Human-made ecosystems: Ecological novelty is now the "new normal" for our planet

"30-40% of the world's terrestrial ecosystems have already transformed into novel states."

"O'ahu as an "amazing crystal ball" that offers a glimpse of the future of our planet if humans continue to damage environments and drive species to extinction."

"Hawaii's O'ahu's lowland forests are now almost entirely devoid of the plants and animals that grew here for millions of years before the arrival of humans. Settlers brought extinctions by cutting down trees to make farms and introducing voracious predators and disease-carrying animals. Today, these tropical forests are a tapestry of non-native species introduced from every corner of the planet: Brazilian peppertree, Indonesian cinnamon and roseleaf bramble from the Himalayas and Australia. Most of the animals, including all the birds that Tarwater mentioned earlier, are also alien."

"We like to think of O'ahu as the cautionary tale for all the other Pacific Islands and the Hawaiian Islands. It's what you don't want to have happen – Corey Tarwater"
>>
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250403-the-new-hawaiian-freakosystem-emerging-on-oahu-accidentally-created-by-humans

Towards a novel biosphere in 2300: rapid and extensive global and biome-wide climatic novelty in the Anthropocene
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rstb.2023.0022
#biodiversity #biosphere #ecosystems #extinction #birds #loss #InvasiveSpecies #degradation #SettlerSociety #cattle #dogs #grasses #NovelEcosystems #weeds #restoration #Pacific

Extinction is a choice

"The Albanese government took power in May 2022, it pledged to end “wilful neglect” of the environment and to introduce stronger environmental laws "

"Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has been taken to court over 11 threatened species. Here’s why
Today, environmental group the Wilderness Society launched a case in the Federal Court against Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, arguing she and successive environment ministers have failed to meet their legal obligations to create threatened species recovery plans."
>>
https://theconversation.com/environment-minister-tanya-plibersek-has-been-taken-to-court-over-11-threatened-species-heres-why-219231
#Biodiversity #extinction #Australia #WilfulNeglect #laws #SettlerSociety #extractivism #ecocide

The cost of preventing extinction of Australia’s priority species

"It would cost $15.6 billion per year for 30 years to prevent extinction for 99 of Australia’s priority species. The cost to reverse the decline of priority species and undo damage done by habitat loss, disease and other threats was estimated at $103.7 billion annually, while getting them off the threatened list entirely would require $157.7 billion per year.”

"Biodiversity loss and ecosystems collapse is ranked by the World Economic Forum as the second most significant global risk over the next decade, with 50 per cent of the global economy dependent on nature. " >>
https://news.griffith.edu.au/2025/02/04/the-cost-of-preventing-extinction-of-australias-priority-species/

Australians spent over $33 billion on their pets last year.
https://www.dogster.com/statistics/pet-spending-statistics-australia
#biodiversity #ecosystems #extinction #risks #wildlife #SettlerSociety #pets #Australia #NaturePositive #values

"To be different without fear."
T.W. Adorno, Minima Moralia

"The referendum, Mr Sivaraman said, had "mainstreamed a torrent of racism" and emboldened people to "immediately challenge" any small measure granting self-determination to Indigenous people. People feel like the defeat of the Voice has given them licence to espouse their racist views...Racism towards First Nations people within Australia had been a "constant" for 238 years that "escalated dramatically" when there was something to attach it to, like cultural heritage protections or the Voice referendum."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-20/mt-arapiles-plan-triggers-racism-towards-aboriginal-people/104604286

'Freedom is no fear.’ Nina Simone/ Nicholas Payton
https://visualizingabolition.ucsc.edu/exhibitions/music-for-abolition.html#sleepwalkers

#referendum #IndigenousPeoples #FirstNations #voice #silence #CulturalLandscape #sacred #respect #SettlerSociety #WhiteRage #violence #racism #safety #discrimination #denial #backlash #tolerance for #ambiguity #AuthoritarianPersonality #fear #loss #mountains #climbing #industry #Australia #freedom

Native freshwater fish at risk of extinction

"More than one-third (37%) of our freshwater fish species are at risk of extinction, including 35 species not even listed as threatened...At present, 63 freshwater fish species are on Australia’s national list of species declared as threatened under federal environmental law."

