CORRECTION: reposted as i mucked up the emphasis the first time ..
.. has anyone else noticed we don't see as many of these caring 'human' considerations on the board as we used to see .. whatever, the board is no doubt more one-dimensional than it used to be .. perhaps that's the way most here want it to be? .. almost science/political period? .. just an observation .. grin .. seriously, i'm only saying this here as i am not sure .. and i like to think of the board as a family, of sorts .. it used to have more of that feeling ..
Oh, the image at the top i can't reproduce .. it's here for any who would like to experience it in the now.
Australian farmers are fighting to stop an enormous coal mine from destroying their way of life and the habitat of an iconic animal that is disappearing as the climate grows hotter.
-- Nov 30, 2015 Todd Woody is TakePart's senior editor for environment and wildlife. --
GUNNEDAH, Australia—Scrambling up a rock-strewn hill, I crane my neck and scan a row of trees for koalas. Truth be told, I’ve never been all that good at spotting koalas in the wild. The cartoon-cute marsupial may be one of the world’s most recognizable animals, but try finding one silently snoozing 40 feet off the ground in a leafy eucalyptus tree among hundreds scattered across this former farm in the Liverpool Plains, a fertile agriculture district 250 miles northwest of Sydney. Koalas, which sleep up to 22 hours a day, don’t snore or do much of anything else that would attract attention. But on this sunny antipodean spring day in late September, even the koala experts from the University of Sydney I’m accompanying aren’t having much luck. After hours of searching, we’ve found only one in an area once crawling with koalas. That is deeply disconcerting to the scientists, who are studying the impact of climate change on an animal listed as one of the species most at risk from global warming .. http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/species_and_climate_change.pdf . A 2009 heat wave here wiped out an estimated 25 percent of what had been one of the healthiest populations of koalas in Australia.
They aren’t bouncing back.
“These heat waves are happening more and more with climate change,” Mathew Crowther, the wildlife ecologist who leads the research team, says as we take a break for lunch. “We have weeks of high temperatures we never had before, and koalas can’t get enough food and water and shelter. Koalas can cope with the odd hot day, but after that they’re found dead or dying at the base of trees.”
The 2009 heat wave followed a decade-long drought and helped trigger the most deadly wildfires in Australia’s recorded history, killing 173 people in the southern state of Victoria as temperatures soared to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Droughts and bushfires, as they’re called here, have been part of the Australian landscape for 65 million years. But in recent decades, the intensity and frequency of deadly conflagrations have grown with rising temperatures. The number of days of record heat a year, for instance, has doubled .. http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/uploads/00ca18a19ff194252940f7e3c58da254.pdf .. since 1960, according to government scientists, while annual rainfall has declined by as much as 20 percent in southern Australia. September ended as the third driest September .. https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/third-driest-september-on-record-in-australia-as-global-records-tumble-again .. ever, while October ranked as the hottest October .. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/aus/summary.shtml , with bushfires breaking out across the country during an ever-lengthening fire season. Wildfires have killed six people in the past week alone.
With only a few hours of search time left in the day, we split up to maximize our chances of a koala encounter. As I reach the end of a ridgeline, there’s no mistaking what I see dozing in a sprawling eucalyptus tree, its butt and belly wedged in the fork between two thick branches, its paws hugging the rough bark of the trunk like a pillow. After a few minutes, the koala rouses from its slumber and peers down at me, staring. I stare back. Most people will never look a wild polar bear in the eye, exchanging glances with a magnificent animal whose extinction is unfolding in real time. The koala is Australia’s polar bear, its tree an ice floe. The eucalyptus I’m standing under is the marsupial’s sole source of shelter, the elongated leaves its only food and water. When heat waves drain moisture from eucalyptus leaves, thirsty koalas have nowhere to run—and a species evolved to conserve energy can’t run for long. A growing pile of scientific studies .. http://www.researchgate.net/publication/52005008_Koalas_and_climate_change_a_case_study_on_the_Liverpool_Plains_north-west_NSW .. indicates that rising carbon dioxide levels will make the few species of eucalyptus leaves preferred by fussy koalas increasingly toxic and less nutritious. As temperatures continue to climb, koala populations in hotter, drier regions of Australia are crashing.
The koala ambles up a branch toward the top of the tree. Sitting on its haunches, the warm breeze ruffling its gray-brown fur, the animal holds on to a branch with one arm as pink-and-gray birds called galahs circle overhead. The idyll is interrupted by the blast of a horn. The koala slowly turns its head and gazes at an approaching train in the valley below, each of its dozens of cars piled high with jet-black coal. Traveling from a mine in the north, the train takes several minutes to pass on its way to a coastal port where its cargo will be loaded on ships bound for China and India.
Even as world leaders gather in Paris .. http://www.takepart.com/feature/2015/11/30/climate-change-curtain-raiser .. this week to negotiate a treaty to slash greenhouse gas emissions and the burning of fossil fuels accelerates the climate change battering Australia, the country’s coal-mining binge continues unabated. The world’s second-largest exporter of coal, Australia ranks as one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases per capita, thanks to its dependence on the black stuff to generate more than 70 percent of its electricity. One recently approved coal mine would generate more carbon dioxide than 52 nations .. http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/07/28/australia-just-approved-coal-mine-will-emit-more-greenhouse-gases-52-nations . That mine, along with six others in the works, would collectively become the world’s seventh-largest emitter of C02.
