Backyard gardeners around the world are helping to save Australia’s deeply ancient Wollemi pine

Heidi Zimmer, Southern Cross University and Catherine Offord

As bushfires blackened forests last summer, one tree species was protected by a specialist team of firefighters: the Wollemi pine.

These trees have a deeply ancient lineage dating back to when dinosaurs walked Gondwana 100 million years ago. Back then, rainforests – including Wollemi pines (or their cousins) – covered what became Australia.

So when a handful of Wollemi pines were discovered alive in 1994 on the brink of extinction, it caused a frenzy of interest that has barely died down among plant enthusiasts.

How firefighters saved the Wollemi pine from the bushfires.

Today, fewer than 100 mature pines are left in the wild. But their exact location is one of the best kept secrets in Australian plant conservation, to protect them from pathogens such as the root-rotting phytophthora that might hitch a ride on human visitors.

But while rare in nature, our ongoing research with citizen scientists is finding Wollemi pines grow in backyards all over the world, in a range of environments, and this information can inform how we can protect them in the wild.

From Gondwana to the garden

The Wollemi pine is considered the iconic poster-child for plant conservation. It’s an unusual-looking plant – each wild tree has many trunks covered in bark resembling bubbling chocolate and branches of lime or grey-green fern-like leaves. And in the wild, they grow to more than 40 metres tall.

The species is a member of the southern conifer family Araucariaceae, and its cousins include the monkey puzzle tree and the Norfolk Island pine. While considered a rainforest tree, many remaining in the wild exist between rainforest and dry eucalypt woodland, on the ledges of a sandstone gorge.

Wollemi pines can stretch 40 metres in the wild.
Heidi Zimmer.

Since the Wollemi pine was discovered 26 years ago, the protection effort has been intense, focusing on conservation in the wild.

One of the first strategies was cultivation. Horticultural scientists at the Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan (Sydney) worked out how to propagate the species so it could be grown and enjoyed in gardens, reducing the risk of illegal visitation in the wild.

After the Australian Botanic Garden established a basic “insurance population” of plants propagated from the wild trees, some of the first cultivated Wollemi pines were distributed to botanic gardens in Australia and overseas, including in the UK’s Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

In 2005, Wollemi pines were auctioned to the public at a Sothebys Auction. Since then, they’ve been exported to many nurseries around the world, and now grow in many public and private gardens.

I spy a Wollemi pine

When plants are very rare in the wild, or are very restricted in their distributions, conservation away from the site (ex situ) can play an important role in their survival.

This includes seed banking, translocation (establishing new populations of rare plants in new locations) and cultivation for the nursery trade.

Enter our I Spy A Wollemi Pine project. Fifteen years after the Wollemi pine became available for sale, our study asks people to report where Wollemi pines are growing in gardens across the world.

So far, results from the online survey have revealed the species grows across 27 different countries, from Australia to Russia, and the UK to Peru.

The tallest trees so far – stretching to 7 metres tall (though dwarfed by their wild counterparts) – have been reported from the UK. To date, 987 people have contributed data about Wollemi pines.

Wollemi pines growing in Coates Wood, United Kingdom.
Ellen McHale © RBG Kew.

What we can learn

Reading comments from survey participants – from “Has survived minus 10 degrees” to “I just love it” – has been a source of interest and joy for us researchers.

When the survey is finished, we’ll analyse the responses to understand what influences the growth of this species, such as different climates and soils.

Knowing how Wollemi pines grow in other parts of the world will provide gardening tips for home growers, but more importantly it will inform future conservation efforts in the wild in the face of climate change.

For example, this research will provide information on what environments the Wollemi pine can tolerate. We’re discovering the hottest, coldest, wettest and driest places on earth this species can survive in.

This information can help us find places to establish new populations of Wollemi pines. It may also provide clues on the evolutionary history of this species and how it managed to survive multiple ice ages and other dramatic climate changes in deep history.

Conservation with cultivation

Conserving Wollemi pines in backyards is not quite the same as Wollemi pines in the wild – in the same way its important to have pandas in the wild, and not just in zoos. But using cultivation for conservation does mean these species have much greater distribution today than they have ever had in the past.

In fact, this isn’t the first time a rare tree has ended up in gardens. The dawn redwood, thought to be extinct in the wild, was rediscovered in China in the 1940s and can now be found in gardens across the world.

