News and Information – Page 8

Time running out to beat climate change

community, environment, government, research

Apr 092014

Original story by Tom Arup and Peter Hannam, Sydney Morning Herald

At least half the world’s energy supply will have to come from low-carbon sources, such as renewables and nuclear, by 2050 as part of the drastic global action needed to cut greenhouse gases to relatively safe levels, a major United Nations climate change assessment will say.

The emission reductions pledged by nations for 2020 are found to fall short of the action needed. Photo: Graham Tidy

A leaked draft of the next report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by Fairfax Media, also warns the world is fast running out of time to make the cuts to emissions required to keep global warming to an average of two degrees – a goal countries, including Australia, have pledged to meet through the UN.

The draft comes as Lord Nicholas Stern, the author of a 2006 landmark review of the economics of climate change, chastised Australia for being ”flaky” on global warming. In an interview with Fairfax he said each country had to be ambitious in its approach to cutting emissions and developing a low-carbon economy because climate change was a such as serious and global problem.

Australia’s target of cutting emissions by 5 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020 “looks very small” and Abbott government policy changes such as the scrapping the carbon tax and its “tone of discussion” suggested it was “not very serious” about climate change.

The final version of the latest IPCC report – the third part of its fifth major assessment of climate change – will be released in Berlin on Sunday. It focuses on ways human-caused emissions can be mitigated.

The draft of the third section warns if the world puts off deep cuts to emissions until 2030 it will make the two-degree task significantly harder to achieve, and limit the options for mitigation.

The world has already warmed 0.85 degrees since 1880.

The emission reductions pledged by nations for 2020 are found to fall short of the action needed to have the best chance of keeping to two degrees, meaning deeper cuts will be required later, with higher costs and probably the need to develop technologies to draw significant amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

The draft finds greenhouse gas emissions rose faster between 2000-10 than in previous decades, driven largely by economic and population growth.It says the majority of scenarios studied that ensure just a two-degree rise in warming include a trebling, to a near quadrupling, of the share of clean energy in the global supply by mid-century.

That would require the share of renewable technologies, nuclear and fossil fuels using carbon capture and storage, to rise from about 17 per cent in 2010 to at least 51 per cent by 2050.

The draft also stresses climate change is a global problem requiring international co-operation. It warns the problems will not be solved if individual countries and companies advance their own interests independently of others.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.

Rivers of Dreams

community, environment, government, research, waterways/wetlands

Apr 092014

Transcript from Landline 6/4/2014, reporter Pete Lewis

Rivers of Dreams

PIP COURTNEY, PRESENTER: For some, northern Australia is farming’s final frontier. A field of irrigated dreams just waiting for the right people and the right projects to unleash its full potential.

Yet others are cautious about triggering an unsustainable land and water grab that tramples over the natural and cultural significance of some of the world’s largest unspoilt tropical savannah country.

The ABC’s rural and regional reporter Pete Lewis headed to Queensland’s Gulf, where one single project has brought both sides of this agricultural development debate into sharp focus.

(Graeme Connors “A Little Further North”)

SONG: I head a little further north each year. Leave the cities behind, out of sight, out of mind. Up where my troubles all disappear I head a little further north each year.

KEITH DE LACY, I-FED: We believe that this is groundbreaking. This is going to change the way agriculture is carried out in Australia. For the last 50 years we’ve been talking about developing the north, the food bowl of Asia. We’ve had white papers and green papers. We’ve found a way of actually doing it. And the great thing about it, it’s absolutely sustainable.

PETE LEWIS, REPORTER: The grand plan is to harness the power of this river in Queensland’s Gulf Country for irrigated agriculture on an unprecedented scale.

CSIRO’s scientists spent two years and $10 million looking into the land, the water and the climate in the Flinders and Gilbert river catchments and they’re not quite so bullish, which some say is just as well.

GAVAN MCFADZEAN, WILDERNESS SOCIETY: We don’t want to see the mistakes of the past now characterise future development in northern Australia and we urge decision makers around this project, but also the Federal Government’s northern development inquiry, to look at sustainable long-term development options for this region, not the legacy of a failed business and development model of the past.

PETE LEWIS: Over the course of the next year, authorities both state and federal will assess the arguments for and against agricultural developments in northern Australia. Whether to opt for the CSIRO’s more precautionary approach to opening up more irrigated projects or a complete game changer, that might not just change the course of mighty rivers up here, but how the water in them is allocated.

