The Human Island: A place of ecological ruin.

Index

Economy; the Noisy Noisy Child of Ecology

Introduction

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
-John Donne, Meditation XVII.

Donne’s words pre-date the Age of Enlightenment by more than a half a century, yet with the birth of modern science, it would become increasingly obvious that his sentiment didn’t go far enough. Indeed no human is an island, free from the requirements of others, nor are any multi-cellular life form truly free from others. In fact, all but for a few pools of sludge – incredibly simple cells that take their energy from physical processes – are reliant on other life to make their life possible.

From the organ-like structures within eukaryotic cells (such as the relationship with mitochondria), to the balancing act between prey and predator populations; from the bacteria, plants, animals and fungi that all work to process soil and return organic material and minerals to the environment, to the beneficial bacteria in the gut of animals that assist with digestion of food; from the various users of river water upstream to the estuary nurseries at the river mouth; where ever you look life supports life.

Understanding how each species fits into the whole, Donne’s “continent”, is the work of ecologists. The more we learn, the more amazing life appears to be. Perhaps most interesting is the realisation that we are far from independent from other forms of life. For all the vast improvements that we have made over recent centuries, especially over the 20^th century, there are still numerous situations where our current standard of living would be impossible where it not for the services of other species. We are not an island species, nor can we hope (or should we hope) to be.

Over the coming series, I hope to open this concept up as much as possible to demonstrate how wonderful ecology is and, probably most importantly, clearly define what resilience means. In doing so, I want to build a compelling reason as to why the various threats to biodiversity over the coming century (such as urban sprawl, pollution, desertification, intensive agriculture, depleting abundance, islandisation / fragmentation of remnant vegetation and of course, climate change) are in reality threats to our own species as much the loss of an abundance of various life.

Parallel to this, I will do my best to also make as clear a case as I can of what a future of low biodiversity abundance would look like and what it would mean to our species, if we were to persist with business as usual as much as possible (ie. think agricultural pollination without pollinators).

Passenger Pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, male, chromolithograph after painting

In all the political noise of recent years, the sublet warning calls around us are being dampened. We cannot be too harsh on our ancestors who removed the Dodo, the Passenger Pigeon, the Thylacine and numerous other species from the living world – they didn’t know any better. However, we do know better now and turning a blind eye to a global ecosystem buckling under the pressures of humanity makes us all as guilty as the next.

There will be no excuses when we explain how we willingly continued to allow extinction rates to persist far above the known background rates, once we had the evidence at hand. There will be no joy for future farmers who have to mechanically treat the landscape now barren of life when the floodplains and neighbouring vegetation for useful species are lost. Should I expect my great-grandchildren to think much of me when the only tuna they ever know of is a stuffed skin in a museum somewhere or held, proudly, by an angler of yesteryear – staring out from the pages of a history book?

I am confident that we as a species could persist for some time in a barren future; for we wouldn’t have today’s luxury of mocking science when it challenges our perception and when we work together, based on scientific reason, we can achieve a lot. But why would we want a world like that? It is likely that we’re fast approaching a crossroad beyond which, we cannot hope to turn around and go down another path. I want to provide one more reason why we should take the only real option, because we don’t want to have to spend the great amount of energy in becoming and maintaining an island species. We must govern all life, preserve the ecological richness as much we can or face a barren future.

* This piece is the first part of The Human Island series. As the series grows, it will published as a continuous piece on it’s own page, reachable on the new Innovation and Ecology tab above.

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Effort of Life

Farming has always been an activity of mixed feelings. All a farmer’s hopes and dreams can paint an exhilarating image over a fertile landscape. The growing season can turn those dreams into reality as much as it can turn them into dust.

Such was the story for western settlers who ventured in land of Australia or more than a century earlier into the heart of the U.S., reaching open plains of long grass. Who would have blamed them for their confidence in what they perceived as rich fertile land?
The recent rains were above the yearly average and over the coming decade, many hard lessons were learnt. Now, for example, when you travel through much of South Australia, as I frequently do, you cannot help but stumble on ruins of stone houses where a farm went bust.

Once, a number of years ago, my father took me on a detour through the lesser travelled roads of the Murraylands, stopping in what I perceived as the middle of nowhere. On his insistence, we climbed a rusty old gate, into a field of nearly waste high dried yellow grass. Heading towards a small hill range, we came upon once such ruin. It was still structurally sound, yellow to red stone, but the windows and doors were long since gone.

It was then that he informed me that his had been one of his earliest homes. He and his siblings would walk a fair distance, along the roads between neighbouring properties, to reach the pick-up point for the school bus. He shared some of his memories of childhood on the farm. It was yet another bust venture and the family eventually moved to Murray Bridge.

Sometimes you stumble upon a massive infrastructural undertaking, like a dugout dam or piping that stretches for many kilometres. It’s mindboggling to think just how much effort these people of previous generations went to, simply hoping to tame the land for their agricultural use.

Here, I want to use a hypothetical example of effort in agriculture to explain a principle of ecology.

One such farmer, scanning across the landscape, notices a massive bolder, about 2kms to the North West. If this bolder is able to be moved 500m towards the homestead, it could be pushed into the creek, creating a basic dam which, after a good rain upstream, would cause the banks to be broken and water to run across the farm, and collect in a small recess on the eastern side of the plot.

Farm House, By ilovebutter

Having no other means to irrigate the landscape in such a short term, this seems like a wonderful way to transfer both water and nutrients to the plot and create a pond for thirsty livestock.

The rock moves easily enough, under the guidance of a horse and two people, until it reaches the bank. The western edge of the creek is on a small rise – small, but enough to be too much for the farmers and the horse to overcome.

One option might be to ask a neighbour for assistance – it might be done with two horses.
Another option might be to dig out the rise, however, would it be more efficient to just use the horse to dig out channels instead?

If time wasn’t an issue at all, give it a century or two and the rise might erode away.
This is an example of what occurs on all levels of biology; where the effort needed is greater than can be provided by the entity at hand. Within cells, enzymes assist with chemical reactions to reduce the energy require. Within the gut of termites bacteria brake down cellulose into digestible sugars. Pollinators vastly improve the likelihood that pollen reaches its target, thereby reducing the need for expensive of pollen production (but the trade off is producing nectar as payment instead).

The last case, regarding erosion, is a case where physical processes provide the effort. This includes important processes, such as the oceanic conveyor belt, atmospheric water transfer, river transfer (which also causes erosion, thereby transferring nutrients and minerals) for instance. Seed dispersal could not happen without being carried in the gut of animals, river ways and by the wind. Physical processes are arguable as important as the many ecological services that feed from it.

Effort is an important aspect of ecology and something too often taken for granted by our species. Here are some examples;

Until a century ago, the effort provided by trade winds was incredibly important for human endeavours.
We’ve forgotten the art of using architecture to control a building’s climate. The shape of the structure and the material used was such to improve the temperature within the dwelling, regardless of the temperature, without much influence (such as heating and cooling).
In no other field is outside effort more exploited than in agriculture. Be it, the plant cover that protects and keeps moist the top soil; solar energy input that permits growth of plants; meteorological events that bring rain or flood water and minerals; and pollinators (globally, 60% of which is done naturally [1]). In more organic practices, extra effort is also provided by, legume species which provide useable nitrogen; natural pest control; soil aeration and nutrient input by animals; and sustainable natural harvest.

All effort requires energy. On the back of cheap fuel, we have been able to move beyond the limitations of our ancestors by using labour saving devices. Such devices have displaced ecological services, leaving situations that now only function on this equipment. This can be seen in the copious amounts of ammonia fertilisers used, the myriad of machines required to work broad mono-culture farms and the near constant heating and cooling required in modern buildings. It’s a self-feeding loop of dependence.

One species could not be expected to spend all the energy required to produce a habitat suitable for its own existence. A habitat is a diverse community of species that all spend energy on a few forms of effort that together produce a whole host of benefits to the ecosystem.

Ecological succession is a wonderful example of this, where over time, the generalists and opportunistic species move into a disturbed area. Over time these species tend to alter the environment in such ways that eventually suit more specialist species. It is a series of events that can radically change an environment and over time, becoming increasingly productive and abundant with diverse life, yet could only happen due to the different efforts made by a number of species in response to former species and physical inputs.
Even soil, rich with nutrients, is often the result of thousands of years of physical effort, such as nutrient rich water movement and ecological effort, such as organic compost, soil preparation and protection [2]. Even the cheap energy we currently exploit is energy accumulated from the sun by ancient forests. Biodiversity doesn’t simply appear, but is built up over time, by the efforts of the growing community.

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Biological Diversity

To keep a submarine live and moving in the abyss of open waters, you need various crew members able to perform various tasks. Probably most import of these are both the Engineering and Operations departments, however the importance of Weapons and Supply departments would vary under the different conditions. With three levels of redundancy (ie. three cycling groups of crew), there is also enough able crew members to share the load to keep the vessel running continuously.

In some cases, the result of losing one shift’s unit of crew – such as group 3 of Engineers – may have a sudden and noticeable impact on how well the submarine works, especially if a member of that unit is the only specialist for a certain piece of equipment or if the effort involved was strenuous and required adequate down time for recovery.

In other cases, removal of an entire department may not be noticeable for a complete deployment – such as Weapons – provided that no threats endanger the craft over the time period. In other cases, having the department there for the once a year event, is the difference between long term persistence and sudden and complete annihilation.

In yet other cases, losing one or two crew members may seem to have no noticeable effect at all – such as the loss of the primary chiefs. However over time, there is a slow degrading of crew moral which is hard to quantify or to measure the effects of, but is ultimately debilitating to the entire mission.

If every crew member suddenly decided to only think of themselves, the vessel would be little more than a metal barrel on the bottom of the ocean, but collectively, their effort has radically effects as a whole.

How much could you reduce the size of the vessel as well, before it becomes too small to hold a fully functional resource of able crew?

This, in short, is a system that works very much like a simplified ecosystem. There are numerous specialists and generalists that are able to perform certain jobs that together make the whole systems a viable operation – the reasoning behind the importance of healthy biodiversity.

