Sydney Morning Herald - Deborah Snow
Last summer, in November, Queensland biologist Professor Stephen
Williams was at a workshop in Vietnam when he received an urgent email
from home. It was from a ranger he knew who worked for the World
Heritage-listed wet tropics area around Cairns.
Something
unprecedented was happening at the top of Mount Bartle Frere, North
Queensland’s highest peak. At 1611 meters high, the mountain’s upper
reaches are in what is meant to be a cool temperate zone.
 |
| Upland rainforest on Mount Windsor, part of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. Credit: Kerry Trapnell |
But instead of
normal summer readings at the peak, which rarely top 25, temperatures
had soared past 35 degrees for six days in a row, culminating in one
scorcher of 39.
“This is on a mountain where the average
temperature for the year is usually 12 degrees, a nice warm day is
around 18, and a hot day is 25,” Williams tells me, as we sit in a cafe
high up on the nearby Atherton tableland. “I was shocked, and very
worried about the impact. Temperatures like this were unheard of.
”Williams,
57, is Professor of Global Change Biology at James Cook University and a
long-time expert on many of the unique animal species which inhabit the
ancient rainforests of North Queensland. Along with the spectacular
landscape, those animals together with the nearly 700 unique plant
species growing in the forests are a fundamental reason why the 900,000
hectare area received much sought-after World Heritage listing in the
late 1980s.
 |
| "Temperatures like this were unheard of”: Professor Stephen Williams. Credit: Kerry Trapnell |
In
March, worried about the impact of the November heat wave, Williams
carried out a spot check on one of the area’s most iconic and vulnerable
creatures, the lemuroid ringtail possum, which he’d been studying for
nearly two decades. These creatures are endemic, meaning they live
nowhere else except in these high wet tropics pockets. The results were
another shock.
At sites where he used to reliably record some 20
individuals an hour, he was now finding only three or four. It was a
similar story elsewhere on the mountain slopes and on the higher
sections of the tableland. Williams alerted the Wet Tropics Management
Authority (an agency jointly reporting to the federal and Queensland
governments) which called an emergency board meeting a week later.
Within days, in late April, the board had issued its most chilling
warning yet about the impact of climate change on the iconic area.
“The
Board … has now become aware that, following the hottest summer ever
recorded, some of the key species for which the Wet Tropics World
Heritage Area was listed are at imminent risk of extinction,” it warned.
“Professor
Williams’ recent monitoring has identified that the declines in possum
and bird species … are now reaching alarming levels. If the trends
continue, populations at sites that previously had the highest density
of lemuroid ringtail possums could become locally extinct as early as
2022.”
'The canary in the coal mine'
 |
| Searching for possums at Mount Hypipamee National Park. Credit: Kerry Trapnell |
On a chilly Monday evening this week, the
Herald and
The Age
accompanied Williams to a site at Mount Hypipamee National Park, 950
meters above sea level up behind Cairns, to track down some of the
nocturnal creatures.
We tramped in darkness along a track lined
with dense rainforest, swinging torches and spotlights up into the
tracery of branches overhead, seeking the tell-tale reflection of possum
eyes. In an hour or more of searching, Williams had picked out four
lemuroids, two Herbert River ringtails and two Green ringtails (also
highly vulnerable endemic species). At this site, the numbers were 50
per cent down on what he would expect to find. Elsewhere, he says,
numbers are down closer to 70 per cent.
The
ringtails, which have evolved to thrive in the cooler upland areas,
cannot handle temperatures in excess of 29 or 30 degrees, so the species
is drifting ever higher up the mountains, Williams explains. They are
disappearing from an elevation of 800 metres which used to be the “sweet
spot” for biodiversity. Now they are starting to decline even at 1000
metres. Once they reach the peaks there will be nowhere else for them to
go.
Bird species unique to
the region are being similarly affected. “It’s distressing,” he says.
“This is what I have spent my life working on, and I’m seeing it
disappear before my eyes.”
