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When we think about animals, we tend to think of furry four-legged mammals. But 95% of all animal species are invertebrates – bees, butterflies, beetles, snails, worms, octopuses, starfish, corals, spiders and many many more. These creatures make us happy, pollinate flowers, keep soils healthy, clean water, build reefs, maintain oceans and bring colour and wonder to our homes, cities, farms and wild places.

Sadly, almost 1,000 Australian invertebrates are threatened with extinction and need protecting. These species are on one or more official lists, including the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Species IUCN Red List, Australia’s national list of threatened fauna, and state and territory lists. Many more unnamed and unassessed species are likely in trouble.

When a mammal or bird goes extinct in Australia, it’s big news. But invertebrates have gone extinct much more frequently – and with much less attention. Since colonisation, an estimated 9,000 invertebrates have gone extinct – and one or two more go extinct every week.

Invertebrates face five big challenges: climate change, habitat destruction, natural resource extraction, pollution and invasive species. For the most part, efforts to conserve them are in their infancy in Australia, likely due to the historic undervaluing of smaller animals and little critters. There are shining exceptions such as the incredible conservation success of the Lord Howe Island stick insect, but such examples are vanishingly rare.

The good news? Because invertebrates live everywhere, the opportunity to help is often literally on our doorsteps. Simple actions can help, such as planting native species, leaving logs in the garden and avoiding insecticides.

Meet some of the threatened one thousand

Threatened invertebrates live in every Australian state and territory and in our major cities. Of the almost 1,000 threatened species, 27% are snails and slugs, 25% are insects, 19% are corals, 17% are crayfish and 5% are spiders. Here are some you may come across.

Bogong moth (Agrotis infusa). These moths once filled the night skies in their billions. Now they’re listed as endangered because the cool alpine caves they rely on to escape summer heat are warming with climate change. These migratory moths fly across southern Australia, navigating to their mountain refuges each summer using the stars and earth’s magnetic field. Help map their migration to protect them.

Atlas moth (Attacus wardi). This giant tropical moth with a 22 cm wingspan is now considered vulnerable due to habitat destruction and introduced weeds. If you live near Darwin, planting the native Atlas Croton tree will help feed its very hungry caterpillars.

Mangrove ant-blue butterfly (Acrodipsas illidgei). These endangered butterflies lay eggs on grey mangrove trees home to acrobat ants (Crematogaster species), which carry the eggs into its nests. When the caterpillars hatch, they eat ant larvae while in turn nourishing the ant colony with sugary secretions. Mangrove destruction, pesticide runoff and threats to their ant partners pose real threats. Protecting mangroves in southeast Queensland and reporting sightings of butterflies and ants on iNaturalist will help.

Sydney Hawk dragonfly (Austrocordulia leonardi). This strikingly coloured endangered dragonfly is largely found in Sydney. Changes to local waterways and the deep pools its aquatic larvae need threaten the species. Restoring local waterways will help.

Dural land snails (Pommerhelix duralensis). These endangered snails are found only in north-western Sydney and the lower Blue Mountains. They cruise through leaves and rocks munching on fungi and helping add compost to forest soils. You might catch a glimpse during light rain. Help them by leaving large patches of undisturbed native undergrowth – habitat loss poses the biggest threat.

Hairy bee (Leioproctus douglasiellus). This critically endangered burrowing bee lives only in and around Perth. Its numbers have fallen due to habitat loss and pesticides. Leaving patches of open soil in your garden and planting shallow flowers can help these short-tongued bees get nectar.

Giant Gippsland earthworm (Megascolides australis). This iconic earthworm can grow up to 1.5 metres long. It only lives in a patch of southern Gippsland in Victoria and is endangered in part due to farming practices such as ploughing. These gentle giants famously gurgle as they move through their tunnels keeping soil healthy. Local landholders can help by leaving patches of land along stream banks as worm conservation habitat.

Tasmanian live-bearing sea stars (Parvulastra vivipara). Most sea stars lay eggs. Not this species, which gives birth to live young. They’re endangered because they live in intertidal waters of south-eastern Tasmania affected by shoreline development and invasive species. Look carefully and you might see one as it grazes on algae-covered rocks. Join local events to tackle invasive species and log any sightings on iNaturalist.

A brighter future for bugs

Invertebrates bring us delight and wonder. Here’s how we can help those in trouble.

Plant flowers. Providing food for pollinators and other wonderful flower-visiting insects can help year-round.

Keep part of your garden a bit wild. If you leave logs, leaves and open soil in your garden, you make space for shiny beetles, singing crickets, native bees and other ground-dwellers.

The creek is beautiful. Help restore waterways, make a pond, learn about local water bugs and support local wetlands.

Be clever with pest control. Avoid snail baits and cancel regular broad-spectrum sprays, as these can harm many non-target species. Use critter-friendly alternatives to protect the whole food chain.

Let the stars shine. Switch off lights at night if safe or close your curtains to help nocturnal creatures such as moths and orb-weaving spiders.

Log your sightings. Conservation scientists need as much data as possible on invertebrates to understand how they are doing out there. Upload your bug photos to iNaturalist.

Kate Umbers, Associate Professor in Zoology, Western Sydney University; Kenny Wolfe, Research Fellow in Marine Biology, University of Sydney; Megan Head, Associate Professor in Evolutionary Biology, Australian National University; Shawan Chowdhury, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Conservation Biology, Monash University, and Tanya Latty, Associate Professor in Entomology, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The South Australian parliament today passed a new law to conserve, restore and enhance biodiversity.

It brings together native vegetation management, protection for native species and habitat, and conservation on private land. When introducing the bill to the Parliament, Deputy Premier Susan Close said:

Just as South Australia has led the way on climate action, committing to net zero emissions by 2050, we must now take the same ambitious approach to biodiversity. (This) crucial piece of legislation … will modernise and strengthen protections for South Australia’s biodiversity to benefit us and our future generations.

SA is not the first state to revise its nature laws. But this is the first environment law in years to be drafted from scratch in Australia. Rather than waiting for federal reform, SA has leapfrogged the protracted process. This new legislation achieves some things no Australian law has done before.

National environment law reform has stalled

This all comes at a time when the federal law reform is up in the air.

The Albanese government failed to pass new national environment laws during its first term.

Environment protection even went backwards just before the election. The rushed amendments limited powers to reconsider certain environment approvals when an activity is harming the environment.

Last month, the new Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt said environmental law reform was a priority. Still, it may be difficult to get the essential ambitious national reforms over the line.

In the meantime, state and territory governments are forging ahead.

Time for states and territories to lead?

The last state to write a new nature law was New South Wales, in 2016. But a scathing 2023 review of the law recommended a major overhaul.

The NSW government committed to most of the recommendations, announcing big plans for nature law reforms in July last year. These plans include strengthening land-clearing codes, improving species protections and monitoring, and preparing a new “nature positive” strategy.

So far, the NSW government has only managed to pass legislation to fix problems with biodiversity offsets. Offset schemes allow developers to compensate for their destruction of vital habitat with gains elsewhere.

In Victoria, the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 was amended in 2019. These reforms inserted new principles around how the Act should be implemented, and a new approach to crucial habitat. The reforms also emphasised the need to improve species’ survival and adaptation to climate and environmental change.

The Nature Conservation Act and strategy in the ACT are also due for review. Early consultation concluded in July 2024. A revised Act is likely to be released later this year.

Does Australia really need two layers of environment laws?

The short answer is yes, Australia needs both state and federal environment laws. But the interactions between the two could be managed better.

The Australian Constitution doesn’t give the federal government explicit authority to make laws about the environment. That’s left to the states and territories, which means they make most laws about threatened species, waterways, native vegetation and protected areas.

The federal government has an overarching responsibility to protect environments that are important to all of us, in national laws. We call these “matters of national environmental significance”.

Some matters are significant because they involve Australia’s promises to the rest of the world. Australia has international obligations to protect world heritage areas and internationally significant wetlands, for example.

Other matters cross state borders. The orange-bellied parrot, for instance, migrates across three states to find food and nesting sites.

Individual states and territories do not have sufficient resources or the national perspective needed to protect these species and places.

Why do the South Australian reforms matter?

SA’s new Biodiversity Act does some things no Australian law has done before.

For example, it looks beyond species and ecosystems, offering protection to so-called “ecological entities”. Regulations will be needed to define what an ecological entity is. But the concept may protect refuges where species shelter from extreme events. It might also offer a new way to protect important landscape features such as coastal dunes.

Another new concept is “culturally significant biodiversity entities”. The Act defines a culturally significant biodiversity entity as:

• a native species or ecological community
• with cultural value to some or all Aboriginal people
• which is critical to Aboriginal peoples’ relationships with and adaptation to Country.

The Act also sets up a new Aboriginal Biodiversity Committee. That committee will co-develop policies with the minister. One of these policies will explain how culturally significant biodiversity entities will be identified and managed.

Other policies will be developed in collaboration with the Aboriginal Biodiversity Committee. These include policies to guide cultural burning of native plants, or to consider and apply Aboriginal knowledge. At long last, Aboriginal people will have a “seat at the table”.

SA becomes the third state (after NSW and Victoria) to mention climate change in its nature law. This is an important reform. Laws are needed to help nature survive more frequent and severe droughts, floods and fires.

All hands on deck

Australian environments are extraordinary, diverse and ancient. But Australia has long been an extinction hotspot. The continent’s ecosystems remain under serious pressure.

Our environment laws must be clear and avoid complex clashes or gaps between national and state responsibilities. But SA, NSW, Victoria and soon the ACT show law reform can also be more ambitious. Nature laws can truly help the environment to flourish even as the climate changes.

Phillipa C. McCormack, Future Making Fellow, Environment Institute, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This week, Environment Minister Murray Watt met with groups representing business, the environment, renewable energy and First Nations communities in a bid to restart Labor’s stalled environmental reforms. There was one group in the room Watt presumably had to woo hardest: Western Australia’s miners.

Last year, the WA mining lobby mounted an ultimately successful campaign opposing proposed changes to national environment laws, and the plan to set up an environmental protection authority. State premier Roger Cook also lobbied Prime Minister Anthony Albanese directly.