As with the engineers and navigators, it’s clear that with photosynthesis and pollinators, the benefits are obvious and profound. Without such processes oxygen concentration in the atmosphere would eventually decrease and also all primary food production would be lost.

When you look at storm surge protection provided by mangroves and forests, just like with weapons and supplies, the need may not be frequent enough for constant concern, but the risk in the absence of such services is too great to be ignored.

Some might argue that the loss of a species is excusable for the sake of progress. An example of such an attitude will be discuss in more detail in chapter eight, but it is common enough – ie. what is more important; a few hectares of remnant vegetation or a new shopping complex; the odd tree that provide a corridor for species movement, or maximising productive land; the presents of an insect or bird species or a new housing estate?

As with the loss of the primary chiefs, the ramifications of losing a species, or reducing the environments capacity to hold as many individuals / species many not be noticeable for many years. New recruitment or distribution of plant species may reduce without obvious signs for many decades, due to the absence of seed dispersers and pollinators [3]. Likewise, many animal species cause soil perturbation, assisting nutrient mobility and soil aeration, which can alter what species are able to live in that environment. Without such soil treatment, new seedlings are unable to grow and as older members of the plant community die off, the services that they provide are lost.
To keep an ecosystem alive and thus retain its useful functions upon the landscape, you need various species able to perform various tasks. Healthy biodiversity, with abundant redundancy, just as with the crew of a submarine, is the difference between viability and slow / sudden death.

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Genetic Diversity

Anyone who has studied meteorology or depends on it for their livelihood understands that weather is annoyingly unpredictable. The more that we learn through science, the more we realise just how many climatic factors are involved and why seasons are a far too simplistic principle.

Traditionally, diversification was the key to reliable food supply. In wetter years, grain crops and fruiting trees might do well. When it was drier, natural harvest from native vegetation, local fishing or grazing livestock, might do better. Being part of a community, were you could trade, barter and buy from others who have employed different tactics over the growing season to gain different produce was simply an addition to this diversity. In this way, groups of people were able adjust regardless of the varying weather from year to year.

If, over decades, the weather patterns began to shift towards a certain trend, such as conditions that favoured fruit and grain production, such communities would have more seed available and tend to favour fruit and grain production. Likewise, if the conditions tended to favour certain livestock, more focus would be placed on livestock production, leading to great population of the animal(s).

Some members of the community who have better lands or access to water than others may continue to grow produce that is unfavourable under the current climate conditions (it can be profitable in exploiting a slightly varied niche market), however, if the effort to maintain such production becomes too much, eventually the produce might disappear from the local community altogether – with the only hope of reintroduction being from outside traders.

By diversifying food production, such communities had developed contingency methods that allowed them to meet a varying climate. In much the same way, genetic diversity within a population allows from greater variations in offspring to meet the challenges of a varying climate and environmental conditions.

Where climate conditions are fluctuating, you will find generations fluctuating in gene prevalence, but overall little change to the available gene pool. Even more expensive gene traits will remain in low concentrations if members that carry them are able to persist and successfully pass them on.

Gene diversity is lost when climate change occurs that is so great that most members of the species are unable to persist (not so common), but more likely due to bottlenecking.

Bottlenecking can occur for many reasons. Population collapse due to disease, a catastrophic event, and a few more closely related members being irreversibly isolated from the large gene pool (eg. islandisation) are a few main ways that a gene pool is bottlenecked.

As with mono-culture agriculture, when the times favour the available traits / crops, survival in a bottlenecked community can persist quite easily. However, when environmental factors do not favour the available traits / crop, persistence becomes increasingly expensive. Effectively, in both cases, the result is a genetic desert, without meaningful contingencies in an endlessly varying climate (more on Minimum viable population).

Food security used to be maintained simply because many members of the community were able to employ difference contingencies and as a whole community, this created great diversity in options, regardless of most climate conditions. Likewise, it is not only the biodiversity, as discussed in previous chapter that assists persistence, but also having enough members of a species to allow a genetically diverse pool of traits.

Looking at diversity as a whole, it becomes easy to understand why there is such concern not only of increasing extinction rates, but also depleting fish communities, fragmentation / islandisation of remnant vegetation and declining populations of many species. At some point, pressures, both directly and indirectly the result of human activity has pushed many species beyond the point of no return and continues to do so without meaningful effort to reduce such pressures. Genetic diversity needs to be maintained as climate continues to shift.

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Nothing is Wasted

A deep, enraged bellowing came through over the radio. It was mid October, 2010, and I was a passenger in my bosses 4WD travelling along the main street of Renmark. The crowd encouraged his outrage with cheers.

What was supposed to be an informative meeting, with question time, in Griffith, upstream, had crumbled out of the public servants’ control and had become little more than an emotionally fuelled rally. Of course, to say this openly in Renmark today might be seen as act of suicide.

We parked only a few meters away from the great Murray River, in the car park alongside the local department of a national radio station. They had asked to interview my boss on the hot topic at hand – the newly releases Murray Darling Basin Plan (MDB).

Stepping out of the car, the air was absolutely wonderful. Being an Adelaide boy, it’s not often I feel an air so humid and comfortably warm. At home, it’s cold and wet or hot and dry.

Renmark, Nov 2010

Around a year earlier, I had been standing more or less where I was currently. Through the frequent visits over the past year, I had witnessed an amazing change to this beautiful town.

I guess the locals, walking the street day after day may not have noticed it so much. However, I was amazed by the health of the grass. Compared to the bone-dry dust of a year ago, the end of a decade long drought, the riverside parks were fluorescent green. The air was fragrant with flora and energising.

It would be easy to let yesterday’s nightmare fade out of mind on the streets of Renmark on this day and feel it unjust that the government would want to take the good times away from you. It wouldn’t be as easy, however, to hold this illusion once you began travelling out of town again.

There was less rhythm to the farming lands this season. Some had planted earlier than others. On more than a few plots, fruit trees were being pulled up. It all seemed confused and unsure of itself. The effects of the Big Dry were by no means over.

The more temporal wetlands looked more like islands of desert surrounded by healthy scrub.
The monitoring site, half an hour north of Renmark, was in bloom.

In every respect, life along the Murray Darling Basin had gone from hardship to confused contrast – and all because of water.

Going back a couple centuries, before western intrusion on the Australian landscape, this river system was a different place. From the highlands of the Great Dividing Range, various small creeks wound down on to the western plains of the southern border region of Queensland and throughout New South Wales. Eventually, the river system reached the Murray River – a river the marks most of Victoria’s northern border and cuts a zigzagged path from the Riverland region to Morgan and then south to Lake Alexandrina and the Coorong.

The Murray Darling river system, provides a corridor path through outback New South Wales and the mid eastern region of South Australia which would otherwise rely solely on the infrequent and sporadic showers that occasionally overcame the land shadow effect. Clearly, regions like the Chowilla floodplain, rich with biodiversity, would simply not exist, but be just as arid as the dry neighbouring region, where it not for this large movement of water.
The Chowilla floodplain nowadays is recognised as containing 4 animals of national significance and 51 plant and animal species of state significance. So rich is it with life, that it is recognised as a Ramsar Wetland [4].

The possibilities of natural harvest; the agricultural potential; the eco-tourism potential of such a staggeringly beautiful region; all of these things cannot be, and have not been, ignored by humanity. For all this and much more, the water is not only the life blood of the region, but also real world income.

Before the European appearance, contrary to the booming voices over the radio, none of this water was wasted. It snaked through the environment in constant flux. In times of high flow, the banks would be broken, allowing water, maybe once every few years, to travel to the more arid floodplains at greater distance from the main flow, bringing with it nutrients and minerals that would see the hardy environment through the next few years of drought. Because of such fluctuations, the Murray Darling region is dynamic and efficient at exploiting the good times.

As such, from the air, the various environments and soil chemistry paints the region just as beautifully as the morning golden sun breaking through the river gums along the Murray’s bank.
Lake Alexandrina and the lower lakes, being the tail end of the terrestrial transfer of water, have probably seen the worst of a poor managed river system over the past two centuries. Some might say that it doesn’t matter for the fresh water would otherwise be lost to sea.

The Coorong and Lakes Alexandrina and Albert Wetland are also recognised as Ramsar sites due to the rich diversity of wetland types (23) of the region that support an incredible array of species, many of which are threatened. These wetlands are the result of mixing waters from the Murray mouth with ocean water and many species need access to both waters as part of their life cycle [5].

Twenty five of the bird species that rely on the lower lakes are listed under international migratory conservation agreements and many species of fish rely on the wetlands for nursery environments [5]. Both migratory birds and estuary breeding fish are great long distance transferrers of nutrients. Whether the species are of direct economic value or transfer nutrients to species and ecosystems that are, areas of high biodiversity value that support these species, such as the Lower Lakes, obviously have direct and indirect economic importance globally.

Since European settlement, the frequency of flow ceasing from the Murray mouth has increased from 1% to currently 40% of the time, with the average annual flow reducing by 61%. Such restriction of flows from the Murray mouth increasingly threatens the biodiversity of the region [6]. Clearly, none of the water is wasted and never was.

A point that my boss made within the interview is a simple continuation from this realisation. When human activity enters an ecosystem, or intensifies practices, it’s a trade-off. There are no extractions of resources from an environment without an effect, because the resources most certainly would have been used by another species at some point. By using any of the water continuously, we had already begun to change the ruling factors that governed the more distant wetlands that relied on the infrequent water supply and as we increased our extraction rate, this brought change closer to the main flows and even more noticeably, to the lower lakes. A warmer and drier local environment as climate continues to change will only exacerbate the alterations of such wetlands.

As yet another farmer stood to shout at the MBD Plan’s representatives, now completely beyond all reason (one even threw a toy horse head at the representatives), I couldn’t help but feel uneasy. After a decade of drought, you would’ve thought proper water management would mean more to the Griffith community. They should have learnt that being water smart, regardless of the actual flow, ensures resilience. Sure, the local towns might be vivid green, but the land between the township and the farm paints a different picture for anyone who wishes to look. The Riverland was settled and farmed because it screamed with fertility in the many voices of the local ecosystem. Now, even when the flow is good, that ecosystem is parched. Clearly, the ecosystem that made the region what it is needs a drink.

