Around The Web

Mountain goats, beavers and whooping cranes are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Continue reading...

US scientists produce their most precise date yet for the colossal landslide that shaped the big red canyon running through what is now Zion National Park.

Scientists create sex identification tests that can identify male chicks before they hatch

The current practice of gassing billions of male chicks within a day of hatching because they cannot lay eggs could be stopped thanks to a new embryo gender test.

Globally some 3.2 billion cockerels are killed within hours of breaking free of their eggs each year.

Continue reading...

Researchers invent a DNA "tape recorder" that can trace the family history of every cell in a body.

Weather is becoming more extreme, and meteorologists are taking notice

Whatever happened to normal weather? Earth has always experienced epic storms, debilitating drought, and biblical floods. But lately it seems the treadmill of disruptive weather has been set to fast-forward. God’s grandiose Symphony of the Seasons, the natural ebb and flow of the atmosphere, is playing out of tune, sounding more like a talent-free second grade orchestra, with shrill horns, violins screeching off-key, cymbal crashes coming in at the wrong time. Something has changed.

My company, AerisWeather, tracks global weather for Fortune 500 companies trying to optimize supply chains, increase profitability, secure facilities, and ensure the safety of their employees and customers. It’s my 4th weather-technology company. Our team is constantly analyzing patterns, providing as much lead-time of impending weather extremes as possible. As a serial entrepreneur I respond to data, facts and evidence. If I spin the data and only see what I want to see, I go out of business. I lay off good people. I can’t afford to look away when data makes me uncomfortable.

Continue reading...

Top conservationists criticise the proposal – announced just days after neighbouring South Africa dropped its bid for legal trade – saying it will open the gates for a black market

Swaziland has been accused by one of the world’s leading conservationists of being a puppet of South Africa in a bid to open the floodgates to a potentially calamitous legal rhino horn trade.

South Africa appointed a committee to study the idea of trading horn internationally, which has been banned for more than four decades, but the government backed away from such a proposal in April.

Continue reading...

All references to climate change's impact on World Heritage sites in Australia are removed from a UN report after a government request.

The water vole has become Britain's most endangered mammal, but a project in Worcestershire is trying to reverse the decline.

A new poll finds that only 20% of Britons have heard of ocean acidification – and even fewer know anything about it

If you’ve heard of ocean acidification, you’re in the minority. If you know that ocean acidification is caused by carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels and cutting down rainforests, you’re practically a scholar. A new poll published in Nature Climate Change finds that around 80% of the British public has never heard of ocean acidification.

“It is sobering to think that few people are aware of this process given its widespread risks for the natural environment, and the potential knock-on effects for people and economies,” Stuart Capstick, co-author of the paper and a research associate at Cardiff University’ School of Psychology, said.

Continue reading...

Perception is everything when it comes to Great Barrier Reef tourism. Reef image from www.shutterstock.com

The removal of an entire section on the Great Barrier Reef from an international report on World Heritage and climate change has been justified by the Australian government because of the impact on tourism.

The Guardian reported that all mention of Australia has been removed from the report released on Friday. An Environment Department spokesperson was quoted as saying that “recent experience in Australia had shown that negative commentary about the status of World Heritage properties impacted on tourism”.

Australia is the only populated continent that was not mentioned in the report, which was produced by UNESCO, UNEP, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. It comes in the wake of one of the Great Barrier Reef’s most significant coral bleaching events – one widely attributed to climate change.

What’s to hide?

In its purest sense, it could be argued that it is important for the world to know about the impacts climate change is having on some of its most famous natural wonders. This has the potential to precipitate national and global policy change that might ultimately help the reef.

It could also be argued that much of the damage to perceptions of people around the world has already been done. The final episode of David Attenborough’s documentary on the Great Barrier Reef – which discusses the widespread bleaching in detail – arguably has far more potential to influence would-be tourists contemplating a visit to the reef.

News coverage of the events has reached audiences as far afield as the United States and Britain. And a recent picture essay on The Conversation provides evidence of the bleaching, observing the phenomenon as “a huge blow to all Australians who cherish this natural wonder and to the tourists who flock here to see the reef”.