Coal is not just an existential threat to an iconic animal whose vulnerability to climate change foreshadows the fate of other species, scientists say. Fifteen miles away, the government has approved the construction of a 13.5-square-mile Chinese-owned coal mine .. http://www.shenhuawatermark.com/html/Watermark/WatermarkProject/TheProject/ .. to be built on the habitat of several hundred koalas and some of Australia’s richest farmland. The Shenhua mine has triggered a rebellion among residents, who fear the 1,000-foot-deep open pits will contaminate an aquifer that transformed the Liverpool Plains into Australia’s food bowl. Now, the farmers and ranchers of this bedrock conservative region are making common cause with environmentalists to stop the mine by challenging its impact on the koala. If they can save the koala, they may just save themselves.
Video: Farmers Take on Big Coal to Save Koalas—and Themselves
Plant a Tree, and They Will Come
When Crowther first came to the Liverpool Plains in 2008, it was not to study why the koalas were dying but rather why they were so healthy. Researchers have found that at least 50 percent of koalas in Australia suffer from chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease that leaves the animals blind and infertile. The Liverpool Plains kolas, on the other hand, appeared to be virtually chlamydia-free. Koala populations elsewhere in Australia were plummeting as suburban development fragmented their woodland habitat, leaving them vulnerable to predation by their new neighbors—pet dogs and automobiles. The country koala population, though, numbered in the thousands and was growing.
Then there was another mystery: Why were koalas even here, and where did they come from?
“There really weren’t many koalas recorded here before the 1980s, as there had been too much land clearing for agriculture over the past century,” says Crowther. So much that the soil began to turn saline. In an effort to keep the water table down and return nutrients to the soil, the state government began planting thousands of trees across the Liverpool Plains. Nutrients weren’t the only thing that returned.
“I reckon we have 100 koalas on our property,” says Doug Frend, 33, who raises cattle, barley, and sorghum on Dimberoy, his family’s 5,200-acre farm nestled between rolling hills on the Liverpool Plains south of the country town of Gunnedah. “My dad said they never really noticed them before the 1970s or ’80s.” You don’t have to wander too far to find them today. It’s a bright, sunny morning, and we’re standing near a row of eucalyptus trees towering over sheds and tractors. A gray-and-white koala perches on a branch high off the ground, its eyes closed tight. Within a few hundred feet of Frend’s tin-roofed farmhouse we find another five koalas, including a mother and baby.
Andrew Pursehouse and Cindy Pursehouse have been farming on the Liverpool Plains for three decades. “We’ve planted hundreds of trees over the years,” says Cindy Pursehouse as she and her husband give me a tour of Breeza Station, their 11,000-acre farm. Andrew Pursehouse gestures to a row of eucalyptus trees that stretches up a hill. “This is a tree line we planted about 20 years ago,” he says. “Usually when we plant tree lines, we make sure they’re a variety that that the koala likes to eat.”
The trees are apparently tasty. Behind us, a rather large koala watches languidly from a branch, only a few feet from a barbed wire fence that marks the boundary between Breeza Station and the Shenhua mine property. A hundred feet away, another koala shimmies down a tree, bounces like a bunny across the grass, and hops onto another eucalyptus.
Farmers Cindy Pursehouse and Andrew Pursehouse point to a koala on their property. (Photo: Elise Hassey)
“Werris Creek is a town on the other side of the gap in those hills,” Andrew Pursehouse says, pointing to the southeast. “Friends of ours have been there for three generations, and the second generation only saw koalas about 20 years ago. They had never been there before, and now they are. I don’t know if it’s climate change or what.”
The origin of the Liverpool Plains koala is unknown, but biologists say there is a possibility that some of the koalas are climate refugees from the Pilliga Forest .. http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/visit-a-park/parks/pilliga-national-park , a 1.2-million-acre woodland to the west. The forest was home to as many as 10,000 koalas in the early 1990s, according to government surveys. By 2011, detections of koalas in the Pilliga had plummeted 77 percent.
“Today there’s only about a couple of dozen left out of a population in excess of 5,000,” says David Paull, a wildlife ecologist who studied the Pilliga koalas when he worked for the state government. “They more or less disappeared over a 10-year period of above-average droughts.”
In a paper reporting the results of the 2011 survey, Paull linked the disappearance of the koalas from the Pilliga to climate change and to a series of heat waves. Meteorological data cited in the study shows that between 1984 and 1994, there were only three years when temperatures in the Pilliga exceeded 104 degrees Fahrenheit, for a total of 14 days of excessive heat during the entire decade. But between 2001 and 2011, the Pilliga experienced temperatures greater than 104 degrees every year, with 10 days of searing heat in 2002, twelve days in 2006, and seven days in 2009.
