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Water - National News - December 2007 |
Australian Capital Territory; New South Wales; Northern Territory; Queensland; South Australia; Tasmania; Victoria; Western Australia
15/12/07 Gathering true whale numbers Jo Chandler, The Age
10/12/07 Murray-Darling inflows 'at record lows' AAP
05/12/07 Where to water The Age Feature
05/12/07 NT fights coast rights judgement AAP Northern Territory;
Jo Chandler, The Age
December 15, 2007
AS JAPANESE whalers begin their annual Antarctic hunt, Australian scientists are on their way to the southern ice to launch a pioneering project to count minke whales from the air.
The project will enable the first authoritative insight into the number of whales surviving in the pack ice and will be central to continuing international debate about whaling and management of the Southern Ocean fisheries.
"Team Minke" - from the new Australian Centre for Applied Marine Mammal Science - will spend the next few weeks in low-flying aircraft crisscrossing 150,000 square kilometres of pack ice off east Antarctica.
The observations collected by 10 expert surveyors will be backed up with photographs, video footage and infra-red imagery to provide the first comprehensive picture of the whale population living in the ice.
The data will then be crunched through mathematical models being developed with the CSIRO to provide an estimate of the minke whale population living near the coast.
The team will be the first scientific expedition to fly to Casey research station aboard the Australian Antarctic Division's new Airbus A319, and are expected to land on the new Wilkins runway next week.
In the past, whale counts in the Antarctic have been constrained to observations from ships, limiting estimates to those populations in more open water. "Ships can't survey through the ice . . . on a big icebreaker, it's a bit like trying to count birds in the jungle by driving a bulldozer through - they scatter," said the expedition leader, the Australian Antarctic Division's Dr Nick Gales.
"We know whales like minkes do go into the ice, but we don't know if that is a tiny per cent of the population, or a lot."
Within the International Whaling Commission scientific committee, where Dr Gales is a delegate, "this has been a huge question for some time".
Now, using small aircraft introduced to Antarctica in recent summers to shuttle between Australia's research stations, "we can gain estimates of the density and numbers of whales within the pack ice, and within the different types of pack ice".
"Run in collaboration with other work we do - using genetics, and acoustics work, retrieving recorders put under the pack ice collecting whale sounds for a year at a time - we start to get a really good idea of the status, ecology and biology of those populations."
The data will also reveal the kind of pack ice - dense or sparse - the whales prefer.
"Under various climate change scenarios, one of the big changes that might be happening in Antarctica is in the nature and extent of pack ice, and what we are not able to say at the moment is how those changes might affect really important predators like whales and seals," Dr Gales said.
The last official numbers on Antarctic minkes are almost 20 years old, and put the population at 860,000 - but with a margin of error in the hundreds of thousands.
Scientists are now updating that figure and, while there is no agreement on the number, Dr Gales said it was likely to decline - perhaps by as much as half.
The new air survey data would not be analysed in time to be part of that process, but its findings could be included in discussion about variations in whale estimates. If the survey reveals a healthy minke population, it might be seized on by whaling advocates.
Japanese whalers have killed 7000 Antarctic minkes in the 20 years of their nation's research program, and plan to take another 935 this season.
"But whatever a country's motivations are for needing to know (whale numbers), you cannot begin to have proper conservation management without the right data," Dr Gales said.
December 10, 2007 - 4:54PM. AAP
The Murray-Darling Basin is still in its worst drought on record despite receiving the best November rains in several years.
The Murray-Darling Basin Commission's (MDBC) latest drought update says hot weather in much of the southern basin last month had offset the extra rainfall.
The two monthly update suggests a bleak outlook next year for irrigators - whose water allocations in many cases have already been cut to zero - if conditions don't improve.
It said the total Murray storage by the end of November was 550 gigalitres lower than the same time last year at 1,885 GL, the lowest since 1940.
"While there had been good rainfall in November, higher temperatures, evaporation and lower runoff kept inflows well below average," the commission said.
Temperatures were up to six degrees above average in the southern basin.
Inflows over the 2006/07 water year were only 55 per cent of the previous minimum on record and the two years ending in November the lowest two-year inflows recorded.
MDBC chief executive Wendy Craik said flow rates would be increased across the river system to meet summer demands by preferentially drawing on downstream storages.
She said Lake Victoria - which is 60 per cent full - would be drawn first, followed by the Hume Reservoir (25 per cent) and lastly the Dartmouth Reservoir (17 per cent).