Watt has pledged to revive the reform process and on Thursday claimed a compromise could be reached. The existing laws, he said, are “not working for the environment, and they are not working for business”.

Whether his efforts will be enough to overcome the scepticism of the mining industry remains to be seen. These companies have influence – and they will use it if they see new laws as a threat.

The mining state

The mining industry dominates WA economically, politically and socially. WA’s mining sector is substantially larger than the mining interests in any other Australian state. Underground lie huge reserves of iron ore, gas, gold, lithium and many other resources.

The sector funnelled A$267 billion into the Australian economy in 2023–24 through salaries, royalties and taxes. About $60 billion directly flowed to Western Australians in wages and salaries.

The leaders of WA mining companies see themselves, by and large, as doing economically vital work.

I have interviewed many WA mining executives for my doctorate, which is currently underway. One clear common narrative emerged: they saw mining as a national good. They believed their companies brought wealth and prosperity to communities, built infrastructure, and funnelled money into state and federal treasuries.

The justification is powerful. It underpins the way those in the industry see their work – and how they respond to any threat, perceived or otherwise.

It also dates back over a century. The link between WA resources and prosperity originates from the 1890s WA gold rush, which transformed the fortunes of the state. This self image has been nurtured through successive resource booms, from gold to iron ore to natural gas and more gold.

Many company executives see any duplication of environmental approvals as time-consuming, unproductive and economically damaging. A 2023 WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry report suggested “green tape” (approval delays) was threatening 40% of mining proposals in the pipeline.

Miners and their political backers often frame the industry as environmentally positive, particularly for resources vital to the green energy transition such as lithium, rare earth elements and – more controversially – gas.

Federal Resources Minister Madeleine King – who is West Australian – regularly draws this link. As she said in 2023:

let me be clear, the global clean energy transition will need more mining, not less […] the road to net zero runs through the Australian resources sector.

Wielding influence

WA miners are represented by well-organised and well-resourced lobbying bodies such as the Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA, the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies, and the Minerals Council of Australia.

These groups maintain relationships with politicians at both state and federal levels, regardless of which party is in power.

Broadly, their goals are to promote the continued expansion of resource projects (minerals, oil and gas) under conditions most advantageous to industry interests.

Mining companies use these industry lobby groups to support or critique government policy and push for changes. They exert influence through targeted lobbying, close relationships with elected officials and political candidates, and direct engagement with federal processes.

What happens when the sector sees a potential threat from policymakers in Canberra? Often, the mining companies unify against it.

For example, WA miners were prominent in the 2010 campaign against efforts by the Rudd government to introduce a super profits tax on mining.

Why WA miners oppose nature law reform

A tax is one thing. But what did the WA miners see as the key problems in the environmental reforms?

One issue was a perceived contradiction between the federal government’s intention to streamline developmental approvals and introduce a federal Environmental Protection Agency, while failing to deal with existing duplication between state and federal processes.

The Association of Mining and Exploration Companies lobby group gave another reason in a submission to government: the proposed independence of the EPA would remove the discretionary power of the minister.

Rather than an independent federal EPA, they pushed for a model similar to the WA version – the advice of which the minister can overrule. The group also warned the laws would impede the global competitiveness of the mining industry and hinder investment.

The state government echoed these statements, calling the reforms an overreach that would stifle economic development.

This alignment of government and industry messaging shows how closely their interests are intertwined.

Premier Roger Cook leaves no ambiguity about this. Ahead of this year’s WA and federal elections, Cook warned the “latte sippers” over east:

do not for a moment think that we will stand by idly and allow you to damage our economy because, ultimately, it will damage your standard of living.

Is a deal possible?

Across Australia, there is broad support for environmental law reform, because the current national laws are seen as not fit for purpose.

Murray Watt came to the role of environment minister with a reputation as a fixer. The question now is, what will he trade to get the miners on side?

The industry will be cautious and will insist on much more detail about any changes. It’s possible a deal could be struck. But we can expect to continue to see very strong pushback if Watt tries to expand federal powers into what is seen as state responsibilities.

The industry will also expect greater federal resourcing for delivery of timely approvals. Nationally important industries don’t like to wait.

Diane Dowdell, PhD Candidate in Sustainable Mining, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia is among the world’s top three exporters of LNG and second-largest exporter of coal. When burned overseas, these exports result in 1.1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year – almost three times Australia’s domestic emissions.

Emissions embedded in Australia’s exports do not count towards our national emissions targets. But they contribute to climate change – and they’re the reason for Australia’s international reputation as a fossil-fuel economy.

On the bright side, Australia boasts huge potential for low-cost renewable energy and a knack for resource industries.

We can, and should, become a “renewable energy superpower”. This term refers to the potential for Australia to use its bountiful renewable energy resources to make commodities such as iron, ammonia and other products and fuels in “green” or low-emissions ways.

So how does Australia give salience to this idea on the global stage, while our fossil fuel exports continue? The solution could be a new net-zero target for Australia, in which emissions from green exports are tallied up against those from fossil fuel exports.

Reinvigorating Australia’s climate policy

If the clean energy transition eventuates, green exports from Australia will rise over time. This will help reduce the use of coal, gas and oil elsewhere in the world.

Meanwhile, coal exports – and later, gas exports – will fall. This will happen irrespective of Australia’s policies, as the world economy decarbonises and demand for fossil fuels slows.

At some point, we can expect emissions avoided by our green commodity exports to surpass those from remaining coal and gas exports. Australia would then reach what could be termed “net-zero export emissions”.

Adopting this net-zero target as a national policy would give a concrete yardstick to Australia’s green-export ambitions. It could also invigorate Australia’s climate policy and boost investor confidence.

A different approach would be to set targets only for green exports, and this could be how we get started. Ultimately, a net-zero target wrapping up both green and fossil-fuel exports would speak most directly to the goal of tackling climate change, and is likely to have more impact on the international stage.

Getting to net-zero exports

The below chart shows an illustrative decline in emissions embedded in Australia’s coal and LNG (liquified natural gas) exports, out to 2050.*

It’s hard to pin down when Australia might reach net-zero exports. It depends on several factors. How quickly will the cost of clean energy and green-commodity technologies fall? How competitively can Australia produce green goods compared to other nations? What policies will be adopted in Australia and overseas – and will they work?

The magnitudes are sobering. Take iron, for example. Australia currently exports 900 million tonnes of iron ore a year. This is processed overseas to about 560 million tonnes of iron.

To fully compensate for emissions currently embedded in Australia’s coal and gas exports, Australia would need to process about the same amount of green iron – around 550 million tonnes – on home soil every year.

To reach this figure, we assume 0.1 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent is created per tonne of green iron, compared to about 2.1 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent per tonne of iron resulting from conventional blast furnace production.

Achieving this would require keeping iron ore production at current levels and processing it all in Australia, which is unlikely to be realistic.

Thankfully, the task of reaching net-zero export emissions will be smaller in future, as global coal and gas demand falls. But exactly how this will translate to Australian exports is highly uncertain.

Let’s suppose Australia’s exports evolved on the same trajectory as they might under current climate policies and pledges for the global coal and gas trade.

In this case, embedded emissions from Australia’s coal and gas exports would be about 360 million tonnes in 2050. This includes about 120 million tonnes from LNG exports – much of it locked in by the extension to Woodside’s North West Shelf project off Western Australia.

Hypothetically, the 360 million tonnes of emissions could be negated by a mix of green exports. They include 102 million tonnes of green iron (saving 204 million tonnes of CO₂), and 11 million tonnes of green ammonia (saving about 23 million tonnes of CO₂), and the remainder covered by a combination of green aluminium, silicon, methanol and transport fuels.

Judgement calls would be needed about which commodities to include in the target. The composition of green exports suggested above is akin to assumptions about Australia’s potential global market share outlined by The Superpower Institute.

Importantly, it’s hard to predict with certainty the greenhouse gas emissions displaced elsewhere in the world by Australia’s green exports. So, the estimates should be understood as broad illustrations, and not as exact as the accounting used to calculate countries’ domestic emissions.

The precise year chosen for reaching a net-zero target for export emissions may well be less important than the commitment that, at some point, Australia’s green energy exports will exceed fossil fuel exports. This would establish the notion that Australia has the capacity and willingness to help the world decarbonise.

A positive agenda for change

The export target could be part of Australia’s updated emissions pledge due to be submitted to the United Nations by September this year. The pledge, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), is required by signatories to the Paris Agreement.

Each nation is expected to detail its national emissions target for 2035. But nations can make additional pledges towards the world’s climate change effort. You could call it an “NDC+”.

So Australia could outline an indicative goal for net-zero exports – perhaps alongside other pledges such as leveraging climate change finance for developing countries, or helping our Pacific neighbours adapt to climate change impacts.

As a large fossil fuels exporter, Australia would earn kudos for showing it has a positive agenda for change.

And if Australia wins the bid to host the COP31 climate conference next year, a plan to reduce export emissions could be a major rallying point.

* Underlying data for the chart showing an expected decline in future emissions embedded in Australia’s coal and LNG exports:

Exports in 2022–23: coal, 9.6 exajoules (EJ); LNG, 4.5 EJ, from Australian Energy Update. This was multiplied by an emissions factor 90.2 for coal (MtCO₂-e/EJ) and 51.5 for LNG (MtCO₂-e/EJ), as drawn from the Australian National Greenhouse Accounts Factors

Exports for 2035 and 2050: this assumes a trend aligned with the IEA’s Announced Pledges Scenario, as outlined in the World Energy Outlook 2024. Note the percentage changes from 2023 to 2035 and 2050 for coal (-45% and -73% respectively) and for LNG (+9% and -47% respectively.) These figures do not distinguish between steam coal for power and metallurgical coal.

Correction: an earlier version of this article said Australia was the world’s third-largest gas exporter. This wording has been amended to refer specifically to LNG, and to reflect that the order of the top gas-exporting nations changes from year to year.

Frank Jotzo, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy and Director, Centre for Climate and Energy Policy, Australian National University and Annette Zou, Senior Researcher, Centre for Climate and Energy Policy, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ever since modern environmentalism took off in the 1960s, people have tried to undo the damage humans have caused to nature. Efforts have ranged from reducing threats, to restoring habitats, to reintroducing vanished species – and the results have been mixed.

