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'Alarming' trend in Queensland tree clearing figures spurs call for tighter laws
Jackie Trad says action is needed to prevent harm to the Great Barrier Reef as study shows tens of thousands of hectares cleared in catchment areas
Hundreds of thousands of hectares of land have been cleared in Queensland, a new study has found, after a surge led by cattle graziers under relaxed laws that the state government is seeking to overturn.
A state science department study on land cover released on Sunday found 296,000 hectares of land was cleared in 2014-15, more than a third of it in Great Barrier Reef catchments.
Continue reading...Waste of resources is biggest threat to planet, warns Scottish environment agency
Scotland’s industries and farmers must cut energy, greenhouse gas emissions and resource use as waste overtakes pollution as the major environmental threat, says head of regulator
Scotland’s environment agency has warned the country’s industries and farmers that their waste and inefficiency is now the biggest threat to the environment, overtaking pollution.
In a marked shift in strategy, the regulator’s chief executive, Terry A’Hearn, will urge businesses, farmers and manufacturers to adopt a “one planet prosperity” policy designed to cut their energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, waste and resource use.
Continue reading...Heathrow expansion: Planned price hikes will end budget flights not airport emissions | Leo Barasi
The only way the UK could have another runway without breaking climate change laws would be to increase prices
When the government’s Airports Commission endorsed the expansion of Heathrow last year it was challenged to explain how the UK could expand its airports without breaking climate change laws that limit greenhouse gas emissions.
It was a reasonable question. Like most countries, the UK has a tough emissions target for 2050 and, even though aviation has been given an easy ride compared with other industries, the sector is on course to exceed its generous limit. That’s the case even without adding a new runway. Increasing the number of flights from the UK would put the target further out of reach.
Continue reading...A brief history of being heard
It hasn’t always been easy for individuals or minority groups to speak up for their rights against governments or large corporations. But a series of past events have strived to ensure that all Australians’ voices are being heard.
Continue reading...A hidden meadow alive with flowers and grasshoppers
Marshwood Vale, Dorset The meadow is a waving, dancing, tawny-pink shimmer of grasshopper song
The landscape is dense, dark green and silent. Acres of monocrop ryegrass fields, grown for silage, lie empty, penned between tall hedges and thick, mostly neglected, stands of oak, ash, alder and hazel. The damp clay in the Vale nurtures straight-growing trees of monster size, once prized by the navy. Eager to keep the trees, 16th- and 17th-century farmers would coppice everything, even young oaks, to spoil them for shipbuilding. Today these old oaks can be identified by their strange shapes, branches growing out in sudden clumps from stunted trunks.
Along the line of the ploughed-out bridleway, the ground underfoot is hard and lumpy, the grass a scanty layer over stones and cracked clay. I miss the overgrown footpath through the hedge and have to go back. Pushing aside brambles and nettles, I climb the first wobbly stile and the blackthorn closes around and above me, making a low passageway. Three, four steps with twigs catching at my hair, over the second stile and out into a different environment.
Continue reading...Know your NEM: An average week in an oligopoly
Some facts on climate science for Malcolm Roberts
South Australia signalling the death of base-load generation
Bob Brown will “sit in the way” of bulldozers if Adani coal mine goes ahead
Victoria renewables auction scheme opens for consultation
Kangaroos add 200kW solar system at North Melbourne football HQ
Port Augusta 375MW solar and wind energy park approved for development
Pollutants react in sunshine to form more pollutants
There’s more to summer smog than traffic, heating and industry. Hydrocarbons are chemically reactive and can form thousands of other pollutants
The contribution of diesel exhaust to summer smog has been a topic of hot debate over the last six years.
Not all air pollution comes directly from sources such as traffic, heating and industry. Pollutants are also created from chemical reactions in the atmosphere. This is especially true in summer when stronger sunlight provides extra energy to drive the chemistry. During this July’s hot weather, air drifted over France and the UK, accumulating pollutants that then reacted in the sunshine. The resulting summertime smog reached six on the UK government’s ten point warning scale.
Continue reading...Death by dingo: outsourcing pest control raises uncomfortable questions
Female dingo in Oxley Wild Rivers NP, New South Wales Guy Ballard, CC BY-NCFrom cats and foxes to goats and cane toads, invasive animals are one of Australia’s biggest environmental problems. Over the past few weeks, one Queensland council has been trying a new approach to controlling goats on an offshore island: introducing dingoes from the mainland.
But since dingoes were moved to Pelorus Island to kill goats, passions have overflowed for and against.