So the first line in the sand between those for and against substantially more irrigated agriculture has been drawn here, where a private consortium, Integrated Food and Energy Developments, is seeking Federal Government imprimatur and formal State Government approval for its $2 billion project – and yes, in this case, size does matter.

I-FED is factoring in 65,000 hectares of irrigated crops, mostly sugarcane, fed by two large off-river dams. That justifies investment in a sugar mill, whose by-products in turn would be used to both generate electricity and ethanol to power the mill, as well as stockfeed for beef cattle that will also be processed onsite.

KEITH DE LACY: The message we’ve got to get across and this is really the breakthrough, is that you’ve got to have the scale to make this work. The scale that can – so that we can create all of the processing architecture that enables us to grow agriculture in this isolated part of the world. If they allocate water so that we can develop projects to this scale, then you will get enormous times more economic benefit or jobs, if you like, per megalitre.

(Speaking to audience) We’ll have 12 months supply of stock, then that justifies…

PETE LEWIS: Keith De Lacy, a former Queensland Labor Treasurer, told the recent ABARES Outlook conference that this project brings him full circle, back to where he grew up, but with a keener sense now of what’s possible, honed after careers in state politics and the corporate world.

KEITH DE LACY: (Speaking to audience) I’d just really like to see, as we say, bringing government policy to life. You just have to do it differently than you did it before. Analyse everything that’s been done, find out why it didn’t work and say, ‘Well, is there a way to make it work?’ and we believe we’ve found it.

PETE LEWIS: Someone with a more cautious outlook is CSIRO scientist Dr Peter Stone.

DR PETER STONE, CSIRO: History’s shown that capitalising on the north’s advantages has its challenges and uncertainties. And this erodes confidence, which in turn can deter investment. So unlocking significant new investment in the north’s agriculture requires confidence about the scale of opportunities and the risks that attend them.

(Speaking to audience) A high-level view of what we did and the sorts of results that we found as part of the Flinders Gilbert Agricultural Resource Assessment. I’m a kind sort of person, so I’m not going to take you through 4,000 pages. If you’re wanting a little bit more detail, there’s the 15 or 16-pager that you’re either sitting on or have in your hands. That’s where I probably prefer to start myself. It gives a nice high-level overview but also enough information to really wrap your head around what we did.

DR PETER STONE: In the Gilbert catchment, we found over 2 million hectares of soil that is at least moderately suited to irrigated agriculture production. That’s a lot of soil. We found sufficient water resources to irrigate 20,000 to 30,000 hectares of that 2 million. To some people, 20,000 or 30,000 hectares sounds like an awful lot of land and to others it doesn’t sound like much.

So just to put it into perspective, the Ord River irrigation area currently irrigates about 14,000 to 15,000 hectares. So the 20,000 to 30,000 hectares that we’ve identified in the Gilbert could increase all of the irrigation area in northern Australia – so, north of the Tropic of Capricorn – by 15 to 20 per cent – that’s a big increase.

PETE LEWIS: Any comparisons with the Ord River scheme in Western Australia’s east Kimberley tends to stir some sceptics into campaign mode. The Wilderness Society has made a detailed submission to the northern Australian development white paper, arguing less is more.

GAVAN MCFADZEAN: There’s two projects already on the drawing board in this catchment which far exceed what CSIRO say is possible. One project, the I-FED project, wants to, at a minimum, take out three times more water and use twice as much land as what CSIRO was suggesting is possible. And that’s just one project.

There’s another project which has already started land-clearing in the Gilbert and wants to clear up to 100,000 hectares of land.

So both of these projects together result in almost 200,000 hectares of land-clearing and vast extraction of water, far beyond what CSIRO say is possible.

(Sound of heavy machinery)

PETE LEWIS: Third generation Gulf grazier Greg Ryan isn’t a fan of I-FED or its super farm either. Indeed, he’s not cleaning up land for crops. He’s weeding chinee apple out of his floodplain pastures that sprouted after the first decent rainfall here after fires and a long drought.

GREG RYAN, GREEN HILLS STATION: You’d hope we’re just at the bottom of the cycle and things will sort of pick up if the weather’s kind to us and the markets are kind to us and everything else sort of turns around, well, yes, we’ll hopefully start working our way up the cycle to the boom end.

PETE LEWIS: While he’s not opposed per se to increased irrigated agriculture here on the Gilbert River floodplain, Greg Ryan says the huge I-FED proposal simply hasn’t had the due diligence it deserves and that’s split the community.