However, these efforts have helped shape modern conservation science. This branch of knowledge uses ecological, genetic and behavioural insights to guide smarter, more ethical conservation actions.

Governments often use this science to decide whether restoration projects should be approved. However, approval processes may be slow, under-resourced and complex, leaving passionate people feeling shut out.

In response, some have turned to “guerilla rewilding” without approval, and often without due consideration of the potential for unintended impacts. As a recent ABC investigation showed, these passionate souls may release species into the wild or build self-managed sanctuaries, often dismissing scientists as “purists”.

What is rewilding?

Rewilding aims to restore wildlife and natural processes to ecosystems where they’ve been lost, often due to land clearing, agriculture or other human activities.

It may involve reintroducing a species that has disappeared from a landscape, or using a similar surrogate species to revive lost ecological functions. The goal is to rebuild functioning, self-sustaining systems. It’s not just about individual species, but the roles they play in sustaining nature.

In Australia, rewilding typically takes place in fenced reserves or on islands where invasive predators such as foxes and cats have been removed. These barriers offer protection, but require intensive planning, long-term management and ongoing funding.

The term “rewilding” itself has been criticised for harking back to a pre-colonial “wilderness”, overlooking First Nations’ connections to Country. But the goal of these projects is to restore ecological function and self-sustaining wildlife populations in shared, lived-in landscapes – including urban environments.

When done well, rewilding can support species recovery, repair ecosystems, and help reconnect people with nature. But success depends on evidence-based design, clear goals, ongoing monitoring, and (often) additional management over time (such as adding or removing animals).

Guerilla rewilding is risky

Guerrilla rewilding can go wildly wrong. Ecology, evolution, behaviour and welfare are deeply complex — and every species is a unique part of a much larger puzzle.

Scientists and conservationists are still learning how different animals survive and thrive in changing environments. Restoring these delicate systems without unintended consequences is also a challenge.

Without rigorous planning, there is a risk of inbreeding or a mismatch between animals and their environment. Animals raised inside fences may become overabundant, or too naive to survive in the wild. Disease, overgrazing and long-term habitat degradation are other risks.

Learning from science, not bypassing it

Successful rewilding draws on decades of ecological insight — genetics, behaviour, predator-prey dynamics, health, and ecosystem function.

Guerilla rewilders may see these as unnecessary academic add-ons. But when reintroductions fail, it’s often because one of these elements was overlooked. Frequently reported problems include animal behaviour, monitoring difficulties, quality of release habitat, and lack of baseline knowledge.

However, accessing the science – and navigating the approvals that rely on it – isn’t always easy. Conservation processes are often slow, under-resourced and opaque. It’s no surprise some view them as “green tape”.

Indeed, in Australia, it’s harder to get a restoration project approved than it is to get approval for land clearing.

Yet bypassing this system risks repeating old mistakes. So if we want rewilding to work, we need to make it easier to engage with evidence, expertise and ethical safeguards.

Engagement may be as simple as working with the right partners from the outset. This may include Traditional Owners, universities, non-government organisations, and local conservation and environmental community groups.

Collaboration, not conflict

A lot of people and groups have the same goal: to restore thriving wild animal populations as part of more complete, diverse and resilient ecosystems. That outcome is best achieved through collaboration, sharing of expertise, and trust.

Traditional Owners, scientists, carers, zoos, non-government organisations and government agencies all bring crucial knowledge. By turning shared passion into practical, evidence-based action, we can ensure rewilding efforts contribute to real, lasting outcomes for Australian and global biodiversity.

So what does this look like in practice? First of all, it’s about getting connected.

People with land or passion to contribute can contact organisations such as the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, WWF-Australia, Arid Recovery, several universities, or state parks and wildlife services. These groups have likely already done the groundwork, from habitat assessment to long-term planning. Joining existing efforts may get more done than starting solo.

Policymakers can contribute not only funding, but also transparency. More open and understandable approval processes may lower the barriers for community-led rewilding efforts.

As for scientists like us, we need to step beyond peer-reviewed papers. That means clearer communication, real-world partnerships, and embracing outreach – particularly in urban or accessible rewilding projects.

The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of Peter Banks, Donna Houston, Phil McManus, Catherine Grueber and Mareshell Wauchope to this article.

Patrick Finnerty, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in conservation and wildlife management, University of Sydney; Alex Carthey, Senior Lecturer Environmental Science, Macquarie University; Benjamin Pitcher, Research Fellow in Behavioural Biology, Macquarie University; John Martin, Adjunct associate and ecological research scientist, University of Sydney, and Thomas Newsome, Associate Professor in Global Ecology, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Seabed mining could become one of the defining environmental battles of 2025. Around the world, governments are weighing up whether to allow mining of the ocean floor for metal ores and minerals. New Zealand is among them.

The stakes are high. Deep-sea mining is highly controversial, with evidence showing mining activity can cause lasting damage to fragile marine ecosystems. One area off the east coast of the United States, mined as an experiment 50 years ago, still bears scars and shows little sign of recovery.

With the world facing competing pressures – climate action and conservation versus demand for resources – New Zealand must now decide whether to fast-track mining, regulate it tightly, or pause it entirely.

Who controls international seabed mining?

A major flashpoint is governance in international waters. Under international law, seabed mining beyond national jurisdiction is managed by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), created by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

But the US has never ratified UNCLOS. In April this year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to bypass the ISA and allow companies to begin mining in international waters.

The ISA has pushed back, warning unilateral action breaches international law. However, the declaration from the recently concluded UN Ocean Conference in France does not urge countries to adopt a precautionary approach, nor does it ban deep seabed mining.

The declaration does “reiterate the need to increase scientific knowledge on deep sea ecosystems” and recognises the role of the ISA in setting “robust rules, regulations and procedures for exploitation of resources” in international waters.

So, while the international community supports multilateralism and international law, deep-sea mining in the near future remains a real possibility.

Fast-track approvals

In the Pacific, some countries have already made up their minds about which way they will go. Nauru recently updated its agreement with Canadian-based The Metals Company to begin mining in the nearby Clarion Clipperton Zone. The deal favours the US’s go-it-alone approach over the ISA model.

By contrast, in 2022, New Zealand’s Labour government backed the ISA’s moratorium and committed to a holistic ocean management strategy. Whether that position still holds is unclear, given the current government’s policies.

The list of applications under the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 – described by Regional Development Minister Shane Jones as “arguably the most permissive regime” in Australasia – includes two controversial seabed mining proposals in Bream Bay and off the Taranaki coast:

• Trans-Tasman Resources’ proposal to extract up to 50 million tonnes of Taranaki seabed material annually to recover heavy mineral sands that contain iron ore as well as rare metal elements titanium and vanadium.

• McCallum Brothers Ltd’s Bream Bay proposal to dredge up to 150,000 cubic metres of sand yearly for three years, and up to 250,000 cubic metres after that.

Legal landscape changing

Māori and environmental groups have opposed the fast-track policy, and the Treaty of Waitangi has so far been a powerful safeguard in seabed mining cases.

Provisions referencing Treaty principles appear in key laws, including the Crown Minerals Act and the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act.

In 2021, the Supreme Court cited these obligations when it rejected a 2016 marine discharge application by Trans-Tasman Resources to mine the seabed in the Taranaki Bight. The court ruled Treaty clauses must be interpreted in a “broad and generous” way, recognising tikanga Māori and customary marine rights.

But that legal landscape could soon change. The Regulatory Standards Bill, now before parliament, would give priority to property rights over environmental or Indigenous protections in the formulation of new laws and regulations.

The bill also allows for the review of existing legislation. In theory, if the Regulatory Standards Bill becomes law, it could result in the removal of Treaty principles clauses from legislation.

This in turn could deny courts the tools they’ve previously used to uphold environmental and Treaty-based protections to block seabed mining applications. That would make it easier to approve fast-tracked projects such as the Bream Bay and Taranaki projects.

Setting a precedent

Meanwhile, Hawai’i has gone in a different direction. In 2024, the US state passed a law banning seabed mining in state waters – joining California (2022), Washington (2021) and Oregon (1991).

Under the Hawai’i Seabed Mining Prevention Act, mining is banned except in rare cases such as beach restoration. The law cites the public’s right to a clean and healthy environment.

As global conflict brews over seabed governance, New Zealand’s eventual position could set a precedent.

Choosing to prohibit seabed mining in New Zealand waters, as Hawai'i has done, would send a strong message that environmental stewardship and Indigenous rights matter more than short-term resource extraction interests.

If New Zealand does decide to go ahead with seabed mining, however, it could trigger a cascade of mining efforts across New Zealand and the Pacific. A crucial decision is fast approaching.

Myra Williamson, Senior Lecturer in Law, Auckland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It’s a warm January summer afternoon, and as I traverse the flower-strewn western slopes of Australia’s highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko, I am on the lookout for a tell-tale river of boulders that winds its way down into the alpine valleys below.

Here, hidden in cave-like hollows and crevices formed deep within the river of boulders, is one of the most spectacular natural phenomena in the insect world – the summer mass gathering of an iconic Australian insect, the bogong moth (Agrotis infusa).

Tightly huddled together in their dim cool cavernous world, with each moth’s head pushed slightly under the wings of the moth just ahead, millions of bogong moths sleep out the summer, slumbering in a state of dormancy known as “aestivation”.

Their little bodies coat the stone surfaces in an endless soft brown carpet, with 17,000 of them tiling each square metre of cave wall. It’s a sight that never fails to take my breath away.

Marathon migrations

To get here, these moths have flown from all over southeast Australia through the spring, arriving from as far away as south-eastern Queensland and far-western Victoria. Converted to human body length, these journeys of roughly 1,000 kilometres would be equivalent to a person circumnavigating Earth twice.

The moths’ marathon voyages to the Alps are likely undertaken to escape the lethal heat of the coming summer in their breeding areas. When the cool of autumn arrives, the moths leave the mountains to produce their own offspring and die.

But how on Earth do they know how to find these caves? How do they know the direction to travel and how do they know when they’ve arrived?

These questions have fascinated me and the other members of my research group for many years. It turns out bogong moths possess a most extraordinary ability to navigate, harnessing Earth’s magnetic field and the stars as compasses to follow their inherited migratory direction.

