It is generally agreed that the legislation is intended to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane.  However, given the big global polluters including China have no intensions of signing up to such a scheme, it is also generally agreed that an Australian emissions trading scheme will have no significant impact on global emissions or global temperatures. 

But in terms of economics how big will the impact be and what will the flow on effect be in terms of Australian industries and as a consequence the Australian environment.

Very large tracts of Australia support a cattle industry.  The government intends to include agriculture in the scheme down-the-track and Senator Barnaby Joyce, Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, claims that taxing methane emissions from cattle will effectively make beef too expensive.  He has claimed a prime cut roast will end up costing upwards of A$100.

Many would argue that the end of the cattle industry in Australia would be a good thing for the environment.   Indeed Ross Garnaut, a key advisor to the government on climate change, suggested in his final report on climate change that the nation’s farmers should switch to kangaroo and this would have multiple environmental benefits additional to reducing emissions.   But instead of switching to kangaroos, it is perhaps more likely that beef producers in moderate rainfall zones will plant trees to defray their costs.  This is what a reader of this weblog, Luke Walker, has suggested and furthermore he claims that trees in large numbers will impact significantly on catchment hydrology resulting in reduced water yields.

Another industry likely to be affected by the proposed legislation is mining.   While mining has arguably a less diffuse impact on the immediate landscape than either agriculture or forestry it never-the-less impacts.   There is currently a battle between farmers and miners on the Liverpool Plains of northern central NSW as farmers worry about the impact of proposed new coal mines in particularly on their aquifers.      

In short, is an ETS likely to be beneficial for Australia’s natural environment, not because it will reduce global emissions of carbon dioxide, but because it will result in the closure of many Australian primary industries and extractive industries?

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The picture is of a young blue gum plantation in western Victoria taken by Jennifer Marohasy on a cold day in November 2006.

There is no evidence that organically produced foods are nutritionally superior to conventionally produced foodstuffs, according to a study published today in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Consumers appear willing to pay higher prices for organic foods based on their perceived health and nutrition benefits, and the global organic food market was estimated in 2007 to be worth £29 billion (£2 billion in the UK alone). Some previous reviews have concluded that organically produced food has a superior nutrient composition to conventional food, but there has to date been no systematic review of the available published literature.

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have now completed the most extensive systematic review of the available published literature on nutrient content of organic food ever conducted. The review focussed on nutritional content and did not include a review of the content of contaminants or chemical residues in foods from different agricultural production regimens.

Over 50,000 papers were searched, and a total of 162 relevant articles were identified that were published over a fifty-year period up to 29 February 2008 and compared the nutrient content of organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs. To ensure methodological rigour the quality of each article was assessed. To be graded as satisfactory quality, the studies had to provide information on the organic certification scheme from which the foodstuffs were derived, the cultivar of crop or breed of livestock analysed, the nutrient or other nutritionally relevant substance assessed, the laboratory analytical methods used, and the methods used for statistical analysis. 55 of the identified papers were of satisfactory quality, and analysis was conducted comparing the content in organically and conventionally produced foods of the 13 most commonly reported nutrient categories.

The researchers found organically and conventionally produced foods to be comparable in their nutrient content. For 10 out of the 13 nutrient categories analysed, there were no significant differences between production methods in nutrient content. Differences that were detected were most likely to be due to differences in fertilizer use (nitrogen, phosphorus), and ripeness at harvest (acidity), and it is unlikely that consuming these nutrients at the levels reported in organic foods would provide any health benefit.

Alan Dangour, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s Nutrition and Public Health Intervention Research Unit, and one of the report’s authors, comments: ‘A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance. Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority. Research in this area would benefit from greater scientific rigour and a better understanding of the various factors that determine the nutrient content of foodstuffs’.

