The stuff of life

Place soil in pot
Then add seed
Add  light and water
Wait

Take tree from pot
Shake off soil
Weigh tree
Weigh soil

Invisible to visible
Air to wood
Light to dark
Death to life




Photosynthesis is the miracle of life. Light and air and water transforming to sugar and then to wood. Water molecules split by light release oxygen and hydrogen which combines with carbon dioxide to form sugar. Imagine a world where we could grow our own homes from Carbon dioxide. Just paint the ground with photosynthetic paint and wait for the house to grow. Wouldn’t that be miraculous and wonderful? Almost as marvellous as a forest! We do take a lot for granted and are often blind to the obvious.

When the experiment described in the poem was undertaken by early experimenters they found that the soil volume remained the same. They therefore concluded, almost rightly, that the tree that grew in the pot was somehow made of air. The carbon that ultimately formed the wood in fact came from carbon dioxide. Carbon, invisible and odourless in carbon dioxide gas, transformed to wood with the energy of light. Light trapped in darkness as the lifeless becomes living matter. And it can all be reversed.

When we burn fossil fuels we release the fossilised light energy trapped for eons, reversing photosynthesis and releasing carbon dioxide. And we burn so much so quickly that the world has no time to adjust. The solution to global warming and climate change is really quite simple. We must slow down the rate that we are releasing carbon dioxide and we must increase the rate it is absorbed. In other words we need to drive less and plant more trees. But we all have to do it. The problem is many of us don’t want to do it. We are addicted to energy and a soft life and rarely worry much about tomorrow or the fate of our children. We need an international carbon tax and we need to understand that sacrifice is necessary. But will a democratic society vote for hardship and sacrifice? Not likely, and definitely not when a sizable portion of a self-interested and gullible population has been persuaded to be sceptical by greedy and evil people! And so we continue to rapidly transform darkness to light as we rush headlong to the inevitable consequence of life to death.

Spot that cat

Spot that
Spot cat
That spot
Cat spot

That cat
Tree cat
That tree
Cat tree

There are many spotted cats in the Congo rainforest or at least cat like creatures. The spots break up their outline in the dappled light of the forest and assist with the camouflage necessary for a successful predator. The largest and best known is the leopard. This is a true feline and despite weighing up to 90 kg it climbs extremely well. They are incredibly powerful and can drag quite large antelopes up a tree where they can enjoy their meal in peace. Next step down are the civet cats in the Family Viverridae which is the same family as the Mongoose. These are superficially catlike and good climbers but they are not true felines. They weigh in at between 10 and 15 kg and have non-retractable claws , a pointed snout and dark eye patches giving them a racoon appearance. Civets make excellent pets and are both intelligent and affectionate. We recently released some orphaned civets from the Mefou Primate Centre in Mbalmayo in Cameroon back into the wild. And as you can see from the photo they did not appreciate their new freedom.

Civet cats are omnivorous and in Sumatra are famous for their role in creating the highly regarded and very expensive coffee called Kopi Luwak. Kopi Luwak is made from partially digested coffee beans salvaged from the dung of civet cats.

Kopi Luwak is expensive and rare

But just one thing you must beware

The digested beans for this caffeine hit

Are carefully sieved from civet something or other

The smallest of the spotted jungle cats are the Genets weighing in at between 1 and 2 kg. These are also viverrids and not felines. These have long banded tails which they use as a counterweight and are extremely agile as they hunt birds, reptiles and small mammals in the forest canopy.

Chuditch or Western Quoll

The whiskery, sleek and streamlined

Chuditch, is a marsupial that

Is often mistakenly felined
As the Western Native Cat

He is also called the Western Quoll

And with his spotted coat and nose of pink

He looks both cute and droll

But he may not be what you think

Like most ferocious carnivores

He can be very frightening

When razor teeth and tearing claws

Flash out like greasy lightning

I was horrified to see a dead Chuditch on Julimar Road last week. Julimar Road runs though the Julimar State Forest and is littered with corpses. Kangaroo’s, parrots, foxes, rabbits by the hundred, and the occasional echidna and Black Gloved Wallaby all turned into road-kill. But this was the first Chuditch I had seen. My heart sank as I saw the thick based tail and the distinctive spotted coat. But then I thought, perhaps this is an indication that the local population is increasing. Impossible to tell from a single animal but it is a comforting thought.

