Top End floodplains are the most important Australian breeding areas for
several water birds eg.
Great Egrets - 30 000
Intermediate Egret - 90 000
Little Egret - 18 000
Cattle Egret - 30 000
Little Pied Cormorant - 18 500
Pied Heron - 22 600
Nankeen Night Heron - 19 000
Royal Spoonbill - 5 500
These figures come courtesy of Ray Chatto ( Waterbird Breeding Colonies
Of the Northern Territory, Technical Report 69:2000).
These floodplains are under threat from rising sea level - 14 cms in 20
years if I remember correctly. The Amateur Fishermen's Association NT
website has several photos demonstrating the damage done to the Mary River
system - freshwater paperbark swamps are now hypersaline mudflats
<https://www.facebook.com/AmatuerFishermenNT/photos_albums> (sic).
The change to anyone familiar with the area is simply astounding. Where
only a few years ago there were paperbarks, waterlilies and sacred lotus,
and typha and spikerush, there is only bare mud, for as far as one can see.
While the Mary River is apparently the most affected
<http://ext.cdu.edu.au/newsroom/a/2012/Pages/SealevelriseimpactingNT¹sunique
riversystems.aspx>, Kakadu and the Finniss and other river systems are also
under threat as are areas further afield including islands and the Great
Barrier Reef.
Another threat, and I mentioned this and the above in my presentations
throughout the US in 2009 and at the Colombia Bird Festival, are destructive
and more frequent fires. Destructive fires are due to the spread of
transformer weeds such as Gamba and Mission Grass, and also less burning off
as Aboriginal burning practices and knowledge are lost and such people move
away from their country.
According to one paper 396 bird taxa "are very highly exposed" (Garnett, ST,
Franklin, DC, Ehmke, G, Van Der Wal, JJ, Hodgson, L, Pavey, C, Reside, AE,
Welbergen, JA, Butchart, SHM, Perkins, GC, Williams, SE, 2013).
That's more than half of Australia's resident bird species.
Denise Lawungkurr Goodfellow
PO Box 71, Darwin River,
NT 0841
043 8650 835
PhD candidate, SCU
Vice-chair, Wildlife Tourism Australia
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