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Notes and Links

Nutritional quality of organic foods: a systematic review.  Alan D Dangour, Sakhi K Dodhia, Arabella Hayter, Elizabeth Allen, Karen Lock and Ricardo Uauy. Am J Clin Nutr (July 29, 2009). doi:10.3945/ajcn.2009.28041

Abstract: Despite growing consumer demand for organically produced foods, information based on a systematic review of their nutritional quality is lacking.  We sought to quantitatively assess the differences in reported nutrient content between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs.  We systematically searched PubMed, Web of Science, and CAB Abstracts for a period of 50 y from 1 January 1958 to 29 February 2008, contacted subject experts, and hand-searched bibliographies. We included peer-reviewed articles with English abstracts in the analysis if they reported nutrient content comparisons between organic and conventional foodstuffs. Two reviewers extracted study characteristics, quality, and data. The analyses were restricted to the most commonly reported nutrients.  From a total of 52,471 articles, we identified 162 studies (137 crops and 25 livestock products); 55 were of satisfactory quality. In an analysis that included only satisfactory quality studies, conventionally produced crops had a significantly higher content of nitrogen, and organically produced crops had a significantly higher content of phosphorus and higher titratable acidity. No evidence of a difference was detected for the remaining 8 of 11 crop nutrient categories analyzed. Analysis of the more limited database on livestock products found no evidence of a difference in nutrient content between organically and conventionally produced livestock products.  On the basis of a systematic review of studies of satisfactory quality, there is no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs. The small differences in nutrient content detected are biologically plausible and mostly relate to differences in production methods.

Received for publication May 7, 2009. Accepted for publication July 2, 2009.

http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/news/2009/organicfood.html

LAST week the International Whaling Commission (IWC) met on the Portuguese island of Madeira and agreed that climate change is a threat to whales.   A decision on the Danish proposal for Greenland to hunt 10 humpback whales a year was postponed.  Australia’s Environment Minister was there and told the meeting that whale-watching is a growing industry worth more than whale hunting.  Ian Mott disagrees:

“THE claim, by Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett, that whales are worth more alive than dead betrays a breathtaking level of economic ignorance and a dangerous penchant for simplistic, “Cargo Cult” panaceas.

 Garrett’s message,  “That whale-watching is an industry which is growing right around the world and that the potential for communities to generate sustainable livelihood from watching whales – not killing them, but watching them – is significant.”
 
For central to his claim is an assumption that whale watching and whale harvesting are mutually exclusive activities. As if the entire whale watching industry would disappear if a single humpback whale was hunted for food. Clearly, the 1000 Minke whales already taken each year, for a decade or two, have had no adverse impact on the whale molesting industry. Indeed, the industry has a very obvious inclination to maximise the flow-on effects of the media attention provided by the anti-whaling protesters. If the Japanese were not involved in whaling then the whale watching industry would be much smaller than it is today.
 
We need to be very careful about lending credibility to people who are incapable of incorporating any sort of “grey” in their consideration of “black and white”.  There are between 50,000 and 100,000 humpback whales world wide and more than 1 million Minke’s and any suggestion that the further expansion of the whale watching industry is being constrained by inadequate whale numbers, or infrequent sightings, is pure bollocks. As with all tourist related industries, the limit to growth is defined by the supply of customers willing to pay, not by the number of boats, not by the number of operators, and not by the number of whales. Just double the number of operators and we will soon find out how relevant actual whale numbers really are to the viability of the industry.
 
In fact, we have the curious circumstance where the key ingredient in the product mix (the whale population) is in robust good health and expanding while a key element of the marketing message is the claimed threat posed to whales and their supposed rarity. It is marketing of a product using messages that are in direct variance with the facts. Funny, I thought we had a Trade Practices Act that specifically outlawed this kind of marketing.
 
And one really must take a very hard critical look at this $3 billion that is being bandied about as the annual value of the industry. The standard MO of the industry advocate is to throw in the accommodation, meals and all other activities that the whale watcher might engage in during the visit in which they also spent a morning watching whales. So a whole weeks worth of accommodation and entertainment is claimed under the whale watching banner even though it might only occupy a small fraction of the tourists vacation time. If the operators pulled that sort of stunt in a share prospectus they would cop a good long stretch in jail.
 
But these claims also betray a woeful grasp of business costing on the part of Garrett and the industry. Even if we accept the bogus $3 billion value of the whale watching industry world wide we must still spread that value over the entire world population of whales. They cannot have it both ways. The industry does not watch many Minke Whales at all but they insist that the harvesting of Minke’s poses a threat to their industry.  So if this industry is claiming that the survival of every whale on the planet is a prerequisite for the survival of their industry then they must include the capital value of every whale in their costing and pay a commensurate economic rent for their exclusive use of that resource.
 