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Energy Highs

I always enjoyed that moment. The aircraft rolled slowly towards the terminal and somewhere close to parking, depressurization of the cabin had occurred. You could tell when this happened. The warm humid air was thoughtless and intrusive. It was mere seconds between the near cold, dry air-conditioning and the lush tropical sauna.

Exiting the aircraft, I watched my parents and sister suddenly slump – the thick air of the lower latitudes hit them with all its force – however, the feeling was the opposite for me. It was as though gravity had faded and the breath of the tropical greenery filled me with an unusual giddiness. I suppose not everyone is made for Far North Queensland, but it had always felt like home to me.

Sixteen years old – nearly half my life time ago now – and unaware that circumstance would mean for this to be my last visit for at least another one and a half decades. In fact, I was pretty much unaware of everything that existed outside of this holiday. My visits to Cairns and the surrounding region were all too brief moments of lucidity, like waking for just a moment from a deep sleep, and I did my best to soak them up.

The memories that stay with me the longest, and in incredible detail, are those that highlight the abundance of life of northern Australia. Back home on the southern coast, throughout the warmer months, you would hear but a handful of bird species calling out lazily in the afternoon. The Mediterranean climate of Adelaide is beautiful, but comparatively sparse. Here, along this band of vegetation against the east coast, you couldn’t escape the call of life.

Invisible millions of cicadas kept a persistent tone that would render tinnitus the mildest of burdens and if you tried to plunge into the waters of the reef to escape from this forest sound, all you find is that the ringing has been replaced by an omnipresent crackling of endless parrot fish scrapping at coral.

Then there’s the life that physically surrounds you.

Image 3. Millaa Millaa Falls

On our way to the Atherton Tablelands, a male cassowary stood in the middle of the road, bringing our hire car to a halt on the dirt track. Once the vehicle was stationary, the giant bird took its time, leisurely looking into the cabin at the giggling occupants. Once he had contented himself with his investigation, he walked away from us, nearly reaching the understory to the right of the car. Seconds later, a number of hidden chicks burst out from the vegetation in front of the vehicle, darted through their father’s legs, before disappearing again in the vegetation to the left.

The striking adult bird was in no hurry to follow his offspring back into the forest. He kept a casual eye on us as he slowly walked away. He clearly knew that he was boss.

Or there were turtles that nudge around you as you paddle beneath the almost too perfect Millaa Millaa Falls (Image 3).

And who, after swimming along the Outer Reef could ever forget that dizzying spell that follows immersing into the vibrantly coloured ocean metropolitan?

Even back in Cairns, I have a whole host of memories surrounded by wildlife – some enjoyable; such as the endless hoards of geckos that scurry across any given wall, and some less so; such as the spider, larger than my hand, that had made a resting platform of my folded bath towel, or the giant cricket that kicked my father’s hand, causing an impressive gash.

In every possible regard, the tropics saturate your awareness with life.

Indeed, when western settlers moved into such regions, they were struck silly with the richness of life of the tropics. Surely, agriculture could to do no better in any other region than it could on rainforest land.

It seemed logical enough and for the first few years, the yield spoke for itself. However, the yield suddenly declined after three or four years.

The soil wasn’t rich and fertile as the monstrous trees seemed to have suggested, but were old and depleted of most nutrients and useful minerals. By cutting and removing much of the vegetation, the settlers had effectively removed most of the available nutrients of the tropical system. Burning what remained after clearing, bought the farmer some time – by fertilising the plot – but this was only temporary.

The turnover rate of available nutrients is so rapid that the soil plays only a minor role in many tropical rainforests. Effectively, the living, breathing biota of the rainforest holds up the wealth and fertility of the region, almost in worship of the hot tropical sun. It was an alien environment to those from temperate Europe and shows, to this day, through the continuous extra effort placed in tropical agriculture compared to that of higher latitudes (see more here).

Not only has farming in the region removed much of the wealth before agriculture even began, but, with the assistance of other landscape use changes, it has introduced the potential of phosphorus fertilisation [7]. As much as this is beneficial in higher latitudes, in phosphorus-limited rainforests, this has the potential to be disruptive to the carbon cycle – even leading the environment from a net carbon sink to one where carbon is lost from the environment in the form of CO2 emissions via increased respiration [7].

As tropical forests are responsible for at least a third of the global organic carbon storage and exchange of CO2 between the biosphere and atmosphere, phosphorus fertilisation has great potential for disrupting this valuable service in controlling CO2 atmospheric concentrations [6].

Another point that should be made is that the life found in such forests are amazing demonstrations of adaption. For example, tropical insects live far closer to their optimal temperature and are likely to be more susceptible to temperature changes than their temperate counterparts [8]. Insects provide many valuable services to rainforests, such as pollination, aeration of soil, rapid breakdown of organic litter and providing a direct and indirect food supply to other species. Living so near to their optimal temperature zone leaves two options with the changing climate – adaption and / or migration – both of which have the potential to be disruptive to the services provided by these species [8]. Clearly, the tropics are weird and wonderful place and work on very different principles to those westerners understood.

I hadn’t realised it at the time, but the forest on either side of the dirt track was likely to be maybe a couple kilometres wide. The adult cassowary was probably used to vehicles; being a large animal with young, he probably had to cross the road regularly simply to find enough food in the thin strip of remnant forest.

From landscape use changes (largely deforestation / wood harvest, agriculture and urbanisation), to pollution and climate change, rainforests are at risk and not only by hectare loss – but also by services loss at a species level.

A loss of a pollinator could mean the difference between abundance and local extinction of a plant species, which in turn could affect other species dependant on that plant. A loss of specialised recyclers of litter could lead to material being locked in waste or greatly increase in conversation time before it is returned as useful material – depleting nutrient and mineral availability even further.

Tropical forests may hold their wealth of fertility up high, but unwittingly, we’re cutting these ecosystems down at the knees, which has the potential of causing a dominoes effect. These highly productive regions are of great importance to human life for many of the ecological services that they provide. Are we effectively pulling the plug on a major life support system?

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Life of a Bee

Image 4. The Beerenberg strawberry farm

It’s late November and on the outskirts of Hahndorf in the Adelaide hills, The Beerenberg Farm is enjoying the busiest time of the year in their tourism trade. The recent break of the prolonged Australian drought delayed one of the farm’s major attractions by a couple of weeks, however, by now the strawberry fields (image 4.) are in full production and swamped by happy families plucking ripe fruit from the plants.

Hay-fever has dampened my enthusiasm somewhat, but I’m grateful to be out here. Not only is it a fun activity in itself, but it helps to overcome a lingering case of writers-block. When deciding to undertake this project, I had casually noted this chapter and thought little more of it – for it’s such a fundamental aspect of human ecology that I assumed it would come to me quite easily. Alas, this hadn’t been the case. I even put it off and worked on following chapters instead. However, watching the bees hop from flower to flower (image 5.) and stumbling upon many flowers at different stages of maturity, I finally have my theme.

Around 140 million years ago, the world began to bloom. Flowering plants have ever since diversified to become the dominant group of terrestrial plants and both the perfume and artistic colour of the natural world. Culturally, flowers have long played a role in human societies, from simple decoration to an important nonverbal form of communication.

Image 5. Bee landing

Yet, flowering plants are most important to our species for the food they supply. All fruit, vegetables, grain and legumes and most nuts come from flowering plants. All herbivorous land animals that we farm for meat produce consume mostly flowering plants. Even honey could not exist were it not for the nectar produced in flowers.

Our existence as we know it relies on flowering plant and their existence in turn relies on pollination – much of which is assisted by other species. It’s a beautiful demonstration of ecology at its finest, most elegant and incidentally artistic; a perfect illustration of the paradoxical attitude of the Human Island – some impossible separation of humanity from nature.

Taking any given variety of apple for example, if you look at what the consumer perceives as the bottom of the fruit, you find what remains of the blossom. After the flower has been successfully pollinated, the ovary at the base of the flower swells and develops into the fruit. Pollinators greatly increase the efficiency of the process, so much so that many species entirely dependent on cross-pollination simply would not propagate without the effort of pollinators (see more here).

Those flowering plants that do not rely on pollinators, simply do not invest in colourful flowers, nectar and large pollen grains. They send small pollen grains out on the wind. For agriculture, this is the strategy employed by the grains (see more here).

As mentioned in an earlier chapter, as much as 60% of the world’s crops rely on natural pollination [1] which demonstrates just how important pollinators are to food security and although it is easy to assume this service is provided freely, as was discussed earlier, there simply is no such thing. Bees are able to be kept in nests to assist with pollination in many cases. However the same cannot be said for butterfly, moths, birds and bats who are also important pollinators. These often require remnant patches of vegetation for roosting, nesting, protection and other parts of their life cycle [9]. Just as with communities that are required to be built near a new mine site, these farm-hands require the basics for life, neighbouring their place of work. The better and vast the facilities, the more potential workers remain on hand.

Image 6. The Passionfruit flower, covered in large pollen grains

Pollination is far from the only service offered by the non-human work-force. Where adequate environments are available on and surrounding the farm, predatory species can provide excellent pest control. As weed invasiveness generally increases with environmental disturbance, having healthy and diversity natural environments surrounding the farm also provide a barrier from weeds [10] as well as protection from storm events (such as top soil lost and crop damage from runoff and strong winds). Allowing certain species access to the farm will also assist with soil perturbation and nutrient transfer.

In collaboration with various academic groups, farmers in Victoria and Tasmania have provided numerous case studies where they were able to improve profits and resilience while reducing effort through increasing diversity of biology and practices on their plots [11]. As discussed earlier, to increase production on the land requires an increase in effort. As many species are well designed for such tasks, there is potential to increase yield and also restore local biodiversity by creating agricultural land that provides habitats for non-human farm-hands.