The impact on tourism

Given that the issues on the reef are well known and widely covered, would the UNESCO report really have had an impact?

The Cairns tourism industry is a vital export earner, not only for the region but for the nation. The region has more than 2.4 million visitors per year, contributing A$3.1 billion to the economy, with the Great Barrier Reef as its anchor attraction.

Adding complexity to the issue, there is debate locally as to how widespread the coral bleaching reported by scientists really is.

The tourism industry in Cairns has been quick to counter scientists’ claims with its own. Tour operator Quicksilver has responded with Reef Health Updates featuring a marine biologist who claims that as the water cools through winter, many of the coral are likely to regain their colour.

Tourists have also been interviewed for the campaign, emerging from the water amazed and astounded at the diversity of colour and marine life they have seen.

Regional tourism organisation Tourism Tropical North Queensland has also begun a campaign to showcase undamaged parts of the reef.

Tourism is a perception-based activity. Expectations of pristine waters and diverse marine life on a World Heritage-listed reef are what drives the Cairns and North Queensland tourism industry in Australia.

We know from past research that perceptions of damage to the natural environment from events such as cyclones do influence travel decisions, but we do not yet know how this translates to coral bleaching events.

Researchers in the region are working to collect data from tourists about how their pre-existing perceptions of coral cover and colour match their actual experiences.

This will provide evidence of the impacts of the bleaching event on the tourist experience and also shed light on what has shaped tourists’ perceptions prior to visiting. Currently, we only have anecdotal evidence from operators and the tourist interviews in the Quicksilver video on what these impacts really are.

What impact could this have on the reef?

From another perspective, tourism is particularly valuable to the reef because it is a relatively clean industry that relies on the preservation, rather than depletion, of the resource for its own survival.

The Great Barrier Reef is a resource of value to both tourism and other industries. In the past, the reef has narrowly escaped gas mining, oil spill disasters and overfishing, not to mention the ongoing impacts of land-based industries along the coast that drains to it.

It is important to remember that the original World Heritage listing was “born out of a 12-year popular struggle to prevent the most wondrous coral reef in the world from being destroyed by uncontrolled mining”. This raises questions about whether the comparative economic importance of mining and other industries could increase if tourism declines.

The message about the threats to the Great Barrier Reef is already in the public domain. Research is still being done on the true impact of the bleaching event and associated perceptions on the tourism industry, and the results are not yet conclusive.

Rather than bury information that many people globally already have access to, perhaps the Australian government could think more creatively about how it is addressing the issues and promoting this as a positive campaign for “one of the best managed marine areas in the world”.

Allison Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

La Trobe University becomes the first in Australia to move towards fossil fuel divestment after pressure from students, staff and alumni. Nils Versemann from www.shutterstock.com

La Trobe University this week became the first Australian university to commit to full fossil fuel divestment, having pledged to do so over the next five years. This is the result of campaigning by staff and students at university campuses.

The university holds an investment of A$40 million in a managed fund. Over the next five years it will work with the fund manager to create a portfolio that does not invest in the 200 most carbon-intensive listed companies.

The university reported:

The change was in response to suggestions by a group of students and staff passionate about reducing the impact of climate change and lobbied university leaders to change its investment strategy.

Even though such decisions have been criticised on the basis that there is a trade-off between sustainability and profitability, Vice-Chancellor John Dewar argued that these were actually compatible.

This is a relatively enlightened view, based on the premise that decisions based on sustainable criteria actually perform better in the long run. This can occur through reducing risk and improving stakeholder relationships and, in turn, reputation.

Other Australian unis

Other universities have made smaller but similar decisions. In 2014, the Australian National University (ANU) announced it would divest from seven companies as a component of its Socially Responsible Investment Policy. This amounts to only 5% of the university’s domestic equity and the value of shares to be sold is around A$16 million.

In February this year, Sydney University put a freeze on new fossil fuel investments and it plans to reduce its investments in fossil fuel companies. But this action has been criticised as being tokenistic without a clear plan for full divestment.