“Rising temperatures and heat stress during certain times seems to be what killed them,” says Crowther. “It’s hard to tell if the koalas were moving into the Liverpool Plains from there or if they hadn’t been discovered here before.”
If some koalas did somehow manage to survive the journey from the Pilliga, the Liverpool Plains may prove to be a short-lived haven.
Nowhere to Run
When researchers came back to the Liverpool Plains after two consecutive heat waves struck the region in late 2009, they found dead and dying koalas clinging to the base of trees, forced to the ground by dehydration and the merciless sun. At Dimberoy farm, Doug Frend’s father found a fifth of the koalas on the property dead on the ground after several 100-degree days. The researchers offered water to one hugging a tree by spraying it with some. “After the koala felt the water on its nose, it then sprinted to John Lemon, who was holding the spray-gun,” Crowther and his colleagues wrote in a study published in 2012. “It clasped his hand to stop John Lemon withdrawing the bottle to refill it. The koala climbed through the fence to pursue John Lemon in its quest for the water bottle. What is so remarkable is that this koala would, in any other circumstance, have quickly climbed the tree on our approach. It was manifestly desperate for water.”
The researchers observed that the animals’ fertility rates had dropped precipitously in the wake of the heat wave. A month before the first heat wave, 89 percent of female koalas caught in the Gunnedah area were found with joeys. A year later, only 40 percent of captured koalas were carrying young. Scientists also think the stress of the heat wave and drought may have triggered a chlamydia outbreak. According to the study, 43 percent of koalas captured tested positive for the disease after the heat waves, compared with just 8 percent in 2008.
In late September, I join the researchers when they return to the Liverpool Plains for the first time in four years for a weeklong excursion to capture koalas, test them for chlamydia, and outfit the animals with GPS collars to track their movements. After I spot the koala, I call out to the team, and 20 minutes later they return carrying long poles festooned with strips of pink-and-gray plastic. The chief koala wrangler, a ponytailed 33-year-old named George Madani, puts on a harness and helmet and starts rappelling up the tree. Madani, a self-described “field monkey” (albeit one with a master’s degree in wildlife management), holds a pole with a length of rope running up the side. As he gets closer to the koala, the animal is startled and moves farther out on a high limb, its weight bending the branch. “You bugger,” Madani curses.
Wildlife ecologist George Madani captures a koala that will be tested for disease and outfitted with a GPS tracking collar. (Photo: Elise Hassey)
He manages to lasso the koala with the rope while three people on the ground wave the plastic-topped poles over the animal as it struggles to free itself. Koalas don’t like anything above their heads, and it begins to back down the tree, alternating between guttural grunts and a high-pitched scream. When it reaches the trunk, veterinarian Mark Krockenberger grabs the koala and presses it to the ground, staying clear of its razor-sharp claws, and then pops it into a white canvas Australia Post mailbag.
Down the hill, Krockenberger weighs the koala while it’s still in the bag and then sedates the nearly 23-pound animal and places it on the tailgate of a Ford Ranger 4x4 pickup truck. The koala is male, about eight to 10 years old, judging from the wear on its teeth. And it’s been captured before: A scanner picks up a signal from a microchip that was implanted under the koala’s skin on Oct. 26, 2010. It’s put on some weight since then—a good sign—but its eyes are red. That’s not so good. “Looks like conjunctivitis, which is a sign of chlamydia,” says Krockenberger as an assistant shaves a patch of fur on one of the koala’s arms to draw blood for laboratory testing that will confirm the presence of the disease. “One of the big problems with chlamydia is that koalas are no longer successfully breeding, yet they’re taking up habitat.”
Still, Krockenberger, an assistant professor at the University of Sydney, deems the koala healthy enough to be outfitted with a GPS collar. Valentina Mella, a postdoctoral research associate at the university, straps the 3.5-ounce collar around the koala’s neck and tunes in its UHF frequency, which will be used to find the animal when the researchers return in six months to retrieve the device and download its data.
Crowther says the scientists hope to learn where and how far the animals travel each night from the trees they choose for shelter against the sun to those that offer the most nutritious koala chow. Those insights will allow wildlife officials to better plan where to create refuges for the climate-stressed animals and plant the tree species most likely to allow them to survive.
Earlier in the day the team caught a female, but Krockenberger ruled against collaring that one, which was showing definite signs of chlamydia. “She’s probably eight to 10 years old, which is oldish,” he says. “She’s also a bit dehydrated, so I’ve given her a bit of fluids. We will release her, but putting a collar on her would put more stress on her.”
A baby koala that was captured with its mother. (Photo: Elise Hassey)
Biologists believe most koalas carry chlamydia, but the disease remains dormant until it’s triggered by stress—from habitat destruction, harassment by dogs, or drought and heat waves.
Laboratory results will show 67 percent of the 24 adult koalas that are caught by week’s end testing positive for chlamydia, an eight-fold increase from 2008.
“They’re living on the edge, particularly out here,” Krockenberger says. “They might breed every two years, maybe annually, but I doubt it.”
At Breeza Station, the Pursehouses find koalas suffering from 100-degree temperatures during most summers. “Even last year I had one in my yard sitting on the ground by the tree,” says Cindy Pursehouse. “You just put some water before them, and they actually drink.”