GREG RYAN: It does concern me. I think everyone would like to see a successful project in the district for the benefit of everyone within the district. But we’ll only get one shot at this and we have to get it right, so I think the split clearly indicates that there’s not enough information and enough research being done to tell us whether it’s a viable sort of project or not.

PETE LEWIS: On neighbouring Forest Home Station, cropping helped get Ken Fry and his family through the big dry. They grew stockfeed for hungry cattle. The family moved up from Queensland’s Burdekin region, the engine room of Australia’s sugarcane industry, for a crack at irrigated cropping Gulf savannah style.

KEN FRY, FOREST HOME STATION: This was the perfect spot for us at the end. It had irrigation potential, a 400-hectare irrigation licence, farmland, irrigators… Essentially we’re cattle people, but I figured we had to be able to diversify and for the last couple of years, it’s been keeping us going, being able to grow crops on our country with irrigation.

PETE LEWIS: Today he’s checking his emerging guar crop; a legume that’s sometimes referred to as poor man’s soybean. Guar gum is a thickening agent used in everything from fast food and toothpaste to coal seam gas fracking.

Forest Home Station’s rich alluvial soil profile is around 4m deep. They grow everything from cavalcade hay to peanuts and corn and are hopeful they’ll get not only approval to clear more scrub, but a crack at more water on the open market against I-FED and others.

Do you think there’s enough for all of you?

KEN FRY: Ah… Yes, I wouldn’t like to say. I don’t really actually know what water, what percentage of water will be released. I don’t have those figures. We need a considerable amount. The Gilbert River precinct needs a considerable amount. I-FED’s proposal, they’re asking for a considerable amount. A lot.

If we’re all equal, if we’ve got to go and put our tenders in for the water or go to auction and bid on it, it will all be fair, but if anything else besides that happens, they get granted water, they will be the biggest water holders and they will hold and they will organise the markets around that.

Saying that, I hope there is enough water here that we can survive and they can survive and it will be so much better for the area if we can both go in tandem.

PETE LEWIS: Huenfels Station was a soldier settler block that’s been in John Bethel’s family since the 1920s, mainly running cattle. But thanks to an agreement he signed with I-FED, it may eventually boast an expansive water feature, a header dam for the irrigated farm.

JOHN BETHEL, HUENFELS STATION: What is attractive about it is they’ll lease it back to us for a peppercorn rental for three years and then you’ve got the option to lease it back after all the development’s done, whatever’s left, so probably a godsend really for a lot of people that are under pretty stiff financial circumstances.

PETE LEWIS: And for John Bethel, that’s the rub. There just simply aren’t a host of development alternatives in this part of the country that could underpin economic growth quite like the super farm.

JOHN BETHEL: One of the things that holds the shire back is it has a very small rate base and projects like these are the only opportunity they’ve got to grow their rate base, but from my perspective I’m more concerned about the next generation that want to stay on the land and be involved in the area and I think that without these sort of projects, the future looks pretty grim really.

PETE LEWIS: Perhaps not surprising the local council is pretty excited about the potential windfall too. The population projections alone would result in a tenfold increase in Georgetown’s 250 residents.

WILL ATTWOOD, ETHERIDGE SHIRE MAYOR: I see that it’s going to be good for a town, to grow the economics of our town, the economics of our area. It’s going to make a lot of opportunity for people to have businesses around. But we’re doing it really tough just at the moment. I mean this is an absolutely huge boost, but really any boost to us at the moment would be great.

(John Denver “A Little Further North”)

SONG: Up where there’s silence and the night sky is clear I head a little further north each year.

PETE LEWIS: So where is that boost likely to come from?

KEITH DE LACY: Well let me say, we would go to the Australian capital markets first. We would prefer to get the money from Australia. Nevertheless, getting money from offshore is good for Australia anyway.

We expect there will probably be a mix of it, but we’ve had enormous interest from the United States, from North America, enormous interest, probably the most interest from there, I’ve got to say that. But, no – we’re ecumenical about that. We want to develop this project and we’ll raise the funds where we’ve got to raise the funds.

PETE LEWIS: First they’ll need to raise $15 million to get the project to the next stage, and undertake the environmental impact and detailed engineering assessments, before pitching for a half a million megalitres in water entitlements and tree-clearing permits. To say nothing about winning over all the locals.

JOHN BETHEL: I don’t think there’s ever been a community born where there wasn’t polarised views. This community – if I’m any judge of the community sentiment – I’d say there’s a small number that are strongly opposed. There’s a small number like myself that are very pro. And everyone else is sitting a leg on either side of the fence. And if you’re a business owner, you’re hoping like hell it’s going to go ahead but probably thinking that it’s too good to be true. And that’s where I think most of the community sit. I’m pretty sure of it actually.

