On Thursday 9th June a group of WCMN members left Jacka Park, Wedderburn, in a mini bus to arrive in time for the annual all day Biodiversity conference at Ballarat.
Dr John Williams (advisor to NSW government) and Professor Peter Gell presented a rather depressing picture of the Murray Darling System. A key point was that the flood plains which were a key part of the system in Pre European Australia are no longer sustaining the system. They suggested that the original ecology may be irreversibly changed as the aquatic plants are now adapted to turbid water. However pre European aquatic plant structure still survives in the headwaters and with intensive management of the middle and lower watercourses over many years it may be possible to flip the hysteresis.
The resilience of ecosystems was a recurring theme of many of the presentations/studies given during the day and was elaborated in the Question and Answer forum. It was in this forum that the interface between scientists and public policy was discussed. Professor Ian Lunt made the point that Ecology departments in Australian (Victorian) universities lack funding and that governments won’t act unless confronted by overwhelming expert advice from scientists. Community lobbyists also need to have input and several Landcare group members spoke passionately about the need for more government action.
Dr Paul Boon gave a summary of his group’s recently completed 3 year study, which includes a fine-scale mapping (1:10000) inventory of the current distribution of species within the saltmarsh, mangroves and estuarine wetlands in Victoria. He also made the point that his study was over budget and there was no part of the original budget to communicate the content of this report to the general public.
Probably one of the main messages I took away from this conference was that in order to effectively manage the environment we need far more comprehensive longitudinal monitoring of the populations, without disturbance of species involved, so that we can more accurately model them.
Finally the ‘Precautionary Principle’ should guide public policy. That is where knowledge of the effects of land management is incomplete then err on the side of caution.
That is to say that if a population is diminishing and its interactions with the rest of the ecology is largely unknown then it is wiser to act to prevent extinction than to allow extinction to happen and then observe the effect on the rest of the ecology.
At the end of the day we were exhausted but very enlightened from the intensity of the information presented.
Barrie Taylor
No comments:
Post a Comment