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Disruption over Macquarie Island calls for some clever Antarctic thinking
The fate of the Australian Antarctic Division’s research base on Macquarie Island hangs in the balance, after last week’s surprise announcement that it would close in March 2017 was followed on Friday by a suggestion that the government could yet reprieve it.
Why all the fuss over a scattering of buildings on a windswept island (admittedly a UNESCO World Heritage-listed one) perched on a tectonic ridge halfway between Australia and Antarctica?
Macquarie Island is the perfect natural laboratory for scientific research. Unique climate, geological, biological and astronomical measurements are collected year-round. The data is fed into many large-scale, international science programs and reports, including those published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
It is something of an anomaly in Australia’s national Antarctic program. Unlike Heard Island, Macquarie Island lies outside the areas covered by the Antarctic Treaty and the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. The Tasmanian government manages the island.
The buildings at the island’s north end are home to research infrastructure and accommodation for various organisations. These include the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Meteorology, and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, which monitors the Southern Ocean for evidence of nuclear events. These buildings are increasingly exposed to ocean inundation.
Death by a thousand cuts
Collaborations of this nature are common in Antarctic science. Budgetary decisions made in one section of the community have a direct impact on the programs of others.
This sudden closure announcement followed the harrowing CSIRO job cuts announcement earlier this year. Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman, the Tasmanian and Antarctic science community and the Australian Greens understandably responded with dismay to last Tuesday’s announcement.
While funding to Australia’s Antarctic science program seemed assured with the long-awaited Australian Antarctic Strategy and 20-Year Action Plan this year, there is a reasonable correlation between previous successive cuts to the Antarctic program and the disrepair of Australian Antarctic infrastructure. Labor Senator Lisa Singh called this a “death of a thousand cuts”.
Competing interestsGiven the huge scale of Australia’s interests in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, there will always be competing budget priorities.
Environmental contamination from long-term human habitation, for example, is an issue common to Australia’s research infrastructure throughout the Antarctic region.
Any research in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic must be done in a way that minimises the direct impact on the surrounding environment. Australian Antarctic Division director Nick Gales has cited the footprint of this research as one reason for withdrawal from Macquarie Island.
Environmentally sensitive replacements suited to such harsh and remote conditions are expensive. The ongoing remediation work on many old Antarctic and sub-Antarctic bases continues to cause further budgetary and logistical headaches.
Macquarie Island, Heard Island and Australia’s Antarctic Territory are notoriously difficult to access, particularly for long-term, logistically demanding tasks such as major remediation and refurbishment works. Access involves battling the increasingly unpredictable sea ice and ice airstrip conditions that already disrupt delicate resupply, search and rescue, and medical evacuation operations.
Given its position deep in the Southern Ocean, there remains a strong case for a small but permanent presence on Macquarie Island. For example, resident climate scientists have collected weekly ozone measurements for 20 years. There is a place for other Commonwealth departments, the Tasmanian government, private industry and research institutions to shoulder responsibility for maintaining this presence.
A silver lining for Tasmania?Given successive budget cuts, precariously short-term funding of Antarctic research programs, the potential domino effect of budget cuts between collaborators and the doubt created within the community by the CSIRO climate job cuts saga, Tasmania needs to continue to build its capacity to ride out the vagaries of the federal political issues that have left it reeling over the past year.
Regardless of the current station’s fate, this could be seen as an opportunity for Tasmania’s Antarctic, climate and oceans science community to collaborate and innovate with various industries to ensure that crucial climate research and observations can continue.
By leveraging from existing programs such as the Antarctic Gateway Partnership, and with world-class scientific expertise, Tasmania is perfectly poised to innovate and invest in the areas of remote and autonomous scientific instruments, technology and data handling.
Private enterprise, including smaller non-icebreaking vessels that already operate as research and tourism platforms in the sub-Antarctic, also has a chance to fill the logistical gap.
The closure of the Macquarie Island station after almost 70 years would be sad and shocking for the generations of scientists who fondly visited “Macca”.
The continuation of a presence on the island, however, is largely a Tasmanian government responsibility. With innovation and collaboration, Tasmania can lead the way in a new, stable and less environmentally damaging era of science on Macquarie Island.
Indi Hodgson-Johnston is an Expert in Antarctic Law and Policy at the London-based Polar Research and Policy Initiative. She also works for the Integrated Marine Observing System at the University of Tasmania.
'No time to waste': climate changes for films on global warming
Rob Callender, who appeared in Sherlock and Game of Thrones, discusses The Incentive, his environmental call to arms
Rob Callender is talking about cheese. “My dad loves cheese, really loves it. So I’ve had to persuade him to cut down. Instead of leaping on every two-for-one in the supermarket, buy one really nice cheese once a week. Dairy farming is such a horrible industry.”
Callender’s passionate advocacy of veganism has made him an object of fun and curiosity on film sets, but he is now turning his environmentalism into art. In just over a month’s time, he he will begin shooting a short crowd-funded feature film on climate change.
Continue reading...Wildflowers on the verge of disappearing
Orchid-spotters have long-known that the best site in the UK to take in a display of pyramidal orchids is a roadside verge in Warwickshire, yet the role verges play in conservation isn’t widely appreciated. There are almost 251,000 acres of rural road verges across the country that are home to 703 species of wild plants – 87 of which are facing extinction.
Britain has lost 97% of its wildflower meadows since the 1930s as land has been turned over to grow food crops. Rural roadside verges and small, family-owned farms remain the only places left for species such as the crested cow-wheat, spiked rampion and man orchid to thrive. These roadside verges represent the last stronghold of British wildflowers yet they are being mown down by local councils because of budgetary pressures and a lack of guidance, conservationists have warned.