"Our overall aim will be to supply water to users as efficiently as possible, while having as much water as possible stored in Dartmouth Reservoir at the end of the coming irrigation season," Dr Craik said.
Dr Craik said while water quality remained high across much of the Murray River, the drought increased the threat of algal bloom and higher salinity, particularly in South Australia.
The Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre said while a rain-producing La Nina event was well established, the likely extra rain may be negated by hotter temperatures.
"The chances of exceeding the median rainfall for summer are between 60 and 70 per cent in a large area extending from southeast Queensland across both the northern inland and east of NSW," centre head Michael Coughlan said.
"However, temperatures are likely to be higher than average resulting in higher evaporation," Dr Coughlan said.
The MDBC said if current conditions persisted, it was likely there would be no more water in storage by next June than a year earlier.
"Under the worst-case inflow scenario used for planning, there would be just enough water to operate the river and meet critical human needs, including some critical stock and domestic requirements," the update said.
"There would be no water for irrigation, other than any volumes carried over from this year."
Water restrictions should support community gardens and the backyard vegie patch, says Ben Neil, CEO of Cultivating Community (above left with gardener Sabri Kiziltam).
Photo: Simon Schlute
December 5, 2007, The Age, Feature
The inventor of permaculture is among those calling for backyard farmers to be freed from water restrictions. Katherine Kizilos reports.
IN A drought year, during an era of climate change, what does it mean to be a responsible gardener? Cactuses, paving and a sculpture near the barbecue? Or an old-fashioned vegie patch, fruit trees, herbs and a compost bin in the corner?
Some serious gardeners are now questioning the conventional wisdom that the best way to save water at a time of low rainfall is to put a clamp on the hose. While pushing the use of rainwater tanks and grey water, they also argue that growing fruit and vegetables at home is, in the words of David Holmgren, "the best thing you can be doing" for the environment.
Holmgren, with fellow Australian Bill Mollison, devised permaculture, a design system for sustainable living and land use. He puts his ideas into practice at his property, Melliodora, at Hepburn Springs, where a hectare of land supports fruit and nut trees, vegetables, chooks, geese and two goats. Although grains, some nuts and oil-producing plants are not in the mix, the property allows for a fair degree of self-sufficiency - Holmgren says this is also possible because he eats seasonally and does not rely on the "drip feed from supermarkets". Water comes from dams and from taps connected to town water. Holmgren says the smallholding uses about one-fifth of the water "used by a market gardener or orchardist".
According to Holmgren, "if we planted out city farms and urban areas, we could achieve a massive increase in (water) efficiency. No one is talking about this ".
Holmgren also points out that farms tend to be open expanses and need more water than a home garden, which is naturally more sheltered. In addition, "farmers use overhead sprinklers which are inefficient". And many orchards and market gardens are sited in sunny, warm places like Mildura, where the rainfall is low, but where farmers achieve a market advantage by producing fruit and vegetables slightly ahead of the season in colder, rainier Melbourne.
Holmgren has based his calculations on water use on a 2001 Australian Bureau of Statistics study by Lenzen and Foran. The study estimated "the amount of water needed throughout the whole economy to provide final consumers with $1 worth of various goods and services". It found that fruit and vegetables required 103 litres per $1; beef products 381 litres and dairy 680 litres.
By contrast, Melliodora uses about 20 litres of water for every $1 of fruit and vegetables produced, while the two goats that provide milk and cheese consumed about two litres per $1 of value, or 1/300th of the amount used by a dairy farm.
According to Lenzen and Foran's figures, commercially purchased food - not including the food purchased in restaurants - accounts for about 48 per cent of the water consumed by the average Sydney household. While the water that comes out of the tap at home accounts for only 11 per cent of a household's total water use.
For Holmgren, the data suggests that putting restrictions on watering suburban gardens makes little sense. He knows that water restrictions are necessary but proposes households be given a seasonal allocation of water, with the decision of whether to use this in the spa or on the tomatoes left to them. Under this system the price of water would "skyrocket if you exceed" the allocation.
"There are good public policy reasons that home food production is desirable," he says. "We need policies that at least don't impede this, even if they don't actively support it."
Holmgren's ideas have been given a boost by a recent petition to the State Government; hundreds of gardeners have asked for exemptions to the water restrictions to allow them extra water for vegetables and herb plots.