The Wet Tropics world heritage area
runs for some 450 kilometres down the coast between Cooktown and
Townsville and includes the oldest continuously surviving tropical
rainforests on earth. They are, says Leslie Shirreffs, the chair of the
Wet Tropics Management Authority, a “living museum”, containing plant
ancestors of the great Gondwana forests that covered the continent and
parts of Antarctica 50 to 100 million years ago, among them rare species
that show how the earliest flowers evolved.
The Wet Tropics
(which includes the Daintree in its northern reaches) abuts another
globally famous world-heritage site, the Great Barrier Reef.
But
while efforts to save the reef – ravaged in some sections by widespread
coral bleaching - have drawn the bulk of the funding and the attention,
the rainforest remains something of the poor cousin, Shirreffs says.
“We had predicted that the loss [of the cool adapted mountain species]
would happen on current trajectories by the end of the century. But we
are seeing it now,” she says.
Williams
says both the reef and the rainforest are being heavily impacted by
climate change, but “my problem is that we don’t have such obvious signs
that the rainforest is in trouble – we don’t have ‘canopy bleaching’.”
The
Australian Conservation Foundation says that makes it harder to
galvanise more action for wet tropics protection. “It looks like a
beautiful place and it is a beautiful place, but that’s actually one of
the problems. It hides pretty well the damage that's being done to it,”
explains ACF’s chief executive, Kelly O’Shanassy, who accompanied a
small group of journalists to the world heritage site.
The Wet
Tropics Authority receives $2.7 million annually from the federal
government for its baseline operating costs, but that figure has not
increased since 2004 (though funding for specific projects has waxed and
waned).
Williams
had an extensive monitoring program set up over several years where he
was tracking climate change impacts at some 40 sites, taking localised
temperature readings. But then, he says, “the money stopped … we left
the data loggers out there until they died. Especially in the rainforest
that sort of instrument only lasts a few years. We kept them running as
long as we could.”
O’Shanassy says people sometimes ask her why
they should worry about the threatened disappearance of these highly
specialised possum species. “They are the canary in the coal mine, just
as much as the reef,” she says. “They are showing us what our future
holds …. If we don’t move from burning coal to renewables in the next 10
years, we can’t stop runaway climate change and we will see this vast
damage everywhere, including things we humans rely on. We lose the
beauty - but we might also lose our life support systems.”
Temperatures soar, with devastating effect
 |
| More than 400 orphaned juvenile spectacled flying foxes were brought in for care over the space of just a few days. Credit: Kerry Trapnell |
 |
| Jenny McLean at her bat hospital. Credit: Kerry Trapnell |
Down
near the coast, Cairns also suffered record temperatures in November,
with a devastating effect on another creature which is iconic for the
region: the spectacled flying fox. Thousands were discovered dead or
dying as temperatures soared to 42 degrees.
At the bat hospital
which Jenny McLean runs at Tolga, on the Atherton tableland above
Cairns, more than 400 orphaned juveniles were brought in for care by
volunteers over the space of just a few days.
McLean, a small,
wiry woman whose been caring for injured bats since 1990 and runs the
place on the lean earnings from a modest visitor’s centre, knows as much
about the flying foxes as the scientists who regularly visit her. Those
bats she can save she nurses back to health in a large enclosure where
bright strings of apples hang beneath the open mesh roof like bunting,
and nectar bottles hang invitingly for her patients to sip from.
“We are giving them another chance at life,” she says, as she cradles a tiny microbat weighing no more than 8 grams.
Among the scientists who are regular visitors to McLean’s bat refuge is the CSIRO’s flying fox expert, Dr David Westcott.
With
McLean’s help, researchers have worked out how to place transmitters on
the bats to locate the more remote flying fox camps in the forest, and
thus ascertain their numbers more accurately. Westcott says a recent
analysis of his data shows that the population has declined dramatically
– by an order of around 70 per cent – over the last 14 years.
 |
| Dr David Westcott. Credit: Kerry Trapnell |
“It
looks like the initial declines were driven by cyclones and then the
heat stress event [in November] has given them a good whack while
they’re already down,” he says. “Our most recent estimate prior to that
heat stress event was 80 to 90,000 animals. There is some debate about
how many died but it's a significant proportion, 20-plus per cent of the
known population.”