Moths, magnets and stars

We made these remarkable discoveries in a specialised lab we built a few years ago near Adaminaby in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales.

First we light-trapped bogong moths that were either migrating towards the Alps in spring or away again in autumn. We next placed them in a special flight arena inside the lab, and finely controlled Earth’s magnetic field (with magnetic coils around the arena) and the starry night sky (by projecting a highly realistic starry night sky on the roof of the arena).

Because we already knew bogong moths have a magnetic sense, we used the coils to completely remove, or null, the magnetic field in the arena. This ensured any orientation using the stars was not confounded by the ability to detect Earth’s magnetic field.

What we found next astounded us. Using only the local Australian starry night sky projected above them, bogong moths flying in our arena were able to discern and follow their inherited migratory direction – both in spring and in autumn.

If we turned this projected sky by 180°, the moths turned and flew in exactly the opposite direction. If we then took all of the stars in this projected natural sky and randomly distributed them across the roof of the arena, the moths became completely confused and lost their ability to migrate in their inherited migratory direction.

Navigators with tiny brains

In the absence of all other possible cues, bogong moths clearly used the stars as a true compass to discern a geographic direction relative to north.

This is the first invertebrate we so far know of that can do this. Only human beings and some species of night-migratory birds are known to have this ability.

But in moths this ability is even more remarkable considering their brain is approximately one-tenth the volume of a grain of rice and their eyes only a couple of millimetres wide.

A magnetic backup system

We made a final discovery when we moved our flight arena up onto the hill behind the lab under the magnificent dome of the natural starry sky. As expected, the moths were beautifully oriented in their inherited migratory direction.

But on one of these nights the sky was heavily overcast with cloud. To our great surprise, the moths remained oriented in their migratory direction, even though the stars were obscured.

The only remaining cue that could have been used was Earth’s magnetic field, which showed very clearly that moths rely on two compasses – a magnetic compass and a stellar compass.

But of course, two compasses will always be better than one – if one becomes corrupted or drops out, the other can take over. Nature’s perfect solution for robust navigation!

Bogong moths under threat

Despite its fantastic abilities, this tiny navigator is under threat. A result of anthropogenic climate change, the recent drought in Australia saw bogong moth numbers fall by a jaw-dropping 99.5%.

Endangered alpine marsupials that depend on the moth’s arrival in spring for food – such as the mountain pygmy possum – suffered heavily as a result.

Droughts in southeast Australia are only predicted to worsen in both frequency and intensity. The future of the bogong moth, as well as the fragile alpine ecosystem that depends on it, does not look very bright.

Eric Warrant, Professor of Zoology at the University of Lund, Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, and Adjunct Professor, University of South Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It’s been 50 years since Steven Spielberg’s movie Jaws first cast a terrifying shadow across our screens.

At a low point during production, Spielberg worried he’d only ever be known for “a big fish story”. The film, however, did not tank.

Jaws broke box office records and became the highest-grossing movie at the time, only surpassed by the first Star Wars released two years later in 1977.

A combination of mass advertising, familiar “hero” tropes and old-school showmanship launched Jaws as the first modern blockbuster.

Hollywood, and our relationship to oceans and the sharks within them, would never be the same.

An unrealistic monster

In Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel that Jaws is based on, the shark is 6 metres long. For added screen excitement, in the movie it grew to a whopping 7.6 metres.

However, that’s unrealistically large.

The average size of a mature great white (Carcharodon carcharias, also known as the white shark) is between 4.6 and 4.9 metres for female sharks and up to 4 metres for male sharks.

The largest recorded living specimens peak at about 6 metres, with one monster specimen caught in Cuba in 1945 reaching 6.4 metres.

Earth’s oceans have seen bigger predatory sharks in the past. The biggest one of all time was the megalodon (Otodus megalodon) which lived from 23 to 3 million years ago, and may have been up to 24 metres in length. However, it looked nothing like the modern white shark.

They’re not even directly related – another thing scientists learned quite recently.

Who was the megalodon, then?

White sharks first evolved between 6 and 4 million years ago in the shadows of the megalodon. A recent study showed the megalodon’s large serrated teeth show signs of it being a supreme opportunistic super-predator.

That means it ate just about anything, but especially liked whales and marine mammals.

But white sharks are not directly related to the megalodon, whose lineage began with a shark called Cretalamna during the age of dinosaurs about 100 million years ago.

By contrast, the white shark lineage began with an ancient mako shark, Carcharodon hastalis. It was 7 to 8 metres long and had large, similarly shaped teeth to the modern white shark but lacking serrated edges.

A fossil intermediate species, Carcharodon hubbelli shows the transition over time from weakly serrated to strongly serrated teeth.

How did Jaws affect white shark populations?

Last year, the International Shark Attack File reported 47 unprovoked shark bites to humans worldwide, resulting in seven fatalities. This was well below the previous ten-year average of 70 bites per year; your chances of getting bitten by a shark are extremely rare.

Following the movies that made up the Jaws franchise, there was an increase in hunting and killing sharks – with a particular focus on great white sharks that were already going into a decline due to overfishing, trophy hunting and lethal control programs.

Between 80% and 90% of white sharks have disappeared globally since the middle of the 20th century. Recent estimates calculate there are probably less than 500 individual white sharks in Australian waters right now.

When Jaws first aired, scientists didn’t know how long sharks took to reproduce, or how many offspring a white shark could have each year. We now know it takes about 26 years for a male and 33 years for a female to sexually mature before they can start having pups.

Data about white shark births is sparse, but recently a 5.6-metre-long female caught on a drum line off the coast of Queensland had just four large pups inside her. This is a very small number. Some large sharks, such as the whale shark, can give birth to up to 300 young.

Now that we know just how slow they are to breed, it’s clear it will take many decades to reestablish the “pre-Jaws” population of white sharks – important apex predators in the marine ecosystem.

Will white sharks survive?

White sharks are currently listed as vulnerable.

This classification means if we don’t change the current living conditions for white sharks, including impacts caused by human activities such as commercial fishing, and the impacts of climate change and ocean pollution, they will continue to decline and eventually could go extinct.

Currently, white sharks are protected in several countries and form the basis for an important tourist industry in Australia, South Africa, western United States and most recently Nova Scotia, Canada.

These sharks are iconic apex predators that fascinate people. One of us (John) went cage diving with them recently off the Neptune Islands of South Australia and can attest to how breathtaking it is to watch them in their natural environment.

In terms of economic impact, they are worth far more alive than dead.

There’s still much we don’t know about white sharks

The complete white shark genome was first published only in 2019. It has 4.63 billion base pairs, making it much larger than the human genome (3.2 billion base pairs).

The genome revealed some surprising things, like how white sharks show strong molecular adaptations for wound-healing processes, and a suite of “genome stability” genes – those used in DNA repair or DNA damage response.

The transcriptome (or sum total of the messenger RNA) of the white shark showed greater similarity to the human transcriptome than to that of other fishes. This hints that “unexpressed genes” in the shark could one day play a role in uncovering genetic pathways for potential cures in human diseases.

Jaws and its sequels certainly brought white sharks to the attention (and nightmares) of humans, with devastating impacts on how we treated them as a species.

Our relationship with white sharks reflects our relationship with nature more broadly – a feared antagonist within the current capitalist paradigm; an enemy to be tamed, contained or consumed.

As we learn more of the peril and potential of these remarkable creatures, we can learn how to live with them, to see beyond our fears and value their role within our delicate ocean ecosystems.

John Long, Strategic Professor in Palaeontology, Flinders University and Heather L. Robinson, Research Associate in Cultural Studies. "Beyond the Books: Culture, value, and why libraries matter" will be published late 2024 through Wakefield Press., Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From hand-sized lantern sharks that glow in the deep sea to bus-sized whale sharks gliding through tropical waters, sharks come in all shapes and sizes.

Despite these differences, they all face the same fundamental challenge: how to get oxygen, heat and nutrients to every part of their bodies efficiently.

Our new study, published today in Royal Society Open Science, shows that sharks follow a centuries-old mathematical rule – the two-thirds scaling law – that predicts how body shape changes with size. This tells us something profound about how evolution works – and why size really does matter.

What is the two-thirds scaling law?

The basic idea is mathematical: surface area increases with the square of body length, while volume increases with the cube. That means surface area increases more slowly than volume, and the ratio between the two – crucial for many biological functions – decreases with size.

This matters because many essential life processes happen at the surface: gas exchange in the lungs or gills, such as to take in oxygen or release carbon dioxide, but also heat loss through skin and nutrient uptake in the gut.

These processes depend on surface area, while the demands they must meet – such as the crucial task of keeping the body supplied with oxygen – depend on volume. So, the surface area-to-volume ratio shapes how animals function.

Despite its central role in biology, this rule has only ever been rigorously tested in cells, tissues and small organisms such as insects.

Until now.

Why sharks?

Sharks might seem like an unlikely group for testing an old mathematical theory, but they’re actually ideal.

For starters, they span a huge range of sizes, from the tiny dwarf lantern shark (about 20 centimetres long) to the whale shark (which can exceed 20 metres). They also have diverse shapes and lifestyles – hammerheads, reef-dwellers, deep-sea hunters – each posing different challenges for physiology and movement.

Plus, sharks are charismatic, ecologically important and increasingly under threat. Understanding their biology is both scientifically valuable and important for conservation.

How did we test the rule?

We used high-resolution 3D models to digitally measure surface area and volume in 54 species of sharks. These models were created using open-source CT scans and photogrammetry, which involves using photographs to approximate a 3D structure. Until recently, these techniques were the domain of video game designers and special effects artists, not biologists.

We refined the models in Blender, a powerful 3D software tool, and extracted surface and volume data for each species.

Then we applied phylogenetic regression – a statistical method that accounts for shared evolutionary history – to see how closely shark shapes follow the predictions of the two-thirds rule.

What did we find?

The results were striking: sharks follow the two-thirds scaling rule almost perfectly, with surface area scaling to body volume raised to the power of 0.64 – just a 3% difference from the theoretical 0.67.

This suggests something deeper is going on. Despite their wide range of forms and habitats, sharks seem to converge on the same basic body plan when it comes to surface area and volume. Why?