And the internet is a great place to foster conservation. In online forums, people share every stage of their Wollemi babies’ growth, from seed germination to pine cone production.

This love and connection to Wollemi pines might even help address “plant blindness”: the propensity for people to see, recognise and focus on animals rather than plants, despite plants being central to providing us with food, the air we breathe and our climate.

So, as more species are threatened with extinction every day, everyone’s actions – even in their own backyards or online – can make a difference.

If you have a Wollemi pine in your backyard, or know of a Wollemi pine in a park or garden, and would like to get involved in our citizen science survey, please click here.

Heidi Zimmer, Research associate, Southern Cross University and Catherine Offord, Senior Principal Research Scientist

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Want to help save wildlife after the fires? You can do it in your own backyard

Holly Kirk, RMIT University; Brendan Wintle, University of Melbourne; Casey Visintin, University of Melbourne; Freya Thomas, RMIT University; Georgia Garrard, RMIT University; Kirsten Parris, University of Melbourne; Kylie Soanes, University of Melbourne; Pia Lentini, University of Melbourne, and Sarah Bekessy, RMIT University

People living in cities far from the unprecedented bushfires this summer may feel they can do little more to help beyond donating to organisations that support affected wildlife. But this is not necessarily the case: ten of the 113 top-priority threatened animal species most affected by the fires have populations in and around Australian cities and towns. Conserving these populations is now even more critical for the survival of these species.

Here we provide various practical tips on things people can do in their own backyards and neighbourhoods to help some of the species hit hard by the fires.

Wildlife may arrive in your neighbourhood in search of resources lost to fire or drought in their ranges. Cities can become ecological traps, as they draw animals towards sub-optimal habitats or even death from threats such as cats and cars. But by providing the right resources, removing threats and connecting your backyard to surrounding habitat, you can turn your property into a refuge, not a trap.

Images from Flickr by: Jarod Lyon (Macquarie perch), Doug Beckers (Giant burrowing frog), eyeweed (Giant barred frog), Catching The Eye (Southern water skink), Alan Couch (Broad-headed snake), Brian McCauley (Regent honeyeater), Ron Knight (Koala), Duncan PJ (Grey-headed flying fox), Tony Morris (Platypus) and Pierre Pouliquin (Tiger quoll).
Author provided

The fires killed an estimated 1 billion animals and Australia’s threatened species list is likely to expand dramatically. As is often the case, the impacts on invertebrates have been largely ignored so far.

Thinking outside the animal box

Despite the focus on animals, it is plants, making up 1,336 of the 1,790 species listed as threatened, that have been hit hardest. Early estimates are that the fires had severe impacts on 272 threatened plant species. Of these, 100 are thought to have had more than half of their remaining range burnt.

The impacts on individual plant species is profoundly saddening, but the impacts on whole ecosystems can be even more catastrophic. Repeated fires in quick succession in fire-sensitive ecosystems, such as alpine-ash forests, can lead to loss of the keystone tree species. These trees are unable to mature and set seed in less than 20 years.

Losing the dominant trees leads to radical changes that drive many other species to extinction in an extinction cascade. Other badly impacted ecosystems include relics of ancient rainforests, which might not survive the deadly combination of drought and fire.

It is difficult to know how best to “rescue” threatened plants, particularly when we know little about them. Seed banks and propagation of plants in home gardens can be a last resort for some species.

You can help by growing plants that are indigenous to your local area. Look for an indigenous nursery near you that can provide advice on their care. Advocate for mainstream nurseries, your council and schools to make indigenous plants available to buy and be grown in public areas.

Example of alpine ash (*Eucalyptus delegatensis*) forest in Victoria.
Holly Kirk

Providing for urban wildlife

Planting native species in your backyard is also the best way to provide food for visiting wildlife. Many species feed on flower nectar, or on the insects the vegetation attracts. Putting out dishes of fruit or bird feeders can be useful for some species, but the best way to provide extra food for all is by gardening.

Plants also provide shelter and nest sites, so think twice about removing vegetation, leaf litter and dead wood. Fire risk can be managed by selecting species that are fire-suppressing.

Urban gardens also provide water for many thirsty creatures. If you put out a container of water, place rocks and branches inside so small critters can escape if they fall in.

Backyard ponds can provide useful habitat for some frog species, particularly if you live near a stream or wetland. Please don’t add goldfish!