Divestment campaigns have been significantly driven by the activist group 350.org, which has reported:

Over the last two years, more than 180 institutions representing US$50 billion in assets have committed to divest. There are now more than 500 active divestment campaigns under way at universities, cities, churches, banks and other institutions.

Benefits for the university

Universities are in the perfect position to take the lead in enacting the values that they have been built upon.

In this regard La Trobe University has a key platform on sustainability, which states:

We will operate sustainably and ethically … The University’s response to climate change, and to sustainability more broadly, requires us to consider carefully our ethical choices and everyday practices.

This divestment decision is fully in line with the university’s espoused values and strategies.

This is the very reason students and staff are increasingly pressuring universities to ensure they take action. Students are looking to their places of study for leadership. The student population frowns upon conflict between values and actions, which affects decisions as to where they will study.

Even though climate-interested investors are increasing in numbers, the outcomes for the economy and investors depend on getting traction with other investors.

There needs to be a pool of funds that can be invested in similar ways. It is not just the impact of ethical investment funds here that can bring about change; increasingly we see the impact of what are called Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) funds.

These funds invest in companies based on the measurement and reduction of their impact in terms of the environment, social and governance criteria.

Is it meaningful?

However, one argument is that divestment does not drive change and that institutions can exert more influence by staying invested. This can occur through influencing company strategies and decision-making; in this way, using a voice rather than exiting the market is seen to be more effective.

Other criticisms are that such decisions are simply public relations exercises that will not actually influence the behaviours of these fossil fuel companies. It is argued that there are always other investors who will continue to invest in these companies and so the net effect is negligible.

But increasingly owners of companies (investors) are realising their influence on company behaviour. They understand that by pooling funds investors can influence companies’ climate behaviour. Hence there is scope for investors, in this case universities, to be more active and to use the power of their investment holdings transparently to change corporate behaviours.

This may be by divestment, but it can also be by using the influence and power of their shareholdings through discussion and negotiation with the companies. There is scope for universities to form a bloc to do so collectively, although such an approach has not been much in evidence so far.

So will La Trobe University’s actions to divest from fossil fuels bring about changes in the behaviour of fossil fuel companies? Probably not, but as a leader in the sector in this regard it will not harm the university’s reputation, and it may build momentum and form the basis of such action increasingly being seen as a new norm.

Suzanne Young does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Red Rocks Marsh, Wirral ‘I have front row seats for the natterjack toad, the loudest amphibian in Europe’

There is one last highlighter-pink line in the sky when I take the path down through the red rocks that give this area its name. They are sandstone, worn smooth by time and tide. The sea is keeping its distance, the tide is out, but that familiar coastal tang is in the air mixing with the peppery scent of sundried grass from the dunes.

Colour fades to monochrome as the light drains out of the day and my eyes become more attuned to movement. A small spring contracts and expands below to my left. It is a toad and I can just make out the pattern of black bumps speckling its back. This is one of the few places natterjack toads can be found in the UK but, while attractive, this is not one of them: it lacks the distinguishing yellow stripe along its spine.

Continue reading...

Silver snake, with distinctive metallic appearance, discovered in Bahamas and confirmed as previously unknown species

A new species of boa constrictor has been discovered on a remote island in the Bahamas.

Scientists identified 20 of the metre-long snakes during two expeditions to the Caribbean islands, the second made in October last year.

Continue reading...

New houses are being built on Victoria's Bass Coast which will have energy bills as low $500 per dwelling, or up to 85% less than an average Australian street of the same size.

Draft chapter warned reef was ‘poor and deteriorating’ but all references were excised following government intervention

• Australia scrubbed from UN climate change report after government intervention

The lead author of a major UN report on climate change has expressed his shock that every reference to Australia was removed from the final version, following intervention from the Australian government.

Guardian Australia on Friday revealed that chapters on the Great Barrier Reef and sections on Kakadu and Tasmanian forests were removed from the World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate report, following the Australian Department of Environment’s objection that the information could harm tourism.

Continue reading...