Continue reading...The eco guide to noise pollution
Peace and quiet is an increasingly scarce commodity in the modern world
Silence is golden – or at least it should be. But according to the Noise Abatement Society (NAS), it’s increasingly rare. “Peace is a precious commodity,” says Poppy Szkiler, of Quiet Mark, part of the NAS.
Anti-noise campaigners suggest we have a “sliding baseline” in terms of our expectation of quiet time. This ecological term refers to an incremental lowering of standards as each generation progresses.
Continue reading...Arctic nations square up as clamour for resources grows
Kristian Jensen, Denmark’s foreign minister, gave a precise response last week to a request by Russia for the nations to enter bilateral talks over the ownership of the north pole. He flatly rejected the move. “We need to apply the international rules,” he told reporters.
The Russian request and the swift Danish response are intriguing. The United Nations is currently assessing Russian, Danish and Canadian claims to own sizeable chunks of the Arctic seabed. The Russian move was generally viewed as an attempt to strike a deal that would cut out Canada, while Denmark appears to believe its case is strong enough to exclude such manoeuvres.
Continue reading...Buzzards back in hunters’ crosshairs over threat to UK pheasant shoots
Tim Boxall points at a shape in the field bordering the seven-acre wooded pen where he keeps 1,500 pheasants. “Here you are,” he says. “Look! There’s one over here.” He bends down and prises the remains of a pheasant from the long grass. “That’s a buzzard kill, you can tell by the way it’s been eaten.”
Boxall is a gamekeeper, raising 10,000 pheasants a year to be killed in commercial shoots on the land he rents in Gloucestershire. This year, however, the pheasants have something other than Boxall’s clients to fear: the buzzard.
Continue reading...The 20 photographs of the week
The ongoing violence in Syria, the Rio Paralympics, the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, New York fashion week – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week
Continue reading...Shades of yellow on the baking heath
New Forest The heather is studded with yellow tormentil, and mixed with dwarf gorse so tight to the turf that it’s knee-high to a grasshopper
A grey minibus pulls up behind me as I’m changing into my walking shoes. Five young people get out and hitch their packs. ”We’ll be there at five,” says the driver, and goes. They set off along the concrete perimeter road of the old airfield, with a two and a half hour walk ahead of them. I cut through some trees and, by the time I’m on the same road, they’re a speck in the distance.
It’s been too dry, and a little early yet, for autumn fungi to show, but a whitish dome in the grass under the trees suggests it will not be long before they do. It’s hot, the car thermometer registers 26°, and I’m hoping to find shade in the Inclosure.
Continue reading...Pacific Ocean's hidden wonders revealed on dive to underwater volcano
US scientists find possible new coral species and rare Dumbo octopus on expedition to previously unexplored extinct volcano off Hawaii
Scientists believe they have identified a new species of coral and found a rare Dumbo octopus during an expedition 3,000ft (900m) down in the Pacific Ocean.
Diving in a submersible to the previously unexplored Cook seamount, an extinct volcano at the bottom of the sea 100 miles south-west of Hawaii’s Big Island, the three-person team was hoping to examine the rich variety of marine life that collects around the nutrient-rich volcanic waters.
Continue reading...Conservation and the act of the kill
Tech innovations combat wildlife crime
Wildlife meeting to tackle global poaching crisis
Norway plans to cull more than two-thirds of its wolf population
Environmental groups criticise plan that will allow hunters to shoot up to 47 of an estimated 68 wolves living in wilderness
Norway is planning to cull more than two-thirds of its remaining wolves in a step that environmental groups say will be disastrous for the dwindling members of the species in the wild.
There are estimated to be about 68 wolves remaining in the wilderness areas of Norway, concentrated in the south-east of the country, but under controversial plans approved on Friday as many as 47 of these will be shot.
Continue reading...Solar-powered tuk-tuk completes India to UK trip
Peter Cubbage obituary
My father, Peter Cubbage, who has died aged 91, was a leading gas forensic research scientist. He led a team that was responsible, among other things, for pioneering the flame-release chamber, a safety innovation used in offshore oil rigs and pipelines, which was compared to the miners’ Davy lamp for its significance.
He was appointed by the crown in 1988 to write the report into what happened during the first two seconds of the Piper Alpha rig explosion.
Continue reading...Senate passes Everglades restoration measure to fight toxic algae blooms
The Central Everglades Planning Project, hailed as a ‘huge victory’, will redirect water to undernourished Florida wetlands affected by manmade developments
US lawmakers have voiced hopes that the ailing Everglades will start to recover after the Senate overwhelmingly approved a nearly $2bn measure to combat the toxic algae blooms that have devastated Florida’s waterways.
The Central Everglades Planning Project, touted by proponents as landmark legislation, passed the Senate on Thursday as part of a broader $10bn water resources bill by a vote of 95-3. The series of engineering projects are designed to collect water around Lake Okeechobee and channel it south to nourish the Everglades wetlands, America’s largest tropical wilderness, rather than have it run off into the ocean.
Continue reading...Marine life, nuclear power and clever crows – green news roundup
The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
Continue reading...Undercover bike cops launch 'best ever' cycle safety scheme in Birmingham
Campaigners hope the operation, that sees plain clothes police on bikes pull over drivers that pass too close, will be taken up across the country
When Mark Hodson gets on his bike in the morning, like many cyclists in the UK, he has come to expect a few close calls. Perhaps drivers will whizz past him too close, or someone will even try a ‘punishment pass’.
Luckily, Hodson is a West Midlands Police traffic officer, albeit in plain clothes, and just yards up the road a colleague in a police car is waiting to pull over drivers that give him less than 1.5m space when overtaking (a distance that increases for faster speeds and larger vehicles).
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
A whale shark, Masai Mara migration and wild boar on a seaside visit are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...How Indonesia's rare birds are facing extinction
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