birding-aus

Is cleanliness next to birdlessness?

To: "Birding-Aus \(Forum\)" <>
Subject: Is cleanliness next to birdlessness?
From: "Chris Corben" <>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:07:01 -0500
Hi all

A depressing conversation with Jill Denning about the precipitous decline of waders and terns in northwest Moreton Bay made me wonder if anyone has actually come up with a reason for this. I carelessly remarked that maybe people and dogs were the problem, but when I think about it, that doesn't make much sense.
One of the really big changes in Moreton Bay in the last 30 or 40 years has 
been the standard of sewerage treatment. In the 70's, you could walk out 
along the pipe to the outflow at Luggage Point and watch the foul-smelling 
black gunk pour straight into the mouth of the Brisbane River. It was 
heaven! There were always a few hundred White-winged Black Terns diving into 
the mass of mullet writhing around at the end of the pipe and thousands of 
waders crowded the mudflats. A great joy was standing back in the mangroves 
and watching the waders pile onto the first bits of mud exposed by the 
falling tide.
If you think about it, most of the really good wader sites are fundamentally 
filthy places. As a youth, I loved the smell of sewerage, as it meant the 
possibility of some good Sandpipers nearby. Much of my most enjoyable 
birding was done around places which really weren't very nice - typically 
bits of foul land lying around the backs of industrial sites, or sewerage 
outfalls. They always smelled!
Is it possible our anti-pollution obsession has killed the Bay's 
productivity? Perhaps we could restore some of it by cutting back on the 
treatment, presumably at negative cost. NEGATIVE COST! Better hurry, before 
everyone gets used to nice clean sand the kids can play in.
Cheers,

Chris Corben.


===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com

To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to: 
===============================

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU