardinale, Associate Professor of the University of Michigan, while not involved in that particular study, sees little doubt that this extinction crisis has already begun. He attributes it largely to habitat destruction.
“It’s not necessarily how much we’ve lost already,” Cardinale was quoted as saying, “It’s that the rate of extinction is so outrageously high compared to what we know is normal.”
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LAURA: “”If populations were lower than about 5,000 individuals, there is a heightened risk of extinction. This is because the whole populations can be wiped out in chance events like natural disasters.”"
An excellent and timely call. The calamitous state of the Tasmanian Devil is a case in point. I think their disease was brought about by having a genetic imbalance??
What can anyone do about the habitat destruction when human beings keep up this obscene re-generating of our own kind? Or to put it another way: Population Explosion is a One-Way Street.
It is not difficult to allude to extinction rates while obscuring the fauna and flora wipeout caused by the mining industry in all states of Australia. “All hail, the mining industry.”
Perhaps Corey Bradshaw of the Adelaide University would like to address the wholesale slaughter occurring in his own state while Mike Rann, Premier and “Minister for Sustainability and Climate Change” obsesses with facilitating a major expansion of the mining industry? All is sacrificed for the industry – native vegetation, birds, animals, reptiles, marine life, precious water supplies, humans and a sustainable future.
Mike Rann is callously indifferent to the 1-2 million uncapped drill holes at Coober Pedy where an estimated 10-28 million reptiles are entrapped and die every year, according to Reece Peddler, community fauna officer with the SA Arid Lands Natural Resources Management Board. What is the extinction rates for these hapless native animals over the last century, set to continue with no plans to cap the drill holes? Who’s counting? Who cares? ‘It’s the environment stoopid.’
Like native flora and fauna, the Australian community draws ever nearer to the abyss. No matter the political persuasion, there is no-one capable of halting this ecocidal catastrophe – the ecosystems on which all life depends. Greedy, vote-grabbing rock apes rule.
A rare Crikey reference to the real environmental crisis. Is the tide turning perhaps?
Nope.
Western Australia – Department of Environment and Conservation 2010:
1) Threatened Ecological Communities: 102
2) Fauna rare or likely to become extinct: 209 species
3) Fauna presumed to be extinct: 18 species
4) Fauna – Declared threatened: 144 species
Includes mammals, butterflies, moths, native bees, millipedes, crustaceans, arachnids, snails, fish, frogs, reptiles, birds etc.
5) Five species of exotic fish have now invaded the Swan and Canning rivers.
Flower: I didn’t mean that. I referred to a less AGW-obsessed Crikey.
Yes Frank I was well aware of that. Aren’t I a nark? But now you’ve given Crikey another serve, who will be the victim of your next polemic? Greens? climate scientists? paleontologists? IPCC? After all Frank, all four bodies have expressed serious concerns over species extinction at the hands of humans including the impacts of AGW.
One would only be sowing the seeds of deception if one expressed alarm over the rapid and unprecedented rates of man-made species extinctions while moving from forum to forum to make a mockery of A/climate change, persuading readers into believing that all climate scientists are plotting to dupe the whole of humanity.
Who did you say was obsessive?
You’ve got a tendency to verbal others, Flower. Pity, because you usually have something useful to say. To ascribe to me “all climate scientists are plotting to dupe humanity” is false. No doubt in the Ozarks, West Texas and Qld pubs they do believe such crap, but I think the only good redneck is a dead redneck.
Around here the bumper sticker of choice is “fertilise the bush: doze in a Greenie”.Shame we can’t fertilise the bush with rednecks, but they’re so full of toxins they need high temp. incinerators.
It’s hard for you to accept that the daily environmental catastrophe is being made worse by the misdirection of political energy and capital (not to mention political capital) into the climate cult. Now the political fate of the entire progressive movement hangs on a suicidal referendum on an absurd “carbon” tax- which can have no effect whatever on climate, as well all know.
That’s why I’ll continue to attack the barrage of misinformation – but only in progressive media like Crikey, the ABC and Fairfax. Because that’s where the Hamiltons, Roses, and Flannerys are. And the very very silly “Film Festival Director” turned climate guru, Nikki Aberle- I hope everyone reads his classic- currently on Crikey. I wonder who Crikey will turn to next for erudite millenarianism? Justin Madden? K. Minogue? G. Rundle?
I may be the only burqualess Green/Left commentator hammering away at the cult- that simply shows how tight the Right/Left tribal boundaries are. People are intimidated into silence. I run a methane plant fed by daily truckloads of insults thrown at me: your shit gives me a Cinderella-sized carbon footprint.
You’re very angry Frank.