Stopping to sneeze for the umpteenth time, I pan across the strawberry field. I guess the occasional tourist gets stung by the odd bee. However, if we moved the bees away to protect the tourists, we effectively remove the creators of the fruit. This is the heart of the problem of the Human Island. Sure, we’ll continue to produce grains, meat and a few fruit and vegetables that are able to self-pollinate (however, this would long term lead to a loss of genetic diversity), but it would be a very boring diet and most likely, one of reduced nutrition.

The world is made a much more beautifully rich, fragrant and delicious by the diversity of flowering plants. The world is more wonderful with biodiversity. The smiles on the faces of the tourist around me tell me as much. You simply cannot have the direct produce without indirect producers. We owe a lot to the life of a bee and the many other farm-hands.

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When it’s Gone

“Oh, and spare me your huffing about biodiversity, sustainability and my children’s children’s children.

“You see, I’ve seen the dodo…

“… looking at the goofy thing, I felt serenely confident that there was not the slightest gap left in my life by its passing, just as I have no reason at all to regret never being able to see a herd of tyrannosaurus rex in my front garden.”

“Shouldn’t we just harden up about this whole “endangered” racket?”

- Andrew Bolt, July 14th 2010, Why save an animal just begging for extinction?

Few others could better sum up the nonsensically extrinsic and apathetically self-serving attitude that I wish to address in this series better than this journalist. Such an attitude would sell out long term prosperity, for a quick dollar on the premise that both the Dodo and the T-rex were unessential for local environments. It is an openly flawed and terribly weak rhetorical argument, but is widespread and something I too often hear.

By such logic, we could condone the eradication of all known pollinators of foreign continents as we would be unlikely to be affected, at least in the short term, by their absence. As discussed in the previous chapter, pollinators are important field-hands in agriculture, however, if we were to lose them elsewhere, we may feel confident that the worst that could happen to us personally is the loss of some exotic imported fresh produce.

In chapter 3, Biological Diversity, I compared an ecosystem to the crew and workings of a submarine. In chapter 5, Nothing is Wasted, I made the point that any subtraction from an ecosystem is a trade off. It is not always a clear and easy decision to decide what species is important and which isn’t, or to what degree of abundance is required to fulfil the effort required for a certain service. Likewise, diverting resources and ecological services may have ramifications that take a long time to be noticeable or may occur many hundreds of kilometres away.

To firstly use Andrew’s example species; tyrannosaurus rex and the Dodo, we have two very different situations.

T-rex is undoubtedly one of the best known species of dinosaurs to have been alive to witness the end of the era of reptilian giants. This occurred of course, around 65 and a half million years ago. In the wake of a mass extinction event, ending the Cretaceous period, the world was a far less biologically diverse place. There was room to move, so to speak – new niches where opening and with it, new species began to emerge. With the large animals no longer around to utilise much of the available resources, new types of ecosystems were able to form; the rules of the playground had changed. To reintroduce T-rex (they were unlike to move in herds by the way), would cause a dramatic pressure to ecosystems that simply had not developed to support it. Being a top-predator, they would be very unlikely find enough meat to persist. If we were talking about an herbivorous giant of the Cretaceous, we may see it literally eat itself out of house and home. In essence, what we’re talking about here is something that we’re all too familiar with (especially in Australia) – introduced species, but on a massive scale. Clearly, foxes, rabbits and cats have been good for Australian ecology, right?

The poor Dodo, being Andrew’s main target for mudslinging, has been the endless ecological joke, which quite obviously undermines this unique species.

As with the chef of chapter 3, the absence of the Dodo didn’t really have a noticeable effect on the ecosystem of Mauritius until the mid twentieth century, when it was realised that only 13 Tambalacoque Trees (Sideroxylon grandiforum) remained; all of which were over 300 years old, although these trees seem to produce fertile fruit [13]. Temple (1997) suggested that it was essential for the fruit to pass through the dodo’s gizzard to remove the thick protective seed coat. Since Temple’s paper, there has been some debate as to whether the relationship between the Tambalacoque tree and the dodo was really significant, as there remains insufficient evidence – for instance, numerous other species on the island became extinct around the same time who may have also treated the seeds – however, such relationships are not rare (whether it’s digestive treatment or simply pulp removal or seed transfer) [3].

Less ambiguity remains in the wake of the lost Passenger pigeon, which overharvest and landscape use change successfully irradiated by 1914. Flocks of this species numbered in the many millions, meaning that their presence and ecological perturbation was immense. There is little question that these flocks were able to alter environments, both through seed dispersal and urea fertilisation [3].

It has been suggested, for instance, that both the Sand cherry (Prunus pumila) and American Beech trees (Fagus grandifolia) at least partially owe their previous distribution to the Passenger pigeon, which has been on the decline in range for both species in recent decades [3].

Understandably, the loss of the Passenger pigeon, regardless of its importance to the historical ecosystem of eastern North America, is yet another species the Andrew Bolts’ of the world would simply shrug their shoulders at. However, what if the declining or absent species was an important regional pollinator or pest controlling species on agricultural land?

Current agricultural methodology is leading to a slow decline in remnant tree abundance which in turn is likely to reduce the abundance of numerous animal species, such as birds and bats, that rely on them to move among fragmented woodland patches that remain [9].

Clearly, when species become locally extinct, so do the services that they previously provided. As these services tend to make other processes possible, or assist in recruitment of other species, ultimately the entire function of the local ecosystem is changed. Once an ecosystem is significantly degraded it will be defined by different processes and thus will no longer provide the same benefits as previously. For example, without suitable habitats for pest controlling species, such as birds, bats and certain invertebrates, pesticide is the only option. Pesticide is likely to reduce soil ecology as well, meaning that the effort of soil treatment is also included work for the farmer (raising costs, lowing quality). It’s a negative feedback process of poor agricultural practices and increasingly evidence in large scale monoculture. This is likely to be the future of agriculture where woodlands are eventually lost, due to current land management [9].

Far from being an “endangered racket”, species conservation is quite literally conserving an easier life. You don’t feed more people by creating a genetic waste land, but by stimulating life and opportunity – increasing activity. You don’t make your work easier by removing all the species able to provide effort and thus work, but by making the environment more suitable for more hands, that is to say, increasing biodiversity.

The Andrew Bolts’ of the world might feel serenely confident as they watch yet another species move down the one-way road of extinction. However I’m not confident that a biological wasteland can adequately provide the standard of living that we are currently able to enjoy.

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Ecology in Space!

Taking a quick look at the Windows wallpapers that my computer came with, I counted 17 that were landscape or plant orientated. On the pin-up board in my office, a number of postcard-sized professional photographs of various natural scenes have been pinned up for who knows how long. When the weight of my particular circumstances seems too much, the relief I find when strolling along the beach, listening to a babbling creek that feeds one of the local waterfalls, or the quiet I find deep in the mallee of my monitoring site is quite indescribable.

I know that I am not alone with this sensation either.

Even those who have developed a form of ‘natural place agoraphobia’ from living a hermit-like existence in human habitats feel the same sensation from photography and even more so, when they have a close encounter with a wild, yet placid animal. Arguably, it is one of the more successful visualisations in vehicle and new development advertising – the golden sunset, the tranquillity of a pristine area and (quite paradoxically) the item for sale.

In a recent paper by Fischer et al [9], they found that many graziers were no different and had strong emotional connections to remnant woodland trees that persisted on their land.

Where Jacaranda, plane trees or other species have been used well to line urban streets, the whole feeling of the area changes and gives a constant reminder of how dynamic and beautiful the world really is in these built up regions that may otherwise seem dull and unchanging.

Even NASA has been experimenting with plants on the International Space Station for future long mission into deeper space, not only for the benefits the plants provide to life support systems, but also for the mental wellbeing of the human crew.

It’s simply overwhelmingly clear that biodiversity does more than just provide beneficial work, it also recharges our core and is wonderfully uplifting. We have, from the first beasts depicted in the earliest known cave paintings, to the development of religions and more recently the biological sciences, worshipped and appreciated the majesty of the natural, living world.

What we risk in extinction and land degradation is also deeply cultural; ecosystems are part of our social identity.

It pains me to watch, for instance, the old black and white movies of the last thylacines in captivity. As a child, I held a secret wish to have had my own thylacine – a stripy native dog, as I saw it. To this day, I’m a little too eager when I hear of possible sightings in Tasmania.

I was thrilled when I learnt of the rediscovery of the pygmy blue tongue lizard – a species found only in one region within 100kms of where I live.

I remember being moved when I saw Cooroboree frogs that where part of a breeding program in the Melbourne zoo, following bushfires that devastated their natural range.

Likewise, I feel that the people of New Zealand should rejoice in the existence of a unique local; the living fossil, the Tuatara, or wonder what the landscape would have been like, had the various Moa survived following human colonisation.

Around the world, whether it is a massive oak, an extraordinary bird call with the sunrise, the sweet blossom in the afternoon air or numerous species working as part of their unique ecosystem; we all associate our place on the Earth with the ecology that makes it different to anywhere else. Nowhere is it more obvious than among the Mount Lofty ranges, parts of Victoria and Tasmania where settlers tried to replicate what they had left behind. Home is where you local ecosystem is. We have always identified ourselves with our land.

So much so is this the reality, that tomorrows astronauts will be farmers. They will leave the Earth and green wherever they stay. Where humanity can be found, so can ecosystems.

Where I argued in the previous chapter that biodiversity enriches production, we can see here that it also enriches the soul. Without biodiversity, we will have a far more monochromatic and dull world, but more disturbingly, we also have far less to which we can relate and associate with. Extinction rates, being far above the expected background levels due to various anthropogenic pressures, threaten to strip with it much of what we identify as us and our home.

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Urban Wastelands

I do my best to ignore the chuckles of an elderly couple as they walk past my house. Certainly, I’m one of very few who would actively choose a manual reel lawn mower, especially when the local Kmart or Bunnings sell motorised units for next to nothing. As it becomes increasingly difficult to mow the lawn with the reel mower as grass length increases and I happen to living in the fertile region of the Lofty ranges. Much of the humour must be in my “needless” struggling with grass that rapidly grew following a recent light shower.

