DragonI

Nearly 500 million animals killed in Australian bushfires

Around 480 million animals are feared to have died in the bushfires sweeping Australia, including nearly a third of the koalas in New South Wales's main habitat.

www.standard.co.uk

Ecologists at the University of Sydney estimate around 480 million mammals, birds and reptiles have been killed, directly or indirectly, by the devastating blazes since they began in September, The Times reported.

This includes almost 8,000 koalas, which are believed to have burnt to death on the state’s mid-north coast.

The region, which lies around 240 miles north of Sydney, is home to the largest number of Australia’s koalas, with a population of up to 28,000.

Federal environment minister Sussan Ley told ABC "up to 30 per cent of the population in that region" may have been killed, because around 30 per cent of their habitat has been destroyed.

More than 100 fires continue to rage across the country, having so far consumed more than five million hectares of land.

Dedicated workers at the The Port Macquarie Koala Hospital reportedly treated 72 badly burnt animals on Christmas Day.

A Gofundme page for the hospital has received more than £1.6million ($2million AUD) since September - the largest single amount raised on the site in Australian history, website Newshub reported.

Read this the below link[1]. Which is a personal account of what's happening and 100% aligned with what I've seen while driving in the outback.

People are leaving. The land is no longer habitable to human or animal life. Trying to write off the last 3 years as 'seasonal phenomena' is fucking insane.

Significant chunk of brumby population died[2] no one's ever seen this before.

Wildlife is unable to reproduce because of the heat and drought[3]

The total wildlife death toll is estimated at 500m for this year alone[4]

None of this is precedented. None of this is part of the 'natural cycle'. This continent is experiencing a mass extinction event and the only reason it's not all over the news is because all of the news outlets are owned by Murdoch the coal mogul who probably understands climate change but will continue funding the public denial of it just because it makes a buck.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ecaqu4/australia...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-23/mass-brumby-death-dis...

[3] https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/cattle-hav...

[4] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/australian-bushfires-n...

Scientists lure fish to dead reefs using speakers playing healthy coral sounds

Underwater speakers playing healthy reefs noises double the amount of fish on damaged reefs, giving scientists hope that sound could be used to help restore them.

www.abc.net.au|Nick Kilvert

• Fish numbers doubled and species increased by 50 per cent on acoustically "enriched" sites
• Coral polyps have also been found to navigate toward healthy sounding reef, despite not having ears
• Bigger stressors like climate change, pollution and overfishing still need to be addressed

Researchers have used the sounds of healthy reefs to entice fish back to areas where coral has been wiped out on the Great Barrier Reef.

They took recordings of shrimp snapping, fish grunting and other sounds taken from healthy regions of reef and played them on underwater speakers at a bunch of "coral-rubble patch reefs" at Lizard Island.

The number of fish doubled at the sites where they placed the speakers compared with control sites with no audio over the 40-day study period, they reported in Nature Communications.

They also found the number of different types of fish — the species richness — increased by 50 per cent during that time.

The researchers hope their findings may help in restoring some of the ecosystem functions to coral reefs that have suffered bleaching or been hit by cyclones or other impacts, said Tim Gordon, lead author and PhD student from the University of Exeter.

"Attracting fish to a dead reef won't bring it back to life immediately. But recovery is underpinned by fish that can clean the reef and create space for corals to regrow.",  Dr Mark Meekan

To move reef recovery beyond localised applications such as this one, the bigger issues must be fixed, Professor Nagelkerken said.

"It doesn't solve the greater issue of how we are [harming] the oceans via pollution, climate change and ocean acidification, habitat destruction and overfishing," he said.

"If we don't remove those stressors then reef restoration is not going to happen."

The sounds that come from the Northern Great Barrier Reef have got quieter in the last five years, scientists at the University of Exeter have found.

The noises, which are made by sea creatures, help young fish find their way home.

Loss of Coral Reefs Could Cost $1 Trillion Globally

Mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 have affected two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef.

www.climatecentral.org

Lesley Hughes argued it was a false dichotomy in public debate “to pit the environment against the economy”.

The loss of coral reefs caused by rising sea temperatures could cost $1 trillion globally, a report from Australia’s Climate Council has projected, with the loss of Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef alone costing that region 1 million visitors a year, imperilling 10,000 jobs and draining $1 billion from the economy. 

“The Great Barrier Reef is one of Australia’s greatest economic assets. It’s responsible for bringing in more than $7 billion each year to our economy, while also supporting the livelihoods of around 70,000 people. A healthy Great Barrier Reef underpins the tourism industry and the jobs that it supports.”

The $1 trillion figure for the value of the world’s coral reefs is derived from a 2015 report led by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute, which found that worldwide, reefs supported 500 million people across 50 nations.

• Great Barrier Reef tourism: caught between commerce and conservation alarm 
• We must act immediately to save the Great Barrier Reef 

Obituary: Great Barrier Reef (25 Million BC-2016)

Climate change and ocean acidification have killed off one of the most spectacular features on the planet.

www.outsideonline.com|Rowan Jacobsen

The Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness. It was 25 million years old.

For most of its life, the reef was the world’s largest living structure, and the only one visible from space. It was 1,400 miles long, with 2,900 individual reefs and 1,050 islands. In total area, it was larger than the United Kingdom, and it contained more biodiversity than all of Europe combined. It harbored 1,625 species of fish, 3,000 species of mollusk, 450 species of coral, 220 species of birds, and 30 species of whales and dolphins. Among its many other achievements, the reef was home to one of the world’s largest populations of dugong and the largest breeding ground of green turtles.

In 1981, the same year that UNESCO designated the reef a World Heritage Site and called it “the most impressive marine area in the world,” it experienced its first mass-bleaching incident.

No one knows if a serious effort could have saved the reef, but it is clear that no such effort was made. On the contrary, attempts to call attention to the reef’s plight were thwarted by the government of Australia itself, which in 2016, shortly after approving the largest coal mine in its history, successfully pressured the United Nations to remove a chapter about the reef from a report on the impact of climate change on World Heritage sites. Australia’s Department of the Environment explained the move by saying, “experience had shown that negative comments about the status of World Heritage-listed properties impacted on tourism.” In other words, if you tell people the reef is dying, they might stop coming.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Ocean Ark Alliance.