If you saw what I see every day here in these lawless hills Flower, you’d be angry too.
Aw.. now now Frank. You should come over to the wild west and watch premier and climate septic, Colon Caddafi on rampage, running amok on almost a third of the nation’s fragile soils. And with the help of the likes of Clive Palmer, weaseling out of paying the $45 million environmental bond on his massive iron ore project too. So that will be another clean-up job for the taxpayers (if it’s “cleanable”). Nah – cancel that – out of sight, out of mind and nobody’s peeping.
Meanwhile, beware of those prevailing winds coming your way to dirty things up for those in the East and beyond. Hey – you couldn’t spare us a drop of water could you?
So evolution is surely going backwards in the lands of down under. I trust I’m not around to witness the legacy left by these rock apes.
Luv from the miner’s daughter.
Flower: “Clive Palmer, weaseling out of paying the $45 million environmental bond on his massive iron ore project”
Now that is interesting…you should write a summary of that and post it here. Most people East haven’t heard of Palmer. In fact as an ex-WA resident myself I know the “E.S.” regard WA as an insignificant foreign country.
Given that Crikey rarely has environmental stories (except you-know-what), there’s no reason why we shouldn’t colonise these blogs with the real environmental agenda…the very thing they almost hired me for a year ago! (I used “hired” advisedly, Beecher may be a millionaire but the blogs are all done for free. They paid $100 an article for the other stuff)
So start resetting the agenda…
FRANK CAMPBELL + FLOWER: What if you’re both right?
1) Crikey IS deficient in ‘real’ environmental reportage. Unless it’s AGW they’re not interested.
2) Oz, from a nation-building status, has arrived much later than other countries; we are described as being a young (population) country. Yet whose only achievements are sport and our rapacity for squandering of our wildlife and flora. Yet no one will ever call us ‘the clever country’.
3) Climate Change may, or may not be, a factor, but all the billions of words written about it have served only to land us with an extra tax. Whereas no one taxes us for the extermination of wildlife and habitat.
4) As you both know the mining industry has a hideous environmental record. So great has been our population explosion that, in Victoria, Melbourne has grown to the size of Greater Buenos Aires, whose population is approximately three times the size of Melbourne.
So, yes, start resetting the agenda. This time using syntax the moronic states’ governments might understand. Bringing politics into the equation merely allows vacuity of thought and existential greed to luxuriate. And the mining companies love that.
Venise: “Crikey IS deficient in ‘real’ environmental reportage. Unless it’s AGW they’re not interested.”
So just let’s do it. Raise actual environmental horror stories. We all know at least some from personal experience. Plant them all over Crikey whenever anything environmental gets mentioned. Or not mentioned, as the case may be.
Here in NW Vic for example we’re at war with Midway bluegum plantation company. They’ve been exposed on the net before. One site calls them the “worst plantation company” in the state.
They keep the lowest possible profile. No website. Just a piece of rented wharf in Corio, two piles of woodchips and a couple of portable huts masquerading as offices. A private company, unlisted. Run by a handful of low postcode Jeremys and Alastairs (Directors) and a few Geelong “managers”. They own very little. They just hire contractors. They told me they had trouble controlling contractors (i.e. abuses were ‘contractors’ fault”). They now refuse to answer residents’ emails. Midway broke every promise and agreement they made with the shire and with residents.
The main issues are industrial noise, hours of operation, dust, destruction of roads, environmental damage and time taken to finish each plantation. They said this job would be done in 3 months. After four months they are not halfway.
Frank: There was a time when I could have helped with that one. I’d be delighted to report environmental abuse cases. I’m stuck in a city these days, but would be more than happy to find out what I can.
Frequently these sort of companies have carefully chosen names to obscure their doings. What could sound less deadly than the MIDWAY BLUE GUM PLANTATION COMPANY; unless it’s The Magic Pudding?
PS: Or GREEN TRIANGLE TREEFARM, or TREEFARM, VICTORIA, MITSUI, NIPPON PAPER?
yes, these companies are masters of disguise- either greenwash or invisibility.
The worst environmental effect is drying out of catchments. Plenty of research on this: densely packed young trees drink a huge amount. Then they’re cut down after 10 or so years and allowed to coppice. They are then pruned to one trunk and the heavy drinking continues. Stream runoff is much reduced. Downstream farmers lose out. Downstream towns end up with no water or crap water.
Mature forests need far less water.
Then there’s the gouging of stream banks. Erosion. Loss of habitat. Buffer zones ignored.