It was, he says, the first report of mass
die-offs among the creatures because of heat stress. “At 42 degrees they
cease to be able to thermo-regulate. They can’t shed the heat.”
The impact of climate change is also being noticed by Aboriginal groups that have traditional ties to the wet tropics.
Among
them are the Djabugay people, who have native title over parts of the
Barron Gorge National Park, north-west of Cairns. Barry Hunter, project
officer for the local Aboriginal corporation, says he’s noticed many
changes since he was a boy scrambling up and down the spectacular Barron
Gorge waterfall.
“Over the last 20 years, I have seen distinct
change, particularly in the birds, some of which have a totemic meaning
for family groups.”
 |
| Barry Hunter says he’s noticed many changes over the last 20 years. Credit: Kerry Trapnell |
Climate
change is also disrupting his community’s traditional methods of fire
management. “We have not had a dry season this year, which indicates
changing weather patterns,” Hunter says. “We should be well and truly
into our traditional burning season,” he adds, explaining that setting
small mosaic fires helps minimise the risk of massive blazes in areas
adjacent to the heritage-listed forests.
The ACF and the federal
government remain at loggerheads over whether funding for environmental
protection is anywhere near adequate. ACF’s O’Shanassy says since the
Coalition came to office in 2013, the environment budget has been cut by
nearly 40 per cent, to around $900 million a year.
A
spokesman for Scott Morrison’s new Environment Minister, Sussan Ley,
flatly rejects that claim, saying ACF ignores programs which are not
directed through the department but are environmentally significant. He
cites the $190 million National Landcare program, a $137.5 million
"practical environment restoration package" and $250 million over the
next five years to support management of federal environmental water
holdings as examples. This week, a $1.9 million grant under the Landcare
program was awarded to an NGO in the wet tropics area.
But the
Wet Tropic Authority’s board said in April that investment was “not
commensurate with the urgency for mitigating climate change impacts”.
One
area where the two sides have reached agreement is over ridding the wet
tropics and adjacent rich agricultural land of yellow crazy ants, an
introduced species that wreaks devastation on local ecosystems and
farmers alike.
This year’s budget set aside $9 million to keep
eradication programs going, with the Wet Tropics Authority overseeing
much of that spend. It’s painstaking work, as rangers and community
volunteers fan out in grid patterns, laying down a paste to lure the
ants (cat food mixed with apricot jam works a treat), then coming back
to set poison baits at infestation hot spots.
 |
| A team works on the eradication of yellow crazy ants, an introduced species. Credit: Kerry Trapnell |
Shirreffs
says the success of the program is a model for what could be achieved
in the bigger battle against climate change. “It has worked by bringing
together industry, the community, science and government - they all have
an interest in the survivability and integrity of the world heritage
area, which is worth $5.2 billion a year to the local economy.”
O’Shanassy,
speaking more bluntly, says ACF will try to work around Canberra and
partner with business and state governments on climate change because
“the Coalition government is not signalling that it’s going to be
serious on climate action”.
“The government says we are going to
reach our Paris [emissions reduction targets] in a canter? Every bit of
evidence says we are not. There are flat-out lies being told which is
very distressing because this is a fundamental issue that affects all
Australians.”
In a week in which
heat records have tumbled in Europe – a week when even
mining giant BHP’s boss Andrew Mackenzie has declared climate change to be an “existential” threat – Williams says he wants to see Australia at the forefront of the issue globally.
“Fiddling
around at the edges is not going to cut it. We have to tackle the root
causes. What most people don’t understand is that this is not something
that might happen in the future, it's already happening. All over the
word. I’m talking about thousands of studies that demonstrate [the
damage] in every ecosystem, from the Artic to the Antarctic.”
Links