One explanation is that what are known as “developmental constraints” – limits imposed by how animals grow and form in early life – make it difficult, or too costly, for sharks to deviate from this fundamental pattern.

Changing surface area-to-volume ratios might require rewiring how tissues are allocated during embryonic development, something that evolution appears to avoid unless absolutely necessary.

But why does it matter?

This isn’t just academic. Many equations in biology, physiology and climate science rely on assumptions about surface area-to-volume ratios.

These equations are used to model how animals regulate temperature, use oxygen, and respond to environmental stress. Until now, we haven’t had accurate data from large animals to test those assumptions. Our findings give researchers more confidence in using these models – not just for sharks, but potentially for other groups too.

As we face accelerating climate change and biodiversity loss, understanding how animals of all sizes interact with their environments has never been more urgent.

This study, powered by modern imaging tech and some old-school curiosity, brings us one step closer to that goal.

Jodie L. Rummer, Professor of Marine Biology, James Cook University and Joel Gayford, PhD Candidate, Department of Marine Biology, James Cook University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia’s rooftop solar industry has renewed calls for a mandatory recycling scheme to deal with the growing problem of solar panel waste. Only about 10% of panels are currently recycled. The rest are stockpiled, sent overseas or dumped in landfill.

One in three Australian homes now have rooftop solar panels, and new systems are being installed at the rate of 300,000 a year. Meanwhile, older systems are being scrapped – often well before the end of their useful life.

This has made solar panels Australia’s fastest-growing electronic waste stream. Yet federal government plans for a national scheme to manage this waste appear to have stalled.

Clearly, solar panel waste is a major problem for Australia. Recycling is one part of the solution. But Australia also needs new rules so solar panels can be repaired and reused.

What are product stewardship schemes?

The Smart Energy Council, which represents the solar industry, is calling for a national product stewardship scheme.

Product stewardship schemes share responsibility for reducing waste at the end of a product’s useful life. They can involve people all along the supply chain, from manufacturers to importers to retailers.

Such schemes may be voluntary, and industry-led, or mandatory and legislated. Alternatively, they can be shared – approved by government but run by an organisation on behalf of industry.

Existing schemes manage waste such as oil, tyres, paper and packaging, mobile phones, televisions and computers.

Depending on the product, a levy is paid by the manufacturer, product importer, network service provider (in case of mobile muster), retailer or consumer – or a combination of these. The money raised is then invested in recycling, research or raising awareness and administering the scheme.

Establishing a solar panel product stewardship scheme

Solar panel systems were added to a national priority list for a product stewardship scheme in 2017.

In December 2020, the federal government called for partners to help develop the scheme, but later stated that no partnership would be struck.

The government released a discussion paper for comment in 2023. The scheme has not yet been established.

This is particularly problematic given Australia’s commitment to renewable energy, which will entail a rapid expansion of solar technology.

Recycling should be the last resort

Product stewardship schemes assume recycling is the main solution to the waste problem.

Australia’s National Waste Policy also focuses on on recycling, rather than reuse or repair. This is despite recycling being the last resort on the “waste hierarchy”, just slightly above disposal.

Solar photovoltaic panels are built to last 30 years or more, and are “not made to be unmade”. They are not easy to dismantle for recycling because they are built to withstand harsh conditions.

It’s difficult for Australia to influence the design of solar panels, given 99% are imported. Just one manufacturer, Tindo Solar in Adelaide, assembles solar panels on Australian soil, using imported silicon cells.

Many solar panels are being removed well before their end of life, generating waste ahead of time. This is rarely because they have stopped producing power.

In our previous research, we found many reasons why people chose to take solar panels down. Consumers are often advised to replace the whole system when just a few panels are faulty. Or they may simply be upgrading to a larger, more efficient system. Sometimes it’s because they want to access a new renewable energy subsidy.

Renewable subsidies and other solar panel policies should be redesigned to keep panels on roofs for longer.

Functioning solar panels removed before the end of their life should be reused. This would require new regulations including quality-control measures certifying second-hand solar panels, and second-hand markets. This is a much neglected field of research and development.

What else should such a scheme include?

Others have discussed what a solar panel product stewardship scheme could include and the possible regulatory environment.

We think the scheme should also involve collecting and transporting panels around Australia, including remote areas.

Unfortunately, existing product stewardship schemes do not differentiate between urban, regional and remote areas. The same is likely to be the case for a solar panel collection and recycling scheme.

This leaves regional and remote areas with fewer recycling facilities and collection points. With a growing number of large solar projects in Northern Australia, reducing waste is imperative.

Remote island communities in the Northern Territory bundle up their recyclables and ship it to Darwin. Removed solar panels are then transported to urban Victoria, New South Wales or South Australia for processing. Who should bear the cost of transporting this waste? Consumers, remote regional councils with small ratepayer bases, or manufacturers and retailers?

A well-designed scheme would help recover valuable resources across Australia for reuse in new products.

However, large volumes of solar panels would be required for recycling schemes to become commercially viable. That’s why the solar recycling industry is concerned about exporters and scrap dealers collecting panels rather then certified solar panel recyclers.

Even if the technology for recycling solar panels is nascent in Australia, it’s worth stockpiling panels in Australia for later.

Considering these issues in the design of a product stewardship scheme would help ensure we can maximise the benefits of renewable energy, while minimising waste.

Deepika Mathur, Senior Research Fellow, Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University and Robin Gregory, Adjunct Research Fellow, Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Boronias, known for their showy flowers and strong scent, are a quintessential part of the Australian bush. They led Traditional Owners to the best water sources and inspired Australian children’s author and illustrator May Gibbs to pen one of her earliest books, Boronia Babies.

But a weird group of boronias has puzzled botanists for decades. They have closed flowers that thwart most insect visitors. Those that do gain entry may encounter alternating sterile and fertile anthers (the male part that produces pollen) and sometimes, an enlarged stigma (the female part that receives pollen).

Since the early 1960s, scientists speculated this group of boronias relied on an “unusual agent for effective pollination”. Moths were occasionally mentioned in the botanical literature as potential pollinators, but the full story remained elusive – until now.

As my colleagues and I detail in our new research, moths are indeed the mystery pollinators of this strange group of flowers. This knowledge is crucial to ensuring their long-term survival.

Sweeping plants, far and wide

My interest in the boronia pollinators began 15 years ago. I was studying a family of moths in my spare time, with a group of friends.

These moths, called Heliozelidae, are tiny. Their wings are just a few millimetres long, smaller than a grain of rice.

They fly during the day and are seldom attracted to lights, so they are poorly represented in museum collections. The best way to find them is to sweep plants with a butterfly net then look inside it.

After sweeping plants all over Australia, we discovered this country is a hotspot for Heliozelidae. Hundreds – if not thousands – of these species are new to science and yet to be described. In comparison, only 90 species of Heliozelidae have been described from the rest of the world.

We consistently found one group of 15 moth species on the boronias with the weird flowers in the biodiversity hotspot of Western Australia’s South West. Each moth species was found only on a specific boronia species.

When we took a closer look, we found each of the 15 Heliozelidae has an intricate structure at the tip of its abdomen that collects pollen. There’s nothing else quite like this in the 150,000 known species of moths and butterflies. At last, the mystery of the boronia pollinators was solved.

The process of pollinating boronias

In spring, female moths lay many eggs inside flowers. While moving about inside the flower, she collects pollen in the little structure on her abdomen. She enters and exits multiple flowers, pollinating as she goes.

When the eggs hatch, the caterpillars eat some of the flowers’ developing seeds. When they are fully grown, they leave the flower and burrow into the soil to pupate in a cocoon. When they emerge in spring as moths, the flowers are blooming again and the life cycle repeats.

For some species, such as brown boronia, the moths may be the only visitor the flowers ever receive. This suggests the moth and the plant have a reciprocal relationship, depending on each other for reproduction and ultimately, survival.

This is unusual in nature. The poster-child for this type of relationship is the figs and fig wasps.

What’s in a name?

When a scientist discovers and officially describes a new species in the academic literature, they have to name it. Scientific names have two parts. The first part is the genus or group of closely related species and the second identifies the individual species.

We built a family tree which included the new pollinating moths using their DNA sequences. We showed the pollinators belong to the genus Prophylactis meaning “to guard before”, which previously contained four non-pollinating species. This gives us the first part of the name.

For the second part, we used the name of the plant each moth pollinates and added the suffix -allax, meaning “alternately” or “in exchange”. This shows their close relationship to the plant.

So, the moth that pollinates Boronia megastigma is called Prophylactis megastigmallax. The moth that pollinates the endangered Boronia clavata is Prophylactis clavatallax – and so on.

Much to learn

The pollinating moths are more closely related to each other than to other species in the Prophylactis genus. This suggests they inherited their pollen-collecting structure from a long-gone common ancestor.

As with all good science, this research leads to new questions. For example, we are now studying which moth-plant pairs fully depend on each other.

Other Australian plant species may also have intimate relationships with moths. Current field work is exploring which of Australia’s 486 plant species in the citrus-family (Rutaceae) are linked to moths and how often moths have evolved to pollinate them.

Bush secrets brought to life

Our research shows just how much of Australia’s biodiversity is yet to be understood and protected.

As climate change and land-clearing drive biodiversity loss at an unprecedented rate, this is a challenge we must tackle with renewed urgency. Otherwise our children and grandchildren may only experience the full glory of Gibb’s characters on a page, and not in the natural world.

Douglas Hilton, Chief Executive, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The high seas are set to gain a greater level of protection when a long-sought after treaty finally enters into force.

For almost 20 years, nations have debated the need for the High Seas Treaty, intended to protect marine life in the high seas and the international seabed. These marine areas together account for nearly two-thirds of the world’s ocean and harbour a rich array of unique species and ecosystems. The treaty is formally known as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement.

Many hoped last week’s United Nations Oceans Conference would result in enough nations ratifying the treaty to bring it into force. As of today, 50 states of the 60 required have done so, while another 19 have promised to do so by the year’s end. A greater level of protection for our high seas is well and truly in sight.

By United Nations standards, this is a cracking pace. The treaty-making process itself can take years, particularly as states need to incorporate the treaty into their domestic laws. This speaks to the urgency of the moment. Researchers and authorities have warned that the world’s oceans are now in deep trouble, threatened by climate change effects, overfishing, plastic pollution and other human-caused issues.

