Documenting all Australia’s remaining species will create $3.7bn-$28.9bn worth of social and economic benefits

Documenting all Australia’s remaining species will create $3.7bn-$28.9bn worth of social and economic benefits

by | Jun 16, 2021 | Think

A report by Deloitte Access Economics for the Australian Academy of Science found that for every $1 invested in discovering all Australia’s remaining species will return between $4 and up to $35 worth of benefits to the nation.

This is a first. Putting a dollar value on discovering and documenting Australia’s species has never been attempted in Australia. To date only 30% of the estimated 750,000 species of Australia’s rich biodiversity has been named and documented.

Australian Academy of Science’s Director of Taxonomy Australia, Adjunct Associate Professor Kevin Thiele explains getting the 30% has taken more than 300 years of Western scientific exploration!

TAXONOMY ON STEROIDS: “Without this 25-year mission, it’s likely to take more than 400 years to discover all remaining Australian plants, animals, fungi and other organisms.

“By combining the skills of our current and future scientists with new technologies such as genome sequencing, artificial intelligence and supercomputing, we will be able to make this ambitious goal achievable by 2050.

“The successful completion of this mission will help build a path to a sustainable and prosperous future and place Australia among the first nations in the world to benefit from a fully documented biodiversity.”

Adjunct Associate Professor Kevin Thiele,

AAS Director of Taxonomy

The mission is also expected to:

  • reduce green tape by providing more certainty to the resources sector
  • help protect Australia’s agriculture and the environment from imported pests and diseases by reducing bio-security risks
  • stimulate new opportunities in agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture, pharmaceuticals and environmental management
  • help ensure that conservation investments are targeted and effective
  • lead to new industries in emerging fields such as industrial food technologies and bio-engineering.

The estimated cost of building capability needed to document the remaining estimated 600,000 Australian species yet to be discovered is $824 million over 25 years.

Download the report here.

TASMANIA’S ‘TOXIC’ SALMON

TASMANIA’S ‘TOXIC’ SALMON

by | May 23, 2021 | Think

See below the ABC #FourCorners in-depth expose? of Tasmania’s ever-expanding salmon farms. And Channel 7 News morning breakfast interview with Booker prize-winning author Richard Flanagan who slams the Tasmanian salmon industry in his book, ‘Toxic’.

The pollution from the from the ever-expanding fish farms now beginning to clog the pristine coastline of Tasmania, the murky filth from the salmon pens and the millions of feed pellets that drift into the ocean and the ocean floor is disastrous for the environment.

And there’s more. See what you think from the links below.

Four Corners report on Tassie’s salmon farming asking: Does the industry’s ‘green image’ stack up?

I think country is trying to talk to us about love. How strong and beautiful it is.

I think country is trying to talk to us about love. How strong and beautiful it is.

by | May 21, 2021 | Do

 

“Inevitably that story is Aboriginal,” said author, Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian man, Bruce Pascoe. And in this time of ‘so-called #reconciliation’, we need to think in terms of #conciliation. As Uncle Max asks: “How did we offend?” We did nothing wrong, yet all his family bar one boy, Uncle Max’s great, great grandfather were obliterated. “If we become closer we will become so much more powerful.” 

And as Bruce Shillingworth, pictured here at the microphone said: “We are the now. We have to refuse to despise our grandchildren my brother. We have to look after our home.” 

Co-author, photographer and artist, Vicky Shukuroglou and Bruce Pascoe shared these stories and more with ABC Radio National’s ‘Awaye’ host, Daniel Browning at the 2021 Sydney Writers Festival when talking about their Guide to Sacred Australia, Loving Country.

“As Australian aboriginal people, we want to talk to you about humanity and our country. Our shared country,” said Bruce. Adding that, “It’s important to be slow, to look carefully, to listen and absorb. The more informed we are, the more country will tell us about ourselves. Even in our own backyard.”

A paraphrased excerpt from the section on the Birdsville track towards outback Queensland … Having driven through the heat and ‘rattled from the corrugations’ of the track, you dismount and ‘the first thing you feel is the breeze through the corkwood trees.’

The sand is soft … you recline in the shade, and you hear that sound again. ‘Soft, repetitive whistles, a churring babble, a plaintive whistle, the variety is enormous and the effect dreamlike.’ The voice of the spiny-cheeked honeyeater seems to come from every corkwood, beefwood or acacia.

‘It asks you to listen, to let the spirit of the country stroke the back of your neck’ … ‘to feel the spirit of the place of solace.’

The intention of the Loving Country guide is to foster communication and understanding between all peoples and country, and to encourage environmental and social change.  

It builds on an original book by anthropologist, geographer and activist, Professor Marcia Langton, Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies and now honoured as Associate Provost at the University of Melbourne.