Queensland RSPCA chief executive Mark Townend was notable among the opposition. He stressed that his organisation is not against feral animal control, but opposes the “very cruel method” of using dingoes to achieve it.
Some people have also strongly objected to the implantation of poison capsules, containing sodium fluroacetate, into the Pelorus Island dingoes. This is intended to kill them after they have killed the goats.
In a rapidly changing world, people are trying new ways to save wildlife and help the environment. These strategies are forcing us to ask new, and sometimes difficult, ethical questions.
Changing worldHumans have created a global patchwork of degraded environments. Australia has the world’s worst mammal extinction record, as well as booming populations of invasive herbivores and ongoing problems with native habitat loss.
When it comes to managing invasive animals, Australians have often been quick to use lethal “pest” control. Methods include poisoning, trapping and shooting for livestock and wildlife protection, in attempts to reduce populations until impacts reach acceptable levels.
This approach does not sit well with many Australians and it has become common to see vocal opposition to wildlife culling programs that are perceived as indiscriminate, unnecessary or unacceptably cruel.
At the same time, there is increasing support for reintroducing native predators to help fix environmental problems.
Some experts in Australia have suggested that Australia should use dingoes to control invasive herbivores, red foxes and feral cats, following the example of our North American counterparts.
Some call it “rewilding”. Others simply see it as biological control. Regardless, a range of private and public land managers believe that dingoes should be Australia’s primary agents of ecosystem restoration.
Putting aside the debate about the likely success of such schemes, the issue of public acceptance remains. Proponents claim that using dingoes for environmental benefit is both “virtuous” and “free”. But the objections to the use of dingoes for feral goat control shows that there is still widespread dissatisfaction with getting dingoes to do our dirty work.
The ethics of killingEvery control technique has a welfare impact on wildlife, causing some pain and suffering.
We can measure objectively how well a technique works, but assessments of humaneness are always subjective. When people choose lethal control, we condemn animals to death.
Although it has been marketed as “compassionate conservation”, using dingoes for pest control means that other animals will be hunted, maimed and killed. This applies to the animals we want removed, such as goats, as well as to other wildlife that shares the habitat.
The future of using dingoes and other predators as pest controllers hinges on whether or not the public finds it acceptable. Do people draw a line between “natural” ways of killing invasive animals (with dingoes), and more artificial means (such as poison)?
We know, for instance, that dingo attacks can be extremely distressing for livestock producers.
Queensland RSPCA’s opposition to the Pelorus Island trial doesn’t mean an end to rewilding, but it is significant. It reminds us that welfare is an important issue for invasive animal control, regardless of whether humans or animals are doing the killing.
Some people find the notion of dingo-based pest control acceptable, even appealing, but others do not. Just as society expects that we carefully assess the use of poisons, traps or bullets, so too we should consider the welfare impacts of outsourcing death to dingoes and making them our tools for ecosystem management.
Guy Ballard is Project Leader for the Wild Canids in Agri-Ecosystems project, funded by the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre.
Peter Fleming receives funding from Australian and NSW Governments, and the Invasive Animals CRC. He is not affiliated with any political or industry organisation or think tank.
Without action, Asia-Pacific ecosystems could lose a third of their value by 2050
Ecosystem services – the natural processes that allow Earth to sustain life and provide us with everything we have and see – are facing an uncertain future.
Between 1997 and 2011, the global value of ecosystem services declined by up to US$20 trillion per year as a result of changing land use. To put that in context, the world’s entire GDP is currently just under US$74 trillion.
Our research shows that, in the Asia-Pacific region, this downward trend is likely to continue unless there are significant policy changes. By 2050, we predict that ecosystem service values could drop by 34% from their 2011 base value of US$13 trillion.
But, more optimistically, we also forecast that ecosystems could grow in value by 24% by mid-century, if policies are put in place to safeguard these crucial environmental values.
An Asian century (of ecosystems)The Asia-Pacific region has historically followed the global trend in ecosystem depletion. But the future doesn’t have to be like the past. The decisions we make as a society will determine what our world will look like in that future.
With that in mind, our research focused on a range of land-use scenarios to try to forecast the consequences of various social, environmental and economic policies.
We used these scenarios to derive estimates of land-use change (urban, cropland, forest, grassland, wetland, desert), population, GDP and other variables such as inequality up to the year 2050. Changes in total value of ecosystem services in these scenarios were estimated to be due to two factors: the change in area covered by each ecosystem type; and the change in the “unit value” – the total value of all the marketed and non-marketed ecosystem services, per area, per year of each ecosystem type due to degradation or restoration.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Afghanistan shows the greatest potential losses and gains, as do other countries that are more susceptible to desertification. At the same time, these countries also have the greatest potential for reversing land degradation.
