Climate change will make QLD’s ecosystems unrecognisable – it’s up to us if we want to stop that

Climate change and those whose job it is to talk about current and future climate impacts are often classed as the “harbingers of doom”. For the world’s biodiversity, the predictions are grim - loss of species, loss of pollination, dying coral reefs.

It’s not just about the Great Barrier Reef. Queensland’s rainforests -
particularly in the mountains - will also change thanks to a warming climate. 

The reality is that without human intervention, ecosystems will reshape themselves in response to climate change, what we can think of as “autonomous adaptation”. For us humans - we need to decide if we need or want to change that course.

For those who look after natural systems, our job description has changed. Until now we have scrambled to protect or restore what we could fairly confidently consider to be “natural”. Under climate change knowing what that should look like is hard to decide.

Read the piece from The Conversation by a Research Fellow from the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University, Sarah Boulter - “Climate change will make QLD’s ecosystems unrecognisable – it’s up to us if we want to stop that.”