Hi Chris,
I think you will find the systematic destruction of important wader roost
sites has been the cause of Moreton Bay's precipitous decline in waders.
>From my time in Broome it became obvious that waders don't just use one
roost site over the course of their stay in the country; even within a
simple environment like Roebuck Bay the birds shift from beach to beach
based on the safety of each roost at each stage of tide. This means in an
even more complex system like Moreton Bay a huge variety of roosts would be
required to support large wader numbers at different stages of tide. Many
of the very important ones don't exist anymore, and still others have been
rendered unusable due to high disturbance.
Between housing developments like Raby Bay, and building Ports, as well as
high levels of recreational disturbance making roost unusable, waders really
have very few safe places to sleep in the bay these days.
Regards,
Chris
On 13/04/2009, at 3:07 PM, Chris Corben wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>
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