Stupid polliie
but interesting article about penguins & Montague
Island:
Just how low can a
politician stoop in pursuit of power? It?s a question that?s been asked plenty
of times before but last month the Shadow Minister for Climate Change and
Environmental Sustainability, Catherine Cusack, was probably out to set new
records with her attack on the Keneally Government over the loss of 13 Little
penguins on Montague Island in a fuel reduction burn conducted by the National
Parks Service.
It was a breathtaking attempt at
reaching new heights of lowness?if you get my drift.
For a start the headline of the Cusack
media release blurts ?Keneally Labour Government?s incompetent Montague Island
burn kills Penguins.? The link between Kristina Keneally and the Seabird Habitat
Restoration Program, which has been running now for more than seven years, is
pretty tenuous but then this attack isn?t really about Cusack?s care and concern
for penguins but about scoring points. The burn that killed 13 penguins in
June was a consequence of a ten year plan to control the noxious grass Kikuyu.
It?s a very common lawn grass that was ignorantly introduced to the 80 hectare
Far South Coast Island many decades ago to stabilise the sand that was entering
the lighthouse. Unfortunately the grass was threatening to choke the island to
death so something had to be done to bring it under control.
There are some 30,000 seabirds that call
the island nature reserve home at various times of the year including 6,000
breeding pairs of Little Penguin. Once the feral goats were removed the Kikuyu
took off at pace spreading quickly and covering half the island and threatening
to choke it completely within a decade if nothing was done. There are some
eco-morons around who insist the goats and the penguins had developed a
symbiotic relationship and were happily coexisting. Spectacular nonsense!! The
goats are responsible for the complete absence of trees on the island as well as
the other native plants and shrubs long since digested. They numbered 200 and
would trample the burrows causing caves ins on shearwater and penguin nests. The
goats had to go. So once the grass took off the penguins, which normally burrow
were forced to nest in the impenetrable long grass. The NPWS made life a tad
easier for many penguins by providing nesting boxes to support breeding. This
was a less than satisfactory long term arrangement. The island has a history of
lightning strikes and it would only take one strike in the peak of the breeding
season in late spring for the entire island to be burnt to smithereens and the
second largest Little Penguin colony in the world after Phillip Island would
potentially have been wiped out.
The NPWS only took over management of
Montague in 1989. Up until then public access was prohibited because it was the
site of a lighthouse. Since then however, a handful of visionary NPWS staff have
built a world class, multi award winning, tourism asset that today is generating
huge amounts of money for the local economy as well as jobs and a tourism icon
built upon easy public access with visitors keen to see an amazing array of
wildlife that of course includes penguins, not to mention seals, whales, and
nesting colonies of gulls and crested terns.
The same staff worked closely with the
researchers from Charles Sturt University over many years, determined to see how
they could rid the island of the Kikuyu while it was home to thousands of
seabirds. Not an easy task. And yet, after years of research and maybe a few PhD
studies they came up with a magic formula ? spray the kikuyu in the middle of
winter when there were the fewest number of penguins with a diluted herbicide
that would not affect the sturdier handful of native plants that still existed.
Wait till the grass had cured and then burn it.
We aren?t talking about lawns or even just
long grass. We are talking about years and years of grass growing and dying ,
growing and dying. It?s a waist deep, trampoline like, thick mattress of biomass
and it can?t pull pulled, bulldozed or plucked. There was really only ever one
way to get rid of it?divide it into small one hectare manageable blocks, send in
teams of people to crawl through the grass thicket on hands and knees for hours
on end after having monitored the site all year to identify the nests and
capture as many birds as possible to put them in quarantine until the burn was
over and done with. Then put a match to it. The burn involved 25 of the State?s
most experienced fire fighters supported by a helicopter. It took months of
planning and required a very specific set of conditions before it could be done
safely. Over the past seven years there have been teams of people to assist in
all manner of ways including vets and handlers to manage the birds, the RSPCA
were generally on hand to observe. (In fact the RSPCA was involved from the
outset and approved of the plan). The only thing missing was maybe the USS
Missouri lying offshore to offer back up. It?s almost certainly the most
intensively planned and managed fuel reduction burn to be undertaken each ear
across the country. The risks were there but they were planned for and minimal.