Vinegar makes box jellyfish stings worse

community, research

Apr 082014

Original story by Brendan Trembath, ABC News

Box jellyfish stings, which can be deadly, could be made worse by applying vinegar, Australian researchers have found.

PHOTO: James Cook University researcher Jamie Seymour swims with a large box jellyfish in 2004. Photo: AAP/Paul Sutherland

Pouring vinegar on the welts caused by the sting of the jellyfish has been the recommended first aid treatment for decades.

But researchers from James Cook University and Cairns hospital in far north Queensland have found that vinegar promotes the discharge of box jellyfish venom.

Box jellyfish are the most venomous creatures on the planet, and Associate Professor Jamie Seymour from the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine at James Cook University says she is in awe of them.

“No venomous animal on the planet kills quicker than this thing, so they are reasonably impressive, from that point of view,” he said.

People badly stung by box jellyfish have died within minutes.

The Australian Resuscitation Council (ARC) is a voluntary coordinating body that represents all major groups involved in the teaching and practice of resuscitation as part of first aid treatment.

The ARC recommends treating stings with vinegar to inhibit the injection of venom.

Meanwhile, the Queensland Poisons Information Centre advises on its website says to not use vinegar to treat stings from Bluebottles (Physalia sp), however does currently say to use vinegar on box jellyfish (Chironex fleckeri) and Irukandji stings (Carukia barnesi jellyfish).

However, Associate Professor Seymour says the research has now called that advice into question.

“You can increase the venom load in your victim by 50 per cent,” he said.

“That’s a big amount, and that’s enough to make the difference, we think, between someone surviving and somebody dying.”

He says first responders would be better off relying on the fundamentals of first aid.

“If the person’s not breathing on the beach, breathe for them,” he said.

“Otherwise leave them alone and they’ll probably come out of it.”

He says organisations that deal will this sort of emergency medicine, such as the ARC, now need to look at the research findings.

“That’s the interesting one – we now have evidence that shows that vinegar increases the venom load in the victim,” he said.

“There is no evidence that shows the application of vinegar decreases the amount of venom in the victim.

“What now is up to the ARC, is for them to review the data that we’ve published, which has already obviously been peer reviewed, and for them to make a decision as to what should go on.

“We would expect that the protocols would change.”

[Stinging balls] that have already fired off – and it might only be 20 or 30 per cent – you apply vinegar to them and it increases the venom coming out of those by 60 per cent, and that’s the kicker.

Associate Professor Jamie Seymour

However, he says it is not known how long that might take.

The first documented case of using vinegar to treat box jellyfish stings was in the Philippines just over a century ago.

“Vinegar was first used, from what I can gather, in 1908 in Manilla where a then-medical officer in the army saw a couple of kids jump off a wharf, they got stung, and he put vinegar on them,” Associate Professor Seymour said.

“We have absolutely no idea why, but he did.”

He says in the 1980s researchers investigated what vinegar did and found evidence of its effectiveness.

“What those studies with vinegar showed was that if you apply vinegar to those tentacles when they’re on the body, that those stinging balls that haven’t gone off become completely and totally inactive, which is really good,” he said.

“The problem was nobody looked at what the vinegar did to the ones that have already fired off.

“That’s what our research has shown: that of the ones that have already fired off – and it might only be 20 or 30 per cent – you apply vinegar to them and it increases the venom coming out of those by 60 per cent, and that’s the kicker.”

The research has been published in the journal of Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine.

$180,000 wetland developed to clean North Lismore creek

community, education, environment, research, waterways/wetlands

Apr 082014

Original story by Marnie Johnston, Northern Rivers Echo

ENVIRONMENTAL science students at Southern Cross University got the chance to visit the Slaters Creek constructed wetland in North Lismore on Monday and learn about the positives of modern stormwater treatment techniques.

FIELD TRIP: Touring Lismore City Council’s constructed wetland at Slaters Creek are Southern Cross University natural resource management students Sam Walker and Trent McIntyre, with (back from left) council environmental strategies officer Anton Nguyen, SCU lecturer Dr Antony McCardell and the Water and Carbon Group’s Katrina Curran.

Third-year SCU students from the unit Ecotechnology for Water Management got to explore the wetlands with their tutor Antony McCardell, who said one of the great benefits of the environmental science courses at SCU was the wide range of natural and manmade environments available for students to visit on a field trip.