As usual with capitalism, it’s not the principle that’s bad, it’s the execution: the excess, the collateral damage, poor siting, chemical abuse etc etc. Since “self-regulation” became the norm in Australia twenty years ago, extractives can get away with murder. the regulation that does exist is laughable: poverty-stricken, primitive redneck shires who can’t even keep up with potholes. An EPA which is absent. Catchment management authorities which are infiltrated, ideologically biased, distracted or just can’t cope…
All plantations in headwaters should be banned north of the Divide. That would be a start. The Wimmera suffered far more in the drought than it should have because of these plantations.
Frank, Venise – Mining magnate, Clive Palmer hails from Queensland, however his tentacles spread far and wide across the nation. Crikey has published a couple of articles. Here’s a media release on the shenanigans in WA but there’s more to it than that:
http://www.
afr.com/p/national/heat_on_barnett_over_clive_palmer_pkXx6Py92zWVxoYr6jQIFP
And last year Palmer leased his 632,000 hectare Mardie cattle station in WA to the Chinese government et al for 25 years to get at the magnetite iron ore. The Mardie open pit is set to become one of the largest holes on the planet – 5.5km long, three kilometres wide and hundreds of metres deep. Heaven help the outback’s creatures.
The Queensland government cowered under the brunt of Palmer’s bully boy tactics when he threatened to “kick them in the arse” to get environmental approval for his new coal mine in central Queensland.
Meanwhile back in hillbilly country, Bauxite Resources boasts of its progress, having government approval to explore 24,000 square kilometres throughout karri and jarrah forests in its plan to dig up the forests to get at the bauxite (and other minerals). Heaven help the little creatures in the forests – or what’s left of them (think Alcoa, the subject of a class action by an aggrieved community). They’ve got Buckleys, poor bastards.
Bauxite Resource’s Chairman is none other than former head of WA’s EPA, Barry Carbon. In addition, agreements have been signed with a JV partner to build yet another alumina refinery in WA.
Western Region Environment Centre Director in Victoria, Harry van Moorst condemned the Victorian EPA, describing it as “schizophrenic” after reviews by the Victorian Ombudsman and the Auditor-General found its regulatory approach lacking. Former WorkSafe Director of Legal Services and Investigations Stan Krpan said the EPA had become “fractured, reactive and inconsistent.”
Forests NSW committed a spate of new breaches last year, including logging old-growth rainforests and destroying the habitat of threatened native animals. The latest damage, at Girard State Forest near Tenterfield, is the fifth time in five months that the state agency has come under investigation. Who is regulating the regulator?
Tip for aggrieved citizens. When lodging a formal complaint against the grim reaper/s, request a copy of the licence and emissions’ reports (if appropriate). These are public documents in WA but they are never volunteered by the regulator or the perpetrator.
Why haven’t the playwrights turned the following story into ‘the comedy of the decade?’ Surely this one would win a logie?:
http://www.
smh.com.au/articles/2002/05/06/1019441476548.html
FRANK: “”As usual with capitalism, it’s not the principle that’s bad, it’s the execution:”"
That’s a very sage remark. Very very good. It is one of man’s most tragic failures that unless people are enduring a drought, a fire, appalling weather, or something on a related topic themselves-at the time the local council issues the preliminary planning notices-they’ll mostly agree with anything.
Now I’m depressed.
Venise: the weakness of the bush is fragmentation…the inability to cohere or organise politically. There’s also poverty, both public and private. And the intimidatory class system whereby the local big landowners dominate everything, serving their own financial and ideological interests.
No wonder there’s drinking and depression in rural Oz….
5000 people demonstrated in St Kilda because one ratty “music” pub had some licence restrictions put on it…the noise-addicted locals won. Govt caved in. Crikey campaigned valiantly for the pub. Meanwhile, back at the branch, rural peoples’ basic human rights are shat upon daily.
Crikey and the rest of the MSM set the agenda- they’re all arseholes manning the parapet of the low postcodes…
Twenty two hours since my post (#17) went into moderation?
Flower: A litany of envirohorrors…and we’re not reading about them on Rooted, which is rooted by AGW.
The Vic EPA recently confessed to comprehensive failure…(Age 20 Feb 2011). Its boss said the EPA had “lost confidence” – couldn’t tackle the “problems confronting it”. Also, records of contaminated sites had been lost…the “small number of EPA prosecutions” was a ‘fundamental criticism of leadership”.
In fact this has been obvious for decades.
(The new CEO promises to do better)
Incidentally, Harry van Moorst is one of those rare 60s radicals who hasn’t become a corporate suit or ALP hack. He’s still in there kicking arse.
FLOWER: I’ve been run ragged for a couple of days and haven’t had a chance to read your excellent comments. Ditto FRANK CAMPBELL and his informative comments. Hopefully I should be back on track tomorrow.
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