Exclusive: This draft chapter for a Unesco report on the Great Barrier Reef warned that it was ‘poor and deteriorating’ and ‘assailed by multiple threats’ but the Australian government asked for it to be pulled

• Australia scrubbed from UN climate change report after government intervention

This description of the Great Barrier Reef, obtained by Guardian Australia, was written by experts for a Unesco report on tourism and climate change but removed after objections from the Australian government. This draft would have been subject to minor amendments after being peer-reviewed. The lead author, Adam Markham, is deputy director of climate and energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Significance: World’s largest coral reef system; marine biodiversity; evolutionary processes; spectacular underwater landscapes.

Continue reading...

RED AND WHITE PLANET: Radar data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has given scientists an unprecedented glimpse into Mars' recent climatic history etched into the layers of its northern polar ice cap.

Pragmatism, not idealism, will give Brazil's Atlantic forests the best chance of survival. Guilmann/Wikimedia Commons

Earth is in a land degradation crisis. If we were to take the roughly one-third of the world’s land that has been degraded from its natural state and combine it into a single entity, these “Federated States of Degradia” would have a landmass bigger than Russia and a population of more than 3 billion, largely consisting of the world’s poorest and most marginalised people.

The extent and impact of land degradation have prompted many nations to propose ambitious targets for fixing the situation – restoring the wildlife and ecosystems harmed by processes such as desertification, salinisation and erosion, but also the unavoidable loss of habitat due to urbanisation and agricultural expansion.

In 2011, the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration, a worldwide network of governments and action groups, proposed the Bonn Challenge, which aimed to restore 150 million hectares of degraded land by 2020.

This target was extended to 350 million ha by 2030 at the September 2014 UN climate summit in New York. And at last year’s landmark Paris climate talks, African nations committed to a further 100 million ha of restoration by 2030.

These ambitious goals are essential to focus global effort on such significant challenges. But are they focused on the right outcomes?

For restoration projects, measuring success is crucial. Many projects use measures that are too simplistic, such as the number of trees planted or the number of plant stems per hectare. This may not reflect the actual successful functioning of the ecosystem.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale are projects that shoot for outcomes such as “improve ecosystem integrity” – meaningless motherhood statements for which success is too complex to quantify.

One response to this problem has been a widespread recommendation that restoration projects should aim to restore ecosystems back to the state they were in before degradation began. But we suggest that this baseline is a nostalgic aspiration, akin to restoring the “Garden of Eden”.

Beautiful, but not particularly realistic. Wenzel Peter/Wikimedia Commons An unrealistic approach

Emulating pre-degradation habitats is unrealistic and prohibitively expensive, and does not acknowledge current and future environmental change. While a baseline that prescribes a list of pre-degradation species is a good place to start, it does not take into account the constantly changing nature of ecosystems.

Instead of a “Garden of Eden” baseline, we suggest that restoration projects should concentrate on establishing functional ecosystems that provide useful ecosystem services. This might be done by improving soil stability to counter erosion and desertification, or by planting deep-rooted species to maintain the water table and reduce dry land salinity, or by establishing wild pollinator habitats around pollinator-dependant crops such as apples, almonds and lucerne seed.

Natural ecosystems have always been in flux – albeit more so since humans came to dominate the planet. Species are constantly migrating, evolving and going extinct. Invasive species may be so prevalent and naturalised that they are impossibly costly to remove.

As a result, land allocated for restoration projects is often so altered from its pre-degradation state that it will no longer serve as habitat for the species that once lived there. Many local, native species can be prohibitively difficult to breed and release.

And present-day climate change may necessitate the use of non-local genotypes and even non-local native species to improve restoration outcomes. Newer, forward-thinking approaches may result in the generation of novel gene pools or even novel ecosystems.

Projects should focus on targets that are relevant to their overarching goals. For example, if a restoration project is established to improve pollination services, then the abundance and diversity of insect pollinators could be its metric of success. As we argue in correspondence to the science journal Nature, restoration should focus on helping to create functional, self-sustaining ecosystems that are resilient to climate change and provide measurable benefits to people as well as nature.

An excellent example of a successful, large-scale restoration project with targeted outcomes is Brazil’s ongoing Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact. This has committed to restoring 1 million hectares of Atlantic forest by 2020 and 15 million hectares by 2050.