"Invasive fish such as brown and rainbow trout are the biggest driver of native fish loss...Australia’s southern states are greatly adding to the problem by releasing millions of trout into waterways each year for recreational fishers...The other major threats facing native fish are agriculture and aquaculture (38%), pollution (38%), hunting and fishing (19%), energy production and mining (17%), and urban development (13%)."

"In 2022, the Australian government made a commitment to end extinctions. Our study provides a blueprint for how to do that for our overlooked native freshwater fish."
>>
https://theconversation.com/troubled-waters-how-to-stop-australias-freshwater-fish-species-from-going-extinct-242950
#fishes #biodiversity #conservation #rivers #extinction #InvasiveSpecies #trout #fishing #RecreationalFishers #sport #agriculture #aquaculture #pollution #mining #DynamiteBlasting #SettlerSociety #sprawl #EPBCAct #IUCN

Culturally modified trees in New South Wales

"In NSW, scarred, marked and ring trees are protected under the National Parks and Wildlife Act, but trees-in-trees are not recognised as "culturally modified trees". Trees-in-trees" are tree species growing out of another tree species, often with stone-axe cut marks visible around the guest tree's graft. All trees have an identity, they have roles and responsibilities in the family unit, like people...They have their own spirit, like people...What makes them unusual is that neither species is an epiphyte: the type of plant that grows on another plant but is sustained by airborne nutrients...These are living cultural memory embodied in trees. All over Australia, trees have been modified by Aboriginal people but are vanishing due to logging, agricultural expansion and urban sprawl. Land clearing is a really big concern."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-09/culturally-modified-trees-a-national-treasure-in-outback-nsw/104557536

Culturally modified trees by settler society:
Trees are regularly butchered to make way for power lines.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-07/tree-canopy-cover-urban-heat-island/104567914
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-18/pruning-street-trees-around-powerlines-ausgrid-compromise/101538168
#trees #FirstNationsPeoples #water #NSW #entanglement #relationality #IntraAction #IndigenousKnowledge #SettlerSociety #culture #sprawl #logging #energy #PowerLines

"Native bees, including the blue-banded bee, have evolved over millions of years alongside our native flowers, making them some of Australia's best pollinators."

"Eighty per cent of the world's insects do not have a name."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-09/blue-banded-bee-australian-insect-of-the-year-inaugral-vote/104572938
#biodiversity #ranking #insects #ExoticWeeds #livestock #bees #SettlerSociety #literacy

Australia's semantic struggles over a "one and only" reality or a pluriverse?
From the 'heart of darkness' to the “sanitised” articles of sub/urban place names.

"Some (Wikipedia) editors told us they felt it was their responsibility to include First Nations’ perspectives, even though they met with heavy resistance. One, Lucas, had repeatedly tried to include First Nations place names, often unsuccessfully. He no longer edits Wikipedia. “I just ran out of energy for it”...One or two editors “were going around removing Aboriginal place names from all the articles about Australia and Australian places”.
>>
https://theconversation.com/we-analysed-35-000-wikipedia-entries-about-australian-places-some-sanitised-history-others-privileged-fiction-over-reality-241364
#wikipedia #SettlerSociety #Australia #SocialImaginary #ImaginedCommunity #fiction #violence #FirstNations #TruthTelling #naming #IndigenousKnowledge #pluriverse #EditWars #WorldMaking #EpistemicInjustice #language #framing #worldviews #AI

"Our leaders are collaborators with fossil fuel colonialists. This is the source of our communal dread. We act like colonial subjects because, in effect, that’s what we are. A child born now will experience 24 times the number of extreme climate events as a politician born in the 1960s. The IPCC’s latest report states emphatically that to spare the worst effects of climate breakdown there should be no new fossil fuel development."
Tim Winton
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/30/our-leaders-are-collaborators-with-fossil-fuel-colonialists-this-is-the-source-of-our-communal-dread
#FossilFuels #ClimateBreakdown #climate #coal #CivilDisobedience #resistance #ProtectProtest #disrupt #ClimateAnxiety #ExtremeHeat #livability #YoungPeople #parenting #Intergenerationaljustice #SettlerSociety #ExtremeClimateEvents #Australia

Conserving Australia’s biodiversity requires a national reckoning with this vast continent’s lands, seas and waters

"Australia’s wildlife and ecosystems are iconic, integral to our national identity and loved the world over. But they’re often disregarded, destroyed and are suffering decline at alarming rates. More than 100 species extinct and 2000-plus threatened species and ecological communities: This is Australia’s unenviable conservation record since European colonisation, about 240 years ago."