“With increasing human impacts on waterways there is a growing need for urban planning to approach stormwater and wastewater management in ways that benefit both humans and the environment,” Dr McCardell said.

Lismore City Council had commissioned the $180,000 wetland to improve the creek’s water quality – identified as containing high levels of pollution – before it enters the Wilsons River.

Now the wetland is showing good signs of working efficiently following a period of settling, is also attracting bird life and has improved the amenity of public open space in the area, the council has said.

A technical analysis of the wetland was provided for the students by Katrina Curran from the Water and Carbon Group, which designed the wetland and monitors it.

“Wetland habitats have been severely impacted as a result of urban development through changes to both water quality and quantity entering waterways,” Ms Curran said.

“New urban areas are now required to treat stormwater but this project is important as it seeks to improve water quality and biodiversity in an area that has already been developed.”

As well as treating stormwater effectively by mimicking nature’s own systems of filtration, the wetland complements restoration work undertaken by the Banyam/Baigham Landcare Group over the past few years.

Time running out to meet global warming target: U.N. report

community, environment, government, research

Apr 072014

Original story by Alister Doyle, Reuters

World powers are running out of time to slash their use of high-polluting fossil fuels and stay below agreed limits on global warming, a draft U.N. study to be approved this week shows.

Smoke rises from chimneys of a thermal power plant near Shanghai March 26, 2014. Photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters

Government officials and top climate scientists will meet in Berlin from April 7-12 to review the 29-page draft that also estimates the needed shift to low-carbon energies would cost between two and six percent of world output by 2050.

It says nations will have to impose drastic curbs on their still rising greenhouse gas emissions to keep a promise made by almost 200 countries in 2010 to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times.

Temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 C (1.4F) since 1900 and are set to breach the 2 C ceiling on current trends in coming decades, U.N. reports show.

“The window is shutting very rapidly on the 2 degrees target,” said Johan Rockstrom, head of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and an expert on risks to the planet from heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising seas.

“The debate is drifting to ‘maybe we can adapt to 2 degrees, maybe 3 or even 4’,” Rockstrom, who was not among authors of the draft, told Reuters.

Such rises would sharply raise risks to food and water supplies and could trigger irreversible damage, such as a meltdown of Greenland’s ice, according to U.N. reports.

The draft, seen by Reuters, outlines ways to cut emissions and boost low-carbon energy, which includes renewables such as wind, hydro- and solar power, nuclear power and “clean” fossil fuels, whose carbon emissions are captured and buried.

It said such low-carbon sources accounted for 17 percent of the world’s total energy supplies in 2010 and their share would have to triple – to 51 percent – or quadruple by 2050, according to most scenarios reviewed.

That would displace high polluting fossil fuels as the world’s main energy source by mid-century.

CARBON CAPTURE

Saskatchewan Power in Canada will open a $1.35 billion coal-fired electricity generating plant this year that will extract a million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from its exhaust gases – the first carbon capture and storage plant of its type.

Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group meeting in Berlin, will help governments, which aim to agree a deal to slow climate change at a Paris summit in December 2015. Few nations have outlined plans consistent with staying below 2 degrees C.

Another report by the IPCC last week in Japan showed warming already affects every continent and would damage food and water supplies and slow economic growth. It may already be having irreversible impacts on the Arctic and coral reefs.

The new draft shows that getting on track to meet the 2C goal would mean limiting greenhouse gas emissions to between 30 and 50 billion tonnes in 2030, a radical shift after a surge to 49 billion tonnes in 2010 from 38 billion in 1990.

The shift would reduce economic output by between 2-6 percent by 2050, because of the costs of building a cleaner energy system based on low-carbon energies that are more expensive than abundant coal, the IPCC said. Capturing carbon dioxide is also expensive, it added.

China and the United States are the top emitters.

One option is to let temperatures overshoot the 2C target while developing technology to cool the planet by extracting greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, the draft says. The draft that would add to risks of warming and push up costs.

Extracting carbon from nature includes simple measures such as planting more trees, which soak up carbon as they grow, or capturing and burying greenhouse gases from electricity-generating plants that burn wood or other plant matter.

A problem is that markets for trading carbon dioxide focus on cuts in emissions at power plants and factories burning fossil fuels, not renewable energies which are viewed as green.

“In Europe there is no incentive” said Jonas Helseth, director of environmental group Bellona Europe who chairs a group of scientists and industry experts looking at burying emissions from renewable energy.

The IPCC draft report is the third and final study in a U.N. series about climate change, updating findings from 2007, after the Japan report about the impacts and one in September in Sweden about climate science.