The Chuditch (Dasyurus geoffroii) is Western Australia’s largest marsupial predator and was officially Endangered (IUCN red list) in 1994. Active fox baiting has enabled it to recover somewhat but it is still classified as Near Threatened and its survival depends totally on ongoing active fox baiting. Its fragmented habitat through the wheat belt in particular is not helping because not all small pockets of remnant bush are fox baited and there are still local population declines.

We have a bush-block adjacent the Julimar Forest and occasionally capture images of the nocturnal Chuditch on a sensor camera. The bad news is that we also capture many fox images. We seem to have reached a balance with respect to fox control and need to urgently extend the baiting programme. The problem of course is extreme reluctance to extend baiting into farmland or near residential areas where there is a risk of family pets being baited. The consequence is huge fox populations in unbaited areas marauding into our National Parks and consuming our endangered wildlife. And the general level of community and political awareness about just how serious this problem is and the need for ongoing vigilance, is very low. The Western Shield fox baiting programmes is not receiving either the level of attention or funding that it needs.

Climate change denial

The climate is changing alas alas
And we are stuck in a deep morass
While politicians dull and crass
Argue the point about greenhouse gas

Some have knives at their backs,
Others ears full of wax
As they decry a carbon tax
And say go slow, just relax

How has this come to pass?
Can we break this sad impasse?
With sound debate turned to farce
While icecaps crack like broken glass

I was astonished to hear Liberal Senator Nick Minchin on yesterdays news state that global warming is a myth.

“Not only has there been no temperature increase since the record in 1999, it is now clear from satellite imagery that the earth is starting to cool.”

It is not surprising that a Liberal politician supporting his parties “anti carbon tax” stance would attempt to discredit the science but to hear someone lie so blatantly was breathtaking. And more astonishingly these kinds of outright lies are told daily with impunity by many otherwise respected and intelligent people. And they succeed in keeping the average citizen confused! This of course is the whole point! So where do people go for accurate information? The answer is to the source data. In this case, Senator Minchin has stated that the evidence for a cooling earth is from recent satellite data. So what does NASA say? The latest information on the NASA website (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/jan/HQ_11-014_Warmest_Year.html ) says:

Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The two years differed by less than 0.018 degrees Fahrenheit. The difference is smaller than the uncertainty in comparing the temperatures of recent years, putting them into a statistical tie. In the new analysis, the next warmest years are 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2009, which are statistically tied for third warmest year. The GISS records begin in 1880. "If the warming trend continues, as is expected, if greenhouse gases continue to increase, the 2010 record will not stand for long," said James Hansen, the director of GISS.

So there you have it. We know that politicians lie but usually it is just broken promises which may have been sincere at the time they were made. People should not be allowed to get away with the outright misrepresentation of science. This is not the time to be arguing about the science. The science was settled years ago. Now is the time for bipartisanship and international accord. We are in trouble and we need to do something about it. The debate should now be centred on alternatives for action and we need to work together.

Avon Descent

Descending down the slippery track
Dodging ruts and boulders
Careful not to get too close
To sheer drops on the shoulders

And in the valley far below
Gleaming like a jewell
The ancient home of catfish
The famous Cobbler’s Pool

But the pool is still and fishless
And ringed with dying trees
And the smell of rotting algae
Is fetid on the breeze

Few of the hundreds of kayakers participating in the Avon Descent in August each year would be aware of the poor health of the river. It is still spectacularly beautiful when it is swollen with winter rain and cascades through the magnificent Avon Valley. Few would realise as they pitch their tents at the Cobbler’s Pool camping ground that there are no longer any fish in the pool. The catfish that thrived in the pool for millions of years before the coming of the Aborigines and for 50,000 years since are long gone and the Avon is as dead as the Dodo.

I stand on the banks of Cobbler's Pool under a dying Flooded Gum and look wistfully at the stagnant green water scummed with blue-green algae. It is a hot summer’s day but you would have to be desperate to dive into that toxic brew. Can this be the same clean fresh pool teeming with catfish that sustained Aboriginal people for millennia? Is this the same pool that provided clean freshwater for the boilers of the steam engines as the steam trains made their way down the Avon last century? A more fundamental question is can we bring it back to life? Now that it has descended as far it can, can we help it to ascend? The answer to that one is possibly, but no time soon.