That economic rent must be determined from existing markets. And in Japan, whale meat retails at 2060 yen/kg or AU $27/kg. So a typical 7.0 tonne Minke whale might produce 3.7 tonnes of dressed meat at $27,000/tonne or $99,900 each.  A 45 tonne Humpback might produce 23 tonnes of dressed meat worth $620,000 each. So if we ignore all the other whale species we can see that the 1 million Minke whales, that the whale watching industry demands exclusive use of, has a capital value of $100 billion. And the 100,000 Humpbacks has a capital value of $62 billion. Add in the other species like Fin whales etc and a total value of the whale resource is easily in the order of $200 billion. And in that light, the $3 billion whale watching industry represents a rate of return of only 1.5% per annum.
 
Or to put it another way, $3 billion divided by 1.5 million whales amounts to only $2000 per whale. It is akin to taking the whole 7 tonne whale and only using 74kg of it.
 
But wait, the whale watching industry currently makes no payment for its current shared use of the whale resource and it has given no indication of a willingness to pay any premium for exclusive use. And to be fair, the whale hunting nations have also given no indication of a willingness to pay for the portion that they use. But unlike the whale watchers, they certainly don’t demand exclusive use of the entire resource either.
 
So where does that leave us? Well, one thing is certain, if the whale watching industry had to pay the full annual cost for each whale that it “uses” based on a normal rate of return on the capital value of the whale then they would very quickly work out exactly how many whales they really needed each year. A modest 5% annual interest on a $620,000 Humpback would amount to $31,000 each year, for each animal they engage with. They could view each whale on its way north and again on its way back south. And they might even spread these costs between other whale watching businesses along the coast who could also view the same whale.  Add some standard tracking devices and the entire industry could offer a guarantee of sightings while actually engaging with a very small number of animals. But the price of a viewing would be unlikely to drop below $3,000 a pop.
 
But no. As is so often the case, the whale watching industry demonstrates how a natural resource that has no value attached to it will ensure the grossest inefficient use of that resource. They seriously believe that they need exclusive use of every whale on the planet to satisfy a market comprised of people who, in all probability, will only pay for the experience once, or maybe twice, in their whole life.
 
The fact is that neither the whale watching industry or the whale eating industry are operating in a way that will optimise this natural resource. One of the two seeks only to use a sustainable portion of the resource while the other demands exclusive use of the entire resource for which it has no intention, nor capacity to pay for.

Ian Mott
Byron Hinterland, NSW, Australia

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Notes and Links

MSM mention of Environment Minister at the meeting
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/24/2607050.htm?section=australia

USA hijacks IWC in an unprecedented move: Denmark’s humpback proposal postponed to special meeting
http://www.wdcs.org/news_stop.php?select=402

Ian Mott is a third generation native forest owner, miller and regenerator from the Byron hinterland.  A former Sydney and Brisbane Executive Recruiter with his own agency, his interest in the family property has seen him evolve, over the past decade, into a property rights activist and consultant. He is secretary of the Landholders Institute Inc and has held a number of positions on national, state and regional level policy and planning bodies.  Mr Mott has a blog at http://ianmott.blogspot.com/

The photograph shows a reader of this blog, known as David, and Jennifer Marohasy eating whale in a restaurant in Tokyo in September 2008.  More here:  http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/09/eating-whale-in-tokyo/

According to Ian Mott, a third generation landholder, they modify parts of the landscape but they do not destroy it.  In the following note, Mr Mott suggests modifications to government advice on the management of livestock in riparian zones. 

 ”PICTURES at a Catchment Management Authority website have been provided as “evidence” of the degraded condition of “our” environment due to grazing of stock in riparian zones. But in reality, the site provides a very good example of how a few pictures and sloppy captioning can tell a thousand lies.

The introductory text claims: “Inappropriate livestock grazing is one of the most significant causes of degradation to the land-water interface in Australia. Livestock have long been part of the Australian landscape. Cattle, sheep, horses, goats and pigs arrived with the first settlers in the 1780s and moved with them across NSW into the Central West. Settlements sprang up along river systems supported by clean water and fertile floodplain soils.  Since that time, livestock have caused damage to the most sensitive part of the landscape – our riparian lands.”