A 2011 study by University of Queensland scientists used computer modeling to forecast that koalas will be forced to move south and east as temperatures rise. The Pursehouses say they’ve seen evidence that such a migration is under way. “We have been here 31 years, and the intriguing issue is that we do see koalas leaving the hill and moving south and east from where we are,” says Andrew Pursehouse. “That means crossing a treeless plain for many kilometers until they find the next hill and tree.”
“We regularly pick them up on the black soil, and there’s not a tree in sight,” he adds, pointing to an expanse of agricultural fields below his house. “We’ve had to rescue so many here over the years, particularly when it gets wet and they get bogged in the fields.”
Drought, heat waves, and wild swings in the weather also have taken a toll on the farmers. Doug Frend says his family sold off its breeding cows as the cost of feeding them during droughts became ruinous. “We know we’re going to get dry times, and droughts can go on for years,” he says. “We now buy in other people’s calves that they’ve bred.”
[ .. sorry can't reproduce the images here ..] Photographer Elise Hassey captures efforts made by farmers and scientists to save the koala on the Liverpool Plains.
Liverpool Plains rancher Nicky Chirlian notes that climate change has started to hit area cattle operations. “There’s been a huge amount of destocking,” she says. “We breed cattle, but we get skinny ones and fatten them. It’s amazing when you drive out west—where have the cattle gone? It’s been dry for so long.”
The drought in 2002–2003, for instance, hurt agricultural productivity, lowering Australia’s gross domestic product by 1 percent, according to a report released in October by the Climate Council, a nonprofit research institute. Between 1996 and 2010, the years of the so-called Millennium Drought in Australia, declines in agricultural productivity resulted in a 0.5 percent fall in GDP. Food prices, meanwhile, rose at twice the rate of the consumer price index.
Andrew Pursehouse, 57, recognizes the threat climate change poses to farmers, but he is focused on a more immediate danger—the huge coal mine to be built by China’s Shenhua Group about a mile from Breeza Station. The Liverpool Plains may boast Australia’s most productive farmland, thanks to an immense aquifer, but underneath that rich soil is an estimated 1.5 billion metric tons of coal. “My fear is that this mine is going to be put here and cut the natural migration of koalas clean off,” he says.
While we're talking, Crowther and his team are on the mine site looking for koalas. They will capture 12 adults and one joey.
“This hill where the mine is going to be is a source of water for the aquifer, as are all the hills in the district," says Andrew Pursehouse. "We’re terribly concerned there is going to be impacts to the underground water supply.”
He scoops up a handful of the rich black dirt that grows just about anything, from cotton and wheat to sunflowers and chickpeas, at Breeza Station. “Why would you want to damage the agricultural ability of this soil for a stinking dirty coal mine?” he asks.
Rural Rebellion
Why, indeed?
To a non-Australian, the idea of trading food for coal may seem, well, insane. After all, would you put a coal mine in the Napa Valley, the cradle of the $25 billion California wine industry .. https://www.wineinstitute.org/resources/pressroom/05192015 ? Australia has. In the Hunter Valley—the Napa Valley of New South Wales—there are 31 coal mines and five coal-fired power plants amid the vineyards.
Australia is a bit of an economic oddity—a wealthy, advanced developed nation with a developing world–like dependence on digging stuff out of the ground. Thanks to China’s voracious appetite, exports of coal, iron ore, wheat, and other commodities have fueled Australia’s 20-year economic boom. The country’s richest person, Gina Rinehart (net worth $11.7 billion, according to Forbes .. http://www.forbes.com/australia-billionaires/list/#tab:overall ), is not a tech mogul but a miner.
In short, no politician, right or left, has met a coal mine she or he didn’t like. It was a state Labor government that in 2008 granted China’s Shenhua Group a license to explore 75 square miles of the Liverpool Plains for coal in exchange for the equivalent of $215 million. Final approval for the mine came from the conservative government of Tony Abbott, the recently deposed prime minister and climate change skeptic who proclaimed at the opening of a coal mine .. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/04/coal-is-the-future-insists-tony-abbott-as-un-calls-for-action-on-climate-change .. last year that “coal is good for humanity, coal is good for prosperity, coal is an essential part of our economic future.”
A coal train passes through the Liverpool Plains. (Photo: Elise Hassey)
The conservative government’s pell-mell push to approve coal mines threatens to fracture a decades-old alliance between rural interests and urban conservatives. “Certainly, like all farmers here on the plain, we’re not against mining,” says Andrew Pursehouse. “But this one is just smack in the wrong spot.”
As if on cue, a coal train rumbles by in the distance, skirting fields planted with wheat and other crops. The Shenhua mine would operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and would require the construction of roads and a rail line to transport the coal.
We’re sitting on the Pursehouses’ patio overlooking a broad plain, drinking coffee and noshing on Nicky Chirlian’s homemade coffee cake. David Paull, the wildlife ecologist, has joined us. He resigned his position with the state government last year to protest what he characterizes as a rush to approve coal and natural gas projects regardless of the consequences for wildlife. He now advises Shenhua opponents in a legal challenge to the mine’s approval on the grounds that the government did not consider the impact on koalas of leveling 2,000 acres of their woodland habitat. (Shenhua somewhat incredulously has said it would encourage the animals to leave of their own volition or, barring that, relocate them.)