The September report raised the probability that human actions, led by the use of fossil fuels, are the main cause of climate change since 1950 to at least 95 percent from 90. But opinion polls show voters are unpersuaded, with many believing that natural variations are the main cause.

Facial scrubs causing damage to environment

community, environment, fisheries, waterways/wetlands

Apr 062014

Original story by Neil McMahon, Brisbane Times

Vanity – and our vulnerability to the power of advertising – are changing consumer habits from breakfast to bedtime, and contributing to an almighty environmental mess. The culprit: microbeads.

In a lather: Minute plastic beads from toiletries are making their way into the marine environment.

These are minute bits of plastic that have been inserted into everyday products from facial creams to toothpaste, proclaimed in advertising as a healthy advance but which are turbo-charging an already dire problem – the global pollution of oceans, lakes and rivers by cast-off plastic.

What makes microbeads especially threatening is that they enter the environment – washed down our bathroom drains – already broken down into all-but invisible microplastics, defined as 0.1 to 0.5 millimetres in size.

Tiny and buoyant, and not filtered by sewerage systems, they are swiftly ingestible by marine life, making them more immediately dangerous than a discarded drink bottle. They are likely to have entered the food chain – so while you wouldn’t eat your facial scrub from the jar, you might be consuming it if you eat fish.

And for what benefit to ourselves – to our skin?

Almost none. According to Associate Professor Greg Goodman, a fellow of the Australasian College of Dermatologists, our modern obsession with scrubbing our skin is, for most people, doing more harm than good.

“People are exfoliating everything,” he says. “But we’re not floorboards. We don’t need to be polishing and buffing and scrubbing. Most science dermatologists don’t like exfoliation because the barrier functions of the skin get exfoliated and that’s a negative thing for your skin. Exfoliating takes out the top layer that keeps your skin in good nick.”

The use of microbeads in cosmetics is recent – Dr Goodman says most patents date only to the middle of the last decade – but there is already a backlash against the harm they are doing. The 5 Gyres Institute in the US found such significant microbead pollution in the Great Lakes region last year that it launched a campaign to have them banned.

In Australia, there has been little study of the harm caused by microbeads. But Dr Scott Wilson, a coastal management expert from the Central Queensland University Gladstone, says harm is being done to marine life and potentially to humans.

“It’s an area we’re just touching on now, trying to find out what the potential harm is,” he says. “We know they’re being ingested – there’s a whole gamut of species that we now know have these microplastics in their guts, and some are being incorporated within the tissues as well … so there’s this trophic transfer of the plastics through the food chain. If you take it to its fullest [conclusion], if we’re consuming fish or other sea life there’s potentially a transfer. We need to find out what risks there are to humans as well as to the organisms.”

Dr Erik van Sebille, of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW, says the impact of microbeads will be felt in heavily populated urban centres.

“We know from a food source point of view that the smaller the plastic, the more harm it does. My suspicion with something like microbeads is the harm is done right where our sewerage systems hit the ocean.”

Major cosmetics manufacturers say they will phase out the use of microbeads over the next three to five years. The Body Shop is leading the way, with a spokeswoman telling Fairfax Media its products would be microbead-free by the end of this year. For consumers, Dr Goodman says there is a quicker solution: use something natural – an oatmeal soap would do the job – or don’t exfoliate at all.

“We mix up the squeaky feel of skin as being something healthy and it’s really not – it’s actually impending dry, terrible skin,” he says. ”They’re not understanding what healthy skin is.”

Maguk (Barramundi Gorge), Kakadu National Park

Australian native freshwater species, Field Trips, waterways/wetlands, wildlife

Apr 052014

By Greg Wallis (pseudechis) at YouTube

Barramundi Creek is a major tributary of the South Alligator River in Kakadu National Park. Where it flows off the rocky Arnhem Land escarpment into Barramundi Gorge it is home to a wide variety of freshwater fishes and is an important refuge area for them and other wildlife during the Dry Season months.

The video follows a walk from the carpark up to the plunge pool and explores some of the underwater habitats and their occupants along the way. There are several points where you can stop and watch fish and take in the beautiful surrounds.

Maguk is far more than just a waterfall and a nice place to swim; take some time to soak up the atmosphere, bird calls and the other local wildlife.

If you are swimming please remember this is home to all these animals so go easy on the suncream and insect repellants — better still, swim with a shirt on rather then use suncream. Crocodiles do frequent the area, and National Parks have a policy or removing Saltwater or Estuarine Crocodiles from here and nearby areas but there is no 100% guarantee — you always swim at your own risk. Freshwater or Johnstone River Crocodiles make their home in the area and are best not approached too closely.