With beautiful photographs, stories and a practical index of places to go to, look at and things to do in 19 special places in Australia, this ‘sacred’ guide is a way both actual and virtual travellers can delve deep into the heart of country. From the ingenious fish traps at Brewarrina and the rivers that feed the Great Barrier Reef, to the love stories of Wiluna and the whale story of the Margaret River.

Loving Country is to know more of the whole story of places like Marree for instance, at the junction of the Oodnadatta and Birdsville tracks in north-eastern South Australia in country where Antikarinya, Arabunna, Dieri and Pitjantjatjara languages are spoken.

What we know as Lake Eyre is just north of Marree, named after the lost early European explorer.

In this chapter Pascoe and Shukuroglou combine early Australian exploration history with Vicky’s close up portraits of echidnas, saltbushes and galahs. Of Sturt, Pascoe writes of how he, and his party of men and horses, halted by ridge after ridge of sand dunes in what appeared unforgiving desert, almost blind with scurvy and close to death, were welcomed by a gathering of 400 prosperous Aborigines, who watered the horses and fed the men roast duck and cake – the ‘lightest and sweetest’ Sturt had ever tasted.  Read more of this early tending and care of country in Pascoe’s Dark Emu.

The stories capture both past and present, and ancient times when the people of Margaret River communicated with the whales as they migrated north for the birthing season and the whales in turn communicated with them teaching them to talk their language and so linking land, sea, human and animal.

They are stories of unity and peace, of restraining human ego and letting country have a voice. In this guide we learn to pay attention and recognise the links between us, the people and the animals who have walked before us.

The authors also urge readers to think in terms of #conciliation not #reconciliation.  If we become closer we will become so much more powerful.

IT’S NOT THE COW, IT’S THE HOW!

IT’S NOT THE COW, IT’S THE HOW!

by | May 20, 2021 | Think

ENVIRONMENTAL CARBON CREDITS TO W.A. CATTLE STATION

April 2021: Bulga Downs station WA reached a major milestone this month when it received its first carbon credits and related payments from the Commonwealth Emission Reduction Fund (ERF). This follows a two-year period of implementing a ‘Human Induced Regeneration’[i] carbon project on the cattle property, south of Sandstone in the mid-west region of Western Australia.

In 2019, the WA State Govt formally consented to WA pastoralists generating carbon credits through regenerating Australian native tree species indigenous to a project’s local area, thanks to the efforts of WA Agriculture Minister, Alannah MacTiernan.

Following the announcement, Bulga Downs owner, David McQuie and his family were one of the first to look into the benefits of carbon farming on their cattle property.

“I took my time investigating how Human Induced Regeneration (HIR) practices can raise the long-term productive base of my grazed country, while at the same time delivering a solid commercial return,” said McQuie.

“After scanning the market for knowledgeable project developers, I formed a partnership with RegenCo, a Natural Capital management company that worked with us to set up, register and execute the carbon project.

“RegenCo advised us how best we could improve my cattle herd and the property, at the same time as building in management changes to assist us generate carbon credits.”

RegenCo’s CEO Tim Moore said: “We formed a true partnership with Bulga Downs, spending the time we needed with Dave and the team to plan and work through the detail of a new pastoral management plan for the family’s 2,870-square-kilometre property.”

The McQuie family bought the property in 1984 and converted the station from grazing sheep to Angus cattle.  The property had been a sheep station as far back as 1921. It is primarily on sand-plain country with outcrops of granite and ironstone, with an annual rainfall averaging 225 millimetres.

Dr Moore said: “Given Bulga Downs’ history, and the fact that the carbon project will run for 25 years, we knew we had to get the project just right. Working in partnership with the family we built the plan together. RegenCo is engaged as the project’s proponent which will relieve the owners of the work involved in running and delivering the carbon credits back to the ERF.

“In its first two years of operation, the Bulga Downs project created and sold more than 125,000 credits . At today’s market rates, that’s a revenue stream in excess of $2 million. That’s a really positive outcome for Dave, diversifying his income stream while enabling additional development of the property with new pastoral infrastructure to further enhance resilience to dry times.

“The interest we are seeing from credit buyers and off-takers, reflects a confidence in carbon credits as a base for a long term commercial market. The value is to provide additional financial resources to rangelands food and fibre producers to enable them to be more profitable, productive and resilient.

“At RegenCo, we passionately believe Australian pastoralists can continue to run cattle while improving the country and generating valuable credits.

“As Bobby Gill, Savory Institute Director of Development & Communications, famously said in his TEDxBigSky talk, ‘It’s not the cow it’s the how!’ 

“This is a terrific commercial outcome for both the pastoralist and the environment. We are truly excited at the potential across Australia’s rangelands to replicate our approach.”

CONTACT

Dr Tim Moore 

CEO RegenCo Pty Ltd
+61 403 827 099 

tim.moore@regenco.earth

[i] The human induced regeneration (HIR) method is designed to achieve forest cover by carrying out eligible activities that encourage regeneration of Australian native tree species that are indigenous to a project’s local area.