In suburban Coburg, Pam Morgan is conducting an experiment. "I want to explore how much food production I can get on a city block," she says.
For 22 years, Morgan managed the Collingwood Children's Farm and has visited Havana to see how the Cubans increased the city's food production by 10 times in a decade. "Fifty per cent of their food is grown there now."
By cultivating land in the city, the Cubans were responding to embargoes which slashed the amount of petroleum available to them to transport food; urban farms reduce food miles. Morgan also wants to recycle her household's biodegradable waste to create compost (commercial farms use petroleum-based chemicals and fertilisers). She also hopes to save water by using grey water and roof water.
Morgan argues that policy makers are approaching the water-shortage problem "from a mechanistic perspective. Minimal water use in the garden and drought-hardy plants. It ignores the issue of carbon recycling or organic waste and also of returning nutrients to the land. We are wasting resources from the city at the moment."
According to Clive Blazey, the founder of mail-order seed company The Diggers Club, the "average person only needs about 60 square metres of space to be self-sufficient in all the potatoes, all the vegetables and the fruit that you wanted to grow. You wouldn't have big, massive apple trees or anything. You would have espaliered trees, especially dwarf rootstock varieties that wouldn't take up much space". He reckons the garden would need "about 34,000 litres of water", which could be gathered from the roof, or grey water.
Blazey is concerned that the present system of water restrictions does not make allowances "for people on a low income who want to grow their own food" and who might need help to divert grey water or set up a rainwater tank. And he believes the role of suburban gardens in reducing greenhouse gases is not appreciated.
He is irritated by the prevailing landscape aesthetic which advocates paving gardens and planting cactus "so instead of burying carbon and doing something useful you are stopping any organisms from growing under the paving and you are using plants that have so little biomass they are absolutely useless to you. What you need to be growing in your backyard is a lot of green things. Trees and shrubs and plants and food plants and not paving, concrete and bricks."
But the water restrictions fall hardest on community gardens, where gardeners do not have the option of using grey water and where tank water, if it exists, may not be sufficient for each plot holder's use. In addition, the morning watering requirements can be difficult for gardeners who have to travel further than the back veranda to visit their plot (while also being less efficient than watering in the evening).
Ben Neil, chief executive of Cultivating Community, which looks after 21 community gardens - just under 800 individual plots - on Ministry of Housing sites, says that when stage three water restrictions were introduced on January 1, "we lost 20 to 25 per cent of our gardeners. There was this initial feeling of 'how are we going to cope?' We lost quite a lot of crops."
Since then, "some people have been quite ingenious," he says. "A resident on the 17th floor has a pram and comes down with containers of water from the shower." Neil is now talking to the State Government about installing more rainwater tanks in community gardens, but he also believes policy makers need to look at food-producing gardens and water restrictions in a different way.
"I believe that if local food and urban agriculture are not part of our future, it will be very, very difficult for us to face the forthcoming environmental challenges," he says. "We must have people growing food in the city."
By making life more difficult for gardeners, particularly community gardeners, you are not merely depriving them of a recreational and social opportunity, Neil argues. "If I don't grow my food next to where I live, I will jump in my car and go to the supermarket and buy something that is refrigerated, wrapped in plastic and that has a massive carbon footprint.
"It's a no-brainer. If I can't grow food close to where I live, what am I going to do?"
Traditional land owners arrive at the High Court in Canberra, where the NT Government is challenging a ruling in their favour.
Photo: Andrew Taylor
December 5, 2007, The Age
DOZENS of Northern Territory traditional Aboriginal landowners crowded into the High Court in Canberra as government lawyers argued against a ruling enabling them to exclude people from coastal waters.
In a landmark ruling earlier this year the full bench of the Federal Court granted Aboriginal people from Blue Mud Bay exclusive access to the tidal waters abutting their land.
If upheld, the ruling could affect up to 80 per cent of the territory coastline, with Aborigines able to decide who enters the waters off indigenous land. The ruling also superseded the NT Fisheries Act, which regulates such things as fish sizes and catch limits.
The NT Government appealed against the ruling to the High Court, which yesterday heard arguments from both sides in front of almost 80 Top End landowners.
John Christophersen, acting chief executive of the Northern Land Council, said the landowners had travelled to Canberra to show that the case was "extremely important" to Aborigines from coastal communities.
The court is not expected to hand down its decision until next year.
AAP