There are only 250 Capricorn yellow chats located in three habitats along the central Queensland coast.(Supplied: Bob Black)
Key points
There are only 250 Capricorn yellow chats found on three marine plain habitats
The Curtis Island chat population has grown to about 40
Researchers have measured a sea level rise of 80mm in 16 years and this is threatening the birds' habitat
The
critically endangered Capricorn yellow chat could lose its habitat on
Curtis Island within 20 years if sea levels continue to rise at current
rates, researchers say.
The birds were reduced to just a couple of pairs 20 years ago, but numbers have rebounded to almost 40 on Curtis Island.
The
increase has been attributed to an annual feral pig shooting program
instigated in 2006 and the removal of cattle four years ago when the
Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service bought back a grazing lease.
But
CQUniversity researcher Bob Black, who has been surveying the chat for
18 years, said the population increase may be short-lived.
"The
future doesn't look terribly rosy because, within 20 years from now,
they won't have enough good habitat to feed and breed," Mr Black said.
The
chat is only found on three flat marine plains on the central
Queensland coast, and since 2002 the sea level has risen 80 millimetres.
"Where they live is so close to sea level and they only live on treeless marine plains," Mr Black said.
"They basically have nowhere else to go as the rising sea tides push up the channel."
Nesting habitat on Curtis Island pictured in 2002 with substantial grass. (Supplied: Wayne Houston)
Although
much of the plain on Curtis Island is still above sea level, the tides
are higher and leave ponds that eventually dry out and create salt
deposits.
Mr Black said when the ponds dried out, the salt deposits killed the vegetation.
There
were four chat breeding sites with sedges when Mr Black and his team
began their survey, but the sedges have disappeared from two of the
sites.
"Eventually the chats will be pushed to the end of the plain and the habitat will no longer suit them," Mr Black said.
Curtis Island in 2019 shows the loss of grass after tidal intrusion. (Supplied: Bob Black)
Mr Black also said the chats had moved almost two kilometres from their original habitat in the past 20 years.
"Once
they the get near the trees, they are a brilliant bright golden bird,
and birds of prey like sparrow hawks will just increase their predation
of them," Mr Black said.
"They basically can't survive in habitats with trees."
The
CQUniversity research team had a paper published this year in the
Austral Ecology journal that stated continued sea level rises would also
have ramifications for other shore birds.
"Capricorn
yellow chats, by virtue of their narrow niche and dependence on marine
plain wetlands, could be used as a sentinel species for early warning of
sea level rises," the paper said.
Scientists are warning that the federal government’s key environment
laws are failing to protect wildlife and ecosystems from climate change.
“Climate
change is a threat multiplier,” said Professor Lesley Hughes. “As the
temperature continues to rise and we get more heatwaves, droughts and
bushfires, threatened species will be in an even worse place than they
are now.”
Scientists are warning the federal government's environment laws don't account for the impacts of climate change. Credit: Janie Barrett
In
1999, the Howard government created the Environment Protection and
Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act to protect Australia’s unique flora
and fauna, but it has failed to reverse the rate of biodiversity
losses. The legislation doesn’t mention climate change, or compel the
federal environment minister to account for it.
In the past 20
years, the number of threatened species and ecosystems has grown by more
than one-third — from 1483 to 1974 — and mammal losses continue at the
same rate of between one and two a decade. One hundred species have
become extinct since 1788.
A CSIRO study, Quantifying extinction risk estimated
that climate change would increase the rate of losses about fivefold,
with 10 birds and seven mammals becoming extinct in the next 20 years
“without purposeful intervention”.
Assistant director of the
Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
Alana Grech said climate change is the "leading cause of decline" for
the Great Barrier Reef and the legislation should be changed to mitigate
its impacts.
The
Commonwealth government's Great Barrier Reef Outlook Report for 2019
showed "the ecosystem is still deteriorating" and found global warming
to be the greatest threat to the reef, Associate Professor Grech said.
A
recent survey of the World Heritage listed coral ecosystem by the
Centre of Excellence found that more than 60 per cent of the reef
ecosystem had suffered in a bleaching event caused by global warming
earlier this year. Mass bleachings did not occur before the mid-1990s,
but this year's event was the third and most widespread of three in the
past five years.
The current trajectory of global warming,
dependent on increasing international emissions reduction, is 2 degrees
by 2050 - a level which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
predicts will lead to decline in more than 90 per cent of coral reefs.
Professor
Hughes, a climate scientist and biologist at Macquarie University, said
"climate change should be compulsory in the legislation" and the laws
should force the federal Environment Minister to fund action plans that
prevent species becoming extinct, or to help them recover from reduced
populations including translocating vulnerable populations and captive
breeding.