Once the treaty enters into force, nations can begin to propose high seas marine protected areas, which could limit fishing and other activities. The question then will be how to police these marine protected areas.

How did we get here?

In June 2023, the High Seas Treaty was adopted by consensus at the UN Headquarters in New York. It was a long time coming.

For decades, nations argued and negotiated over what this treaty might look like. How could the marine genetic resources of this global commons be shared fairly and equitably? How could protected areas be designated and managed? What was eventually thrashed out was a comprehensive international legal framework able to better protect and safeguard the rich and diverse web of life inhabiting the deep sea.

Getting to this point was a real achievement.

But for this treaty to enter into force, 60 countries have to ratify it. This means their governments must consent to be legally bound by the terms of the treaty.

While Australia has pledged to ratify the treaty, it is still working through the ratification and domestic legal process. On a positive note, Environment Minister Murray Watt has indicated this will happen before the end of the year.

What will the treaty actually do?

At present, the high seas are regulated by a patchwork of global, regional and sectoral frameworks, instruments and bodies. However, none of these have a core mandate of protecting the biodiversity of the oceans.

In 1982, the Law of the Sea Convention was adopted, giving every coastal nation rights over the waters extending to 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) from their coastline.

Once you are past this, you’re in the high seas – the swathes of ocean not controlled by any one nation.

If and when it comes into effect, the High Seas Treaty would give the world a way to set up large marine protected areas in the high seas. It would also apply to the international seabed – the seabed, subsoils and ocean floor lying beyond the continental shelf of a coastal state.

Any new protected areas would likely have restrictions on activities such as fishing and shipping. But this will need to be done in consultation with relevant international bodies such as the International Maritime Organisation and regional fisheries management organisations.

The treaty would go a long way to reaching key conservation goals set under the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Pact, which calls for protection of at least 30% of the world’s marine and coastal habitats by 2030.

The treaty also sets up a mechanism for the sharing of benefits from marine genetic resources, financial and otherwise. Bacteria living in deep-sea ecosystems have attracted much scientific and commercial attention for potential use in medical research or pharmaceutical, cosmetics and food industries. Genetic resources from sea sponges have given rise to antiviral drugs targeting COVID and HIV as well as anti-cancer drugs.

These resources were a major sticking point during the long negotiations.

Many coastal countries lack the ability to participate in high seas research. As a result, they can miss out on these and other benefits. The High Seas Treaty recognises this and sets up a strong framework for capacity-building, technology transfer and technical assistance for developing nations.

When will the oceans get a reprieve?

Once the 60th nation ratifies the High Seas Treaty, it will enter into force 120 days later. This date could be as soon as May 1 next year, if the threshold is reached on January 1.

Once this happens, this will be the date upon which the treaty gains legal force, meaning nations will have to comply with its obligations.

That doesn’t mean huge new marine parks will come into being. There’s still much work to do to hash out the mechanics of how the treaty would actually work, how it would be overseen and how it would work with the International Seabed Authority which oversees deep-sea mining and the Antarctic Treaty System, among others. Negotiators face more work ahead to solve these outstanding issues before the real work can begin.

That’s not to diminish this achievement. The progress on this treaty has been very hard won. Once it’s in effect, it will make a concrete difference.

Sarah Lothian, Senior Lecturer in Maritime Law and Academic Barrister, University of Wollongong

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Imagine a lush forest with tree-ferns, their trunks capped by ribbon-like fronds. Conifers tower overhead, bearing triangular leaves almost sharp enough to pierce skin. Flowering plants are both small and rare.

You’re standing in what is now Victoria, Australia, about 127 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous Period. Slightly to your south, a massive river – more than a kilometre wide – separates you from Tasmania. This river flows along the valley forming between Australia and Antarctica as the two continents begin to split apart.

During the Early Cretaceous, southeastern Australia was some of the closest land to the South Pole. Here, the night lasted for three months in winter, contrasting with three months of daytime in summer. Despite this extreme day-night cycle, various kinds of dinosaurs still thrived here, as did flies, wasps and dragonflies.

And, as our recently published research in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology reveals, termites also chewed through the decaying wood of fallen trees. This is the first record of termites living in a polar region – and their presence provides key insights into what these ancient forests were like.

Home makers, not homewreckers

Termites might have a public reputation as homewreckers.

But these wood-eating bugs are a key part of many environments, freeing up nutrients contained in dead plants. They are one of the best organisms at breaking down large amounts of wood, and significantly speed up the decay of fallen wood in forests.

The breakdown of wood by termites makes it easier for further consumption by other animals and fungi.

Their role in ancient Victoria’s polar forests would have been just as important, as the natural decay of wood is very slow in cold conditions.

Although the cold winters would have slowed termites too, they may have thrived during long periods of darkness, just as modern termites are more active during the night.

The oldest termite nest in Australia

Our new paper, led by Monash University palaeontology research associate Jonathan Edwards, reports the discovery of an ancient termite nest near the coastal town of Inverloch in southeastern Victoria. Preserved in a 80-centimetre-long piece of fossilised log, the nest tunnels carved out by termites were first spotted by local fossil-hunter extraordinaire Melissa Lowery.

Without its discoverers knowing what it was then, the log was brought into the lab and we began investigating the origins of its structures.

Understanding the nest was challenging at first: the tunnels exposed on the surface were filled with what looked like tiny grains of rice, each around 2 millimetres long. We suspected they were most likely the coprolites (fossilised poo) of the nest-makers. Once we took a look under the microscope we noticed something very interesting: this poo was hexagonal.

How did this shape point to termites as the “poopetrators”?

Modern termites have a gut with three sets of muscle bands. Just before excretion, their waste is squeezed to save as much water as possible, giving an almost perfect hexagonal shape to the pellets.

The size, shape, distribution and quantity of coprolites meant we had just discovered the oldest termite nest in Australia – and perhaps the largest termite wood nest from dinosaur times.

A global distribution

We continued to investigate the nest with more specific methods.

For example, we scanned parts of it with the Australian Synchrotron – a research facility that uses X-rays and infrared radiation to see the structure and composition of materials. This showed us what the unweathered coprolites inside the log looked like.

We also made very thin slices of the nest and looked at these slices with high-powered microscopes. And we analysed the chemistry of the log, which further supported our original theory of the nest’s identity.

The oldest fossilised termites have been found in the northern hemisphere about 150 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic Period.

What is exciting is that our trace fossils show they had reached the southernmost landmasses by 127 million years ago. This presence means they had likely spread all over Earth by this point.

The termites weren’t alone

Surprisingly, these termites also had smaller wood-eating companions.

During our investigation, we also noticed coprolites more than ten times smaller than those made by termites. These pellets likely belonged to wood-eating oribatid mites – minuscule arachnids with fossils dating back almost 400 million years. Many of their tunnels ring those left by the termites, telling us they inhabited this nest after the termites abandoned it.

Termite tunnels may have acted as mite highways, taking them deeper into the log. Moreover, because both groups ate the toughest parts of wood, these two invertebrates might have directly competed at the time. Modern oribatid mites only eat wood affected by fungi.

Regardless, our study documents the first known interaction of wood-nesting termites and oribatid mites in the fossil record.

This nest also provides important support for the idea that Australia’s polar forests weren’t dominated by ice, as modern termites can’t tolerate prolonged freezing.

This is the first record of termites living in a polar region, and their presence suggests relatively mild polar winters — something like 6°C on average. Termites would’ve been key players in these ecosystems, kickstarting wood breakdown and nutrient cycling in an otherwise slow environment.

So maybe next time you spot a termite nest, you’ll see a builder, not a bulldozer.

The authors would like to acknowledge the work of Jonathan Edwards who led the research and helped prepare this article.

Alistair Evans, Professor, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University and Anthony J. Martin, Professor of Practice, Department of Environmental Sciences, Emory University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For millennia, First Nations people have shaped Australian ecosystems through the purposeful and skilful use of fire. This cultural burning is an important way for Aboriginal people to connect to and care for Country.

Under climate change, Earth is experiencing more frequent and severe bushfires. This has prompted a rethink of Western approaches to fire management, and triggered the development of cultural burning programs supported by government agencies.

At the same time, First Nations people have been calling to revitalise cultural burning as part of a generations-long pursuit of self-determination.

Our new research details the results of a Indigenous-led cultural burning program in critically endangered woodlands in New South Wales. It shows how Western science can support cultural burning to deliver benefits across cultures – as well as for nature.

What we did

Box-gum grassy woodland has been extensively cleared for agriculture, and only about 5% of its original extent remains. The woodlands are endangered in NSW and critically endangered across eastern Australia.

They feature diverse eucalypt trees, sparse shrubs and native tussock grasses, and support native fauna including the critically endangered regent honeyeater and swift parrot.

Our project brought together First Nations communities, ecologists from the Australian National University and officers from Local Land Services. It also involved the Rural Fire Service.

Cultural burns are relatively cool, slow fires. They trickle through the landscape, enabling animals to escape the flames. They promote the germination of plants, including culturally important food and medicine plants, among other benefits.

Cultural burns are important to First Nations people for a variety of cultural and social reasons. The practice is part of a broader suite of inherited cultural responsibilities shared through generations.

Our project involved cultural burns in the winter and spring of 2023. Wiradjuri people burned their Country around Young and Wagga Wagga, and Ngunnawal people burned their Country near Yass.

The burns took place on travelling stock reserves – remnant patches of vegetation historically used to move cattle from paddock to market. These reserves are very important for Aboriginal people because they often trace Songlines and Dreaming tracks. They are also important for farmers as places to graze cattle during drought.

Alongside the cultural burning program, ANU research ecologists monitored how the woodlands responded to the burns. They did this by surveying plants, soils and biomass before and about eight months after the burns, as well as in unburnt areas.

What we found

We measured plant responses by counting the number of plant individuals and recording germination.

Many native plant species germinated after the burn. They included native peas – one an endangered species, the small scurf pea, which germinated exclusively after the burns.

Germination was greater in burned than unburned sites, including for sensitive species that commonly respond well to fire such as native glycine (a herb) and lomandra grasses.