On the other hand, in this region, countries like Japan and New Zealand have the least potential for fluctuations in their ecosystem service values. This is because they are already highly developed and potentially have more stable climates.
Australia’s prospectsAustralia, second only to China in ecosystem services value, also shows an extensive range of values among our four scenarios. Starting with a terrestrial ecosystem services value of US$3.4 trillion per year in 2011 (roughly three times Australia’s GDP that year), we forecast that by 2050 ecosystem services could grow in value by as much as 21%, or decrease by up to 29%.
This translates to either a gain of US$700 billion per year or a loss of US$980 billion per year – a figure that’s not far short of Australia’s current annual GDP.
The scenarios used incorporate a range of world views and policies, and the impacts of these on the entire, integrated system, including population, energy use, equity, environmental change, climate change and more. Our research features a country-by-country breakdown of the outcomes of each scenario, although it is impossible to separate out the impact of individual policies, especially given the differences in each country.
The consequences and solutionsThe loss of ecosystem services will be felt most strongly by the poorest in any society, as they depend most directly on ecosystem services. They are the first to feel the effects when those services begin to disappear, and the least able to replace or ameliorate the loss. Increasing ecosystem services, on the other hand, would increase sustainable human well-being.
Around the world, the focus on ecosystem services has been growing quickly. Recent major policy reforms in this direction include a White House memo directing US federal agencies to incorporate ecosystem services into their planning, investment and regulations.
Other countries have also begun to incorporate ecosystem services in their policies. The European Union has mandated all member countries to produce national ecosystem service assessments, for use in policy and decision-making.
At the international level, the United Nations has set up an Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, analogous in structure and function to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The international Ecosystem Services Partnership has also been established to co-ordinate and facilitate the exchange of information and expertise across the world.
We have taken ecosystem services for granted for far too long. The UN Sustainable Development Goals, adopted last year by all UN countries, include specific calls to promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, to halt and reverse land degradation, to ensure clean water and food security, as well as to safeguard life both on land and in the oceans.
If we are taking these goals seriously, we need to put natural capital and ecosystem services “on the books” as a major contributor to sustainable well-being.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
Roadside flowers hit hard by council cuts | Letters
As Patrick Barkham says (Postcards from the hedge, 2 August) austerity is responsible for wild roadsides. But this is only partly so. Plantlife has for years campaigned for roadside verges to be left uncut until flowers have dropped their seeds, which can be as late as August or September. One cut can be ideal, with the proviso that visibility is maintained for road users. Dorset county council is following such guidelines and is experimenting with stripping topsoil to reduce fertility and introducing yellow rattle to inhibit vigorous grass growth. It is hoped that other local authorities will introduce such measures into their roadside maintenance schedules to help wildflowers that have been pushed from farmlands to the margins.
Paul Walker
Buxton, Derbyshire
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Continue reading...Chinese firm with military ties invited to bid for role in UK's nuclear future
China National Nuclear Corporation on government list of preferred bidders for development funding for next-generation modular reactors
A controversial Chinese company has been selected to bid for millions of pounds of public money in a UK government competition to develop mini nuclear power stations.
The China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) features twice in a government list of 33 projects and companies deemed eligible to compete for a share in up to £250m to develop so-called small modular reactors (SMR).
Continue reading...Great white shark feasts on minke whale carcass in Massachusetts – video
Researchers from the Centre for Coastal Studies (CCS) catch on camera a great white shark feasting on the carcass of a minke whale this week. The sighting is a sign of a resurgence of the species along the north-eastern US Atlantic coast, and led to three popular tourist beaches being temporarily closed
Continue reading...Trying to bribe public to accept fracking won't work, say campaigners
Greenpeace accuses Theresa May of wanting to ‘silence concerns with a wad of cash’ as Labour and Green party join attack
Environmental campaigners have accused the government of trying to bribe the public to accept fracking, after Theresa May unveiled plans to give households cash payments worth thousands of pounds if shale drilling occurs in their areas.
The prime minister personally intervened with proposals for households to get direct cash handouts in areas where fracking takes place, changing plans that would have given money to local communities.
Continue reading...Great white shark feast caught on film points to population rebound in US
A resurgence of gray seals, a favorite food, has been credited for the shark’s comeback on the Atlantic coast – but sighting has led to beach closures
Researchers in Massachusetts this week captured footage of a great white shark feasting on a minke whale carcass, off the coast of Cape Cod. The sighting led to the temporary and precautionary closure of three popular tourist beaches.
Related: Monster shark fishing tournaments face growing pressure to reform
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