Latest news with #ClearAirAustralia
The Guardian
08-04-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Massive swarms of bogong moths once resembled rain clouds – then their numbers crashed to earth
The bogong moth was once so abundant it was mistaken for weather. During Sydney's Olympic Games in 2000, a swarm of bogong moths attracted by stadium lights was so huge that meteorologists mistook it for a rain cloud. But the species known as 'deberra' in Taungurung language – an insect with deep cultural and ecological importance, but which is smaller and lighter than a paperclip – has not returned to those numbers since the population collapsed by up to 99.5% in the two years before 2019. In February the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, decided against listing the species as threatened under federal conservation laws, citing gaps in data and uncertainties about the moth's population due to limited monitoring and its migratory nature. The bogong moth has been on the global endangered list compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature since 2021. Prof Brendan Wintle, a lead councillor at the Biodiversity Council and a conservation ecologist at the University of Melbourne, calls Plibersek's decision 'very disappointing' given that most experts agree the species is in trouble. Every spring, bogong moths migrate hundreds of kilometres to escape the summer heat, travelling from low-lying breeding grounds in southern Queensland and western New South Wales and Victoria to mountainous caves and rocky crevices in the Australian Alps. 'They do that without ever having done that before,' Wintle says. 'It's quite unique for such a small animal to travel such a long distance.' Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as an email While bogong moth numbers have improved, they remain well below levels recorded before the crash. Wintle says the shift from 'hyper abundant' to scarce could have catastrophic consequences for alpine ecosystems. The species is under pressure from the climate crisis, he says, and from land clearing for farming. Bogong moths rely on cold temperatures at the top of mountains for a period of dormancy to complete their life cycle. But those places are rapidly warming. The moths are widely known and recognised but scientists say there are 'fundamental knowledge gaps' about where they breed, how much their population has fluctuated and the threats they face. They are calling for significant funding to plug knowledge gaps and to work out how to protect the species. The population decline has ecological and cultural implications. Bogong moths are a crucial food source for the mountain pygmy possum, a critically endangered species and Australia's only hibernating marsupial. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion Dr Marissa Parrott, a senior conservation biologist at Zoos Victoria, says the possums rely on the moths for important fats, proteins and nutrients after waking from five to seven months hibernating under snow. She says the species is critical to alpine ecosystems because its annual migration brings an influx of nutrients that nourished the soil, fungi, plants and animals. The bogong moth also is culturally significant to many First Nations people, including the Taungurung people of central Victoria. Matt Shanks, executive manager of bio-cultural landscapes at Taungurung Land & Waters Council, says the high-elevation sites where the moths spend the summer were also important ceremonial and meeting places for Taungurung and other First Nations people. Deberra feature in Indigenous stories stretching back tens of thousands of years. At the height of its population, the moths were recorded in every state and in the Australian Capital Territory. Wintle says this means saving the species will require nationwide coordination by governments, First Nations communities, land owners, researchers and citizen scientists – a project he says would be on a similar scale to that required to restore the Murray-Darling basin. A genetic analysis published in the journal Biological Conservation found high levels of genetic diversity in moth populations, suggesting they arrive in the Alps from a variety of breeding sites then mix randomly. Dr Collin Ahrens, a conservation geneticist and co-author of the paper, says it suggests site-specific conservation measures would be less useful than strategies that supported the species across its entire range, including work to understand and limit farming practices that could be contributing to its decline. Parrott says there is significant public enthusiasm for bogong moths, demonstrated by members of the public reporting nearly 2,000 moth sightings to a Zoos Victoria citizen science platform, Moth Tracker, between September and December. About half of the sightings have been verified as bogong moths. She says the data collected could improve understanding of the 'tiny but mighty' moths by tracking movements and population changes. Dr Kate Umbers, an associate professor in zoology at Western Sydney University and the managing director of Invertebrates Australia, says the moths' Australia-wide distribution is 'great, in a way, because it means everybody can be part of looking after it'. 'They have the potential to get agricultural and conservation scientists working together to solve these 'grand challenges' of biodiversity conservation, around how we manage land effectively, to both feed people and look after nature,' she says. But Umbers says it will be more challenging to fund and coordinate research and recovery efforts while the species is not recognised as threatened under federal law. In the short-term, she says the assessment process has identified areas in which more data is needed, and emphasised the need for the community to work together to protect the moth and its extraordinary migration.