Importantly, the condition of a site before the burn affected how well plants responded. Condition refers to factors such as the diversity of native plants (including sensitive species) and the presence of weeds.

After the burn, native plants were more abundant on sites with a better starting condition, than on those in poor condition. This highlights the importance of improving the health of poor-condition areas after burns.

The type of appropriate management will depend on the site, but may include weed control and planting or seeding native species. More monitoring will also help quantify longer term responses after burning.

Investing in community and nature

Indigenous community members led the burns on their Country and were represented by women and men of multiple generations. They were paid for their work and offered fire-safety training and personal protective equipment.

The burns were often community events – days of connection and sharing knowledge within communities, and between cultures. This fostered opportunities for “two-way learning” and “two-eyed seeing” – ways of respectfully bringing together Indigenous and Western knowledge.

Our project shows how cross-cultural partnerships can be central to conserving and restoring Australia’s unique and highly diverse ecosystems, during a period of environmental change. But for this to happen, cultural burning must be better integrated into mainstream land management.

This is especially needed in some parts of southern Australia, where government-funded programs have been less resourced than in parts of northern and Central Australia.

Government agencies and institutions can support Indigenous land stewardship in various ways.

These include:

• designing projects with Indigenous people from the outset, and being directed by community aspirations which supports self-determination

• forming meaningful cross-cultural partnerships across agencies to navigate complex bureaucratic processes

• providing Indigenous people with resources and land access to manage Country, including funding for labour, training and equipment. Provisions for sufficient resources must be made from the beginning, in grant applications

• protecting and acknowledging the rights of Indigenous people to their cultural heritage, such as traditional knowledge, through formal protection agreements.

Elle Bowd, Research Fellow, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University; Braithan Bell-Garner, Ngunnawal Man, Indigenous Knowledge; David Lindenmayer, Distinguished Professor of Ecology, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University; Dean Freeman, Senior Officer (Cultural Burning), Riverina Local Land Services, Indigenous Knowledge, and Geoff Cary, Professor, Bushfire Science, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A bill essentially abolishing Brazil’s environmental licensing system is just days away from likely passage by the country’s National Congress. Despite the environmental discourse of President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, what is known as the “bill of devastation” (PL 2159/2021) apparently has his tacit approval. Even if Lula vetoes the bill, anti-environmental voting blocks in the National Congress have more than the 60% in each house needed to override a veto.

The “bill of devastation” has been promoted as relieving “low impact” projects of unnecessary bureaucracy, but it is very much more than this. First, it is for both “low” and “medium” impact projects, two categories that are vaguely defined, allowing projects with major impacts to be benefitted. The bill applies to licensing at both the state and federal levels, and at the state level there is expected to be a “race to the bottom” as states compete to attract investments by loosening environmental restrictions.

The “medium impact” category is a misnomer, as it includes most mining projects such as the mine tailings dams that broke in 2015 at Mariana and in 2019 at Brumadinho to create two of Brazil’s worst environmental disasters.

Under the bill, these “low” and “medium” impact projects would be licensed by what is known as “self-licensing,”. This eliminates the need for an environmental impact assessment, public hearings and specification of compensatory measures in the event of accidents or other impacts. Basically, this self-declared statement consists of checking a series of boxes on an online form.

Bypassing any public or committee debate, at the last minute before the Senate’s plenary vote the bill was modified with an amendment that increased its environmental impact even more. The amendment created a “Special Environmental License” that would allow any project considered to be “strategic” to have an accelerated approval process, regardless of the magnitude of its impacts.

The amendment is believed to be specifically intended to facilitate the controversial mouth-of-the-Amazon oil project, which has major potential impacts both from potentially uncontrollable oil spills and from its impact on climate change.

Brazil’s imminent climate disaster

Global climate and the Amazon forest are both approaching tipping points where the process of collapse escapes from human control. These imminent disasters are intertwined: if the Amazon forest were to collapse it would release more than enough greenhouse gases to push global temperatures beyond the point where human society loses the option to contain climate change by cutting emissions to zero, and if global temperatures rise uncontrollably, it would soon push the Amazon forest to collapse.

The Amazon forest is on the verge of tipping points in terms of temperature, the ongoing increase in dry season length, the percentage of forest cleared and a combination of various climatic and direct anthropogenic impacts.

The loss of the Amazon forest that would result from crossing any of these tipping points would, among other impacts, sacrifice the forest’s vital role in recycling water.

A volume of water greater than the Amazon River’s total flow is released as water vapor by the leaves of the trees, providing rainfall that not only maintains Amazon forest but also maintains agriculture and city water supplies in other parts of Brazil and in neighboring countries. The water vapor is transported by winds known as “flying rivers” to São Paulo, the World’s fourth largest city, which depends on this water supply.

Amazon destruction

Given these catastrophic prospects, Brazil’s government should be acting decisively to halt the country’s greenhouse gas emissions and to lead the World in combatting climate change. These necessities are interrelated, as effective leadership is done through example and Brazil cannot continue to merely exhort other countries to reduce their emissions when its domestic decisions are acting to increase global warming. This includes the “bill of devastation”.

Rapidly phasing out fossil fuel use is fundamental to containing global warming. The amount by which human society must reduce its emissions and the trajectory in time that this reduction must follow are determined by analysis of the best available data and climate models.

The “Global Stocktake” by the Climate Convention, released at COP-28 in 2023, showed that anthropogenic emissions must decline by 43% by 2030 compared to 2023, and by 84% by 2050 to stay within the limit currently agreed under the Paris Agreement of 1.5 ºC above the pre-industrial average global temperature.

This limit represents a tipping point both for the global climate system and for the Amazon forest. Above this point there is a sharp increase in the annual probability of uncontrollable feedbacks driving the system to a catastrophic shift or collapse.

The mouth-of-the-Amazon project is critical. A massive auction of drilling rights, both onshore and offshore, is scheduled for 17 June, including 47 blocks in the mouth of the Amazon River.

Environmental approval of the first “experimental” well (FZA-M-59) is viewed as the key to international oil companies being willing to bid on these blocks. The head of the Brazilian licensing agency (IBAMA) has been under intense pressure to approve the project.

Oil project

Within the licensing debate, the focus is almost entirely on whether Petrobras has the infrastructure and personnel to mount a rescue operation for marine wildlife in the event of an oil spill, rather than the more basic question of whether a leak could be plugged if it should occur.

Unfortunately, there are strong indications that a leak could not be plugged for months or years, as the site has double the 1.5-km water depth at the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico that spilled uncontrollably for five months in 2010, and the ocean currents are much stronger and more complex in the mouth of the Amazon.

Petrobras constantly brags about its long experience with offshore oil extraction, but neither Petrobras nor any other company has plugged a leak at a location with the depth and complexity of the mouth-of-the-Amazon site.

Containing global warming is inconsistent with opening new oil fields due to the economic logic of these projects, which is different from the economics of continued extraction of existing oilfields. This is what led the International Energy Agency (IEA) to recommend that no new oil or gas fields be opened anywhere in the World.

In the case of the mouth of the Amazon project, the expectation is that it would take five years to begin commercial production and another five years to pay for the investment; since no one will want to stop with zero profit, the project implies extracting petroleum for many years after that – far beyond the time when the World must stop using oil as fuel.

Petrobras claims that the mouth-of-the-Amazon project and other planned new oilfields are needed for Brazil’s “energy security” to guarantee that Brazilians will not lack fuel for their vehicles.

The falsity of this argument is obvious from the fact that Brazil currently exports over half of the oil it extracts, and this percentage is expected to rise with the planned expansion. The reserves in Brazil’s existing oilfields are far greater than what the country can consume before fossil-fuel use must cease. In other words, the expansion of oil extraction is purely a matter of money.

Another argument promoted by Petrobras and by President Lula is that the oil revenue is needed to pay for Brazil’s energy transition. While the energy transition must indeed be paid for, it should have a guaranteed place in Brazil annual budget, like health and education, and not be treated as something optional that depends on windfall financial gains.

President Lula’s sleepwalk

President Lula apparently lacks understanding of Brazil’s suicidal course towards a climate catastrophe. He has surrounded himself with proponents of projects with enormous climatic consequences, such as his minister of transportation who presses for Highway BR-319 and his minister of mines and energy and the president of Petrobras who push for the mouth-of-the-Amazon and other new oil and gas projects.

Clearly, Lula does not listen to his minister of environment and climate change on these issues. He lives in a “disinformation space,” to use the term coined by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinski to describe Donald Trump. The question of whether President Lula will awake from his sleepwalk before COP-30 in November is critical, as this is his opportunity to assume global leadership on climate change. Although there is no indication that this is likely, efforts to penetrate his disinformation space must continue.

Philip Fearnside, Biólogo e pesquisador titular (Departamento de Ecologia), Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As extreme weather intensifies globally, governments are seeking nature-based solutions that deliver both climate and economic benefits.

The restoration of wetlands is an often overlooked opportunity. As our recent study shows, wetlands have long been treated as environmental “add-ons” but are in fact rising economic assets, delivering more value as they mature.

Restored coastal wetlands, particularly mangroves and saltmarshes, offer growing returns in the form of carbon sequestration, biodiversity protection and storm buffering. These benefits build up gradually, sometimes exponentially, over time.

But planning frameworks treat restorations as static costs, rather than compounding investments.

Using international data and economic modelling, we developed a framework to capture how wetland benefits evolve over decades. While we draw on global datasets, this approach can be applied in New Zealand to understand the value of local restoration projects.

Timing matters for wetland investment

Traditional cost-benefit analyses treat wetland restoration as a one-off expense with fixed returns. Our research shows this misses the bigger, long-term picture.

For example, coastal mangroves initially store a modest amount of carbon while seedlings develop. But as root systems establish and capture sediment, there is a critical threshold when carbon sequestration accelerates dramatically. Mature restored mangroves can store three times more carbon annually than during early years.

Saltmarshes follow a similar pattern. They develop from basic habitat into complex networks that buffer storm surges, filter nutrients and support productive fisheries.

For New Zealand, where many wetlands were historically drained or degraded, the implication is clear. Early investment in restoration is critical and will deliver increasing returns over time.

Our study highlights mangroves and saltmarshes as priority systems, but also points to peatlands and freshwater marshes as promising candidates.

