Hundreds of thousands of native fish dead in second Murray-Darling incident

Hundreds of thousands of fish have been killed along a stretch of the Lower Darling River in New South Wales in a second major incident which has led some experts to fear whole populations of local native fish have been wiped out.

 Photos posted on social media of the fish kill at Menindee on the Darling River. 

Residents near the Menindee Lakes are reporting what is the second major fish kill along a 20km stretch of water near Weir 32.

An incident before Christmas saw an estimated 10,000 fish die.

Locals have been posting photos of dying fish washed up along the shores of the lakes which are about 100km east of Broken Hill.

And local fish experts are saying that it could all but wipe out the populations of Murray cod and other native fish, raising serious questions about the way WaterNSW is managing the lakes system.

Read the story from The Guardian by Anne Davies - “Hundreds of thousands of native fish dead in second Murray-Darling incident.”

How climate change policy helps farmers

Drought is ravaging the land. Large swaths of eastern Australia are experiencing some of the worst seasons on record. Frosts have wiped out large areas of crops in Western Australia, southern New South Wales and Victoria. Hail has beaten crops into the ground in Queensland.

Tony Windsor.

The government is scrambling to be seen to be doing something meaningful for farmers, particularly in Queensland where traditional National voters are looking to desert in favour of minor parties, such as One Nation and Katter’s Australian Party. In some coastal seats in the state, Labor is also doing well. Hence the scene is set for the champion of the short-term, former agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce, to weave his web of utterances that join the drought, energy and climate scepticism into an electoral defence.

At the same time, the climate change debate proceeds at a crawl without any meaningful policy regarding the risk of increased drought and other weather events. This week a report, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), declared that in order to keep warming within a relatively safe 1.5 degrees Celsius, global emissions will need to be cut by 45 per cent by 2030. Coal power will need to be phased out by 2050. The world has just 12 years, according to the IPCC, to avoid a climate change catastrophe. The deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, rejected the IPCC’s call for transition from coal, saying “some sort of report” won’t stop Australia using up its coal resources. Renewable energy, and the opportunities it offers regional Australia, is still being used as a political pawn.

Read the story by Tony Windsor from The Saturday Paper - “How climate change policy helps farmers.”

Wild dogs make a return to help restore the ecological balance

There are just 14 of them, far fewer than those that roamed Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park before the nearly two-decade civil war that started in the 1970s. As up to a million people lost their lives to violence and famine, much of the park's wildlife also was wiped out - including the wild dogs, an endangered species vulnerable to snares and disease.

In this undated photo supplied by Gorogosa Media,
a pack of wild dogs make their way down a road in Mozambique.

Now they have been re-introduced to Gorongosa, carnivores unleashed on plant eaters as part of an intricate conservation project that aims to restore a diverse ecosystem at the southern end of Africa's Great Rift Valley.

From The Age - “African wild dogs make comeback at Mozambican wildlife park.”

Land-clearing wipes out $1bn taxpayer-funded emissions gains

More than $1bn of public money being spent on cutting greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees and restoring habitat under the Coalition’s Direct Action climate policy will have effectively been wiped out by little more than two years of forest-clearing elsewhere in the country, official government data suggests.

Emissions projections data estimates more than 60.3m tonnes
 will be emitted this year – equivalent to more than 10%
 of national emissions.

The $2.55bn emissions reduction fund pays landowners and companies to avoid emissions or store carbon dioxide using a reverse auction – the cheapest credible bids win. The government says it has signed contracts to prevent 124m tonnes of emissions through vegetation projects – mostly repairing degraded habitat, planting trees and ensuring existing forest on private land is not cleared.

Read the story by Adam Morton from The Guardian - “Land-clearing wipes out $1bn taxpayer-funded emissions gains.”

Frogs show signs of immunity to chytrid fungus pandemic that has wiped out about 200 species

A disease caused by a highly contagious fungus has wiped out as many as 200 species of frog worldwide since the 1970s, and pushed many more to the brink of extinction.

The Panamanian golden frog is presumed to be extinct in the wild.

But researchers now believe that some frogs may be developing a resistance to the deadly chytrid fungus.

When chytridiomycosis wiped through a biodiversity hotspot called El Cope in Panama in 2004, scientists said the spread was so rapid that, in places, dead frogs littered the forest floor.

In the study published today in Science, researchers have documented the recovery of nine frog species in three regions of Panama, including El Cope, and have observed infected frogs showing no ill effects from the fungus.

Read the ABC News story by Nick Kilvert - “Frogs show signs of immunity to chytrid fungus pandemic that has wiped out about 200 species.”

On grief and climate change

I am the daughter of a father born on the floor of a displaced persons’ camp after a Holocaust that almost wiped out his entire community. I am also the daughter of a mother born in freedom, peace and civility whose privilege informed a deep gratitude and joy for life. The dual gift of these legacies inform me every day. I know that tragedy and trauma are often man-made. That showing up and personal fortitude are often forged in the fire of recovery and renewal. I take these lessons into account when I am wracked with grief about climate change.

Dumbo Feather’s publisher and editor-in-chief,  Berry Liberman.

The arctic ice shelf just cracked off, meaning a trillion ton of ice has now entered our oceans. We are in strange and frightening territory of our own making. The weather is our only compass and it is wild and vengeful in places where peoples are the most vulnerable. Issue 52 of Dumbo Feather, and the content we’ll be sharing online over the next eight weeks, is an attempt to have a purposeful conversation about how we can collectively remain engaged and active in campaigning for the renewal of our eco-systems which are crashing and destabilising all around us.

Read the piece by Dumbo Feather’s publisher and editor-in-chief, Berry Liberman - “On grief and climate change.”

Most of the Great Barrier Reef destroyed forever

The Great Barrier Reef is close to being wiped out and there is “zero chance” of its massive dead zones springing back to life, scientists have warned.

Much of the Great Barrier Reef is in trouble.

This natural wonder has been hit by a series of “mass bleaching” incidents which turn the reefs into barren underwater wastelands.

Last month, researchers detected another round of mass bleaching which follows a severe event in 2016.

Their fears were then confirmed in aerial surveys of the entire 1,400 mile-long reef, which is one of the most bio-diverse places in the world.

Last year, the northern areas of the World Heritage-listed area were hardest hit, but the middle third is experiencing the worst effects.

Read the story by Jasper Hamill, originally published in The Sun, now in the New York Post - “Most of the Great Barrier Reef destroyed forever.”

Adani coal mine would wipe out Direct Action gains within a year, estimates show

The Emissions Reduction Fund is
 the centrepiece of the Australian
 Government's policy suite to
 reduce emissions.

Carbon cuts made by the federal government's Direct Action climate change plan by 2020 would be wiped out by pollution from a single coal mine in just over a year, new data revealed at a Senate estimates hearing shows.

Officials from the Clean Energy Regulator said that projects paid for from the first three auctions of the Emissions Reduction Fund – the backbone of Direct Action – would trim pollution by just 42 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent by 2020.

Even if all the remaining funds were spent – with a fourth auction planned for November 16 – emissions reductions are projected to total only 92 million tonnes by the year 2020, officials told senators.

By contrast, the Adani coal mine proposed for Queensland's Galilee Basin would trigger emissions of about 79 million tonnes a year – nullifying the ERF's pre-2020 abatement in little over a year if it proceeded.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Adani coal mine would wipe out Direct Action gains within a year, estimates show.”