We see cattle by a creek and some exposed soil, in the above photograph from the website, which would lead most urban punters to conclude that this picture is representative of the entire length of the creek on that farm and representative of the situation on all grazed creek banks on all farms.

But we can be quite certain, given the proven MO of CMA’s and their staff, that the picture shows worse than average impacts?

A random inspection of the first, second and third  order farm streams that account for most of the riparian interface in the landscape is unlikely to provide a single example of conditions like those shown. It is also highly improbable that anything like those conditions would be replicated over the entire length of that particular stream. Indeed, there may be only one or two such examples on the entire property.

It is also quite certain that the conditions produced in the photo represent the sum of all cattle damage over a period of more than 100 years. Once the landform modification has been made by the stock to match their normal level of traffic, the rate of change (called degradation) will reduce to a minimum. Most of the modification shown in the photo would have been done in the first decade after settlement. 

Stock can produce physical modifications to a small portion of a riparian zone when they are first introduced to a landscape or when a major increase in animal traffic at a particular point takes place.  If the stocking rate has essentially remained the same and the number of access points is not reduced in a way that increases traffic on the remaining access points then there is minimal on-going impact. But the CMA text merely indicates that this “significant” damage has taken place “since that time” (ie on a continuous basis, in the past and in future).  It converts an historical event as evidence of a future threat.

And it begs the question, do we regard a road culvert as evidence of land degradation? Or do we regard it as a piece of infrastructure that is a normal and necessary part of the prevailing use of the land as a road?

Clearly, we view it as the latter.

So why do we regard customary tracks (roads) made by cattle for their own continuing use as anything different to our own road culverts?

Both involve an initial excavation that exposes soil and both then involve only minimal soil disturbance for many decades after.  And just like our road system, the more traffic cattle tracks have, the greater the visual impact.   Do we begrudge Elephants or Caribou their right to shape creek crossings? No, only domestic stock.
 
To its credit, the site does include some helpful tools for minimising on-going soil movement. And just as for our own road culverts, this involves paving the  most prone parts of the road with rock and concrete. The irony is that this simple, logical solution can only be carried out with the approval of DPI and the additional cost and effort that involves. And it is also fairly obvious that any approval for such works would only come with very significant and expensive conditions like fencing off the entire riparian zone and installing unnecessary watering points and piping.

Don’t get me wrong, additional watering points away from streams and dams make very good sense as they spread the grazing intensity more evenly over the entire area. But when faced with baseless, ideologically driven demands to render existing in-stream watering points redundant as a condition of approval for your voluntary good works, most farmers, justifiably, opt to let the authorities continue abusing themselves.

The second photo shows a fairly normal steep bank of a deep riverine cross section. Yes, there are sheep in the picture but one is left to wonder what, exactly, is the impact of those, or the past century of previous sheep, on the steepness of the river bank? 

Sure, they graze on the grass and may also graze on any tree seedlings that might germinate there. But the chances of such stems surviving the first flood event are quite low as they are more rigid than grass and much more likely to get tangled with passing debris.

Are we to seriously believe that without the sheep this river bank would be steeper?

No.

Is there any evidence that the bank is not maintaining its form?

No.

Would the bank structure be any different if there were trees atop the bank?

No

In fact, if trees were present we would probably observe exposed roots as evidence that additional erosion had taken place.  The area of exposed soil would be greater because the grasses would be competing for moisture with the trees and this would present a more erodible face to flood waters with greater potential for snags.  

The third photo is just as misleading.  
We are told that: “This creek was severely polluted with sediment and animal waste laden run-off.
The rapid increase in nutrient levels caused a massive toxic blue-green algae bloom, rendering the creek water unusable for stock or domestic consumption.”

But what they do not tell us is that this is a temporary condition that starts at the beginning of a dry season and will only last until the pool dries up later in the season. More importantly, they do not mention that most high faecal E. coli counts and algal blooms are the result of self reproduction in the warm stagnant water.  As was found to be the case with Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin,  most algae in a bloom is of a secondary or “regrowth” nature.

The severity of an algal bloom or the ultimate concentration of faecal E . coli, is not a function of the initial volume of coli being supplied to the pools in runoff. Rather, the longer the dry season, the warmer the temperature, the shallower the pools and the less frequent the intermittent runoff events take place, the greater the exponential rate of bacterial and algal growth becomes. 