The Guardian
07-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Earless dragons were presumed extinct in Australia – now Daisy and Kip have sniffed out 13 of them
Wildlife detection dogs successfully sniffed out 13 critically endangered earless dragons in previously unknown burrows in Melbourne's west, after a training program launched by Zoos Victoria in 2023. The Victorian grassland earless dragon – Australia's most imperilled reptile – had not been seen for 50 years and was thought extinct before its remarkable rediscovery on privately owned grassland in 2023. Given this 'second chance' at survival, Garry Peterson, the zoo's general manager of threatened species, said the organisation launched intensive training and search efforts the same year. 'We're really lucky to have a second opportunity with this species that was presumed extinct,' Peterson said. But it wasn't going to be easy to find them. It's thought there are probably fewer than 200 dragons left in the wild and the short, nuggetty and extremely rare dragons often hid inside wolf spider burrows or under rocks, making them challenging to find using traditional survey techniques. That's where the zoo's dogs came in. After a year of training, Daisy, a 6-year-old lagotto romagnolo and Kip, an 8-year-old kelpie cross, had sniffed out a total of 13 of the wild dragons by March this year, in return for treats, cuddles, ball games and praise. Daisy mostly works with wildlife detection dog officer Dr Nick Rutter, who said it was a 'career highlight' when she finally found a dragon on her own in May 2024, making him feel 'an overwhelming cascade of joy'. The palm-sized reptiles were 'bloody gorgeous', he said, with intricate patterns down their backs and striking colours during the breeding season. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as a free newsletter Daisy and Kip were chosen for their safe behaviour around small animals, and experience surveying for threatened species, like Baw Baw frogs and freshwater turtles. Each undertook about 80 days of scent-based training and survey work, initially sniffing out a small number of captive animals and graduating to opportunistic lessons in the field when biologists came across a wild dragon. When assessed, the dog-handler teams detected earless dragons with speed and accuracy, according to results published on the National Environmental Science Program's Resilient Landscapes hub. Emma Bennett, who has researched the effectiveness of detection dogs in searching for rare species, said dogs provided a scent-based search method that was complimentary to traditional surveys using visual cues. 'If something is hidden, or camouflaged, in a burrow, and just difficult to see, it might be easy to smell,' she said. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion Detection dogs were being successfully used in Australia, as well as globally, for finding threatened species, searching for invasive viruses and pathogens, and conducting bird and bat surveys at wind farms. Bennett, who has worked with detection dogs for 20 years and was not involved with the zoo project, said success relied on a strong partnership between human and hound. 'From the dog's perspective, the role of the human is to carry the ball around for when they do find something, and then to throw it,' Bennett said. Zoos Victoria also trained two other dogs, Sugar and Moss, to search for dragon scats – droppings roughly the size of corn kernels. While the dogs were effective at finding them, they were limited by how quickly scats were scavenged by ants and other invertebrates in the wild. Historical records show the Victorian grassland earless dragon was once recorded in St Kilda, Moonee Ponds and Sunbury, habitat that disappeared as housing and farmland expanded. Approximately 0.5% of suitable grassland habitat remains. Dr Jane Melville, senior curator of terrestrial vertebrates at Museums Victoria Research Institute – who named the Victorian grassland earless dragon as a distinct species in 2019 – said its rediscovery was a reminder that animals could still persist, even in places where they hadn't been seen in decades. 'They've shown amazing resilience,' she said. 'This little dragon has managed to hold on under really difficult circumstances.'
