Blue Tongue

This lizard is well known I think

To me and also you

His gaping mouth is vivid pink
His tongue a brilliant blue

He is a true blue Aussie
Despite his All Blacks tongue
Beautiful and glossy
As he lies there in the sun

He slowly and with quiet dispatch
Will eat the grubs and snails
That infest your vegie patch
When pesticides all fail

But being useful and iconic
Is no defence to cats
Nor to careless drivers
Who kill them with a splat

The Blue Tongue is a national icon. It is harmless and inoffensive and probably our best known and most loved lizard. For most of the year this reclusive and well camouflaged creature remains well hidden but in spring they seem to be everywhere as they emerge from their winter dormancy to feed and mate. This is also the time they are at their most vulnerable as they get squashed on the roads by inattentive drivers and consumed by the dozen by domestic cats and dogs. William Dampier may have considered them foul to the point of being inedible when he first dissected one in 1699 but the average cat does not share this opinion. A Blue Tongue is a slow moving and defenceless creature relying on bluff and camouflage for its survival. A gaping pink mouth and vivid blue tongue are not much defence against a cat.

Blue Tongues are very useful in the garden where they happily consume garden pests such as slaters, grubs and snails. They will also unfortunately consume snail pellets with fatal consequences so think carefully before you are too liberal with the snail pellets.

We have many kinds of Blue Tongues in Australia including rough scaled and stumpy tailed “Shingle-backs" and the sleek and glossy classic Blue-Tongued Skinks but they have many things in common as well as their blue tongues. They mate for life and have about 25 young each season which unlike most lizards are born live rather than as eggs. They also live for decades. So look after these special creatures by providing them with a lizard friendly environment with plenty of hiding places, logs to sun themselves on and of course a large variety of plant life which in turn will support many insects and other creatures. The Blue Tongue will eat them all as well as many of the plants. Did you know that the Blue Tongue is about 500 times more resistant to 1080 poison than a fox or a cat due to its high natural concentration in Western Australian plants? And of course do what you can to protect them from cats and dogs although with cats this is very difficult. You will in turn be rewarded by the sight of a garden full of these gentle, beautiful and interesting creatures who will work very hard and effectively at protecting your vegetables and prized flowers from pests.

The Red Weed From Mars

In its native southern Africa
It is beautiful and rare
But a curse in poor Australia
That fills us with despair

Escaping from a garden
So English and so neat
It marched across the country
Leaving wasteland at its feet

Where once was biodiversity
A monoculture stands
Sickly pink and hideous
And a blight upon the land

Gladioli and Watsonia
And sweet Salvation Jane
Brought here in ignorance
And causing untold pain


There is an old maths question that is great for kids. If a waterlily doubles each day and takes 29 days to cover half a pond, how long will it take to cover the whole pond? The answer of course is 30 days and therein lies the problem with environmental weeds. Their spread is initially slow and insidious and we hardly notice them until one day we look at on a sea of sick Pink Gladioli and wonder where it came from. By then of course it is too late to do much about it.

We have few weeds on our property but Pink Gladioli are trying hard to get a foothold. At this stage they are mainly confined to the firebreaks and in low numbers, or so we thought until we went around pulling them out in their hundreds yesterday. Often the bulbs break off so it will be the work of some years to rid the place of this curse but at least the flower heads with their thousands upon thousands of papery wind-borne seeds are gone.

Gladioli are a curse but not the worst one by far. Thickets of Watsonia and Arum Lilly choking our waterways and the purple fields of Salvation Jane now more aptly namely Paterson’s Curse are far worse, at least for now, but the pretty aromatic Pink Glady’s are bad enough. They are outcompeting the magnificent Red and Green Kangaroo Paw, Blue Leschenaultia and thousands of other sand plain species in Western Australia’s biodiversity hot spot and doing untold damage.

And the key question is why? Just because some settler homesick for merry England and oblivious and dismissive to the native beauty in abundance around them wanted something pretty to look at. And inevitably they escaped from the gardens and with no natural controls have wreaked havoc. But the saddest thing of all is that it is still happening. We have learned little! There is growing awareness about potential environmental weeds but gardens and nurseries throughout the country continue to propagate a huge variety of plants from all corners of the globe. Our next major invasive weed, and possibly our next 10 are likely already to be growing in someone’s garden.