As Andrew Pursehouse calmly delves into the complex hydrology of the Liverpool Plains and the potential for the mine to contaminate the aquifer, there’s an undercurrent of rage at the table: fury at Shenhua and the government, dismay at neighbors who sold their farmland to the Chinese for millions of dollars, giving the miners access to water rights.
“If this mine goes ahead, I think we’ll see a revolution of people here,” he says. It’s not an idle threat. In 2008, Liverpool Plains farmers staged a 635-day blockade to prevent Australian mining giant BHP Billiton from exploring for coal on growers’ land. The company backed off.
“People are so angry they will do anything to stop this mine,” he adds, his voice growing steely. “Whatever it takes.”
The End of Coal
“Farmers are the biggest greenies in the country at the moment,” says Tim Flannery, one of Australia’s most prominent scientists and author of The Weather Makers .. http://www.groveatlantic.com/?title=The+Weather+Makers , a global best seller that, along with Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth .. http://www.takepart.com/an-inconvenient-truth , brought climate change to worldwide attention a decade ago. “They wouldn’t call themselves that, but that’s effectively what they are. They’re at the radical end of things.”
The Weather Makers laid out the coming climate catastrophe in chilling and persuasive scientific detail and warned of the consequences of inaction, including the melting of glaciers, the collapse of coral reefs, and prolonged droughts. “The delay of even a decade is far too much,” Flannery wrote in the concluding chapter, titled “Time’s Up.”
When I meet Flannery on the patio of his Melbourne home, it’s been nearly a decade of dithering by world leaders on climate change since the book’s publication. But I find him cautiously optimistic
“I think the days of exporting coal are finished for Australia,” says the soft-spoken Flannery as his two-year-old son plays with a toy train. “The cost of the highest-quality metallurgical coal you can buy in China is now less than that of potable water. You can’t afford to dig it out of the ground and ship it.”
Tim Flannery. (Photo: Andrew Francis Wallace/Getty Images)
“Coal is losing its social license to operate in Australia,” he adds. “They’re not generating the jobs anymore, but the pollution is still there, and people in regional Australia are keenly aware of that. Australia totally needs to leave its coal in the ground.”
Two of Australia’s biggest banks have ruled out financing a recently approved $16 billion mine, while the city council of Newcastle in New South Wales, home to the world’s biggest coal port, has voted to pull its investments from four Australian banks if they continue to finance fossil fuel projects.
Flannery led the Climate Commission, which the Australian government established to provide scientific advice on climate policy. When Abbott’s Liberal Party (which is conservative) came to power in 2013, it abolished the commission, along with a carbon tax that had been imposed by the outgoing Labor government. Flannery reconstituted the commission as the nonprofit Climate Council.
Former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull, a proponent of action on climate change, ousted Abbott in a party-room coup in September. He became the country’s fifth prime minister in five years, a turnover spawned in large part by disputes over climate policy.
For Flannery, action is being increasingly driven from the ground up as average Australians, like the Liverpool Plains farmers, experience the consequences of climate change in their backyards. Flannery, a mammalogist, points to his own backyard. “It was hot last summer, and we had a family of black rats living up in that tree there, and I watched them chewing through bamboo to get some water, and they eventually died,” he says.
Climate Refugees
Are Australia’s koalas fated to end up like rats in a bamboo cage? They have, after all, survived endless millennia of drought and bushfires. “Australia has always had droughts, but before we came around and messed up the landscape, koalas could find a refuge and hunker down until conditions improved,” says Christine Adams-Hosking, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Queensland, who studies the impact of climate change on koala habitat.
Adams-Hosking is lead author of the 2011 study that found that koala populations would contract toward the south and the east as temperatures continue to rise. “The rapidity of this climate change is one of the big issues for koalas—they’re just not a very mobile animal,” she says, noting females tend to stay within a small home range, while males typically don’t move more than 12 miles from where they’re born. “I don’t think most of them will be able to migrate. It’s happening now in real time that their populations are crashing.”
But not all of them. On Christmas Day in 2001, when I was living in Australia, we woke in our Sydney home by the beach to apocalyptic yellow clouds hovering over the ocean. Some 1.7 million acres of bushland surrounding the city were burning. At a family gathering later that day, ash fell into our gin and tonics as thick black smoke drifted across the horizon. On Sydney’s western edge, 60-foot walls of flames were incinerating forests, including a woodland home to 200 koalas near the suburb of Campbelltown that biologist Robert Close had been studying for a decade. When I joined him months later as he ventured into a moonscape of charred trees to monitor the survivors .. http://www.sfgate.com/green/article/Hazardous-habitat-Isolated-by-development-3188518.php , he was relieved to find Franceska, a 10-year-old female koala that he had been tracking for seven years, sitting in one of the few intact eucalyptus trees. Better yet, a three-month-old joey was sticking its head out of Franceska's pouch.