Algae reproduce faster and more often in favourable conditions, get used to it, folks. 

So we need to add a few comments in italics to the official CMA summary in black, below, to give a true and fair view of the impacts of grazing on riparian zones:

Impacts of riparian grazing (Modified version)

On-site:
• isolated, once-off loss of vegetation cover in the first few years of exposure to grazing
• once-off soil compaction at a few specific points and initial erosion
• once-off bank instability followed by long term stability of the modified landforms
• isolated instances of reduced water quality
• no evidence of reduced property values from the presence of stock modifications
• enhanced germination of native tree species in hoof depressions etc

Off-site:
• localised instances of poor water quality (increased turbidity, nutrients and salinity)
• very localised loss of in-stream habitat
• isolated, once-off changes to river channel shape of minor consequence
• minor silting of rivers and creeks compared to that produced by unsealed roads
• enhanced natural regeneration of native trees along previously cleared creek banks

Clearly, a picture can, indeed, tell a thousand lies. And government and green pictures seem to tell the most lies of all.

Ian Mott
Byron Hinterland, NSW, Australia

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Notes and Links

Ian Mott is a third generation native forest owner, miller and regenerator from the Byron hinterland.  A former Sydney and Brisbane Executive Recruiter with his own agency, his interest in the family property has seen him evolve, over the past decade, into a property rights activist and consultant. He is secretary of the Landholders Institute Inc and has held a number of positions on national, state and regional level policy and planning bodies.

Mr Mott has a blog at http://ianmott.blogspot.com/

The offending website can be found at: http://www.cw.cma.nsw.gov.au/pdf/Information/BMPs/CWCMA_Information_BMP_0288_ripariansheet_livestockmanagement.pdf

“It is appropriate that another contributory factor to the world’s food shortage should be the millions of acres of farmland now being switched from food crops to biofuels, to stop the world warming, Last year even the experts of the European Commission admitted that, to meet the EU’s biofuel targets, we will eventually need almost all the food-growing land in Europe. But that didn’t persuade them to change their policy. They would rather we starved than did that. And the EU, we must always remember, is now our government – the one most of us didn’t vote for last week… 

Read more here from Christopher Booker.

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Notes and Links

CROPS UNDER STRESS AS TEMPERATURES FALL
by Christopher Booker
The Sunday Telegraph, 14 June 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5525933/Crops-under-stress-as-temperatures-fall.html

The photogrgaph of a failed wheat crop being bailed as hay was taken by Jennifer Marohasy near Falls Gap, western Victoria, in November 2006.

I’m have never advocated a particular management regime.  Indeed I support calls for fewer cattle in the Macquarie Marshes and more in the Redgum forest of the central Murray Valley.

Cattle will change the composition of the vegetation and keep an area more open and with fewer reed beds which is apparently why they are encouraged to graze the wetlands just outside of Stockholm.

The photograph of the red fox and a bull was taken just outside of Stockholm by Ann Novek.

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Notes and Links

Ann has two blogs at http://seaspy.bloggsida.se/ and http://annimal.bloggsida.se/
Find more information on foxes at http://www.canids.org/species/Vulpes_vulpes.htm
The colour of the fox varies in Sweden from greyish pale orange to dark red with black legs.

Click on the photograph of the fox and the bull for a much larger and much better view.

Clearly wheat farmers are feeling left behind with the statement including the comment:  Lack of private and public investment in wheat research has left wheat development behind the advances in competing commodity crops, and has also led to a shortage of scientific expertise in wheat research generally.

I’ve been aware for some time of important research being conducted in South Australia, at the Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG), focused on developing new drought and frost tolerant varieties of wheat and barley.

Frost tolerance has become an issue because plant breeders have been selecting for early maturing varieties in order to escape potential summer drought. But, this has now exposed crops to frost during flowering.  There is apparently variation for traits for frost and salt tolerance in the “crossable” gene pool for wheat and barley, but there are far better genes in other plants and these would need to be transferred through genetic modification. 

Of course organisations like Greenpeace oppose this research and have claimed consumers do not want GM in their “daily bread”.   In a media release last year a spokesperson for Greenpeace said that GM wheat is not grown commercially anywhere in the world nor accepted by any market which is why major GM crop producers such as the US and Canada have rejected it. 