The seeds of life

The salt lake harsh and lifeless
Glitters white hot in the sun
A wasteland free of life stress
Until the day is done


But hidden in the salt crust
Waiting for a storm
Are tiny seeds of life dust
That one day will be born

And finally there comes a time
A day of salt lake dreaming
When tiny shrimp of brine
Fill the flooded lake all teeming

The water birds are gobbling
And shrieking while they feed
And over partners squabbling
As they seek a mate to breed

When you look at an apparently lifeless salt lake glittering in the harsh summer sun under a cloudless sun bleached sky it is difficult to envisage an environment less amenable to life. And yet there, embedded in the salt crust, are tiny almost invisible brine shrimp eggs or cysts waiting for the rain. These small brown cysts measuring about 200 microns in diameter are almost fully dehydrated and will remain viable for decades. There they lie, dormant in suspended animation until the day it rains. When the rains come and the salt crust dissolves tiny microalgae living in the salt and the underlying mud of the salt lake begin to reproduce rapidly turning the brine into a green organic soup. The brine shrimp cysts draw in water through their permeable shells and when fully hydrated begin to hatch. Within 24 hours the newly hatched brine shrimp begin to feed on the green soup and grow rapidly. They then begin to reproduce and the salt lake becomes thick with brine shrimp. And not just brine shrimp. The cysts of many other species of small molluscs and crustacea that were also dormant in the salt quickly join the party. In barely no time, the previously lifeless salt lake is a seething sea of life. And then the birds arrive in their countless thousands to feast on the sea of plenty and to breed. Ducks and pelicans are joined by migratory wading birds from as far away as Siberia in a magnificent spectacle of abundant life. And then when the party is over and the lake dries out the seeds of life again remain dormant in the salt crust until the next rain.

It is easy to overlook the immense ecological importance of salt lakes to bird life in particular and in their own right.

Tears of Salt

Blurred skeleton trees
Ring the salt lake all shimmering
Shades of life memories
Through the long summer simmering

Gone now the sweet water
And green leafiness
A lamb to the slaughter
The price of progress

Uncontrolled clearing
For sheep and for wheat
Replace kangaroo spearing
And wild bush treats

Wounded land crying
In great tears of salt
Wounded land dying
From farming assault

How quickly things change! In less than 100 years Lake Ninan has transformed from a sweet lake with water fresh enough for steam train boilers into a dazzling white salt lake. The lake was the water supply for Wongan Hills as recently as the 1930’s. Today, the skeletons of ancient trees killed by rising salt levels ring the lake and shimmer eerily in the heat haze reflecting off the salt. A stark testament to the consequences of over-clearing!

The matted shallow roots of the native vegetation once inhibited rain-water infiltration into the soil and ensured that fresh rain water flowed into streams and river systems and that water tables remained low. When this vegetation was removed for broad acre wheat and sheep farming, rates of infiltration increased greatly. This caused saline ground-water to rise to the surface and salt to concentrate in the surface soil. Rain-fall run-off into streams became increasingly saline and large tracts of previously arable land became salt-affected. In the case of Lake Ninan the now salty Mortlock River delivered millions of tonnes of salt into the once fresh lake. Dry land salinity is a major problem for both agriculture and biodiversity across Western Australia’s wheat belt which is one of the world’s biodiversity “hot spots.”

One solution is to return native vegetation to over-cleared farm-land but this is not easy in soil that is now salt affected and can no longer support the growth of salt sensitive plant species. Another option is to physically lower water tables using bore drains carved into the hillsides. Both strategies are now being applied with some effect across Western Australia’s wheat belt. And if things weren’t difficult enough already there is the added problem of climate change and a significantly drier climate to contend with.

Handfish

There’s a funny looking fish
In old Van Diemen’s Land
That walks about on fins
That look a lot like hands

He doesn’t like new neighbours
From far off tropic seas
Eating all his food
In the estuaries

And lately he’s been finding
That it’s getting very hot
And the Kelp beds are declining
And he’s in a nasty spot

It really is unpleasant
He would like to up and go,
If there was a place to go to
And he didn’t walk so slow