But why deny myself this wonderful chance for exercise? My working life can only be described as a sedentary one – even the once-a-month field trip requires 6 hours of driving and maybe an hour of activity. I often find trivial excuses to get up from my desk and climb stairs solely for some activity. I think we naturally benefit, not only physically but mentally from activity – it’s no secret that exercise is proven to improve mood and counter depression.

That said, I’m the last to sign up for gym membership as it seems to me to be going about the whole problem from the wrong direction. What is the real benefit of labour-saving devices if they reduce your physical exertion so much that you require the spend that “saved” time jogging to nowhere on a treadmill? It’s long been one of the logical fallacies of a consumer based society, as I see it. Why not save time and, more importantly, money by taking the short-hand approach and spend the physical energy on productive work in the first place?

It might simply be me, however the image of someone jogging on the spot or partaking in group cardio-aerobic exercise is by far a more peculiar spectacle than to witness genuine physical labour or seeing a group engage in sport or dance.

Whilst trudging through the thick grass, doing my best to ignore the neighbours, the seed of The Human Island series was planted (and yet took me ten chapters to get to this point!).

People tended to move into an area because it seemed to promise productivity. People stayed and multiplied when the promise paid out in produce. Most major populations nowadays are where agriculture worked well or are along important trade routes between productive settlements.

Adelaide and the Mount Lofty region were settled for the productive land.

Over the twentieth century, western societies began to radically change, largely due to the internal combustion engine and the turbine – both relying on fossil fuels [14].

Cheap fuel has changed production. Where transfer no longer limits production, the only remaining overheads are labour and environmental concern. Globalisation of production meant that local producers soon had to compete with competitively cheap imports, where such overheads are far lower.

As many farmers within western societies soon realised, unless you were able scale up the farm, using more aggressive mono-culture techniques, there appeared to be simply no other way to stay afloat on the global market. Expanding communities require land – this stood as an attractively profitable exist from the competitive production market for landholders.

For Adelaide and the Mount Lofty region as well as many other regions of the globe, this meant that urban sprawl claimed much of this once productive land. With improvements to the southern freeway over the past decade, the residents of the Lofty region have witnessed an influx of people wanting a touch of rural tranquillity within a short drive of Adelaide city.

One comment to an online article regarding sprawl in the Adelaide hills says it all;

“I say HOORAH for urban sprawl…
“…someday [I’d] like to move out to Mt Barker or somewhere nice in the hills. The people have to live somewhere, Adelaide is a hot spot now. If you don’t want Mt Barker being turned into “suburbia” move WAY out into the stix. The farm land isn’t even being used very well anyway, we get most of our produce overseas or interstate because it’s CHEAPER. Plus we could save a lot of water by not having so much farming.”

Obviously there are a number of flaws to this attitude, such as the extra pressure on water supplies where the produce originates (plus urban water use in new sprawl) as well as the deficit inevitable from a net importing community. However, cheap imports and growing populations make sprawl inevitable – regardless of long term risks and unseen environmental degradation.

From natural vegetation to productive agricultural land and then to urban environments; we have an anthropogenic succession of diminishing ecology. Sure, the Lofty region still maintains much of its former charm, but as any one of us who has witnessed new developments appear, unification of style and expectation tends to dilute anything unique. Displacing the wildlife and the ‘Jones’s housing design’ will mean that much of the Lofty region will eventually be an Adelaide suburb with a “hilly” feel, just as Brighton is an Adelaide suburb with a “beachy” feel or Salisbury is an Adelaide suburb with a “plain-sy” feel.

They are places where the few bird species that can persist, keep a watchful eye out for the overfed cat; where the dogs howl in the afternoon – bored and waiting for the family to return; where the drably patterned generalist invertebrates die most often by poisonous gas or shoe heel; where children live so far from an open space that they no longer climb a tree or catch anything interesting, but content themselves with electronic gadgetry; where the introduced bee species feed themselves on weeds and ornamental flowers. Urban environments are ecological wastelands that provide no real reason for any of us to care greatly about them – indeed most of us can happily move halfway across the nation, provided that we bring our loved ones and prized possessions.

Coupling inactivity with urban environments of low connective value, I wonder why there so much discussion about the growing apathy, materialism, depression and disappearing sense of community. Not only is the remnant ecology disjointed and sparse, so too is anything that gives a community any worth and identity.

Not only is local productive land increasingly being lost beneath new housing slabs, but many human processes contaminate what is left. Filling up a fuelled lawn mower and the exhaust will contaminate the soil and collecting the clippings to send to landfill reduces the quality of the soil by removing compost.

We many, as in the comment above, celebrate in the name of sprawl, but in doing so, we celebrate becoming more genetic and apathetic; we celebrate the loss of diversity, identity, activity and purpose.

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Equating Ecology

The first half of The Human Island tried to illustrate what should be easily recognisable facts about life. We are not free from nature and to aspire to as much is simply to willingly turn off one’s own life support system; it’s blatant suicide. To achieve greater production, to mitigate and adapt to the worst of a changing climate, to create jobs, to improve mental as well as physical health, to secure energy, fresh water and food is entirely to protect, rehabilitate and to advance the many wonderful ecological services available (albeit slowly disappearing from the biosphere).

The hope and result of the industrial era has been quite the opposite of this. We now have too much available information to plead continual ignorance and I feel confident in concluding that the resistance typically observed to these issues (such as climate change denial and the condoning of species extinction) is the result of misinformation and personal delusion which is the result of very little if not completely devoid of real and relevant data.

Another way to look at it is to compare human and ecological relationships to the workings of a company. At first, most of the work is manual; high employment and moderately expensive, high quality goods. To be competitive, the profits are kept in check. The result is a good cycling of money among the community. It’s a system that inherently demands a strong gravitation towards equality and modest competition.

However, as new technology becomes available, people are replaced with machinery. Overheads, such as wages, are lowered, yet the produce remains at the same price or only has a minor price reduction. Profits are thus increased. The cash flow cycle is altered and disparity is increased. With the newly unemployed unable to afford quality goods; inferior goods (especially poorer quality food) is the only option.

Even newer technology means that transport costs are relatively cheap, so the whole local production centre is closed and operations are moved offshore to where the required labour can be achieved by those willing to work at much lower rates. Again, produce remains the same price, or is only slightly reduced. Profits are increased again. Now the local cash flow is so greatly changed that only those who have shares in the company obtain income and via offshore wages, wealth is trickled out slowly from the local market all of which exacerbates disparity even further.

I could go on to discuss why I believe labour-saving devices are in many ways, inhumane, but that is a subject for another project.

In short, the idea is that by removing services provided by species, you may be able to make a quick dollar, but eventually, by removing the contributors to the larger cycle you fundamentally reduce local productivity which will eventually impact all members of the community – even those who originally profit from the quick dollar.

As previously discusses; removing the tropical rainforest removes the nutrient supply; removing vegetation around agricultural land removes many pollinators, soil regenerators, storm surge protection and pest controllers. By removing services, you will lead to lowered productivity. It’s a simply enough concept and one we had previously applied from much of our agricultural past, until the modern industrial era (not that this is a call for deindustrialisation, obviously, but I’ll get to that later).

I mentioned in chapter 7 a quote from The TEEB foundation that Priess et al. (2007) found that pollinators in Sulawesi provided 46 Euros per hectare worth of ecological services to agriculture [12]. These pollinators of course rely on the neighbouring forest, which are slowly being cleared. Ultimately the loss of forest area is expected to reduce revenues from local agriculture (coffee) over the next 20 years by as much as 14%, solely from the reducing the pollination service [12]. In the same report, insect pollination alone is estimated to provide €153 billion of global economic value or nearly 10% of the agricultural output in 2005 [12].

Some other points from the same report [12] that are worth mention are:
• Current fishery practices are estimated to underperform by as much as US$50 billion per year, when compared to more sustainable fishing scenarios.
• As much as 30 million people are entirely reliant on coral reef ecosystems for primary food production (think about this and do some research on coral bleaching over 2010).
• Looking at climate change prevention alone, it is estimated that halving deforestation by 2030 could save US$3.7 trillion in net present value terms (if we include the previously discussed living space for pollinators, soil regenerators, pest controllers, as well as storm surge protection, water capture and purification and sustainable harvest, the number would be much higher).

This is not, as is often demonised, the talk of some radical “Green” liberal movement, but as much a discussion about the economy and wealth as you would hear from any iconic conservative group or individual with one important difference; being totally aware of all the employees of the system. In chapter 8, I quoted an Australian journalist, Andrew Bolt, referring to species protection as a “racket”.

However, when you look at much that is discussed in The Human Island and the underlying referenced work, you find that the real threat to industry, to job, food, fresh water security and the whole host of important services previously discussed is the racket of endless growth; this neoliberal development over the past few decades that requires not only growth of production, but acceleration [15] – two principles that just don’t work with finite resources and services that have an inbuilt speed limit (and are often slowed down as we change the functions of landscapes).

When you equate a financial value to ecological services, the picture is suddenly translated into something more intelligible to a wider audience and the threats to prosperity should be exposed. By reducing ecology, there may be some sort term gains, but just like farming on tropical lands, this too will eventually come up short and will require greater effort to maintain.

Over the coming chapters, I had originally planned to focus on simply trying to live as an island species. However I now think that it would be more useful to breakdown each chapter, first to explore this idea and then to provide examples of the opposite; re-promoting an ecologically enriched prosperity.

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Farming Alone

So we decided that we can do without ecological services; we islandise our species. Coastal desalination plants, running from a combination of dirty old technology, nuclear and renewable energy, provide expensive yet drinkable water (that we continue to fill our toilets with – go figure), however, food and water security being what it is, subsidies are provided for growers; but only for the essential produce. Luxury (ie. nonessential) and water intensive agriculture is reduced to pocket areas lucky to be situated where the shifting hydrological cycle provides good rainfall. Of course, demand for such items leads to the price to a level beyond the affordability of the average family.