No doubt the growers in the US, Canada and Australia hoped that by putting out a joint statement the opportunity for activists to play them off against each other would be reduced. 

Already the Canadian Wheat Board has reacted negatively to the statement with a spokesperson explaining they won’t support genetically modified wheat until key conditions are in place, including assurances that overseas markets will accept the crop.

Of course if organisations like Greenpeace stopped their scare mongering there would be near universal acceptance of the product tomorrow.    The fear of “GM bread” is a creation of modern environmentalism.

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Notes and Links

Canadian Wheat Board cautious about GM wheat
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE54E59X20090515

Genetically Engineered Wheat Not the Solution to Drought
http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/news-and-events/media/releases/genetic-engineering/genetically-engineered-wheat-n

Importing A Banned Product & Denying Drought Tolerance
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2006/10/importing-a-banned-product-denying-drought-tolerance/ 

Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics
http://www.acpfg.com.au/

Picture of the loaf of bread republished from http://cdn-write.demandstudios.com/upload//6000/400/90/1/66491.jpg 

Wheat Biotechnology Commercialization
Statement of Canadian, American and Australian Wheat Organizations

In the interest of expressing support for more efficient, sustainable and profitable production of wheat around the world, the undersigned organizations have approved the following joint statement concerning commercialization of biotechnology in wheat:

1. Wheat is a vital food to all peoples of the world and we believe that by developing higher yielding better quality wheat varieties we can better supply the world with wheat food products.

2. One important tool to help feed the world into the future is biotechnology. Basic agronomic
improvements to wheat like strengthening disease and insect resistance, enhancing wheat’s use of soil nutrients and water, increasing its tolerance to weather extremes like drought and frost, are all possible with biotechnology. Another critical area for biotechnology is to improve the nutritional aspects of wheat to facilitate healthier living for people all over the world. Biotechnology is not the only answer to these questions, but it will be a significant component in solutions.

3. In many of our production areas, wheat production is under pressure from competing crops which, through the application of biotechnology, have achieved higher productivity, reduced input use, and other benefits not available in wheat. As a result, the historic area of wheat production has declined in many areas and economics are driving producers away from wheat and into other crops if they have alternatives. If wheat continues on a non-biotech course, then farmers will continue to devote a greater share of their acreage to biotech crops, where profitability is relatively greater, resulting in lower world wheat production than would otherwise be the case.

4. In general, wheat yields are on a very slow growth trend in comparison with competing crops, and the longer it takes to increase the growth rate the bigger will be the hole from which the industry must climb.
5. Biotechnology is a proven technique to deploy traits of interest with a high degree of precision in agricultural crops. Crops derived through biotechnology are subjected to strict regulatory scrutiny before commercialization. Over 10 years of global experience with biotechnology has demonstrated a convincing record of safety and environmental benefits as well as quality and productivity gains.

6. Lack of private and public investment in wheat research has left wheat development behind the advances in competing commodity crops, and has also led to a shortage of scientific expertise in wheat research generally. By providing an opportunity for private companies, the level of activity in wheat research will expand and attract a new generation of scientists into the field.

In light of these resolutions, we will work toward the goal of synchronized commercialization of biotech traits in our wheat crops. While none of us hold a veto over the actions of others, we believe it is in all of our best interests to introduce biotech wheat varieties in a coordinated fashion to minimize market disruptions and shorten the period of adjustment. We are also committed to working with other stakeholders to address their needs and concerns as we travel the road to commercialization.

US National Association of Wheat Growers, U.S. Wheat Associates, North American Millers’
Association, Grain Growers of Canada, Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, Alberta Winter Wheat Producers Commission, Grains Council of Australia, Grain Growers Association, Pastoralists and Graziers Association of Western Australia (Inc.),  May 14, 2009.

Landholder Jim Inglis reckons the scrub tick does a better job than the dingo at controlling foxes in higher rainfall regions – foxes that kill the pademelons on his property.

The European fox, Vulpes vulpes, was introduced into Australia in the early 1870s for recreational hunting purposes.   Along with the domestic cat, Felis catus, the species has been implicated in the extinction or range reduction of many Australian native marsupials and rodents.  