The creek is spring fed up in the rocky escarpment and runs throughout the year — from raging floodwaters in the Wet Season months down to a light shower in the late Dry. The area is only accessible to vehicle based tourists during the Dry Season months and it’s always best to check with National Park Headquarters to see if the area is open before you visit.

The video shows a variety of fish that are commonly seen at the gorge, but it is far from being comprehensive.

Please note: Fishing is NOT allowed in this area or in most areas east of the Kakadu Highway (with a couple of exceptions). Because these waters remain throughout the year, they are a very important refuge for many species of fish. Many stick it out here during the Dry only to move downstream to breed on the floodplains during the Wet Season and then back to the refuges again for the Dry. There are plenty of places you can fish much further downstream in the big tidal rivers and floodplain billabongs.

www.gregwallis.com

Queensland Government under fire over land clearing permits

community, environment, government, wildlife

Apr 042014

Original story by Rachel Carbonell, ABC News

The Queensland Government is under fire from conservationists over the granting of new land clearing permits in the north of the state.

The Wilderness Society says weakening of vegetation management laws last year has led to large-scale clearing applications.

Campaigner Gavan McFadzean says the biggest example is a permit granted to Strathmore Station, a big cattle station in the gulf savannah country near Georgetown.

Queensland land clearing legislation, the Government says the legislation changes are part of its vision to expand Queensland’s agricultural economy. Photo: ABC News

“We’ve discovered through a tip-off that [land clearing] is now broadscale and at an alarming rate,” he said.

“One of the biggest examples of that we’ve discovered is in the Gilbert catchment at Strathmore, where an application for 30,000 hectares of clearing – that’s about 134 Brisbane CBDs of clearing – has been granted.”

Mr McFadzean says the legislative amendments are undermining the land clearing legislation introduced in Queensland nearly 20 years ago.

“During the 1980s and 1990s Queensland was clearing at an alarming rate, it was actually an emerging environmental crisis,” he said.

“If Queensland was a country, in the early 90s it would have been one of the worst land clearers in the world, on par with Brazil, the Congo Basin, Borneo and Indonesia.

“It was through the 1996 native Vegetation Act introduced by the Beattie government that land clearing was brought under control.”

Queensland Minister for Natural Resources and Mines Andrew Cripps says the legislation changes are part of the Government’s vision to expand the state’s agricultural economy.

“What the amendments to the vegetation framework that the Queensland Parliament passed last year are doing is providing opportunities for the sustainable expansion of agriculture in Queensland,” he said.

“The Queensland Government went to the last state election with a commitment to build a four pillar economy here in this state and that included agriculture, and we’re changing the regulatory environment to provide for those opportunities.”

Mr Cripps says it is this kind of agricultural development the Queensland Government is keen to support.

“I think the opportunities for Strathmore Station to undertake an expansion of their existing grazing enterprise by taking into account some cropping agriculture on their property, is a great example of the opportunity that the Queensland Government is providing to grow sustainable communities in Cape York Peninsula,” he said.

“Strathmore Station is in fact growing sorghum at the moment under the high value agriculture framework to improve the sustainability of the existing grazing operations, and I think that is going to be a tremendous thing for communities in Cape York Peninsula.”

Land clearing will create opportunities, says station owner

Strathmore Station owner Scott Harris says his permit to clear 28,000 hectares is aimed at improving the environmental health of the land, as well as making it more productive.

He says it will be done in an environmentally sensitive manner.

“The environmental aspects of Strathmore Station, the land there, historically has been very degraded,” he said.

“It is chock-a-block full of weeds, rubber vine, there’s feral animals there.

“This is more about not clearing pristine wilderness that everyone thinks this is about, trying to return the environment back to somewhere like before white man settled there.”

Mr Harris says the application is part of a plan to expand his operation, that will create up to 200 jobs, and economic opportunities for others in the region, including Indigenous communities further north.

“With it there is a big opportunity for the landholders in Cape York to be able to become a person that can purchase cattle, which is a great help to the Indigenous communities up there, because at the moment they’re quite hamstrung in the respect that they’ve got nowhere to sell their cattle.”

But Mr McFadzean questions the economic argument behind the proposal.

“The so-called high value agriculture that’s allowed at Strathmore is for fodder cropping which even the CSIRO has stated, earlier this year in its report, would only be viable in two to three years out of every 10,” he said.