It’s not too essential, however. Many grains do well enough with the increasingly wet-dry seasons as they creep into higher latitudes and higher CO2 atmospheric concentrations, albeit with lower nutritional value [16]. That grains fair reasonably well also eliminates another problem; dwindling natural pollinators. Where good natural flows are found (even if it’s one good season out of five), farmers keep the odd fruit orchard and bee colony, to rake it in on the good year. Of course, such fertile and easily farmed land has since been acquired from remnant vegetation (being as important as it is for human use), so all other pollinators are no longer found locally, as are natural pest controllers and eventually soil repairers.

As was previously needed along the Nile, the Murray Darling Basin and many other major river systems that had previously inundated floodplains seasonally, providing the nutrient booster, before weirs controlled water flow; much more intensive measures are required to repair and fertilise soils without the flows and abundance of soil repairers. Eventually, in the early 22nd century, the previous luxury of expensive land filling of sewage had to be abandoned – regardless of massive protest – to instead go through yet another expensive process to provide fertilisers where natural gas has once been over-used. It is, after all, rich with much of the required materials and with between 8 and 9 billion mouths to feed, there simply remained no other way to provide enough fertilisers without such a measure.

Somewhat surprising, the camel, the rabbit and the goat that demanded control policies around Australia have suddenly found themselves an increasingly positive limelight. Each species fairs well in the changing climate – especially the camel – and each species is edible. The foreign flavour of such gamey meat was quickly overcome by employing the sharp herbs of the East, however, over time these species regained their former rarity and thus increased value. By then, the meat was well established on the Australian palette and so no longer required such masking.

Not only did this provide money and means to keep these species numbers better in check, but as camel replaced the now too expensive beef supply and many other produce now in limited supply or of decreasing quality, the cholesterol and calorie intake values dropped significantly. The human island did what human endeavours couldn’t; it made us healthier eaters. Diets and gym memberships were a thing of our gluttonous past – now looked back upon by new generations who had never personally witnessed it with a sense of awe and disgust.

Another wonderful surprise that results from necessity is that while many introduced crops species find New Australia a less tolerable place, many native fruiting species handle the changes better – provided that they are cultivated. Suddenly native fruit, such as the Quandong, Dessert Lime, Muntries (with the Quandong; my personal favourites), Riberries and Bush Tomato are reapproached with a new zeal. In some respects, the absence of numerous herbs (but certainly not all), native Australian herbs also found a sudden market – something that was seen in much of the New World. Thus there is a resurgence of ‘local flavour’ over universal recipes that swept across the globe throughout the industrial era. Humanity has rediscovered its culinary identity as diverse and unique from region to region as it once was (but obviously not the same flavours of a few centuries prior).

Unfortunately another true survivor is also ever present on a landscape of decreasing biodiversity; the locust. Remnant vegetation is pushed further and further away from where we know we can guarantee food production. Likewise, the birds and predatory insects have also left the new agricultural lands. These wide open spaces too do not favour certain fungal infections that would otherwise limit pest numbers so in short our new vast monoculture landscapes are a wonderland for pests; with ample food and few risks. Chemical treatment of crops is simply the only way to ensure high enough yields beneath massive clouds of these pests.

As with the sewage fertiliser protects and the endless GM protests, so too the public are in outrage by the high level of pesticides and herbicides that are sprayed on our food supply, but in all cases the same answer had to be accepted – without the former ecological services, without the former physical processes, we simply had no choice.

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Damming Water

It’s always disturbed me; fresh water filling that ceramic bowl just waiting for someone to relieve themselves in it. We must be the only non-aquatic species that makes the conscious decision to putrefy clean water.

Hypocritically to this is the rage discussed in chapter five regarding the Murray Darling Basin Plan. How can we get angry when water rates or water restrictions increase, but still feel comfortable plumbing out toilets to a drinkable water supply?

It’s an all too often occurrence nowadays to complain about the expense of resources (ie. water, food or energy) while making at best token gestures to reduce waste. Sivak and Tsimhoni (2009) for instance found that vehicle efficiency only showed signs of dramatic improvement in the wake of oil scarcity, to only plateaux again when general concern had waned [17].

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has stated that as the climate continues to change, we are more likely to experience increasing numbers of hot dry days and an increase in intense rainfall. In this regard, the prolonged drought over the south east of Australia over the first decade of the 21st century followed by the record breaking rainfall, causing widespread flooding, throughout spring and summer of 2010-2011 may provide some indication of what we can expect to become increasingly normal weather patterns.

Precipitation will forever remain the cheapest and most efficient source of desalinated water and yet we seem so quick to forget the past few years debate over desalination plants, soil salinity, aquifer pollution / recharge, waterway bank erosion / pollution and widespread wetlands loss / stagnation to instead debate increased dams and flood prevention planning. Of all our resource management issues, water is arguably the worst managed; where the public tend to be the most fickle.

Is it that we see our planet as the blue ball?

As mentioned above, precipitation is the cheapest source of desalinated water and is likely to become more infrequent, but more intense, as the world continues to warm (think also of the freak snow storms of the northern hemisphere over the past couple years). We will need to wizen up on water management and do so quickly.

Over recent decades, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of wetlands, not only for the abundance of species which they generally support (see chapter 5 above and Innovation is Key, chapter 6) but also for their ability purify water. This is yet another wonderful example of ecological services that we rely upon.

The problem for wetlands and river ways however, is that human diversion of water tends to restrict water movement (especially in drought conditions), leading to oxygen levels to decrease, where harmful bacteria can then take over; ie. stagnate water (image 7). Species survival is threatened by restrictions to water movement both through stagnation and potential limitations to suitable mates (see the Victorian Fishways Passage for an example). Overall, stagnation reduces water quality, thus stands as another example of water mismanagement.

Another important aspect not often discussed is evapotranspiration. It is a difficult life, believe it or not, relying on the sun and water (and of course CO2) to produce food, but also water to remove heat caused from too much solar energy. It’s a balance that arid plant species are amazingly adapted to coping with.

Think, for instance, of a mallee eucalypt: it’s the middle of a summer heat wave. There’s been little rain the past four months. You have more than enough sunlight, but very little water – how do you both transpire, to remove heat, and photosynthesise to sugars? Amazingly, many of these species are incredible water conserves and also able to tolerate temperatures that would cook many temperate species (well, these species are likely to transpire and thus wilt rather than cook).

Evapotranspiration is an important part of climate, being that it uses a significant proportion of the solar energy at the Earth’s surface, as well a major component of the hydrological cycle (ie. in Australia, evapotranspiration returns close to 90% of precipitation back to the atmosphere) but most importantly, water availability to ecosystems (for evapotranspiration as well as other functions) is most essential for ecosystem health and all the ecological services that they provide.

This in turn ensures increased fresh water security for human activity through various means:

Improving water movement, especially through diverse wetland habitats, is one of the easiest methods for improving water quality.
Cloud forests directly capture water for the atmosphere, providing a source of fresh water.
As mentioned in chapter 3, forests also provide storm surge protection, which will also assist with managing future flooding events, while also assisting in the capture of fresh water as precipitation becomes less frequent but higher intensity.

By islandising our species, fresh water will be without a doubt the most unreliable resource available to human activity. As water is so important to every aspect of human life, this fact should merit management that is both persistent and long term rather than the typical knee-jerk reaction. We can’t simply dam every last drop until we wish to use it, nor can we expect waterways to remain health whilst supporting whatever industrial, agricultural and residential use it meets along the path.

We’ve tried all of this; only to turn on each other to find someone else to blame when it eventually fails. We must stop this now or else we run the risk of a similar fate to the next cistern full of fresh water.

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Home is Where the Life is

wish to start this chapter with a short hand version of a story I learn in the first year of my degree which has remained a source of inspiration to me ever since. It’s of the Richmond Birdwing Butterfly, Ornithoptera richmondia.

: The Richmond Birdwing butterfly

While never being quite as abundant as the previously discussed Passenger Pigeon, the Richmond Birdwing was once a prolific species found along the coast regions of south east Queensland. At times of the year, they were a wonder for the locals as this large species took wing in search of a mate. Over the past 100 years however, their numbers have slowly declined until their range was reduced to small fragmented patches.

Urban development provided much of the impact to range and not only through land clearing. Aristolochia elegans, the Dutchman’s pipe vine, was introduced to the region as an ornamental garden plant. Apparently the birdwing is unable to tell the difference between the Dutchman’s pipe and the two native vines, Pararistolochia praevenosa and P. laheyana, as it would lay its eggs on which ever it came upon. Unfortunately the Dutchman’s pipe is poisonous to the larvae.

: “Aristolochia elegans” By jennyhsu47

Of course, we simply can’t ask people to move so we can again provide habitat for the birdwing (as discussed in Chapter 8, there are some who would shrug at the potential loss of a species anyway), but there is a compromise. The Richmond Conservation Network has been working to remove the Dutchman’s pipe in favour of the two native vines. By doing so, they promote corridors of suitable habitat within urban environments to allow this species to move across the region. So far, the sightings have been increasing (2008 was a bumper year for sightings), but it is a slow ongoing process to re-establish the range of a species (learn more at The Richmond Conservation Network’s website).

The story stands as an example of the exact opposite to islandising our species. Where the Andrew Bolt’s of the world would smugly laugh at the lost Dodo and look on proudly as the slabs are poured down for a new suburb or shopping complex (see Chapter 8), here with the Richard birdwing, we have a suggestive glimpse of urban environments that support greater biodiversity as well as our species.

In turn, urban agriculture and pest control are improved by the greater biodiversity. As climate zones shift, species are no longer trapped in fragmented regions, but can move with suitable regions. As discussed in chapters 9 and 10, the sense of identity and of community are enriched by a thriving unique biodiversity identity and in chapter 11 we saw some indicators of genuine financial gain from various ecosystems.

It’s simply not an issue that sits on either traditional political leaning, but an overwhelming obvious fact that we just benefit from a biologically diverse planet. Every last item that we eat grew somewhere at some time. Whilst growing, each of them required other species for their own health, and they in turn required others. Vegetated areas play an important role in climate – water vapour, CO2 and energy accounting – and also assist in storm surge protection.