The best frog ponds have plants at the edges and emerging from the water, providing calling sites for males and shelter for all. Insecticides and herbicides harm frogs as well as insects and plants, so it’s best not to use these in your garden.

Piles of rocks in the garden form important shelters for lizards and small mammals.

Reducing threats

It’s important to consider threats too. Cats kill native wildlife in huge numbers. Keep your pet inside or in a purpose-built “catio”.

When driving, think about killing your speed rather than wildlife – especially while populations are moving out of fire-affected areas in search of food. Slowing down can greatly reduce animal strikes.

With the loss of huge areas of forest, species like grey-headed flying foxes will need to supplement their diet with fruit from our backyards. Unfortunately, they risk being entangled in tree netting. If you have fruit trees, consider sharing with wildlife by removing nets, or using fine mesh bags to cover only select bunches or branches.

Living with the new visitors

People have different levels of knowledge about our native wildlife, and some will be more affected by new wildlife visitors than others. Some of these critters are small and quiet. Others are more conspicuous and may even be considered a nuisance.

Try to discuss what you are seeing and experiencing with your neighbours. When you can, provide information that might ease their concerns, but also be sympathetic if noisy or smelly residents move in. It is important to tolerate and co-exist with wildlife, by acknowledging they might not conform to neighbourly conventions.

Given the unprecedented extent and intensity of these fires, it is difficult for scientists to predict how wildlife will respond and what might show up where. This is especially the case for species, like the regent honeyeater, that migrate in response to changing resources. New data will be invaluable in helping us understand and plan for future events like these.

If you do see an animal that seems unusual, you can report it through citizen-science schemes such as iNaturalist. If an animal is injured or in distress it’s best to contact a wildlife rescue organisation such as Wildlife Victoria or WIRES (NSW).

Our wildlife is under pressure now, but we can help many populations by ensuring safer cities for the species that share them with us.

Resources

How to help birds after the fires

Other threatened species in cities

Wildlife-friendly fencing

Find your local native nursery

Learn about platypus-safe yabby nets

Record your bird sightings

Record your frog sightings

Record other urban wildlife

Holly Kirk, Postdoctoral Fellow, Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group (ICON Science), RMIT University; Brendan Wintle, Professor in Conservation Ecology, School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne; Casey Visintin, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne; Freya Thomas, Research Fellow, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University; Georgia Garrard, Senior Research Fellow, Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group, RMIT University; Kirsten Parris, Professor of Urban Ecology, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, University of Melbourne; Kylie Soanes, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, University of Melbourne; Pia Lentini, Research Fellow, School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, and Sarah Bekessy, Professor in Sustainability and Urban Planning, Leader, Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group (ICON Science), RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate explained: why your backyard lawn doesn’t help reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

While growing grass takes up carbon dioxide, it emits it again back into the atmosphere when it is mowed or eaten.
from http://www.shutterstock.com, CC BY-ND

Sebastian Leuzinger, Auckland University of Technology

Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz

I read somewhere that 1,000 square metres of grass absorbs the same amount of carbon dioxide that one person produces. I then think about my small 10ha property. Does that mean that I am covering 100 peoples’ CO₂ emissions every day? What about those large 1,000ha properties then? Do they absorb thousands of tonnes of carbon every year?

In New Zealand, your average carbon footprint will be around four tonnes of carbon, emitted per year (based on the carbon contained in 16.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annual per-capita emissions). A 1,000-square-metre area of grass will take up around one tonne of carbon per year. So if you didn’t fly much, lived in a well insulated home, cycled to work etc, you might bring your overall footprint down to around one tonne of carbon per year, the equivalent of what a backyard lawn may take up per year. So far so good.

The big problem (causing tremendous confusion even among scientists) begins right here. In the above, we talk about fluxes, not pools. Using your bank account as an analogy, fluxes are transfers, pools are balances.

With your own carbon emissions, regardless whether they are one or four tonnes per year, you pay into the atmosphere’s account every year. This means that there is more and more carbon in the atmosphere.