The dingo, Canis lupus dingo, is a descendant of the wolf and thought to have been in Australia for a bit longer than either the fox or cat – about 4,000 years longer.

Dingoes will eat foxes and cats, but they also eat lambs and other livestock.  Baiting programs have traditionally been more effective against dingoes than, for example, foxes to the extent that there is now an Australian Dingo Conservation Association – concerned the species could be driven to extinction.

An increasing number of ecologists are claiming that one way of saving small native marsupials and rodents is to actually protect dingoes, because they suppress numbers of foxes.   

Mike Letnic from the School of Biological Science at the University of Sydney is one of the latest to publish findings along these lines.   His latest research, just published in the journal ‘Animal Conservation’, claims that maintaining or restoring dingo populations may be a useful strategy to mitigate the predatory impacts of foxes on small and medium sized mammals in arid environments.
 
Dr Letnic qualifies his findings though, acknowledging, that the mass extinction of mammals from the Australian deserts has occurred in the last 100 years, despite the presence of dingoes, makes it clear that dingoes are not a ‘silver bullet’ for biodiversity conservation.”
 
A regular reader of this weblog and landholder, Jim Inglis, sent me the picture of the headless Red Necked Pademelon, Thylogale thetis, killed on his lawn on May 1, 2009, by a fox.  He has also written that foxes are thriving alongside dingoes at his place which has a higher rainfall than the Strzelecki Desert where Dr Letnic carried out his research.

According to Mr Inglis,
“Dingoes are bad news for the natives that are their natural prey but could possibly help the preservation of these smaller animals that were more the focus of foxes and cats.

“As Dr. Lentic says, they certainly aren’t any silver bullet. Though they possibly restrict cats and foxes in open desert country, these two species “play them off a brake” in rough scrub and forest country.

“What controls cats and foxes in coastal mountain bushland more than dingoes is the scrub tick which luckily no one has yet developed a way to eradicate though I believe they are still foolishly trying. 

“If people get a scrub tick they should extract it gently and put it back where they got it.”

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Links and Notes

http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=1367-9430&site=1  

http://www.dogslife.com.au/dogs_life_articles?cid=9454&pid=146591

http://www.ecosmagazine.com/nid/10/issue/4862.htm 

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/850

Not Available online:

Does a top-predator provide an endangered rodent with refuge froman invasive mesopredator?
M. Letnic, M. S. Crowther & F. Koch,  Animal Conservation (2009) 1-11.

Abstract

In arid environments, ecological refuges are often conceptualised as places where animal species can persist through drought owing to the localised persistence of moisture and nutrients. The mesopredator release hypothesis (MRH) predicts that reduced abundance of top-order predators results in an increase in the abundance of smaller predators (mesopredators) and consequently has detrimental impacts on the prey of the smaller predators. Thus according to the MRH, the existence of larger predators may provide prey with refuge from predation. In this study, we investigated how the abundance of an endangered rodent Notomys fuscus is affected by Australia’s largest predator, the dingo Canis lupus dingo, introduced mesopredators, introduced herbivores, kangaroos and rainfall. Our surveys showed that N. fuscus was more abundant where dingoes occurred. Generalised linear modelling showed that N. fuscus abundance was associated positively with dingo activity and long-term annual rainfall and negatively with red fox Vulpes vulpes activity. Our results were consistent with the hypothesis that areas with higher rainfall and dingoes provide N. fuscus with refuge from drought and predation by invasive red foxes, respectively. Top-order predators, such as dingoes, could have an important functional role in broad-scale biodiversity conservation programmes by reducing the impacts of mesopredators.

When farmers say that the region has never been as dry in their lifetime they are correct.  However, the data clearly show that over south eastern Australia the first half of the 20th century was much drier than the second half and the recent ‘drought’ is a return to the conditions of the early 20th century.  Also, the recent dry period is not yet as dry as the period from about 1935 through 1945.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) have taken the station annual rainfall since 1900 and created maps of annual rainfall. They have then calculated the average annual rainfall within various regions, including the Murray Darling Basin region.  At the website the BOM also have this map which shows the annual departure from the average (anomaly) together with the 11-year average plotted on the 6th year of the averaging period.

The data are available at:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rranom&area=mdb&season=0112&ave_yr=11

Click on the graph for a better larger view.