Tasmania’s marvellous Handfish are in trouble. All of the many species of Handfish are finding it difficult to adapt to the rapidly warming waters around Tasmania and the Spotted Handfish is now endangered. But what options are there for an estuarine species adapted more for walking than swimming? Unlike the warm-water fish invading in their droves from the tropical north, swimming to a new place is not an option for the Handfish. And where would it go in any case? The rapid warming of the waters around Tasmania is driving major ecological change with kelp beds vanishing and a dramatic shift to warmer water species. It doesn’t bode well for Tasmania’s aquaculture industry and particularly the culture of Atlantic Salmon which likes cold water. And if rising sea temperatures were not bad enough there is the hideous Japanese Seastar to contend with. This invasive species was introduced to Tasmania in ballast water and has infested the Derwent River Estuary home of the Spotted Handfish in their countless millions eating their food and their eggs. But what can be done? Getting rid of the Japanese Seastar will help and the CSIRO is working on this but the underlying problem of Climate Change appears unresolvable. I have no doubt that when the situation reaches crisis point in the terrestrial world there will be concerted global action to tackle climate change. The impact of climate change in the marine world is, however, much more rapid and profound than in the terrestrial world. By the time we get around to doing something about climate change it will be far too late for the Handfish and many other marine species.

You won’t find climate change sceptics among marine biologists. They see the consequences first hand and know it is real. The problem with climate change sceptics as stated by Gordon Livingstone in his book Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart , “ It is difficult to remove by logic an idea not placed there by logic in the first place.”

Helping Mother Earth

We grow fat with our technology and despoil
And neglect our mother earth
Who has sustained us since our birth
With natures fruits now left to spoil
As we pollute the air and soil
And laugh at warnings with great mirth
Until we finally face her wrath
And die or be condemned to toil

For despite our arrogance and pride
Each of is natures child
There is nowhere we can hide
We need the earth and nature wild
To be always at our side
And never get our mother riled

We are in a lot of trouble. Climate change, invasive species and habitat loss are wreaking havoc on our ecosystems and threatening the wonderful web of life on our precious planet. And yet it seems that the more comfortable we get the less we think about the consequences of our high population and high technology lifestyle on our fragile planet. It is not in our interest to think about it never lone actually trying to do something about it. We are daily beset by visions of massive floods, raging fires, intense cyclones and endless droughts exacerbated by climate change but for most of us it is not our problem. In the words of the great Moody Blues rock band “someone dropped a bomb today but it wasn’t on anyone I knew.”

The silence of the major parties on environmental issues in Australia’s current federal election campaign is deafening. The exception to this is the Murray Darling River system and only then because the situation has reached crisis point. Irrigators and their communities are competing with the need for environmental flows to sustain stressed ecosystems and the water supply of Adelaide. The lack of water has triggered a water war and both sides of politics are focused on treating the symptoms. They assume it will rain soon and all will be well. Neither side seems to recognise that the situation is a long term consequence of climate change and it's only going to get worse. Neither party has any interest in tackling climate change and the leader of opposition is a climate change denier.

But if the people in the Murray Darling catchment are doing it tough spare a thought for the 2,000 people living on the Carteret Islands, northeast of Bougainville, where their ancestors have lived for 3,000 years. Their islands are disappearing under the waves and they are having to evacuate. The rate of sea level rise in the area is increasing and has been about 8 mm in the past 7 years. I witnessed the same thing happening at my old home town of Madang on the north coast of New Guinea when I visited there last year.

It is not easy to address issues such as climate change but denying it is happening is not going to get us anywhere. The time is fast approaching when we are going to have to unite as a world society and make some unpalatable choices.

I would greatly appreciate any comments you may have on these articles and would be very happy to write on any environmental topic that is close to your heart. Next week I will tell you about the marvelous Handfish that is being threatened by the warming waters around Tasmania and the invasive Japanese Seastar.

Mopoke

Last night I heard a mopoke
Calling from a tree
With a voice of forest folk
And nature wild and free

Ninox calls to me at night
As my emotions swirl
Bringing tales of delight
From the wild world

Mopoke Mopoke
Is how he spoke


There are few things more delightful than the call of a mopoke from the darkness outside our bedroom window. Ninox novaeseelandiae or the Boobook Owl is a small hawk like owl whose distinctive “mo-poke” call was once familiar to people all over Australia but sadly heard less frequently now as much of its forest habitat has disappeared. It is the call of the wild in the voice of the mopoke that reminds us why we made the decision to move out of the city to our forest retreat and why, despite the cost of time and inconvenience of long drives to the city, it is all worthwhile. And sometimes, when we are really lucky, we hear the mournful shrieking cry of the mopokes larger cousin the Barking Owl. The hideous hair raising shriek of the Barking Owl inspired the early settlers to call them the “Murdering Woman Owl.” It must have been a terrifying sound for lone travelers camping in the forest.