Likewise, it doesn’t matter if it’s the shades of amber through autumn, the near magic of a white winter, the sudden rush of colour from wild flowers in spring or the crashing waves by the white sands in summer; we all associate strong memories – in fact, a strong connection – with the places we know as home. Without the local biota, such places would be barren, regardless of the other climatic factors. Teaching you children to fish (I have many cherished memories fishing with my father and sister) is simply the pointless act of throwing a hook and line into a body of water, without the teasing nibbles, the thrill of a hooked fish and the occasional unfamiliar bird soaring overhead.

We would be kidding ourselves to think we could make do on a world without the treasures of biodiversity.

We could also throw a peaking oil supply into the equation. Sure both coal and natural gas have a while longer before they hit their peaks and we could make liquid fuel from coal (which would only be viable when oil prices starts to place significant pressures on living expenses already), but think about the previous couple chapters not only as an islandised species, but also without the fossil fuel work horse.

Current large scale monoculture agriculture only works because we have machines near the size of a house chugging down the diesel as they work the plot and masses of fossil fuel derived fertilisers spread over otherwise depleted landscapes. Irrigation too results from fossil fuel – even more so the more we look into desalination plants. We can’t exactly move on from agricultural lands when fuel becomes too expensive (we’ll have even more mouths to feed that we currently have) but we also cannot hope to continue current practices into the foreseeable future.

We will need more farm hands (human as well as nonhuman) as well as clever new distribution and farming methods – all of which will require infrastructure and energy – something that is still relatively cheap. I’ve also discussed some of the social problems peaking oil in Innovation is Key, that I will not cover here.

Home isn’t just where your house is found, it is of course where life as you know it makes sense. Increasingly we’re unattached to the four walls and the neighbourhood around us and I would suggest that this is because of the monotony; endless streets of brick, concrete, asphalt and barren patches of grass. They don’t have the acorn trees to climb or the shaded babbling creeks. Even the constructed wetlands appearing around suburbia have a “look but don’t touch” menace about them – and why would you let your children near that green sludge of standing water anyway?

Diversity is key as much as innovation. We need other species more than they need us. If we are to maintain a standard of living even remotely to that we’ve been powering on fossil fuels for more than a century, we’ll need to face up to these facts and the sooner we do so, the easier the transition will be.

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Economy; the Noisy Noisy Child of Ecology

Over a year ago, I was referred to an interesting article by Dr. Rob Morrison, Economy and ecology are unevenly match siblings. For a while after, this sat with me as an excellent example of many of the problems that face human activity into the 21st century.

However, I’ve since come to a slightly different conclusion over the relationship between economy and ecology. In my opinion, they are not two children; one larger and clearly the favourite (economy), who pummels the smaller (ecology) into submission, but rather parent birds (ecology) with the ever demanding cuckoo chick (economy) taking far more than its reasonable share of the resources.

All human processes, whether linear of cyclic, rely on the resources-to-consumer chain to stimulate economy. Apart from minerals/water and most renewable energy sources, these resources are ecologically based. All food and non-renewable fossil energy (as material consumer items are made from oil derived hydrocarbons, they are also included here) and some renewable energy (ie. biofuels) are the result of ecological processes.

Hatchling common cuckoos in the process of evicting host eggs and chicks from great reed warbler nests. From Anderson et al. 2009

Without transfer of currency in exchange for consumption of goods and services (which are generally powered by energy) there is no economy as we currently know it. There could very well be humans without economy (as history demonstrates) and there would certainly be ecology without economy or humans, but economy ceases to exist without transfer of resources – almost entirely resulting from ecology. Plain and simple. It’s for this reason that ecology and economy are not siblings – two halves of the “house”, true, but not siblings; rather a parent child relationship.

It might seem a trivial point to waste few paragraphs arguing over an analogy, but let me explain why I feel it’s important. Ecological services have various limitations to the speed at which they can regenerate resources. Fruit might take a yearly cycle while fossil fuel production may take millions of years to produce. You could plant more fruit, providing more yield in the growing season, but without shipping across hemispheres or storage, there still remains viability issues (ie. how much is too much?). As for fossil fuels – there’s not a lot we can do to change that process apart for returning again to biofuels. Current western economic models need growth to remain viable; growth not only of consumables, but also of consumers (as there are obvious limitations to what one individual can purchase). It’s exponential growth that cannot continuously be matched by space and resource availability.

To simplify the problem, imagine a microbe community in an agar tray. Let’s say that they double in number once an hour. Within 24hrs, 1 microbe will become 8388608 members. It’s easy to see that such exponential growth will quickly deplete the resources available, leading to population collapse. Even if the nutrient rich agar regenerated at a certain rate, maximum population size would maintained by population growth and reduced fitness when resources are being stretched. Eventually it would plateaux at a population size where each member has access to enough resources to persist.

But we’re not mindless microbes. We should want communities that have ample resources, not simply the bare essentials to preserve their existence. We have the choice to want better – but that simply cannot include perpetual growth in a system with finite resources and resource regeneration rates.

We can decide how well resources are divided and the ultimate number of people that we wish to support.

The problem of course comes back to western economic models, which not only require growth (the level of redundancy found in “middlemen” could be suggested as yet another example unviable growth), but worst than this, it also fails to appreciate many of the humanistic values of a healthy society.

As Andrew Mason, from the University of Southern Queensland put it, “The normal measure of an economy, which looks at Gross Domestic Product [GPD] and those sorts of things, Gross National Product, doesn’t really measure our lives, it just measure economic things. So if you go and buy some vegies from the supermarket, that contributes to GPD, so it looks good on the economy. But if you grow vegies in your own backyard, it doesn’t contribute to GPD. So things like car crashes contribute to GPD because, you know, people are employed fixing cars and looking after things and you know the people that go to hospital to be treated; all that contributes to GPD. Whereas going for a walk in the park doesn’t. So they’re trying to work out how to model economics that will more accurately reflect a happy society.”

The cuckoo hatchling that is economy not only has appropriated and displaced other resource users, like the other hatchlings from the nest, it demands resources at a growing rate, eventually running the parent birds of ecology haggard. Everyone loses if the system fails. This has to one of the most important points of The Human Island; endless growth is a primitive societal design which fails to recognise many of the finer points of human culture.

It’s parasitic like the cuckoo and an unsympathetic leveller of population size.

However, there are of course alternatives to this endless churning of a snowball economy, which Mason touches upon. Ultimately we all want to be happy and to provide the best for our children. The internal combustion engine accelerated us into a new phase of plenty, but as I’ve tried to explain throughout The Human Island, no-one can sensibly assume ‘good times’ of this nature can continue on indefinitely. We have already accumulated a large ecological debt which will eventually bite us in the rear and the inertia of recent progress provides a worrisome image for beyond-peak oil.

Yet, if we developed humanistic economic models that, say, instead of focused on resource and financial transfer within and among communities, focused on human health, local diversity (not only biological, but multi-use spaces, transport options, career opportunities; civil-diversity) and innovation, we could transform societies with greater emphasis on care, education, contentment and employment – that is to say that money wouldn’t be the driving force, instead ideal lifestyle, community development and broader level (than just money) prosperity would provide the focus.

As utopian as this sounds, I admit that it would still be far from perfect (but with greater focus on education and innovation, I’d also argue that improvement would accelerate), but it would give greater clarity to true social wealth. We’re in debt in many different ways, both as individuals and as social groups. I know that I personally want more time to be a more interactive father to my son and partner to my fiancée more than I want a new 3D TV. I want to teach my kids how to fish, ride a bike and play various sports more than I want to buy them the newest game consol. I want to actively show my fiancée how much I love her rather than prove it via diamonds and gold.

It’s knowing the wealth that I can achieve in pursuing these goals rather than “chasing the buck” that makes me certain that financial pursuits alone are not wealth. We in fact don’t need all the stuff we think we do. We want them because we’re lead to believe that we do (and don’t underestimate the ‘Jones effect’) and encouraged when we’re told that the economy is doing well. The state of the economy can have little impact at the individual level. For example using that financial stimulus package to buy a second flat screen may have helped the economy, but it could have made more of a personal difference to the interest on your loans (albeit being counter-productive to the economy).

Economy is not the sibling of ecology, it was borne from ecology. It’s a noisy apathetic child that ultimately assumes resources are infinite. Virtues have no financial value, thus the dollar is dumb and we deserve better.

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Resilience… Priceless

“Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll never go hungry again.”

We’ve all heard that, or a variation of it, at some point in our lives. I’d prefer if it read more to give a person an apple tree rather than an apple. Not that the meaning is drastically changed, but from resource perspective (where the original is more about education) it’s more suited to The Human Island. I don’t see much of what I’ve written as new information but instead reiterating hard won knowledge that resulted from millennia of trial on changing landscapes which seems to have been ignored in this incredibly short-lived period of abundant and easy energy.

The extremes of effort, that the world woke up to as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill polluted the Gulf of Mexico, should have been seen as an early sign of growing oil scarcity. Given a century hence the age of fossil fuel will be an era for the history books. Sure, they will persist for some time after, but only as a minor player – especially in combustion.

However, if we play our cards right, there still will be apples to pick and fish to catch. If we show a yet to be seen wide spread zeal for innovation and development, a century from now may know a standard of living comparable to that known at the height of fossil fuel addiction. This future is my hope and the inspiration behind The Human Island, Innovation is Key and my work on MothIncarnate in general (soon Gen[A] as well).

Economy, as explained in the previous chapter, is the parasitic child of ecology. To have resilient economies demands that we have resilient ecologies. You cannot have prosperous societies without resources and you cannot have ample resources without ecosystems to produce, manage, distribute and/or condition them. To return to the analogy of the previous chapter, if the cuckoo hatchling wishes to demand more resources as it grows, we need to increase the health of the parent birds and their hunting grounds. Luckily ecosystems can be incredibly resilient whilst being productive for human use, if properly managed [18] [19] [20].

I suppose an even further development from the quote above (following my conversion of it) would be;

“Give a person an apple and you’ll feed them for a day. Teach them how to propagate an orchard and they’ll never go hungry. Provide them a richly diverse environment in which to do so in and you’ll feed their society indefinitely.”