This project has clear objectives. These include restoring local biodiversity (for conservation and human use, including timber and non-timber forest products); improving water quality for local communities; increasing carbon storage; and even creating seed orchards that can be either sustainably harvested or used to provide more seeds for sowing as part of the restoration.

This project has clear social objectives as well as ecological ones. It has created new jobs and income opportunities. Local communities are contributing to seed collection and propagation, while the project gives landowners incentives to abide by laws against deforestation. For forests, this is the kind of pragmatic approach that will bear the most fruit.

Martin Breed is an ARC DECRA Fellow who receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Andrew Lowe receives funding from the Australian Federal and State governments to undertake research on habitat restoration. He is Principal Advisor - Biodiversity Research Partnerships, for the South Australian Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources; a member of the Board and Chair of the Technical Advisory Committee for Trees for Life - a not for profit restoration organisation; and on the Scientific Advisory Committee of Greening Australia - a not for profit restoration organisation.

Nick Gellie is a PhD candidate who receives scholarship funding from the Australian Research Council

Peter Mortimer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Ruling the roost: flying-foxes can suddenly arrive in huge numbers when the right trees bloom. Justin Welbergen, CC BY-NC-ND

The conflict between urbanites and wildlife recently developed a new battleground: the small coastal New South Wales town of Batemans Bay, where the exceptional flowering of spotted gums has attracted a huge influx of grey-headed flying-foxes from across Australia’s southeast.

In response to intense and highly publicised community concern, federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt has announced he will seek an immediate National Interest Exemption to facilitate dispersal of these bats – a move that risks undermining legal protections afforded to this and other threatened species.

Similar conflicts are occurring elsewhere in NSW, such as the Hunter region, where some unscrupulous members of the public lit a fire in a flying-fox roost at Cessnock.

With the ongoing expansion of the human urban footprint, animals are increasingly confronted with urban environments. Human encroachment into natural habitats generally negatively affects biodiversity. However, urban landscapes can present wildlife with an irresistible lure of reliable food supplies and other resources. While urban wildlife can provide a range of benefits to health and wellbeing, it can also be cause for frustration and conflict.

Urban human-wildlife conflict is a growing area of management concern and scientific research. But the research suggests that the current strategies for addressing NSW’s conflicts between humans and flying-foxes might not have the intended results.

Flying-foxes increasingly find themselves in urban areas. Justin Welbergen Ruling the urban roost

Australian flying-foxes are becoming more urbanised, and the noise, smell and droppings from their roosts can have huge impacts on local residents.

A fundamental problem underlying current approaches to urban roosts is a lack of understanding of the extraordinary mobility of flying-foxes. They are some of the most mobile animals in Australia, with movements that range from foraging trips of up to 120 km in a single night to long-distance nomadism covering thousands of kilometres in a single year.

Nomadic movements of an adult female grey-headed flying-fox, tracked over a period of four years and currently at Batemans Bay. John Martin & Justin Welbergen, unpublished

While roosts can remain active for decades, they are more like backpacker hostels than stable households, housing a constantly changing clientele that comes to visit local attractions. Roosts are connected into large networks through which flying-foxes move in response to changes in local food resources.

This explains the sudden influx in places such as Batemans Bay where preferred food suddenly becomes abundant. But it also highlights the importance of a national approach to flying-fox management and conservation.

Intense local flowerings of Eucalypts, such as spotted gums, produce copious amounts of nectar and pollen, which attract large numbers of flying-foxes and other species for several weeks. When a relatively small local flying-fox population that is tolerated by its human neighbours suddenly increases tenfold, it can place severe pressure on the local community.

Despite their transient nature, these influxes are often wrongly interpreted as population explosions, leading to calls for culling. In comparison, more humane tactics – such as using loud noise or vegetation removal to disperse the flying-foxes – can seem like a more balanced response. But does dispersal actually work?

Council workers in Charters Towers, Queensland, using ‘foggers’ to disperse flying-foxes from a local roost. Australasian Bats Society Shifting the problem elsewhere

There is now ample evidence to show that dispersals are extremely costly and can exacerbate the very human-wildlife conflict that they aim to resolve.