Veterinarians examine a koala. (Photo: Elise Hassey)
I contact Close to find out how the koalas are faring 14 years later, given a panoply of threats, including encroaching housing developments. He tells me the animals have not suffered long-term consequences from the fires. “Nor did we notice any other possible effects of climate change, except that koala numbers around Campbelltown are increasing,” he says. The housing developer has gone bankrupt, and the woodland is now part of a national park.
Australians may love their koalas and love putting them in the arms of visiting royalty, presidents, and prime ministers, but the federal government does not protect them as a threatened species, and state safeguards remain weak.
That underscores the importance of the work Crowther and his colleagues are doing to track the animals and determine which tree species are crucial for their survival. On the second day of the excursion, the team catches six koalas, including a joey, at Dimberoy farm. With the day drawing to a close, Doug Frend thinks more are to be found on the further reaches of his farm. I jump in a truck with him and his dachshund, and we head out past an electric cattle fence. “There,” he says, pointing to the silhouette of a koala sitting in the crook of a eucalyptus, its baby nestled against its chest.
In short order, three more koalas—one a joey—are spotted nearby. As the setting sun lights the golden hills afire, Madani races up trees to capture the animals before darkness falls. He wrestles a big and feisty koala into an Australia Post bag, and I carry the 22-pounds of squirming marsupial a few hundred yards to where Krockenberger is examining the captured koalas by flashlight while assistants hold an overflow of sedated animals on their laps.
“Imagine if the world had no more koalas,” Crowther says. “Imagine if Australia lost its koalas on our watch. It’s important to our culture; it’s important to our ecosystem. All other species have inherent rights to exist with us on our planet.”
[IMAGE: image can't copy] Join Climate Reality Project in demanding that world leaders sign a strong agreement at the Paris climate negotiations. Read More .. [hmm, there is a PETITION to sign or not here]
Melanie Leigh · Perth, Australia Solar energy is the fuel of the future. Australia has plenty of sunshine, and should not continue to mine coal : a non-renewable, dirty energy source. Groundwater contamination from mining is a real danger, especially in a dry country. The future for our children and grandchildren looks bleak indeed if political will remains weak and government does not put an end to the rapacious greed of mining giants. Like · Reply · 3 · Dec 5, 2015 2:30pm
Nicola Chirlian · Speech Language Pathologist at Nicola Chirlian Speech Pathology Services
Totally agree with you Melanie. Like · Reply · Dec 5, 2015 9:30pm
Global warming milestone about to be passed and there's no going back
Date May 10, 2016
Peter Hannam Environment Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald
EXCLUSIVE VIDEO 1:21 Major CO2 milestone reached Carbon dioxide continues to increase in the atmosphere with a major milestone of 400 parts per million of CO2 recorded in the Southern Hemisphere according CSIRO's Dr David Etheridge.
Within the next couple of weeks, a remote part of north-western Tasmania is likely to grab headlines around the world as a major climate change marker is passed.
The aptly named Cape Grim monitoring site jointly run by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology will witness the first baseline reading of 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, researchers predict.
Watching the world at it changes at Cape Grim. Photo: John Woudstra
"Once it's over [400 ppm], it won't go back," said Paul Fraser, dubbed by CSIRO as the Air Man of Cape Grim, and now a retired CSIRO fellow. "It could be within 10 days."
The most recent reading on May 6 was 399.9 ppm, according to readings compiled by the CSIRO team led by Paul Krummel that strip out influences from land, including cities such as Melbourne to the north. (See chart below, with the red line showing the baseline CO2.)
David Etheridge, from CSIRO's Oceans & Atmosphere division, at work in a research hut near the Antarctic base of Casey. Photo: Colin Cosier
Political heat
The approaching global CO2 threshold comes as climate change looks like becoming one of the key issues in Australia's election campaign.
The Turnbull government has made clear it will oppose Labor's proposals for an emissions trading scheme that will again put a price on carbon pollution.
The Cape Grim greenhouse gas station in Tasmania, run in partnership by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, tracks some of the cleanest air in the world.
New data out on Tuesday show that emissions from the country's main electricity grid covering the eastern states have risen 5.7 per cent - or 8.7 million tonnes - in the year to April compared with the final 12 months of the carbon tax that the Abbott government scrapped in July 2014, according to energy consultants Pitt & Sherry.
The share of coal in the National Electricity Market has risen to 76.2 per cent - its highest level since September 2012 - from 72.3 per cent during the period since June 2014, the consultants' latest Cedex report said.
Mark Butler, Labor's shadow environment minister, said the Cape Grim landmark reading was "deeply concerning".
"While the Coalition fights about whether or not the science of climate change is real, pollution is rising. And it's rising on their watch," Mr Butler said.
Greens deputy leader Larissa Waters said the Cape Grim result "should act as a global wake-up call and must shock both Australian big political parties out of their blind coal-obsession which is literally cooking our planet and our Great Barrier Reef".
"Our atmosphere cannot take any new coal mines – both the old parties must stop approving them and revoke their approval of the Adani coal mine [in Queensland] at both the state and federal level," Senator Waters said.