That carbon comes from fossil fuels – an entirely different “account”. Regardless of whether you have 1,000 or 100,000 square metres, this is what grass is doing in this analogy: it takes carbon from the atmosphere every year, but that carbon is going straight back to where it was taken from when you mow the lawn and the biomass is broken down and returned to the atmosphere. In other words, your carbon footprint is a flux that leads to a permanent change in a pool (the atmosphere). This is a bit like a weekly salary. You don’t have to pay it back. What your lawn is doing however, is making payments that are returned a few weeks or months later (when you mow the lawn, a cow eats the grass, or when natural turnover takes place).

The bottom line is that short-term fluxes (as large as they might be) don’t matter if they are reciprocated by an equivalent but opposite flux. If you want, let’s do the experiment. You pay $1,000 onto my account ever odd week, and I pay $1,000 onto yours every even week. None of us will care – as little as the atmosphere will worry about the carbon that your grass patch briefly locks away from it.

So your grass won’t lock away carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the long run. Neither will any grassland in New Zealand.

If you wait long enough, things can become a bit more complicated, namely if my payments back to you start to become a little less or a little more, causing dollars or carbon to accumulate on one account rather than the other. While this is the case in some ecosystems, such as a growing forest, New Zealand grassland is unlikely one of them. So your backyard isn’t helping, there is no way around reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

Sebastian Leuzinger, Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The small patch of bush over your back fence might be key to a species’ survival

File 20181212 76965 x1w7xf.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1 — A kangaroo finds refuge in a small patch of vegetation surrounded by a new housing estate.
Georgia Garrard, Author provided

Brendan Wintle, University of Melbourne and Sarah Bekessy, RMIT University

It may not look like a pristine expanse of Amazon rainforest or an African savannah, but the patch of bush at the end of the street could be one of the only places on the planet that harbour a particular species of endangered animal or plant.

Our newly published global study of the conservation value of landscapes in 27 countries across four continents has found these small patches of habitat are critical to the long-term survival of many rare and endangered species.

In Australia, our cities are home to, on average, three times as many threatened species per unit area as rural environments. This means urbanisation is one of the most destructive processes for biodiversity.

It tends to be the smaller patches of vegetation that go first, making way for a housing development, a freeway extension, or power lines. Despite government commitments to enhance the vegetation cover of urban areas and halt species extinctions, the loss of vegetation in Australian cities continues.

This story plays out all over the world day after day. Of course, it’s not just an urban story. Patches of rural vegetation are continually making way for, say, a new pivot irrigation system or a new mine to provide local jobs.

Remnant salmon gum woodland surrounded by cropland near Bencubbin in Western Australia’s northeast wheatbelt.
Mike Griffiths, Author provided

Mostly, policymakers and scientists do not consider these losses to be, on their own, a fatal blow to the biodiversity of a region or country. Small, often isolated patches of vegetation are considered expendable, tradeable, of limited ecological value due to their small size and relatively large amount of “edgy” habitat. Wrong.

Research forces a rethink

Our study analysed the relationship between conservation value of vegetation patches and their size and isolation in landscapes across Europe, Australia, North America and Africa. The findings prompt a rethink of long-held views about the relative importance of small, isolated habitat patches for biodiversity conservation. We show that these patches often have unique ecological and environmental characteristics.

The critically endangered Western Ringtail Possum lives mainly in small habitat patches in or around urban areas near Perth and is under intense pressure from housing development, foxes, cats and dogs.
Yokochi K., Bencini R./Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

That’s because they are the last patches left over from extensive clearing of flat, fertile land for agriculture or urban growth close to rivers and bays. They often contain habitats for rare or endangered species that have disappeared from the rest of the landscape. This makes these small, isolated patches of habitat disproportionately important for the survival of many species.

Our study calls for a rethink of urban planning and vegetation management regulations and policies that allow small patches of vegetation to be destroyed with lower (and often zero) scrutiny. We argue that the environment is suffering a death by a thousand cuts. The existence of large conservation reserves doesn’t compensate for the small patches of habitat being destroyed or degraded because those reserves tend to contain different species to the ones being lost.

The combined impact of the loss of many small patches is massive. It’s a significant contributor to our current extinction crisis.

Why are small patches seen as dispensable?

A key variable used in decisions on vegetation-clearing applications is the size of patch being destroyed. Authorities that regulate vegetation management and approve applications are more permissive of destruction of small patches of vegetation.

This is partly due to a large body of ecological theory known as island biogeography theory and subordinate theories from metapopulation ecology and landscape ecology. These theories suggest that species richness and individual species’ population sizes depend on the degree of isolation of the patch, its size and the quality of the habitat it contains.