“So if the bar is set so low for high value agriculture agriculture in Queensland, we’re very concerned that rampant land clearing will return to this state.”

He says there is no public scrutiny of permit applications or approvals.

“We fall on those incidents of land clearing by accident but god only knows how much land clearing is happening in Queensland, and at an increasing rate, and that’s what we’re extremely concerned about.”

The Queensland Government says all applications for land clearing must meet strict environmental and economic criteria.

Back from the brink – Issue 6, March 2014

community, environment, government, research, threatened species, wildlife

Apr 022014

Back from the brink is a periodical publication produced by EHP’s (the Department of Environment and Heitage Protection) Threatened Species Unit.

The publication provides information about what is happening in threatened species recovery around Queensland.

In this issue

Concern for Raine Island turtles
Counting koalas and creating habitat in South East Queensland
Family fun day at Daisy Hill
Woongarra Coast turtle conservation work
Keeping track of flatback turtles
Spring has sprung: launch of a new species database
Summer loving: monitoring little tern breeding success
Science or Art? A jump in the mistfrog population
Find your calling: the search for the rufous scrub-bird
Forestry and threatened species: guiding practices for species conservation

Severe marine pollutant may have been released at Gladstone

government, waterways/wetlands

Apr 022014

Original story by Daniel Burdon, Queensland Times

A SEVERE marine pollutant that may have been released into Gladstone Harbour during the Western Basin dredging project went unassessed before dredging began, due to failures in the sediment testing program for the project.

The Gladstone Ports Corporation failed to test for the pollutant despite recommendations provided in 2009 that harbour sediments be “immediately” tested for the substance.

That failure was allowed to occur due to a weakness in the National Assessment Guidelines for Dredging; CSIRO scientist Dr Graeme Batley – a key contributor to the guidelines – has confirmed.

The pollutant, dibutyltin (DBT), is the breakdown product of the toxic chemical tributyltin (TBT), a key ingredient in anti-fouling paints that was banned in 2008, which was a known “contaminant of concern” in the harbour.

These substances were also overlooked during investigations into a 2011 fish disease outbreak in the harbour that coincided with the dredging project.

While a GPC spokeswoman said the dredged sediment was deemed suitable for “its intended disposal location”, she referred all questions to documents “available on the project website”.

Those documents show sediment was dredged from an area “of concern” for potential DBT contamination, near the RG Tanna coal terminal, in the months preceding the 2011 harbour closure.

But the documents did not specify where the sediment was dumped; an issue the port did not clarify.

A 2009 study on the chemicals’ effects on molluscs in the harbour found DBT was more prevalent than TBT and the “major effects to biota” were likely caused by butyltin compounds in the sediment, including DBT, rather than directly from vessels using the banned paint.

That study recommended “immediate” sediment testing for all such compounds “to ascertain potential for contamination and re-suspension”.

While the tests completed found little evidence of TBT, the port’s environmental impact statement shows no tests were completed for the key pollutants DBT or monobutyltin (MBT).

CSIRO chief research scientist Dr Graeme Batley, who contributed to the guidelines, said while TBT was more toxic, “normally if you were doing an investigation, you would test for all the breakdown substances”.

“The main reason for (testing for) TBT is it’s more toxic, DBT and MBT are still toxic, but not to the same extent,” he said.

“But DBT certainly lasts longer than TBT – in sediment you’ll see DBT and MBT present for many years after it’s broken down.

“The toxicity is probably the main reason why it’s not in the guidelines; but normally, the analytical labs will probably give you the information anyway.”

The federal Department of the Environment has to date declined to investigate the matter.The chemical:

Dibutyltin (DBT) is a “severe marine pollutant” and the initial breakdown product of a highly toxic chemical, tributyltin (TBT), an ingredient in anti-fouling paints that was banned worldwide in 2008.

TBT breaks down into DBT in sediments over several years, with DBT staying dormant in sediments, if left undisturbed, before it breaks down further into monobutyltin (MBT) and finally tin.GPC’s response:

“Material to be dredged for the Western Basin Dredging and Disposal Project (WBDDP) was extensively sampled and analysed prior to dredging and all material was assessed to be suitable for its intended disposal location.

“An extensive campaign of geotechnical testing within the dredging footprint was carried out as part of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

“The results of these sediment studies indicated that there were no exceedences of contaminants, with the exception of some metals, which were identified as naturally occurring within Port Curtis.

“Documents detailing the approved areas for onshore and offshore placement of dredge materials are available on the project website, www.westernbasinportdevelopment.com.au “

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