Australian Conservation Foundation policy co-ordinator
James Trezise said the federal government should follow the lead of
state governments which have set standards for how emissions-intensive
projects are approved “like in Western Australia with mandatory
emissions offsets”.
“We
are advocating for a climate trigger to be inserted into the laws,
which compels the minister to account for the impact of climate change
from major projects,” Mr Trezise said.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has introduced to the Senate a private members bill,
dubbed the Climate Trigger. It would force projects with carbon
emission and climate impacts to gain approval under the EPBC Act.
A
submission on the Climate Trigger bill from the federal Energy
Department said the EPBC Act is not the "most appropriate mechanism to
drive emissions reductions or ensure fulfilment of Australia’s
international obligations" and argued it would create unnecessary
duplication for project approvals.
The Act is currently under
review by former chair of the Australian Consumer and Competition
Commission, Graeme Samuel, who is due to complete his report for
Environment Minister Sussan Ley later this month. A spokesperson for the
minister said the "government will respond in due course".
Internationally
renowned ecologist Professor Hugh Possingham has watched for the past
20 years as the national environmental laws he helped design have failed
to protect Australia's threatened species and unique ecosystems.
Since
the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act passed
in 1999, the list of threatened species and ecosystems has grown by more
than one-third – from 1483 to 1974.
Among mammals alone, one to two
species are being lost each decade. The most recent, the Bramble Cay melomys, a rat native to the Great Barrier Reef, was declared extinct last year – the first loss attributed to climate change.
Environment Minister Sussan Ley has warned the status of koalas in various locations may be upgraded to endangered. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
About
8 million hectares of threatened species habitat was cleared between
2000 and 2017, and 93 per cent of it was not assessed under the
legislation despite the powers existing to do so, a study by leading Australian ecologists including Possingham found last year.
Environment Minister Sussan Ley has warned the status of koalas in various locations may be upgraded to endangered.
"We
are losing species at a similar rate to what we were 200 years ago and
it's fast, as fast as anywhere on the planet," Possingham says, adding
populations of threatened species are declining at a rate of 1 per cent a
year. "It's really depressing. If our superannuation was declining at 1
per cent a year, we would all be concerned."
Possingham,
a laureate fellow of the Australian Research Council, was brought in to
advise the Howard government in the late 1990s on what started out as
ambitious Commonwealth reforms to modernise the system of environmental
protection. He was optimistic when the legislation passed in 1999, but
now despairs.
"The intent of the law was any human action that
would impact a listed species would not happen or would be modified so
it wouldn't have an impact or it would be stopped," he says.
"Look
at the data on applications – under 1 per cent of projects have been
denied. A lot of habitat has disappeared and most of it wasn't referred
[for assessment under the act] and when it is, little happens.
"A
lot of richer countries like those in Europe and the US have got their
extinction under control, but we haven't ... we are very embarrassed on
the international stage. There's no ambiguity in the science, the EPBC
Act isn't delivering."
'Green safety net'
Recent
catastrophes have wrought havoc on national icons including the Great
Barrier Reef and the Murray-Darling river system.
The Black Summer fires
of 2019-20 killed billions of animals,
scorched 10 million hectares of bushland, pushed scores of threatened
species towards extinction and endangered populations that had
previously been relatively plentiful.
But experts say there is
cause for optimism amid the dire tallies of death and destruction,
arguing the legislation could "do a hell of a lot" to reverse the
damage, provided politicians used its powers to intervene on nature's
behalf.
'Operation Rock Wallaby' is delivering thousands of kilos of vegetables to endangered brush-tailed rock wallabies.
"The
act is like a Ferrari, but you've got to take it out of the garage to
use it," University of Queensland associate professor of environmental
policy Chris McGrath says. "It's got all the tools; the powers are
there. It can act as a green safety net for threatened species and the
environment. But the political will to enforce the rules is the
problem."
The draft of the second statutory review of the EPBC Act, being prepared by former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Graeme Samuel, is due to be handed to Ley by the end of the month.
The independent review
of the government's central piece of national environmental law, which
must occur every 10 years, is examining whether its objectives are being
achieved and providing recommendations to ensure it is "fit for the
future".
Once she receives the review, Ley will have to balance
the demands of industry, conservation groups and scientists who have
complained about the act's administration almost from the day it was
passed.
'Gaping chasm'
The
legislation provoked bitter divisions in the environment movement at
the time, with some groups and the Greens opposing the bill because of
what they saw as fatal flaws, including its inclusion of Regional Forest
Agreements that enabled states – the primary managers of the
environment – to substitute their regulations for federal oversight, and
its failure to recognise the widespread threat of climate change.
The
Humane Society International's head of campaigns, Nicola Beynon, who
represented the organisation when the act was drafted, says it
represented "major progress for environmental legislation at the time,
but the trade-off was ministerial discretion". The legislation does not
compel the federal minister to protect threatened species and their
habitat, she says.