While it is crucial that we conserve large, intact landscapes and wilderness, the problem with conserving only large and well-connected patches of high-quality vegetation is that not all species will be conserved. This is because some species exist only in small, isolated and partially degraded habitats, such as those characteristic of urban bushlands or remnant bush in agricultural areas.

A remnant wetland is still valuable habitat for species like the Pacific Heron.
Wayne Butterworth/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

For this reason, we highlight the importance of protecting and restoring habitats in these small isolated patches. And these areas do tend to be more vulnerable to invasion by weeds or feral animals. If the impacts of invasive species are not managed, they will eventually lead to the destruction of the habitat values and the loss of the species those habitats support.

Small and isolated patches of vegetation on the urban fringe are under enormous pressure from human use, pets, escaped seed of Agapanthus and the many other invasive species we plant in our gardens. These plants spread into local bushland, where they outcompete the native plants.

Communities can make a difference

As well as these perils, being on the urban fringe also brings opportunity. If a remnant patch of vegetation at the end of the street is seen to be of national environmental importance, that presents a great opportunity to channel the energies of community groups into conserving and restoring these patches.

A patch that is actively cared for by the community will provide better habitat for species. It’s also less likely to fall foul of development aspirations or infrastructure projects. The vicious cycle of degradation and neglect of small patches of habitat can be converted into a virtuous cycle when their value is communicated and local communities get behind preserving and managing them.

Volunteer community groups can play a vital role in preserving and enhancing small habitat patches.
Robin Clarey, Friends of Edithvale Seaford Wetlands, Author provided

Urban planners and developers can get on board too. Rather than policies that enable the loss of vegetation in urban areas, we should be looking at restoring habitats in places that have lost or are losing them. This is key to designing healthy, liveable cities as well as protecting threatened species.

Biodiversity-sensitive urban design makes more of local vegetation by complementing the natural remnant patches with similar habitat features in the built environment, while delivering health and well-being benefits to residents. Urban development should be seen as an opportunity to enhance biodiversity through restoration, instead of an inevitable driver of species loss.

Brendan Wintle, Professor Conservation Ecology, University of Melbourne and Sarah Bekessy, Professor, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Not in my backyard? How to live alongside flying-foxes in urban Australia

Justin Welbergen, Western Sydney University and Peggy Eby, UNSW Australia

The conflict between urbanites and wildlife recently developed a new battleground: the small coastal New South Wales town of Batemans Bay, where the exceptional flowering of spotted gums has attracted a huge influx of grey-headed flying-foxes from across Australia’s southeast.

In response to intense and highly publicised community concern, federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt has announced he will seek an immediate National Interest Exemption to facilitate dispersal of these bats – a move that risks undermining legal protections afforded to this and other threatened species.

Similar conflicts are occurring elsewhere in NSW, such as the Hunter region, where some unscrupulous members of the public lit a fire in a flying-fox roost at Cessnock.

With the ongoing expansion of the human urban footprint, animals are increasingly confronted with urban environments. Human encroachment into natural habitats generally negatively affects biodiversity. However, urban landscapes can present wildlife with an irresistible lure of reliable food supplies and other resources. While urban wildlife can provide a range of benefits to health and wellbeing, it can also be cause for frustration and conflict.

Urban human-wildlife conflict is a growing area of management concern and scientific research. But the research suggests that the current strategies for addressing NSW’s conflicts between humans and flying-foxes might not have the intended results.

Flying-foxes increasingly find themselves in urban areas.
Justin Welbergen

Ruling the urban roost

Australian flying-foxes are becoming more urbanised, and the noise, smell and droppings from their roosts can have huge impacts on local residents.

A fundamental problem underlying current approaches to urban roosts is a lack of understanding of the extraordinary mobility of flying-foxes. They are some of the most mobile animals in Australia, with movements that range from foraging trips of up to 120 km in a single night to long-distance nomadism covering thousands of kilometres in a single year.

Nomadic movements of an adult female grey-headed flying-fox, tracked over a period of four years and currently at Batemans Bay.
John Martin & Justin Welbergen, unpublished

While roosts can remain active for decades, they are more like backpacker hostels than stable households, housing a constantly changing clientele that comes to visit local attractions. Roosts are connected into large networks through which flying-foxes move in response to changes in local food resources.