The Guardian
07-04-2025
- The Guardian
When sadness strikes I remember I'm not alone in loving the wild boundless beauty of the living world
At times my work takes me to the big city and the tall buildings where people with power make decisions that affect the rest of us. While I am there, crossing busy roads, wearing tidy clothes and carrying out my duty, I think of faraway places where life is getting on without me. Logrunners are turning leaf litter on the rainforest floor, albatross are cruising the wind beyond sight of the coast. Why does thinking about these creatures, who have no idea that I exist, bring me such comfort? Because they are free, because they are beautiful, and because of their utter indifference to me. I was in a pub in Newcastle a few weeks ago chatting to a stranger with a lot going on. He runs a business selling household appliances, employs dozens of people, is negotiating a divorce and paying a mortgage. He seemed sceptical about what people tell him about climate change. Given how much else he has to think about, that didn't surprise me. I asked him, if he was free next week to do anything he wanted, what would he do? He said he would bundle his kids into a van and drive to Seal Rocks to go camping. If you're not familiar with it, Seal Rocks is among the most beautiful places anywhere on the New South Wales coast. I'd love to be there next week myself. People seek and find freedom in wild places. There is toil in the rest of the natural world and there are dependants to care for, as there are in civilisation, but there is also a sense of boundlessness. This feeling catches me up and I get carried away. I want to cruise in the great ocean currents like a tuna. I want to gather grass and spider silk and nest in the shrubs with the wrens. I suspect the tug of freedom is what takes some people out on hunting trips, and some to earn their living as jackaroos or prawners. Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as an email Then there is the beauty. Survival is necessary but being gorgeous, creative and excessive has played as important a role in evolution as survival skills. This has filled the world with the resplendent detail of iridescent insects, curly liverworts, currawong song and the synchronised courtship flight-dance of terns. And it is not just living creatures making this beauty. Rays of sunlight bend through a running creek and make bright moving patterns of line and form on its bedrock. All beings have the urge to expression, even including non-living beings: rivers have it, waves have it, the wind. The wind heaps sand in rhythmic curls in the desert. The freedom and beauty of nature guide my sense of right and wrong. If I am to be free, I must care for the freedom of other earthlings. Beauty is the signal to me that this is true. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion When self-consciousness traps me in its hall of mirrors, the outside world brings the relief of being unimportant. A friend and I once sat by a creek in a rainforest. A rose robin flew down to drink beside us, unaware we were there. The marvellous world is turning without me and my own life is as dear, marvellous, fleeting and irrelevant as a rose robin's. What lightness! People talk about cosmic vertigo but how about the giddiness of knowing that the ancestors of the lyrebird you're listening to have been living in the forests of this continent for 15m years, since there were still trees in Antarctica? We're living in a thin film of biosphere that is creating its own atmosphere, recycling its own wastes, cleaning its own water, producing and metabolising in complex self-organising systems that we are too small and silly to understand. When we talk about 'protecting nature' it makes sense at a certain scale but it is quaintly hubristic. Nature is not all lovely creatures and majestic landscapes. It is mutating viruses, poleward-creeping cyclones and vengeful orcas. Just who needs looking after from whom? Now that greenhouse pollution and the global environmental cataclysms of the last hundred years have broken long-familiar patterns of living within the biosphere, nature will reclaim its place as a terrifying quasi-divine force that cannot be mastered. This, too, is strangely comforting. I often feel overwhelmed with sadness to be living in a culture that doesn't seem to value all of this but I know that I am not alone in loving the living world. The Biodiversity Council of Australia takes the trouble to ask people how they feel about nature, why and how it is important to them. The overwhelming majority of people feel as I do: that they are part of nature (69%); that being in nature helps them deal with everyday stress (79%); that it is important to them to know that nature is being looked after (88%). The vast majority want more to be done to protect it (96%). The way Australian politics treats 'the environment' – either as a decorative irrelevance or as an insidious threat to our prosperity – doesn't reflect the way the people feel about it. Love and affinity for nature cuts across political, social and economic divisions. Of course, if you ask someone to choose between their own livelihood and the livelihood of a greater glider or a Maugean skate, they're likely to choose their own – even more so for the non-specific thing they call 'net zero'. But why should anyone be asked to make that kind of awful choice? Nature shows me that we don't have to choose between beauty and freedom on the one hand, and good living on the other. Australians' desire to be part of and safeguard the living world is a good start but we're going to lose so much of it unless we take some responsibility for what we're doing. Georgina Woods is a poet, environmentalist and head of research and investigations at Lock the Gate
The Guardian
30-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Sign up for the Clear Air Australia email newsletter with Adam Morton
Sign up for the Clear Air Australia email newsletter with Adam Morton Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy . We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
