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Harrowbarrow, Tamar Valley Short twigs of February-grafted cherries already show swelling buds above the yellow plastic tape

The new tall fence should help protect Mary and James’s orchard from the attention of roe deer, which come from the valley’s sheltering woodland to nibble leaves, bark and the precious shoots of new grafts, as well as shed their potentially dangerous ticks.

Most of the fruit trees are more than 30 years old, but this diverse and catalogued collection of once widely grown apples, cherries and pears is constantly being refined and added to. Short twigs of February-grafted cherries already show swelling buds above the yellow plastic tape that binds specific varieties to vigorous root-stocks. Lanky poor specimens of cherries have been dug out and the spaces infilled with more apples.

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Eerie scenes on north-west coast show bioluminescent waters caused by ‘sea sparkle’

The waters along Tasmania’s north-west coastline have taken on a bizarre, glowing appearance in recent days. Photographs taken off Preservation Bay and Rocky Cape showcase bioluminescent waters caused by Noctiluca scintillans (AKA sea sparkle), tiny plankton emitting blue light in self-defence.

The phenomenon, which is best seen in calm, warm seas, is foreboding. “The displays are a sign of climate change,” Anthony Richardson, from the CSIRO, told New Scientist after an occurrence in Tasmania in 2015.

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Why is South Australia spending so much on gas when battery storage could do the job at less cost? And why doesn't it just borrow a gas plant, rather than building a new one?

Early in the morning and late in the evening is when shorebirds escape disturbance on the beaches on which their survival depends. Arnuchulo

This is the ninth article in our Contested Spaces series. These pieces look at the conflicting uses, expectations and norms that people bring to public spaces, the clashes that result and how we can resolve these.

There’s no doubt about it, Australians love the beach. And why not? Being outdoors makes us happy, and all beaches are public places in Australia.

Head to a beach like Bondi on Christmas Day and you’ll share that space with more than 40,000 people. But we aren’t just jostling with each other for coveted beach space. Scuttling, waddling, hopping or flying away from beachgoers all around Australia are crabs, shorebirds, baby turtles, crocodiles, fairy penguins and even dingoes.

Beaches are home to an incredible array of animals, and sharing this busy space with people is critical to their survival. But, if we find it hard to share our beaches with each other, how can we possibly find space for nature on our beaches?

Beach birds

Here’s a classic example of how hard it is to share our beaches with nature. Head to a busy beach at dawn, before the crowds arrive, and you will most likely see a number of small birds darting about.

You may recognise them from the short movie Piper – they are shorebirds. As the day progresses, swimmers, kite surfers, dog walkers, horse riders, 4x4s and children descend upon the beach en masse, unwittingly disturbing the shorebirds.

We share beaches with an extraordinary array of life, including many shorebirds.

Unlike seabirds, shorebirds do not spend their life at sea. Instead, they specialise on the beach: foraging for their invertebrate prey, avoiding waves, or resting.

However, shorebird numbers in Australia are declining very rapidly. Several species are officially listed as nationally threatened, such as the critically endangered Eastern Curlew.

There are few places you can let your dog run for as long and as far as it pleases, which is one of the reasons beaches appeal to dog owners. But this disturbance results in heavy costs to the birds as they expend energy taking flight and cannot return to favourable feeding areas. Repeated disturbance can cause temporary or permanent abandonment of suitable habitat.

The world’s largest shorebirds, Eastern Curlews are critically endangered – and Australia is home to about 75% of them over summer. Donald Hobern/flickr, CC BY

The fascinating thing about many of these shorebirds is that they are migratory. Beachgoers in Korea, China, Indonesia or New Zealand could observe the same individual bird that we have seen in Australia.

Yet these journeys come at a cost. Shorebirds must undertake gruelling flights of up to 16,000 kilometres twice a year to get from their breeding grounds in Siberia and Alaska to their feeding grounds in Australia and New Zealand. In their pursuit of an endless summer, they arrive in Australia severely weakened by their travels. They must almost double their body weight before they can migrate again.

And these birds must contend with significant daily disruption on their feeding grounds. A recent study in Queensland found an average of 174 people and 72 dogs were present at any one time on the foreshore of Moreton Bay, along Brisbane’s coastline. And 84% of dogs were off the leash – an off-leash dog was sighted every 700 metres – in potential contravention of regulations on dog control.

Managing the menagerie

One conservation approach is to set up nature reserves. This involves trying to keep people out of large areas of the coastal zone to provide a home for nature. Yet this rarely works in practice on beaches, where there are so many overlapping jurisdictions (for example, councils often don’t control the lower areas of the intertidal zone) that protection is rarely joined up.