"A new federal government in 2022 brought promise of ending environmental neglect, commitments to being “nature positive”, and a stated goal of “no new extinctions”. Central to this was the reform of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act)."

"It might seem a strange thing for a wildlife ecologist to say, but genuine progress for conservation in Australia does not hinge on more science. We know the threats and risks – we’re currently monitoring species to extinction."
>>
https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/opinion-and-analysis/2024/08/opinion-law-reform-for-nature/
#biodiversity #conservation #wildlife #EPBC #EPBCAct #NaturePositive #law #MoreData #EPBC #extinction #destruction #australia #SettlerSociety

We need to move beyond the term stakeholder in environmental decision-making (1/2)

"Language matters in shaping perceptions and guiding behaviour. The term stakeholder is widely used, yet little attention is paid to the possibility that its use may inadvertently perpetuate colonial narratives and reinforce systemic inequities. In this article, we critically examine the limitations of the stakeholder concept and its ambiguity, normativity, and exclusionary implications. We emphasise the importance of using language that gives a voice to marginalised groups, promotes inclusion and equity, and fosters meaningful and reflexive participation in decision-making processes. In critiquing the use of the term and calling for alternative practices, we aim to contribute to the decolonisation of research norms and the creation of more inclusive and equitable societies. Therefore, rather than advocating a single alternative term, we suggest a focus on the people, places, and species affected by decisions, interventions, projects, and issues."
>>
Reed, M.S., Merkle, B.G., Cook, E.J. et al. Reimagining the language of engagement in a post-stakeholder world. Sustain Sci 19, 1481–1490 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-024-01496-4
#environment #ImpactCulture #DecisionMaking #stakeholders #consultation #tokenism #participation #symmetry #IndigenousPeoples #activism #CitizenScience #engagement #collaboration #research #credibility #CitizenEmpowerment #democracy #SettlerSociety #logging #mining #extractivism

"...The stakeholder paradigm (2/2)
reduces the relationships between people and place to financial or economic transactions that ignore the cultural and spiritual significance of the land and the non-human species to which people are inherently connected. Moreover, the term stakeholder has been used to legitimise extractive policies by corporations and governments on Indigenous lands, on the basis that the interests of corporations and governments are as legitimate as Indigenous communities. This framing ignores power imbalances and the histories of colonisation and dispossession that have impacted those communities over many generations. These exploitations inherent in the stakeholder paradigm are directly relevant for research, which aims to engage individuals, groups, organisations, and, in some cases, non-human or other species in decisions, interventions, projects, and issues (Reed and Rudman 2022)."
>>
Reed, M.S., Merkle, B.G., Cook, E.J. et al. Reimagining the language of engagement in a post-stakeholder world. Sustain Sci 19, 1481–1490 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-024-01496-4
#environment #ImpactCulture #biodiversity #stakeholders #DecisionMaking #consultation #tokenism #participation #symmetry #IndigenousPeoples #activism #CitizenScience #engagement #collaboration #research #credibility #CitizenEmpowerment #democracy #SettlerSociety #logging #mining #extractivism #exploitation

Native Knowledge: What Ecologists Are Learning from Indigenous People

"One estimate says that while native peoples only comprise some 4 or 5 percent of the world’s population, they use almost a quarter of the world’s land surface and manage 11 percent of its forests. In doing so, they maintain 80 percent of the planet’s biodiversity in, or adjacent to, 85 percent of the world’s protected areas."
>>
https://e360.yale.edu/features/native-knowledge-what-ecologists-are-learning-from-indigenous-people

Vertebrate biodiversity on indigenous-managed lands in Australia, Brazil, and Canada equals that in protected areas

"Declines in global biodiversity due to land conversion and habitat loss are driving a ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ and many countries fall short of meeting even nominal targets for land protection. We explored how such shortfalls in Australia, Brazil and Canada might be addressed by enhancing partnerships between Indigenous communities and other government agencies that recognize and reward the existing contributions of Indigenous-managed lands to global biodiversity conservation, and their potential contribution to meeting international treaty targets."