Most dispersals result in the flying-foxes returning the original roost as soon as the dispersal program ends, because naïve new individuals continue to arrive from elsewhere. Overcoming this can take months or years of repeated daily dispersal.

Other dispersals result in flying-foxes establishing new roosts a few hundred metres away, typically within the same urban environment in locations that we cannot control. This risks shifting the problem to previously unaffected members of a community and to other communities nearby.

Former flying-fox roost at Boonah, Queensland, that contained thousands of flying-foxes before it was destroyed in June 2014. Justin Welbergen

While flying-foxes are often portrayed as noisy pests, they serve our economic interest by providing irreplaceable pollination and seed-dispersal services for free. What’s more, those same bats that annoy people during the day work tirelessly at night to maintain the health of our fragmented forests and natural ecosystems.

So it is in our national interest to manage conflict at urban roosts, by using approaches that balance community concerns with environmental considerations.

Flying-foxes perform irreplaceable ecological roles in our natural environment. Steve Parish

To be considered “successful”, a dispersal should permanently reduce conflict to a level that is acceptable to the community without causing significant harm to the animals. However, dispersals are currently implemented at the local council level with little or no monitoring of the impacts in or outside the immediately affected area. This makes it hard to assess whether they have been successful.

For example, it is not uncommon for flowering to cease and flying-fox numbers to decline naturally during the period of active dispersal. This gives the community a false sense that a permanent solution has been achieved, when in fact the issues will recur the next time the trees blossom. There is thus an urgent need for urban roosts to be managed with properly defined and applied criteria for success.

Evidence-based management

Unfortunately, lack of research effort directed at “ugly” and “less popular” Australian animals means that very few evidence-based management tools are available to deal with contentious roosts.

Research targeting a few key areas would greatly help efforts to improve urban roost management. For instance, we do not know how flying-foxes choose their roost sites, which leaves us unable to design “carrot solutions” by creating more attractive roost sites elsewhere.

Intensive tree-flowering events are relatively infrequent and hard to predict. This means that it is difficult to prepare communities for a sudden influx of flying-foxes.

Furthermore, the acceptability of various flying-fox management options differs between sections of the community, so it is difficult to find optimal solutions. Social scientists are currently trying to help identify priority areas that promote long-term viability of flying-foxes while also easing conflict with humans.

The extreme mobility of flying-foxes means that a uniform federal approach for management is needed. Justin Welbergen/WildPhotos.org

Local, state and federal governments continue to allocate considerable funds for dispersal responses, even though such actions are high-risk activities for local communities and are unlikely to provide long-term solutions. We argue strongly that targeted research is needed to better inform land managers and affected communities of flying-fox ecology and provide them with low-cost, low-risk, evidence-based tools for dealing with urban roosts.

Flying-foxes don’t care about legislative borders, and state-based responsibility for wildlife management leads to discontinuity in approaches between jurisdictions. While flying-foxes are being monitored at the national scale, this initiative needs to be combined with a uniform federal approach for managing flying-foxes in our human landscapes. Otherwise, conflicts such as those faced by the residents of Batemans Bay will continue unabated.

Justin Welbergen is President of the Australasian Bat Society, a not-for-profit organisation that aims to promote the conservation of bats, and receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Peggy Eby represents the scientific community on the NSW Flying-Fox Consultative Committee, a not-for-profit stakeholder group that assists government in developing strategies for conserving and managing flying-foxes in NSW. She works as an ecological consultant to government and industry.

Exclusive: All mentions of Australia were removed from the final version of a Unesco report on climate change and world heritage sites after the Australian government objected on the grounds it could impact on tourism

Revealed: Guardian Australia has obtained the Unesco report Australia didn’t want the world to see. Read it now

Every reference to Australia was scrubbed from the final version of a major UN report on climate change after the Australian government intervened, objecting that the information could harm tourism.

Guardian Australia can reveal the report “World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate”, which Unesco jointly published with the United Nations environment program and the Union of Concerned Scientists on Friday, initially had a key chapter on the Great Barrier Reef, as well as small sections on Kakadu and the Tasmanian forests.

Continue reading...