This explains the sudden influx in places such as Batemans Bay where preferred food suddenly becomes abundant. But it also highlights the importance of a national approach to flying-fox management and conservation.

Intense local flowerings of Eucalypts, such as spotted gums, produce copious amounts of nectar and pollen, which attract large numbers of flying-foxes and other species for several weeks. When a relatively small local flying-fox population that is tolerated by its human neighbours suddenly increases tenfold, it can place severe pressure on the local community.

Despite their transient nature, these influxes are often wrongly interpreted as population explosions, leading to calls for culling. In comparison, more humane tactics – such as using loud noise or vegetation removal to disperse the flying-foxes – can seem like a more balanced response. But does dispersal actually work?

Council workers in Charters Towers, Queensland, using ‘foggers’ to disperse flying-foxes from a local roost.
Australasian Bats Society

Shifting the problem elsewhere

There is now ample evidence to show that dispersals are extremely costly and can exacerbate the very human-wildlife conflict that they aim to resolve.

Most dispersals result in the flying-foxes returning the original roost as soon as the dispersal program ends, because naïve new individuals continue to arrive from elsewhere. Overcoming this can take months or years of repeated daily dispersal.

Other dispersals result in flying-foxes establishing new roosts a few hundred metres away, typically within the same urban environment in locations that we cannot control. This risks shifting the problem to previously unaffected members of a community and to other communities nearby.

Former flying-fox roost at Boonah, Queensland, that contained thousands of flying-foxes before it was destroyed in June 2014.
Justin Welbergen

While flying-foxes are often portrayed as noisy pests, they serve our economic interest by providing irreplaceable pollination and seed-dispersal services for free. What’s more, those same bats that annoy people during the day work tirelessly at night to maintain the health of our fragmented forests and natural ecosystems.

So it is in our national interest to manage conflict at urban roosts, by using approaches that balance community concerns with environmental considerations.

Flying-foxes perform irreplaceable ecological roles in our natural environment.
Steve Parish

To be considered “successful”, a dispersal should permanently reduce conflict to a level that is acceptable to the community without causing significant harm to the animals. However, dispersals are currently implemented at the local council level with little or no monitoring of the impacts in or outside the immediately affected area. This makes it hard to assess whether they have been successful.

For example, it is not uncommon for flowering to cease and flying-fox numbers to decline naturally during the period of active dispersal. This gives the community a false sense that a permanent solution has been achieved, when in fact the issues will recur the next time the trees blossom. There is thus an urgent need for urban roosts to be managed with properly defined and applied criteria for success.

Evidence-based management

Unfortunately, lack of research effort directed at “ugly” and “less popular” Australian animals means that very few evidence-based management tools are available to deal with contentious roosts.

Research targeting a few key areas would greatly help efforts to improve urban roost management. For instance, we do not know how flying-foxes choose their roost sites, which leaves us unable to design “carrot solutions” by creating more attractive roost sites elsewhere.

Intensive tree-flowering events are relatively infrequent and hard to predict. This means that it is difficult to prepare communities for a sudden influx of flying-foxes.

Furthermore, the acceptability of various flying-fox management options differs between sections of the community, so it is difficult to find optimal solutions. Social scientists are currently trying to help identify priority areas that promote long-term viability of flying-foxes while also easing conflict with humans.

The extreme mobility of flying-foxes means that a uniform federal approach for management is needed.
Justin Welbergen/WildPhotos.org

Local, state and federal governments continue to allocate considerable funds for dispersal responses, even though such actions are high-risk activities for local communities and are unlikely to provide long-term solutions. We argue strongly that targeted research is needed to better inform land managers and affected communities of flying-fox ecology and provide them with low-cost, low-risk, evidence-based tools for dealing with urban roosts.

Flying-foxes don’t care about legislative borders, and state-based responsibility for wildlife management leads to discontinuity in approaches between jurisdictions. While flying-foxes are being monitored at the national scale, this initiative needs to be combined with a uniform federal approach for managing flying-foxes in our human landscapes. Otherwise, conflicts such as those faced by the residents of Batemans Bay will continue unabated.

Justin Welbergen, Senior Lecturer in Animal Ecology, Western Sydney University and Peggy Eby, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Centre for Ecosystem Science, UNSW Australia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Learn more about the insects and mini-beasts in your own backyard

Susan Lawler, La Trobe University

I recently wrote about how important it is to be able to identify plants and animals. Knowing the names of species that live around us helps us to connect to nature.