A spokesman for Environment Minister Greg Hunt defended the government's climate policies."There is now absolutely no doubt that we will beat our 2020 target" of cutting 2000-level emissions by 5 per cent by then, the spokesman said. "We are playing our part to tackle climate change and our 2030 target [of cutting 2000-level emissions about 19 per cent] is ambitious and significant," he said. "Labor has nothing more than a plan to bring back the carbon tax and hike electricity prices."
Rising 'pretty much all of the time'
Cape Grim's readings are significant because they capture the most accurate reading of the atmospheric conditions in the southern hemisphere and have records going back 40 years.
With less land in the south, there is also a much smaller fluctuation according to the seasonal cycle than in northern hemisphere sites. That's because the north has more trees and other vegetation, which take up carbon from the atmosphere in the spring and give it back in the autumn.
So while 400 ppm has been temporarily exceeded at the other two main global stations since 2013 - in Hawaii and Alaska - they have dropped back below that level once spring has arrived because of that greater seasonal variation.
David Etheridge, a CSIRO principal research scientist, said atmospheric CO2 levels had fluctuated around 280 ppm until humans' burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forests set in process rising levels of greenhouse gases almost without pause since about 1800.
"It's been upwards pretty much all of the time," Dr Etheridge told Fairfax Media. "This is a significant change, and it's the primary greenhouse gas which is leading to the warming of the atmosphere."
The following chart, compiled by CSIRO researchers using atmosphere and ice core readings, show how CO2 levels have risen over the past 2000 years.
While the 400 figure is in itself of no particular note, compared with 399 or 401, it was a marker likely to carry important symbolism. "People react to these things when they see thresholds crossed," Dr Etheridge said.
While the fraction may seem small, it is 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere. By comparison, a similar level of alcohol would be close to the legal driving limit in Australia.
"These things act at low concentrations," he said, noting that ozone-destroying chemicals at levels of parts per trillion were enough to damage that important component of the atmosphere.
CSIRO cuts
The impending 400 ppm reading at Cape Grim comes at an awkward timing for CSIRO, which is the midst of cutting 275 jobs, many of them in climate science.
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While CSIRO has not confirmed the number of researchers it will cut from the 30 or so involved in analysing CO2 levels in ice and the atmosphere, Fairfax Media understands about one-third will go.
"CSIRO is again producing world-leading climate science, and it's reprehensible that the Turnbull Government is allowing the slashing of CSIRO's capacity to ring the alarm bells the world needs to hear," Greens Senator Waters said.Fairfax Media sought comment from CSIRO on the size of the job cuts.
In justifying the cuts to climate modelling and monitoring programs, CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall said that as climate change had been proved, resources could be diverted to climate mitigations and adaptation.
But Dr Etheridge said monitoring would continue to be vital.
"It's like going on a diet and not measuring yourself," he said, noting the world's nations had committed to cut back emissions of greenhouse gases that are helping to drive up global temperatures.
Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the UK's University of Reading, has constructed the following animation showing how the world has warmed in the past 166 years.
Going negative
Dr Etheridge said that while a reduction in emissions could slow the increase of temperatures, it would likely take many years of net-negative emissions - effectively removing the gas from the atmosphere - to push CO2 levels back below 400 ppm.
"It would take a lot of emissions reductions - and probably negative emissions for some period, decades - before we see CO2 reduce in concentration," he said.
Research to be published soon by CSIRO has shown the ocean would act against any drop in atmospheric CO2.
The seas would likely give back some of the extra CO2 it has absorbed - as it did during the "Little Ice Age" during the middle ages - delaying any drop in levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, he said.
Dr Fraser, who helped set up the Tasmanian site in the 1970s, said CO2 levels were rising fast, at about 3 ppm a year. The precise timing of the 400-ppm mark at Cape Grim would probably take some time to confirm.
"On the day it happens, we won't recognise it," he said. "It will take a few weeks to verify."
The Cape Grim data show a steadier rise than at the Alaskan Alert Observatory site and Hawaii's Mauna Loa, as seen in the following chart:
'Cleanest in the world'
Sam Cleland, manager of Cape Grim, said the site was in "the teeth of the Roaring Forties", the band of powerful winds in latitudes of about 40 degrees south of the equator.
"Our job is to find the cleanest air in the world and measure the pollution in it," Mr Cleland said.
The baseline data draws on winds reaching Cape Grim from the south-west. "Three days ago, they were coming from an area not far off the Antarctic coast," he said.
A year ago, Cape Grim's CO2 readings were about 396.7 ppm, implying a jump of more than 3ppm since.
Part of that increase would have been influenced by the El Nino weather event in the Pacific. During such years, ocean take-up of both heat and CO2 from the atmosphere is reduced.
Since Cape Grim was set up in 1976, CO2 readings have increased from 330 ppm to the brink of 400 ppm.
That implies an average increase of less than 2 ppm per year during that period - but quickening in the more recent past towards 3 ppm or more.