The problem with the Avon is dry-land salinity. The death of the Avon and many other wheat-belt rivers is a consequence of over-clearing for wheat farming. Excessive removal of native vegetation has increased rates of rainwater infiltration into the soil causing ground-water levels to rise and bringing salt to the surface. Much of this ends up in the river system. The once fresh Avon now has a salinity of about half seawater. The mussels, insect larvae, worms and crustaceans that once supported the food chain are gone along with the cobblers and the many other species of fish that once inhabited the river. The irony is that much of the excessive clearing that has killed the Avon has not occurred anywhere near the Avon. Once again it demonstrates the connectedness of things and the unpredictability of consequences.

Sanctuary

Our enemies besiege us
As aimlessly we roam
Wandering tired and hungry
Looking for a home

Once we could have travelled
To the valley nearby

But now that too has gone

We hold our heads and cry

Is there a place of shelter

Where we can carry on

And safely raise a family

In a place we call our own?

It is a terrible thing for an individual to be displaced with nowhere to go but for a species it is a tragedy. And it is happening everywhere. With relentless removal of habitat and hunting pressure it is now no longer possible for many displaced animals to find sanctuary in the untouched nearby forest.

When I was a child growing up in the mountains of Papua New Guinea Long Beaked Echidnas were common but they have now all but disappeared. The locals whilst acknowledging that they haven’t seen any for decades will invariably tell you that there are plenty in the next valley. And so it goes, valley by valley, with each group not particularly worried because there are plenty elsewhere. The trouble is elsewhere no longer exists.

It is very difficult to separate people from the forest that sustains their culture and livelihood. Much has been done in many parts of the world to develop sustainable forest use areas but there is also a place for true sanctuaries. Fully protected areas of critical habitat serving as sanctuaries for endangered wildlife! These areas will in fact be the reservoir areas for wildlife into the sustainable forest use areas where sustainable hunting is allowed. The reservoir areas not only protect species from extinction but will also sustain the heritage and culture of native peoples.

Australia is blessed with one of the best National and Marine Park systems in the world. These areas are of great ecological importance as well as supporting an economically important tourist industry. Similar parks can be found throughout the world but unfortunately many third world countries do not have the resources to properly manage their protected areas. These areas will always have poor biodiversity outcomes without proper funding and management. This in fact is the most urgent priority in many parts of the world.

Eye Worms and other Tropical Diseases

Nasty biting insects
Are a wretched curse
But the diseases that they carry
Are infinitely worse

Those Loa Loa Worms
Wriggling in your eyes
Are the lasting legacy
Of biting Deer Flies

Malaria and filaria
Are diseases we must purge
From the poorest folk in Africa
Living with this scourge

The jungles of Central Africa are a cauldron for new diseases including many strains of HIV and nasty haemorrhagic Ebola Virus. Many of these diseases have recently jumped the species barrier from primates to humans and the Global Viral Institute is working hard to prevent the next pandemic but it is not just new diseases that are a problem. The clearing of forest and the migration of people into new areas is increasing contact with mosquitoes, biting flies other vectors of disease. Cerebral malaria and several types of filarial infection in particular are increasing rapidly. Trypanosomiasis which causes sleeping sickness in humans as well as Cattle Trypanosomiasis through the bite of the Tsetse Fly (Glossina)is also on the rise despite the development of Trypanasome resistant cattle and mass spraying of insecticide to kill the vector.

Climate change is also having an impact. River Blindness, or Onchocerciasis is a filarial infection spread by the Black Fly which is rapidly spreading south into the tropical jungle areas from the savannah Sahel where it results in blindness rates of 3-5%. The problem is exacerbated by land clearing in combination with a drying climate which creates suitable conditions for the Black Fly vector. Loa Loa Eye Worm infections caused by a filaria spread by Deer and Mango Flies is also on the increase with 70% infection rates in some parts of Cameroon.

But what can be done? It is unthinkable that we don’t do all we can to eradicate these diseases and alleviate the immense suffering of local populations but we also have to be mindful of the environmental consequences of our actions. The eradication of the Tsetse Fly for example would result in large areas of rainforest being cleared for cattle grazing. Large scale insecticide spraying programmes will similarly have devastating ecological impacts. Neither strategy is the long term answer to achieving an appropriate balance between development and conservation. In the longer term a combination of education, poverty alleviation and medical treatment of impacted populations is likely to secure the best outcomes. And if you happen to be visiting these areas make sure you have your shots and always protect yourself from mosquitoes and biting flies.