Yes, you can enjoy greenery and birdsong without knowing which species are involved, but recognising the call of a magpie while walking under a lemon-scented gum can enrich your experience. It makes nature more personal and accessible.

The most diverse and common group of animals in your neighbourhood (and mine) are the insects. Children are often drawn to these mini-beasts and are too often warned away by well-meaning adults who are afraid they might get stung.

The fact is that knowing your insects is a gateway to developing a relationship with the natural world. Who has not marvelled at a trail of ants carrying crumbs, enjoyed the sound of cicadas on a hot summer day, or watched bees pollinate flowers?

Insects are found everywhere and are incredibly diverse. They are critical to the health of any ecosystem, including your backyard or garden. Knowing enough to tell the main groups apart is a great way to learn about animals.

Insect swarm at my place

We had an interesting experience in our garden last week. Several wattle birds were swooping overhead and then half a dozen magpies arrived and started pecking at the grass at our feet. This was unusual behaviour so we watched closely and eventually noticed a swarm of insects above the vegetable patch.

There were both small and large insects in the swarm and I guessed that the large ones were predators, enjoying the feast along with the birds, but I was wrong. After finding the sweep net and collecting a few we realised that we were looking at a termite mating swarm. The larger insects were the females, and every now and then pairs dropped to the grass to do the deed.

Many people when they hear this story will cringe at the implications of having termites near the house, but most termite species do not eat wood and are not a danger to infrastructure. We placed a few dozen into a mesh enclosure along with some water, newspaper, wood and a jar of soil. The next day they had all burrowed into the soil, so we think they hatched out of our garden compost.

How did I know they were termites? Because termites belong to the order Isoptera, which literally means “same wings”. Unlike most insects, their four wings are all the same size and shape. Once you know this it is easy to distinguish between them and winged ants (who have four wings of different sizes) or flies (who have only two wings). A little bit of knowledge is a powerful thing.

Learning more about bugs

How will you learn to identify insects? A new book called Miniature Lives: identifying insects in your home and garden, by Michelle Gleeson would be a good start. It was mentioned on the CSIRO blog just a few days ago.

If you look around, you may find activities like Bring Ya Bug Along, which will be run by a friend of mine in our home town in a few weeks.

Of course, not every bug will be a bug. This sounds odd but there is an order of insects known as “true bugs” (Hemiptera). They have sucking mouthparts which they use to pierce plants or prey. So even the word “bug” has some linguistic problems and how you use it depends on who you are talking to.

Beetles are the most common insect order (Coleoptera), and most people can recognise them from the hard wing covers. Probably the most popular insect order is the Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies). Yes, they are beautiful but their caterpillars can be bad for the garden.

Lacewings (order Neuroptera) are also beautiful in their adult form. As juveniles they are called ant-lions, which are fearsome little predators that eat garden pests. You can even buy lacewings eggs from Bunnings to add to the garden.

I could go on but if I have sparked your interest, just buy a book or go online to start learning. Using insects as a gateway to connect with nature is something everyone can do.

Susan Lawler, Senior Lecturer, Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution, La Trobe University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

QUEENSLAND: GIANT SPIDER EATING BIRD

A massive Golden Orb Weaver Spider has allegedly trapped a Chestnut-breasted Mannikin in its web and begun to eat it in pictures circulating the web this week. The photos were taken in the backyard of a property at Atherton near Cairns in northern Queensland, Australia.

When first looking at the pictures it is easy to think that the photos are fake or that they have been set up, but wildlife experts claim that the photos are genuine. The report first surfaced in The Cairns Post.

Golden Orb Weaver Spiders usually prey on large insects and not birds. It is unlikely that the spider would be able to consume the entire bird.

View the pictures at:

http://www.freewebs.com/spider-eats-bird/

Or view the footage below:

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QUEENSLAND: GIANT SPIDER EATING BIRD

From Gondwana to the garden

I spy a Wollemi pine

What we can learn

Conservation with cultivation

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Thinking outside the animal box

Providing for urban wildlife

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Living with the new visitors

Resources

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Research forces a rethink

Why are small patches seen as dispensable?

Communities can make a difference

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Ruling the urban roost

Shifting the problem elsewhere

Evidence-based management

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