"A Carbon Tax’s Ignoble End Why Tony Abbott Axed Australia’s Carbon Tax"
Dec 7 2016 at 11:00 PM Updated Dec 7 2016 at 11:25 PM
VIDEO - Carbon review divides government 1:17
by Phillip Coorey
The Turnbull government's decision to rule out a carbon scheme for the electricity sector rejects advice from its handpicked expert who will recommend an emissions intensity scheme as the most effective way to transition to a secure and lower-cost energy supply.
Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, who in October was put in charge of the review into Australia's National Energy Market, is scheduled to recommend such a scheme for the electricity sector in a preliminary report to the Prime Minister and premiers at Friday's Council of Australian Governments meeting in Canberra.
Sources familiar with the recommendation say Dr Finkel's committee, like other energy market experts, believes the scheme would reduce power prices and was the best way for Australia to move away from coal towards gas and renewable energy, while maintaining energy security and meeting the 2030 emissions reductions targets.
But 36 hours after Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg suggested such a scheme at least be looked at as part of the government's 2017 review of climate policy, a fierce backlash from government backbenchers led by Senator Cory Bernardi,
Chief Scientist Alan Finkel is in charge of the review into Australia's National Energy Market. Rohan Thomson
He was also hung out to dry by Mr Turnbull who on Wednesday morning was emphatic there would be no such scheme or any other type of carbon price and said it was for Mr Frydenberg to explain his comments.
Emboldened by his victory, Senator Bernardi then called for Australia to abandon altogether its Paris agreement pledge, made when Tony Abbott was prime minister, to reduce emissions by 26 per cent to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.
An emissions intensity scheme.. http://www.afr.com/news/politics/consider-an-ets-industry-tells-turnbull-government-20161205-gt44sf.html .. is not a carbon price or carbon tax in that it does not raise revenue by charging for emissions. Instead it would penalise generators who pollute above a baseline limit. Cleaner emitters who stayed below the baseline would not pay anything and would receive free credits which they could to trade to bigger polluters.
Safeguards mechanism
The policy is similar to the Coalition's current direct action policy that has a "safeguards mechanism" designed to penalise emitters for exceeding limits. Polluters are currently paid from the budget to reduce emissions but this is considered unsustainable beyond 2020.
It is understood the federal government already has a copy of the report from Australia's National Energy Market Commission which says such a scheme would reduce prices, but cabinet resolved against the scheme several weeks ago.
As energy experts warned the government was now limited to options that would make power more expensive and less reliable, industry was also alarmed by the lack of preparedness to at least discuss the option.
A spokeswoman for AGL said the energy sector needed "clear policy settings that are agreed by COAG and consistently implemented across states".
"An emissions intensity scheme is one cost-effective way to manage the energy transition but it cannot be achieved by this alone."
Tony Wood, energy expert from the Grattan Institute, said the backdown limited the government's ability to meet its 2030 targets.
"It's a somewhat ironic outcome because it could be we end up with a fourth-best policy and we end up with exactly the opposite of what those who are opposing the scheme would like to achieve – more uncertainty, and even higher prices, and that would seem to be a really crazy outcome," he said.
'More expensive'
The government's decision to rule out a carbon scheme for the electricity sector rejects advice from its handpicked expert. David Rowe
"Either the government puts a lot more money into the [direct action] emissions reduction fund … or they take the safeguard mechanism and rapidly reduce the baselines without having some sort of trading scheme which is a much more expensive and clunky way of doing it.
"Or they actually expand the Renewable Energy Target which gets them into the same sorts of problems they've criticised state governments for.
Danny Price of Frontier economics and who has long advocated a baseline scheme, said the scheme would actually reduce power prices while maintaining energy security.
"This shows a lack of spine. The policy vacuum that it leaves will be filled by policies that will do exactly what they are trying to avoid," he told Fairfax Media.
"The government is allegedly interested in lower prices and energy security. By doing this, it means they are the party of increasing electricity prices and reduced energy security."
On Monday, Mr Frydenberg released terms of reference for a review of climate policy for the decade beyond 2020.
It opened the door to the purchase of cheap international permits to help meet Australia's 2030 emissions reduction target but made no provision for an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax.
Credit scheme
But Mr Frydenberg did leave open the prospect of an emissions intensity scheme for the electricity industry which produces one-third of the nation's carbon emissions.
"We know that there's been a large number of bodies that have recommended an emissions intensity scheme, which is effectively a baseline and credit scheme. We'll look at that," he said in an interview.
Following the backlash and a cabinet meeting on Tuesday afternoon, Mr Frydenberg ruled out any prospect of such a scheme.
"The government will not introduce an emissions intensity scheme, which is a form of trading scheme that operates within the electricity generation sector," he said in a statement.
On Wednesday morning, Mr Turnbull said the terms of reference never opened the door to "a scheme of that kind" and it was up to Mr Frydenberg to explain his comments.
"We are committed to doing everything we can to put downward pressure, maintain downward pressure on electricity prices," he said.
"If you want to ask questions about what another minister said, you should address them to him."
He said federal Labor's plan for a 50 per cent renewable energy target would make power both more expensive and less reliable.
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Todd Woody is TakePart's senior editor for environment and wildlife. 