The beach-nesting Hooded Plover is unique to Australia where it is listed as vulnerable (and critically endangered in NSW). Francesco Veronesi/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA Benjamint444/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

However, our work at the University of Queensland shows we don’t need conservation reserves in which people are kept out. Quite the reverse. We should be much bolder in opening up areas that are specifically designated as dog off-leash zones, in places where demand for recreation is high.

In the case of Moreton Bay, 97% of foraging migratory shorebirds could be protected from disturbance simply by designating five areas as off-leash recreation zones. Currently, dogs must be kept under close control throughout the intertidal areas of Moreton Bay.

By zoning our beaches carefully, the science tells us that the most intense recreational activities can be located away from critical areas for nature. And there’s no reason why this logic couldn’t be extended to creating peaceful zones for beach users who prefer a quiet day out.

By approaching the problem scientifically, we can meet recreational demand as well as protect nature. Proper enforcement of the boundaries between zones is needed. Such enforcement is effective when carried out in the right places at the right time.

We believe that keeping people and their dogs off beaches to protect nature is neither desirable nor effective. It sends totally the wrong message – successful conservation is about living alongside nature, not separating ourselves from it.

Conservationists and recreationists should be natural allies, both working to safeguard our beautiful coasts. The key is to find ways that people and nature can co-exist on beaches.

You can find other pieces published in the series here.

Madeleine Stigner received funding for the work referred to in this article from Birds Queensland and the Queensland Wader Study Group Nigel Roberts Student Research Fund.

Kiran Dhanjal-Adams received funding for the work referred to in this article from the Centre of Excellence in Environmental Decisions, the Australian Research Council, Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, the Commonwealth Department of the Environment, the Queensland Wader Study Group, the Port of Brisbane Pty Ltd, the Goodman Foundation and Birdlife Australia’s Stuart Leslie Award.

Richard Fuller received funding for the work referred to in this article from the National Environmental Science Programme's Threatened Species Recovery Hub, the Australian Research Council, Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, the Commonwealth Department of the Environment, the Queensland Wader Study Group, the Port of Brisbane Pty Ltd, the Goodman Foundation and Birdlife Australia’s Stuart Leslie Award.

Alinta Energy - another of the retailer "naughty boys" on the RET - signs contract for output of Ratch Australia's 42MW Collinsville Solar Farm.

A forecast lull in Germany's onshore wind installations prompts Senvion to cut its workforce by almost 20%; meanwhile, in Australia...

Tesla says increased interest in EVs and a renewables-committed state government make SA its next Australian target market.

The energy sector was supposed to be the showcase for privatisation and market deregulation. Yet competition has failed to deliver on its promise of lower prices for customers.

The latest state by state guide to retail electricity markets and their components.

The gas initiative and the ministerial powers are interesting, but the biggest thing is the battery storage tender.

The ATA has welcomed the South Australian Government’s embracing a clean energy future in its energy plan released yesterday.

Potential for up to $16.8m revenue and $15.2m EBITDA.

Lane Crockett shares his thoughts about the industry, including opportunities, solar costs and battery storage.

In the first of a series about communities building renewable energy projects, we look at how Victoria’s Hepburn Shire overcame local opposition to deliver a new homegrown, community-owned generator

From the fertile spud-growing country of Hepburn Shire, 90km northwest of Melbourne, has sprung what many hope will become a revolution in renewable energy in Australia.

On Leonards Hill, just outside the town of Daylesford – famed for its natural springs – stand two wind turbines that not only power the local area, but have also added substantial power to the community-owned renewable energy movement in Australia.

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Kicking off our six-part series highlighting innovative community renewable energy projects across Australia, we visit the town of Daylesford in Hepburn Shire in rural Victoria. Despite early local opposition, residents have tackled the electricity crisis by building their own renewable energy projects, starting with a cooperative-owned windfarm and moving into the hydro power that was once a feature of the town

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ANCIENT ALGAE: New scanning technology gives scientists an extraordinary view inside the cells of what may be 1.6 billion-year-old red algae, the oldest plant-like fossils ever found.

Underground aquifers are usually replenished from October through to March, but hydrographs reveal progress was slow until January

In the UK, about one third of the water that comes out of our taps is sourced from groundwater. The south of the country is particularly dependent on this underground store of water, with Cambridge Water and Cholderton Water relying entirely on the water found in the chalk and sandstone rock formations of the south-east.

After a dry winter, groundwater levels are lower than normal for the time of year, and scientists from the British Geological Survey are keeping a close eye on the situation.

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More than 8000 pelicans have descended on to a series of islands on an inland lake in central NSW to breed.

‘We hope that these estimates and their significant magnitude raise public awareness and increase the level of appreciation for spiders,’ study authors say

The world’s spiders eat 400-800m tonnes of insects every year – as much meat and fish as humans consume over the same period, a study said Tuesday.

In the first analysis of its kind, researchers used data from 65 previous studies to estimate that a total of 25m metric tonnes of spiders exist on Earth.

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