With all the right boxes ticked it had everyone?s blessing. Doing nothing was a
much bigger risk to the penguin colony. Doing nothing was , in the longer term,
probably a death sentence for the island?s seabirds.
When the burn was done they would plant the
area out with thousands and thousands of native shrubs and trees that provide
the shade which prevented the kikuyu from returning. Before Europeans arrived
the island would probably have looked more like a south coast headland with a
thick growth of wattles, banksias, stunted eucalypts and native shrubs. In this
environment the penguins can burrow and nest in a fashion they are meant to.
Many more penguins have got a better chance of survival in this habitat if a
fire strikes than if they continue to nest in grass, a virtual funeral
pyre.
With the exception of the 2001 accident
that killed maybe 40 penguins when they were experimenting with the process
before this program got underway the Parks fire fighters had managed to conduct
seven burns in seven years since 2003 and lose a total of 20 penguins and that
includes the 13 lost this year. Tragic though this might seem it?s nothing
compared to the annual average of almost of 400 penguins which are dying the
slow painful death of strangulation after being mortally tangled in the kikuyu
runners. Hence a very good reason for taking the well managed risk of
burning.
The job of controlling Kikuyu is almost
complete. The island today is no longer being choked to death by Kikuyu.
Penguins are colonising the revegetated areas and beginning to burrow. The
numbers of penguins being strangled is dropping yearly, The island is looking
more like it should. Even woodland birds, which have not been seen there for
many years, are now being recorded. It would have been far easier for the NPWS
staff to have not done the research, not done the burns, not taken the well
planned risk that a handful of birds would perish in these operations. I think
the staff could be forgiven for thinking the message from Cusack was that they
should have just left things alone and avoid all risk.
Cusack went to Montague last year
apparently and was taken around the island and had all this explained to her by
the very staff that now stand condemned as being ?incompetent? in her most
recent attack. If she thinks they are a tad upset by what?s been said in the
media about their efforts as a result of her criticisms then she?d probably be
right because the breathtaking hypocrisy of it all lies in the fact that she has
made absolutely no mention of the God-knows-how-many animals that perish in
thousands of hectares of native bushland that is burnt in national parks each
year under the State?s hazard reduction burning program. The difference here is
that penguins are cute. The shot at the Government and the Parks Service was
cheap and easy. She knew she?d get mileage and the media wouldn?t really bother
addressing the detail. The Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily
Telegraph willingly obliged Cusack without question. Not surprisingly then
no one bothered to ask her the question ?Well?are you opposed to hazard
reduction burning too??
It?s amazing that a conservative politician
can suggest that a burn should not be carried out because of the potential
impact on wildlife when that?s precisely what the NPWS has been criticised for
(unfairly) in the past.
I think it?s a given that the Liberals will
storm home in next year?s election. The question is not whether Labour will lose
but by how much. Why on earth then does the Shadow environment spokesperson feel
the need to make such virulent attack on the obviously very professional staff
of the NPWS. It was completely unnecessary.
Despite the bad press, generally I have a
great deal of respect for most politicians who I genuinely believe are there
trying to do a thankless task. Periodically one breaks the mould. The Park
Service team who?ve devoted their professional careers trying to make the right
decisions and manage this island have achieved an outstanding result all round
over 20 years and it?s a damn shame that was tossed aside in favour of some
cheap point scoring in a media release entitled (again for the record)
?Keaneally Labour Government?s incompetent Montague Island burn kills penguins?.
The gun?s pointed at the Government but the bullet?s hit some good people along
the way. So? that?s how low a politician can go.
STOP PRESS?since writing this I am pleased
to report that the local Liberal Member for Bega, Andrew Constance, had the good
grace to do something extremely unusual and contradict the fellow Liberal Cusack
by congratulating the NPWS staff for their excellent work in letters to the
editor of a number of local newspapers.
http://www.realdirt.com.au/2010/08/01/what%e2%80%99s-a-dead-penguin-worth-to-a-politican/utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+real_dirt+%28REAL+DIRT%29