"The
system is very permissive and even the last remaining habitat for a
threatened species could be approved to be cleared," Beynon adds.
Amendments
to the act in 2006 weakened community rights to appeal against
development approvals and changed the threatened species listing
process, which shifted from compulsory investigation of public
nominations to a ministerial priority list that "does allow for
political considerations to come into the process", she says.
Suzanne
Milthorpe, the Wilderness Society's national environment laws campaign
manager, says the federal minister's powers under the EPBC Act are
firmly established in law, but there is a "gaping chasm" between the
objectives of the act and its subsequent use.
"With the Franklin Dam case in 1983, Bob Hawke and the High Court firmly established that the Commonwealth government has extensive powers to protect the environment," Milthorpe says.
"Australia's
national environment laws simply don't do what they say on the tin. If
the Franklin Dam was proposed today, the EPBC Act would more likely be
used to provide political sanction for the dam to be built rather than
being used to protect the world heritage area from danger."
The
legislation created powers for the federal government to conduct
threat-abatement plans to prevent species decline and recovery plans to
help bring endangered populations back to health. But conservation
advocates warn key threats are not being addressed – such as the risk
posed to native flora and fauna by bushfire.
The system is very permissive and even the last remaining habitat for a threatened species could be approved to be cleared. The Humane Society International's head of campaigns, Nicola Beynon
Catastrophic
bushfires were forecast ahead of the 2019-20 event. Threatened species
commissioner Sally Box said the "ecological disaster" had left 119
animal species in need of "urgent management intervention".
Despite
the fact bushfires were proposed and considered for listing as a key
threatening process in 2008, the federal Environment Department has not
progressed the matter.
The Commonwealth Threatened Species Scientific
Committee reminded the government about the listing of fire risk in 2018 and the assessment was reopened for consideration. It is ongoing.
'Red lights'
If it had identified the risk, the federal government could have prevented a mass fish kill in 2019 on the Lower Darling River near Menindee in far-west NSW, says Martin Mallen-Cooper, a native fish expert and adjunct research professor at Charles Sturt University.
The
remote region made international headlines when an estimated 1 million
native Murray cod and other species perished amid the region's worst
drought on record, as shrinking river pools became de-oxygenated and
left cramped fish choking for breath.
The
site of the fish kills is downstream of Menindee Lakes, a natural lake
system that has been engineered for water storage. It had been filled as
recently as late 2016 after an unusual winter rain event flooded down
from Queensland.
But under joint management of federal and state
governments, the water was released to flow into South Australia – which
Murray-Darling Basin Authority chief executive Phillip Glyde said was
done to avoid the high evaporation rates of the shallow lake system.
However,
Mallen-Cooper says the "incredibly damaging" event could have been
prevented if the risks were identified and contingency plans put in
place.
"There should've been red lights going off" to store water ahead of 2019, he says.
"Everyone
knew the inflows over the next 12 months would be around the lowest on
record. You could see the risk and therefore you should have planned to
mitigate it. If you had held back sufficient water, and that would have
been a fair bit, you could have prevented the fish kill entirely."
Ley
will be challenged in her response to the Samuel review to balance the
push to speed up project approvals from industry groups, including the
Minerals Council and the National Farmers Federation, and calls from the
scientific community and environment movement to beef up federal
oversight.
In its submission to the review, the Wentworth Group of
Concerned Scientists said the "objectives of the [EPBC] act are not
being met", highlighting that it does not account for cumulative impacts
that come from a build-up of developments over time.
Among
the authors of the submission was Peter Cosier, a senior policy adviser
to former environment minister Robert Hill, who declined to comment for
this article.
"By themselves, individual developments may have
minimal impact on the environment but when combined, their cumulative
impact can result in long-term damage," the Wentworth Group said.
The
submission cited the example of deforestation in Great Barrier Reef
catchments, which had created marine pollution and contributed to the
fact "numerous marine species including freshwater sawfish are now
threatened".
Minerals
Council chief executive Tania Constable says "significant growth in
regulation" had not led to "better environmental and biodiversity
outcomes" and the EPBC Act was hampered by "poor collaboration and
co-ordination of policies".
"Resources wasted on duplicative
processes should instead be directed to the collection and collation of
environmental data, which would support strategic environmental outcomes
and business certainty," Constable says.
In
April, Ley said she expected Samuel would "identify a range of measures
that we can take to prevent unnecessary delays and improve
environmental standards".
"Cutting green tape is not about
removing protection for the environment – it is about getting rid of
unnecessary delays – delays that currently cost environmental groups,
businesses and the economy hundreds of millions of dollars," she said.
The minister declined to comment for this article.