"Many countries currently fall short of meeting targets to curb biodiversity loss.
Indigenous-managed lands represent one avenue by which national targets can be met.
Both Indigenous lands and conventional protected lands have high biodiversity.
Indigenous-managed lands have equal-or-higher biodiversity than protected areas.
Partnerships with Indigenous communities can ameliorate shortfalls in habitat protection for biodiversity conservation."
>>
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2019.07.002
#TraditionalEcologicalKnowledge #IndigenousPeoples #conservation #BiodiversityCrisis #SettlerSociety #Australia #degradation #extinction #extractivism #LoggingImpacts #deforestation #ClimateEmergency

Save Tuckers Nob forests
Save the Bellingen koala habitat.
Save the biodiversity habitat of the promised Great Koala Park.
Save the habitable climate niche.
#StopNativeForestLogging #SaveTuckersNob #BellingenLogging #NSWlogging #FCNSW #ClimateEmergency #ExtremeHeat #BiodiversityCrisis #destruction #governance #SettlerSociety #extractivism

Some humans are SO GOOD!

The Wentworth Group of Concerned #Scientists has come up with highly feasible and affordable (0.3% of GDP) solutions to an essential component of #Australia's #ecological mess.

Thanks to @Bellingen for sharing The #Guardian's article about the Group's "Blueprint to Repair Australia’s #Landscapes". Links:

https://mastodon.au/@Bellingen/112839873185063325
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/24/australia-environment-endangered-species-fixed-gdp
https://wentworthgroup.org/2024/07/blueprint-repair-australias-landscapes/

"Australia has a cat problem.
After being introduced in 1788, feral cats now number between 2.1 – 6.3 million depending on rainfall conditions, and there are another 3.8 million pet cats in our neighbourhoods."

"Together, they kill over 2 billion animals every single year. Most of those are native. And no matter how much we adore them, we can’t escape the fact that our pet cats that are allowed to roam are responsible for over 500 million of those deaths."

"Meet the 27 native animals cats have helped send extinct since colonisation"
>>
https://invasives.org.au/blog/meet-the-27-native-animals-cats-have-helped-send-extinct-since-colonisation/
#roaming #pets #cats #PetOwners #SettlerSociety #wildlife #biodiversity #extinction makers

‘Property poetry’?
"Real estate is another way to say Australia."

"Kate Holden connects Turnbull’s persistence in illegally clearing vast tracts of koala habitat, and his murder of Turner, to British Enlightenment theories of property. The English philosopher John Locke, she observes, “placed emphasis on labour to morally justify the owning of property. The more work put into the land, the more settled a man was upon it. Holden traces associations between Locke’s ideas, the history of terra nullius and the “strange, morbid fixation in Australian myth of just how hard a person has to work on this land.”

"[b]y the time of Australia’s settling, the ineluctable mark of a British citizen was land ownership. It enfranchised him, gave him rights […] Land – elemental, foundational – was the desperately prized asset in a new colony. Without it, man was only an object."

"Yet the contradictions and inequities surrounding the trade in stolen land are rehearsed largely without reflection or analysis across contemporary Australian culture."
>>
https://theconversation.com/property-poetry-real-estate-ads-and-literature-have-more-in-common-than-you-might-think-214835

"It will be a dull march back into history, a return to the denialism and silence that has defined white Australia. Honesty will be torn from the trees. Any notion of shared understanding will be shredded."

"For all the misinformation and deceit, all the lies of the campaign, we will be left with one ugly truth: given the chance, Australia would still sooner destroy Indigenous people than listen to them as equals. The central impulses of colonisation are all still there, brutal and unrepentant."
>
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/editorial/2023/10/14/mothball-politics#mtr
#Australia #culture #denial #dispossession #FirstNationsPeoples #indigenousPeoples #recognition #constitution #democracy #VoicetoParliament #SettlerSociety #TerraNullius #21stCentury