Sep | 2018 | ConservationBytes.com

South Australia’s broken biodiversity legislation

24 09 2018

It might come as a bit of shock to some who might give more than a shit about our State’s environmental integrity that there is no dedicated legislation to protect biodiversity in South Australia today.

What? Well, ok, we do have the Native Vegetation Act that is supposed to restrict the clearing of existing native vegetation (of which there is precious little left), and the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972 to legislate protected areas and species endangerment. We also have the Wilderness Protection Act 1992 that addresses wilderness protection and land restoration, and the Natural Resource Management Act 2004 that is designed to promote sustainable and integrated management of the State’s natural resources. Finally, the South Australia Environment Protection Authority operates under various acts¹ to limit environmental damage.

However, South Australia has no act specifically focussed on biodiversity conservation, and the legislation that does exist does not even consider invertebrates (like insects) as animals — because most animals are in fact invertebrates, this means that most of South Australia’s species are ineligible for official threat listing, even if they have a high risk of extinction.

If you recall, I reported in July this year that in 2017 we had a Parliamentary Inquiry into Biodiversity², which concluded that existing environmental legislation in South Australia “… lacks cohesion and consistency, particularly regarding enforcement and compliance provisions”.

In my judgement, therefore, an entirely new, biodiversity-focussed act would add legislative teeth to biodiversity conservation in South Australia. As it turns out, that very same Parliamentary Inquiry into Biodiversity I mentioned above recommended³ the creation of a Biodiversity Expert Panel to reform the legislative framework of environmental protection. Thus, the new Government of South Australia has the perfect opportunity to do so under their proposed changes to natural resource management legislation. Following these calls for reform and the new direction of Nature of SA, there is a real opportunity here for statutory reform that includes integrated biodiversity legislation analogous to the New South Wales Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016.

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Tags: biodiversity, environment, legislation, South Australia
Categories : agriculture, Australia, biodiversity, conservation, deforestation, development, environmental policy, extinction, fragmentation, habitat loss, management, protected area, South Australia, threatened species, vegetation

Legacy of human migration on the diversity of languages in the Americas

12 09 2018

quechua-foto-ale-glogster This might seem a little left-of-centre for CB.com subject matter, but hang in there, this does have some pretty important conservation implications.

In our quest to be as transdisciplinary as possible, I’ve team up with a few people outside my discipline to put together a PhD modelling project that could really help us understand how human colonisation shaped not only ancient ecosystems, but also our own ancient cultures.

Thanks largely to the efforts of Dr Frédérik Saltré here in the Global Ecology Laboratory, at Flinders University, and in collaboration with Dr Bastien Llamas (Australian Centre for Ancient DNA), Joshua Birchall (Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Brazil), and Lars Fehren-Schmitz (University of California at Santa Cruz, USA), I think the student could break down a few disciplinary boundaries here and provide real insights into the causes and consequences of human expansion into novel environments.

Interested? See below for more details?

Languages are ‘documents of history’ and historical linguists have developed comparative methods to infer patterns of human prehistory and cultural evolution. The Americas present a more substantive diversity of indigenous language stock than any other continent; however, whether such a diversity arose from initial human migration pathways across the continent is still unknown, because the primary proxy used (i.e., archaeological evidence) to study modern human migration is both too incomplete and biased to inform any regional inference of colonisation trajectories. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Ancient DNA, anthropology, archaeology, ecology, Genetics, human migration, indigenous languages, linguistics, PhD, PhDchat, South America, student opportunities, transdisciplinarity
Categories : Amazon, biogeography, connectivity, demography, ecology, ecosystem, Flinders University, mathematics, modelling, population dynamics, research, science, South America, statistics

Minister, why is the dingo no longer ‘fauna’?

7 09 2018

dead dingo So, a few of us have just submitted a letter contesting the Western Australia Government’s recent decision to delist dingoes as ‘fauna’ (I know — what the hell else could they be?). The letter was organised brilliantly by Dr Kylie Cairns (University of New South Wales), and she and the rest of the signatories have agreed to reproduce the letter in full here on ConservationBytes.com. If you feel so compelled, please voice your distaste of this decision officially by contacting the Minister (details below).

CJA Bradshaw

Honourable Stephen Dawson MLC
Minister for Environment; Disability Services
Address: 12^th Floor, Dumas House
2 Havelock Street, WEST PERTH WA 6005
(minister.dawson@dpc.wa.gov.au)

cc: Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (biodiversity@dbca.wa.gov.au)
cc: Brendan Dooley (brendan.dooley@dpc.wa.gov.au)

Dear Minister,

The undersigned welcome the opportunity to comment on and recommend alteration of the proposed section (9)(2) order of the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 (BC Act) that changes the listing of the dingo from “fauna” to “non-fauna” in Western Australia. Removing the “fauna” status from dingoes has serious consequences for the management and conservation of this species and other native biota it benefits. Currently, dingoes are classed as A7, or fauna that requires a management policy. The proposed section (9)(2) order will move dingoes (as “non-fauna”) to the A5 class, meaning that dingoes must be (lethally) controlled and there will be no obligation for the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions to have an appropriate management policy (or approval).

Currently, under the Wildlife Conservation Act 1950 (WC Act) the dingo is considered “unprotected” fauna allowing management under a Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions management policy. A section (9)(2) order demoting dingoes to “non-fauna” will remove the need for Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions management policy and instead mandate the lethal control of dingoes throughout Western Australia.

As prominent researchers in top predator ecology, biology, cultural value and genetics, we emphasise the importance of dingoes within Australian, and particularly Western Australia’s ecosystems. Dingoes are indisputably native based on the legislative definition of “any animal present in Australia prior to 1400 AD” from the BC Act. Dingoes have been present in Australia for at least 5000 years. On the Australian mainland they are now the sole non-human land-based top predator. Their importance to the ecological health and resilience of Australian ecosystems cannot be overstated. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Australia, Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016, Canis dingo, Department of Biodiversity Conservation and Attractions, dingo, environmental policy, human-wildlife conflict, mesopredator release, Minister for Environment, predator, Stephen Dawson, Western Australia, Wildlife Conservation Act 1950
Categories : Australia, biodiversity, cat, conservation, conservation biology, dingo, ecology, ecosystem function, endemic, environmental policy, exploitation, genetics, human-wildlife conflict, introgression, kangaroo, livestock, mammal, management, meso-predator release, predation, predator, research, science, top-down ecology

South Australia doesn’t value its environment

5 09 2018

how we treat our environment The South Australian State Budget was released yesterday, and as has been the trend for the last ten years or so, the numbers are not good for the State’s environment.

While it has been reported that the budget includes the loss of 115 full-time staff from the Department of Environment and Water, the overall cuts run much deeper. They also herald a new era of not giving a tinker’s cuss for the sorry state of our environment.

I took the liberty of amassing the budget data with respect to environmental spending in this State since 2002-2003 (the earliest year I could find budget papers), and now I’ve just added the 2018-2019 data.

If I’ve selected the appropriate amounts, — side note: someone desperately needs to teach these budget bean-counters how to standardise, report, itemise, and organise data much, much better than they do (my first-year students could do a better job drunk and blindfolded) — then this is what environmental spending (including environment, biodiversity, water, and the Environment Protection Authority) has looked like since 2002: Read the rest of this entry »