I think this was my first hard news story to be published. I was running the radio station at Halls Creek and studying journalism online at Griffith University. Style is a little clunky but this is the kind of story I still love to do today. Thank you Gerard Willett for giving me a break!
A formerly “threatened” species has been reclassified “vulnerable” as the birds start to repopulate the East Kimberley.
Photo by Martin Pot
Two scientists, Sarah Pryke and Sarah Legge, have worked hard to identify the Gouldian Finches’ ideal habitats and feed, and a third, Alex Watson, is working with Kija Rangers to re-establish them.
The method depends on mimicking the effects of the traditional Aboriginal mosaic burning practices using modern technology.
As the website Science Network WA is now defunct I have reproduced the story here: Continue reading
The Kimberley has a new seed bank that will function as a seed shop for bush tucker (Aboriginal food) plants, and for those needing to propogate plants for mine site rehabilitation and gardening.
Tamara Williams (Nyul Nyul Rangers), Cat Williams (Apace WA), Devena Cox (Nyul Nyul Rangers), Debbie Sibasado (Bardi Jawi Oorany Rangers), Kylie Weatherall (Environs Kimberley) and Cissy Tigan (Bardi Jawi Oorany Rangers).
It is also intended to be a supplier to high-end restaurants serving Aboriginal food-influenced dishes.
It also has a serious conservation purpose in preserving rare species for ecological renewall.
This may become important when, for example, rare Kimberley vine thickets are destroyed by bushfires.
Science Network [read this story]
Red Knot by Adrian Boyle
Shorebird ecologists say they have proven conclusively that Chinese and Korean developments on the Yellow Sea coast are decimating migrating shorebirds.
Careful banding and observation by scientists and the bird watching fraternity shows almost all of the birds that leave Broome’s Roebuck Bay reach the Yellow Sea, their second major feeding ground.
A Yellow Sea dredge dumping site. Photo by Adrian Boyle.
However it seems they don’t all find enough food there to complete their journey back to North West Australia via Siberia.
Science Network WA [read this story]
Click on this NASA image to expand it.
A simple editor’s request to find scientists to interpret a picture of the coastline near Broome turned into quite a paper chase.
The academic year was only just starting, so it took a week to find two experts to interpret a photograph taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station..
They then fundamentally disagreed about what caused the unusual parallel tidal creeks.
Science Network WA [read this story]
Rangers Herbert and Wesley Alberts with Georgia Ward-Fear. Photo courtesy Georgia Ward-Fear
Almost every conceivable measure to stop cane toads advancing into the Kimberley has been tried and failed.
Click on this image to read the story.
Collecting cane toads and killing them has failed.
Constructing barriers to keep them out of waterholes has failed.
Experiments with lungworm showed the worms were even more harmful to native frogs.
Meanwhile, other researchers have been training larger predators to avoid eating the toxic amphibians.
And strange as it may seem, a future program could involve releasing more toads into the environment, ahead of the invading wave.
Science Network WA [read this story]
This story has been republished in The West Australian, Friday, January 15, 2016.
The pindan scrub, which is a type of arid heathland, is not a place toxic cane toads care to tarry.
Click on this image to read the story as printed in Kimberley Echo, Kununurra WA, 26 Nov 2015.
As a result, the large reptiles that tend to eat them have had a better survival rate in this drier environment.
This is an interesting, opportunistic study by government scientists working out of Kununurra in the East Kimberley.
It has now been republished in The Kimberley Echo.
Science Network [read this story]
26 Nov 2015
Kimberley Echo, Kununurra WA
While Broome is home to several unique and vulnerable ecosystems, two ecologists say builders and planners could take fairly simple steps to preserve them.
The Minyjuru tree within the restricted Broome PEC, provides a much coveted sweet fruit and traditional Yawuru Mayi (pictured).
They have exhaustively mapped the four ecosystems so that making small zoning changes and planning new works and subdivisions around them would be a fairly simple matter most of the time.
Science Network WA [read this story]
A SUB-SPECIES of a small shorebird spends much of the northern winter feeding at Roebuck Bay and Eighty Mile Beach in the Kimberley.
The red knot sub-species (Calidris canutus piersmai) breeds in the Siberian Arctic tundra, and travels to and from the Kimberley via China’s Yellow Sea—a round trip of at least 20,000km.
PhD student Ying Chi Chan is one of a group of Netherlands-based scientists conducting detailed longitudinal studies of shorebirds’ flight paths and foraging ecology.
“Habitat destruction is happening in a lot of places but the rate is particularly fast in China,” she says.
“The main thing I want to know is how the bird adapts to this change in environments.”
When I wrote this piece I was unaware of the Wilson Inlet (Denmark WA)’s importance to this intrepid little traveller.
Science Network WA [read this story]
Last months story about Wilson Inlet (Denmark, WA) shorebirds has prompted me to post this story from two years ago.
From the Broome Advertiser, March 13, 2014. Click on this image to read the story.
The Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research is the world centre for shorebird ecology.
Dutch biologists Tanya Compton and Marc Lavaleye have been to Broome a couple of times to sample and assess the marine life that migrating shorebirds feed on during their annual stay.
They say the relative population of bivalves, worms and crabs has changed every time they have been there.
Science Network WA [read this story]
The Broome Advertiser republished this story.