Resilience truly is priceless. Resilience is the “cash cow” in ways that endless consumer growth simply cannot match. We’re not really at a point where we can safely say how large the global population of our species can grow to before we’ve reached our limit (which is inevitable regardless of what that number may in fact be) – arguably, with current distribution and resource management, we could suggest that such activity cannot support the current population (ie. with so many people still living in poverty and malnutrition, we clearly are not supporting each member of our species). In short, we’re probably overpopulated under current practices which will only exacerbate with continuing species loss [19] [20] [21].

From the best of our understanding, current extinction rates are likely to be around 100 times greater over the previous century when compared to the background extinction rate – the average rate of species loss typical in the fossil record [22]. So great is this increased extinction rate that it is seriously argued whether we are in fact witnessing the sixth mass extinction event [21] [22] [23] [24].

As explained throughout the early chapters, life within ecosystems is interdependent. Without pollinators, many flowering species would fail to propagate. Without those flowering plants, many herbivores wouldn’t be able to persist. Even more subtle than this, you may have a species that disturbs soils or grazes on particular grasses, creating landscapes and soil conditions necessary for other species. The point here is; the deeper you look into ecology, the more wonderful, bizarre and incredible it becomes. This is why it continues to interest me professionally and personally every day. We simply cannot entertain behaviours as discussed in chapter eight and turn a blind eye to extinction.

We have only a limited catalogue of the forms of life that currently populate this planet and even less understanding of how that life interacts with others. We have copious information on ecology; but still, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. As previously explained, the loss of keystone species can result in a dramatic shift in the species assemblage within an ecosystem which in turn could result in losses of ecological services on which we currently rely.

One of my previous lecturers did some of her research in bio-prospecting; not only are we far from understanding much of ecosystem function, but also potential benefits in food and medicine hidden within. “There’s nothing new under the sun,” as they say, and for all we know, the cures for cancers, disease and infection may have already been invented by nature and exist in the bodies of organisms growing today – some of whom may be threatened with extinction at this moment.

It’s the unknowns, even more than the known’s, that should demand greater concern over such extremes of extinction rate as we’ve witnessed in recent centuries.

We simply don’t know all the species currently alive. We simply don’t know how each one interacts with its ecosystem. We simply don’t know what services we are provided, or could be provided, by such ecosystems…

We just don’t know enough to laugh about the loss of the dodo or any other species that stands on the door step of extinction, or has been pushed over by human impacts.

If resilience of economies is our aim, surely we require increasingly resilient ecosystems – even above a new shopping complex. Islandising our species is counter to all of this. We would need to do everything for ourselves, by ourselves. It would be difficult, if not impossible to achieve. There is no stronger case for species protection than for our own protection.

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Conclusion

The real tragedy, as I see it, is that we’re not short of the vitals. We certainly have enough of the required understanding, potential methodology and community level will to divert from this path to islandising our species. We understand emotionally, as well as scientifically and economically, the value inherent in a richly bio-diverse planet. We have both ecological and social warning bells wailing overhead. We also want to have the best lives for ourselves and our children.

Arguably, meeting the challenges facing our immediate future would not only increase sustainability, but also tackle economic disparity from a local to global level. Work and personal life balance would be greatly improved as would access to basic goods and services – which should be available to everyone. Empathy, dignity and virtue would be returned to our global community which is slowly forgetting the heart of a prosperous community for the sake of the material consumables and extreme personal and species individualism.

We could again develop diverse and unique communities akin to those of yesteryear with one major improvement – choice. Where we once relied on vastly unknown environmental factors and farming ‘by-thumb’, we now know how we can utilise ecosystems within and around urban landscapes to promote resilience against the extremes of weather, to increase food and water security and provide usable energy in ways we’ve yet to seriously contemplate.

The phrase, ‘Where we live’, is at best ambiguous as it is all too familiar in highly developed western societies, to reside in one location and work and gather many kilometres away and the consumables which we gather to have travelled many more kilometres. Urban sprawl as we’ve watched it develop in the west has diluted where we live so much so that is near meaningless; were there is little unique about a community and little reason to have connection with landscape. All the while the commonwealth of such societies is on the decline and even in some of the most advanced societies of the world, disparity increases. This is signature islandisation at its broadest sense.

We should, as free people in the modern, post-enlightenment age, demand much more community level prosperity and equality. We should demand political will that asserts long term sustainability – the only thing that can ensure such prosperity.

Our sacrifice in return would be the acknowledgment that business-as-usual, while it has improved regional GPD, it has failed to protect us against disparity, to provide resilience and to measure humanistic values. We would need to accept the mess we’ve made to engage in progress for better and increasingly prosperous societies.

Even before we become concerned about the physical sea level rise from the increasing temperature anomaly, we need to be willing to accept the rising waters of isolation. We will not improve production by removing producers – that should be blatantly obvious.

I opened this report with the words of John Donne;

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

Indeed, no man or woman is an island; even a CEO’s wealth comes largely at the work of those on the factory floor (increasingly in developing nations where such labour is cheap). No community is an island; for trade is by far one of the oldest ventures of our civilized cultures. No species is an island, entire to itself; every species is a piece of the continent, part of the main – what we refer to as ecosystems.

We are just a small fragment of the continent of life. We are more fragile than, in our pride, we’d like to admit. We are heavily reliant on a dynamic and little understood network. It is the rest of the continent that keeps us afloat.

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References

[1] Traill, L. W., Lim, M. L. M., Sodhi, N. S., and, Bradshaw, C. J. A. (2010) Mechanisms driving change: altered species interactions and ecosystem function through global warming. Journal of Animal Ecology. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2010.01695.x
[2] Traill, L. W., Bradshaw, C. J. A., Delean, S., and, Brook, B. (2010) Wetland conservation and sustainable use under global change: a tropical Australian case study using magpie geese. Ecography. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0587.2009.06205.x
[3] Catling, P. M. (2001) Extinction and the importance of history and dependence in conservation. Biodiversity. 2(3): 2-13
[4] MBD commission, 2006. The Chowilla floodplain (inc. Lindsay-Wallpolla), Icon Site Environmental Management plan 2006-2007.
[5] The Coorong, and Lakes Alexandrina and Albert Wetlands website: http://www.environment.gov.au/water/topics/wetlands/database/ramsar.html (accessed 4/11/2010)
[6] Dept. Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, 2010. Coorong and Lakes Alexandrina and Albert Ramsar Wetlands Fact sheet.
[7] Cleveland, C. C., and Townsendm A. R. 2006. Nutrient additions to a tropical rain forest drive substantial soil carbon dioxide losses to the atmosphere. PNAS. 103:27. 10316-10321.
[8] Deutsch, C. A., Tewksbury, J. J., Huey, R. B., Sheldon, K. S., Ghalambor, C. K., Haak, D. C., and Martin, P. R. 2008. Impacts of climate warming on terrestrial ectotherms across latitude. PNAS. 105:18. 6668-6672.
[9] Fischer, J., Zerger, A., Gibbons, P., Scott, J., and, Law, B. S. (2010) Tree decline and he future of Australia farmland biodiversity. PNAS. 107(45): 19597-19602. doi:1008476107.
[10] Fischer, J., Lindenmayer, D. B., and, Manning, A. D., 2006. Biodiversity, ecosystem function, and resilience: ten guiding principles for commodity production landscapes. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 4(2): 80-86.
[11] Lefroy, T., Bailey, K., Unwin, G., Norton, T. (Editors) 2008. Biodiversity: Integrating Conservation and Production. CSIRO Publishing. http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/5915.htm
[12] TEEB Foundation 2010. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity. Edited by Pushpam Kumar. Earthscan, London. http://www.teebweb.org/InformationMaterial/TEEBReports/tabid/1278/Default.aspx
[13] Temple, S. A. (1977) Plant-Animal Mutualism: Coevolution with Dodo Leads to Near Extinction of Plant. Science. 197(4306): 885-886.
[14] Smil, V. 2009. U.S. energy policy: The need for radical departures. Issues in Science and Technology Summer 2009:47-50.
[15] Gleeson, B. 2010. Lifeboat Cities. UNSW Press.
[16] Högy et al. 2009. Effects of elevated CO2 on grain yield and quality of wheat: results from a 3-year free-air CO2 enrichment experiment. Plant Biology. 11(1). pp 60-69. doi: 10.1111/j.1438-8677.2009.00230.x
[17] Sivak, M., and, Tsimhoni, O. 2009. Fuel efficiency of vehicles on US roads: 1923-2006. Energy Policy. 37(8). pp 3168-3170. doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2009.04.001
[18] Fischer, Lindenmayer and Manning (2006). Biodiversity, ecosystem function, and resilience: ten guiding principles for commodity production landscapes. Frontiers in Ecology and Environment. 4(2): 80-86.
[19] Díaz, Fargione, Chapin III and Tilman (2006). Biodiversity loss threatens Human well-being. PLoS Biology. 4(8): 1300-1305
[20] Folke, Carpenter, Walker, Scheffer, Elmqvist, Gunderson and Holling (2004) Regime shifts, resilience, and biodiversity in ecosystem management. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 35: 557-581
[21] Rockström et al. Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity. Ecology and Society 14(2): 32
[22] Mace, Hillary Masundire, Jonathan Baillie et al. (2005) Chapter 4. Biodiversity. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Volume 1. Current State and Trends Assessment.
[23] Wake and Vredenburg (2008) Are we in the midst of the sixth mass extinction? A view from the world of amphibians. PNAS. 105(1): 11466-11473
[24] Barnosky, Matzke, Tomiya, Wogan, Swartz, Quental, Marshall, McGuire, Lindsey, Maguire, Mersey and Ferrer (2011). Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived? Nature. 471: 51–57. doi:10.1038/nature09678

Search

Index

Introduction

Effort of Life

Biological Diversity

Genetic Diversity

Nothing is Wasted

Energy Highs

Life of a Bee

When it’s Gone

Ecology in Space!

Urban Wastelands

Equating Ecology

Farming Alone

Damming Water

Home is Where the Life is

Economy; the Noisy Noisy Child of Ecology

Resilience… Priceless

Conclusion

References

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