Risk from resource management reform

As part of a major reform of the Resource Management Act, the government is reviewing the environmental rules governing the work of local and regional councils, including policies on freshwater.

The law review and freshwater policy consultations present both opportunities and challenges for wetland valuation.

The amendment to the Resource Management Act regarding freshwater proposes:

quick, targeted changes which will reduce the regulatory burden on key sectors, including farming, mining and other primary industries.

While this may reduce the regulatory burden, it highlight the need for robust valuation tools that can weigh long-term benefits against immediate development returns.

The current consultation outlines specific changes, including clarifying the definition of a wetland. The amended definition would exclude wetlands “unintentionally created” through activities such as irrigation, while constructed wetlands would have a new set of objectives and consent pathways.

Councils would also no longer need to map wetlands by 2030, while restrictions on non-intensive grazing of beef cattle and deer in wetlands would be removed.

These definition changes could exclude wetlands that accumulate significant climate and biodiversity benefits over time, regardless of their origin. As our research suggests, the ecological and economic value of wetlands often increases substantially as systems mature.

The valuation gap

Despite growing international recognition of “blue carbon” initiatives (which store carbon in coastal and marine ecosystems), New Zealand lacks frameworks to capture the dynamic value of wetlands.

Earlier research shows coastal ecosystems contribute about US$190 billion annually to global blue carbon wealth, with wetlands storing about half of all carbon buried in ocean sediments despite occupying less than 2% of the ocean.

New Zealand has no wetland-specific financial instruments to attract private investment and wetlands are not integrated into the Emissions Trading Scheme, the government’s main tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

This creates a fundamental mismatch. Policy frameworks treat restoration as static costs while science reveals appreciating assets.

Our modelling framework offers a pathway to bridge this gap. By tracking how different wetland types accumulate benefits over time, decision makers can better understand long-term returns on restoration investment.

Australia is already developing wetland carbon markets. International blue carbon financial initiatives are emerging and recognising that today’s restoration investment delivers tomorrow’s climate benefits.

For New Zealand, this could mean:

• integrating wetland valuation into environmental assessments, moving beyond upfront costs to consider decades of accumulating benefits across different wetland types

• aligning finance with restoration timelines and developing funding mechanisms that capture growing value rather than treating restoration as sunk costs

• building regional datasets and generating location-specific data on how New Zealand’s diverse wetlands develop benefits over time, reducing investment uncertainty.

With sea-level rise accelerating and extreme weather becoming more frequent, wetlands represent critical infrastructure for climate adaptation. Unlike built infrastructure (stop banks, for example) that depreciates, wetlands appreciate, becoming more valuable as they mature.

The current policy consultation period offers an opportunity to embed this thinking into New Zealand’s environmental frameworks. Rather than viewing wetlands as regulatory constraints, dynamic valuation could reveal them as appreciating assets that increase resilience for coastal communities.

Restoring coastal wetlands is not just about repairing nature. It’s about investing in a living, compounding asset that ameliorates climate impacts and protects our coasts and communities.

Wei Yang, Senior Scientist in Environmental Economics, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From the Loch Ness monster to Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, to the jackalope of the U.S. West, mythical animals have long captured human imagination.

Some people are so fascinated with mythical creatures that they create their own, either working from pure fantasy or by modifying real animals. In a newly published study, we show that in countries such as Mexico, people are catching, drying and shaping guitarfishes – members of the rhino ray family, one of the most threatened groups of marine fishes – to create mythical specimens called “pez diablo,” or devil fish.

Depending on where these curios are sold, they might also be referred to as Jenny Hanivers, garadiávolos or rayas chupacabras. The origin and meaning of the term “Jenny Haniver” is unclear, but the most accepted explanation is “Jeune d'Anvers,” or “young girl from Antwerp” in French.

We found that pez diablo are made for many reasons, including as curios for the tourist trade and as purported cures for cancer, arthritis and anemia. Some are simply used for hoaxes. Regardless, the pez diablo trade could threaten the survival of guitarfishes.

Fishy talismans

Skates and rays, including guitarfishes, are flat-bodied fishes related to sharks and are found worldwide. Together, they make up a group known as elasmobranchs, which are characterized by their unique skeletons made of cartilage rather than bone like most other fishes.

Skates have long been used to craft mythical creatures. The earliest known examples date back to 1558 in Europe, where they were fashioned to resemble dragons. These objects were thought to offer pathways to the divine or medicinal cures.

In the mid-20th century, dried guitarfishes emerged as a new generation of mythical creatures. This may be because their unique shape can be fashioned into more humanlike forms. Their long nostrils, which are positioned just above their mouths, can resemble eyes.

The first known case of a modified guitarfish was described in 1933. Since then, specimens have made their way into museums, and dozens of North American newspapers have published stories featuring modified guitarfishes.

A real and endangered fish

Guitarfishes are one of the most threatened vertebrate groups on the planet: Without careful management, they are at risk of global extinction. As many as two-thirds of all guitarfishes are classified as threatened on the IUCN Red List, a global inventory that assesses extinction risks to wild species.

Guitarfishes are found in warm temperate and tropical oceans around the world. Fishers target them as an inexpensive source of protein. Guitarfishes may also be caught accidentally or collected live for the aquarium trade.

Ultimately, however, these species are worth more as pez diablo than for other uses. For example, an entire fresh guitarfish in Mexico is worth approximately US$2, whereas guitarfish that have been killed, dried and carved into pez diablo can be worth anywhere from $50–$500 on eBay and other e-commerce sites.

Curbing the pez diablo trade

Internationally, the guitarfish trade is regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, an international agreement between governments. This agreement requires member countries to manage guitarfish trade across international borders.

Most countries where guitarfishes occur, however, do not have national regulations to protect these species. As a result, people who create or sell pez diablo are likely unaware that these fishes are threatened.

There are as many as 37 species of guitarfish, some of which are at higher risk of extinction than others. Yet to the untrained eye, it can be hard to distinguish one guitarfish species from another. It’s especially hard to identify dried and mutilated guitarfishes that have been processed into pez diablo and look very different from their natural form.

This is a common challenge for agencies that monitor trade in animal products. The global wildlife trade is an enormous market, involving billions of animals moving through both legal and illegal channels. Many wildlife products are heavily altered, which makes it hard to identify the species and determine where the product came from.

Another source of confusion is that many people in Mexico also refer to an invasive freshwater fish that has overrun lakes and rivers across the nation as pez diablo. This “other” pez diablo is actually a suckermouth catfish and is not at all related to any of the threatened guitarfishes. Local education efforts need to distinguish clearly between these two species, since the desired outcome is to protect guitarfish while removing the invasive catfish.

Guitarfish CSI

Fortunately, advances in wildlife forensics offer a way to distinguish between species. Molecular techniques have been used to identify many illegally traded species, including guitarfishes. By taking a small skin sample, scientists can use DNA to identify the species of individual pez diablo. This method can help protect endangered species by helping to ensure that laws against wildlife trafficking are followed.

Refining this kind of molecular tool is the most promising way to improve traceability in the trade of guitarfishes. By documenting where and how pez diablo are traded, scientists and conservationists can help clarify the threats to these species. The pez diablo is an imaginary creature, but it is doing real harm to threatened guitarfishes in the world’s warm oceans.

James Marcus Drymon, Associate Extension Professor in Marine Fisheries Ecology, Mississippi State University; Bryan Huerta-Beltrán, Graduate Student, The University of Southern Mississippi; Nicole Phillips, Associate Professor of Biology, The University of Southern Mississippi, and Peter Kyne, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

One-third of the Earth’s land surface is already degraded. The UN estimates that more than 2.6 billion people are harmed by land degradation, with countries losing up to US$10.6 trillion (£7.8 trillion) a year because of damage to “ecosystem services”, including the benefits people get from nature such as water and food.

Unhealthy soil is a major contributor to land degradation. This can lead to loss of biodiversity, harm plants and animals, cause sand and dust storms and affect crop yields.

These consequences affect the regulation of the planet’s climate and water cycle, socioeconomic activities, food security and forced migration of people.

Emerging smart technologies such as artificial intelligence, satellite remote sensing and big data analysis offer a chance to protect our soils. These tools can help track soil health in real time. This will support farmers, landowners, government agencies and local communities in making better decisions to care for the soil.

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As a professor of geo-hydroinformatics – a field that combines geoscience, hydrology and information technology – my research focuses on using AI, algorithms and advanced modelling tools to better analyse and predict soil health.

My team and I have developed the first global map of soil salinisation (accumulation of salt in soil) under various climate scenarios using AI-powered techniques. Soil salinisation is one of the leading contributors to soil degradation and can happen naturally or because of human activities, such as using salty irrigation water or poor drainage systems.

With increasing climate uncertainty, our models help identify regions most vulnerable to salinisation. Our AI-driven analysis predicts that by the year 2100, dryland regions in South America, southern and western Australia, Mexico, the southwestern US and South Africa will be key hotspots of soil salinisation.

In another key study, we used satellite data, AI and big data tools to investigate the interaction between soil salinity and soil organic carbon – an important part of healthy soil that stores nutrients, holds water and supports plants.

Part of this analysis revealed a general negative correlation between salinity levels and soil organic carbon content. As salinity increased, we found that the soil organic carbon content tended to decrease.

Our two studies underscore the transformative potential of AI technologies and big data analytics in understanding soil degradation. With a deeper understanding, land can be better managed through more effective mitigation policies and sustainable land use planning.

Restoration at scale

Large-scale land restoration can transform degraded soils. In the Loess plateau in China, centuries of deforestation and unsustainable farming have led to significant ecological challenges. Loess soils (a type not limited to this location in China, formed essentially by the accumulation of wind-blown dust) are easily eroded because they are made up of fine and loose particles.

Degradation here has led to more frequent floods, droughts and dust storms because soil degradation is often associated with compaction. This reduces the ability of soil to absorb and hold water.

In the 1990s, this prompted the Chinese government to invest in reforestation and sustainable agriculture. This led to the landmark Loess plateau watershed rehabilitation project, with the main goal of boosting farming and incomes on 15,600km² of land in the Yellow River’s tributary area. The total project cost of US$150 million, partly funded by the World Bank, was approved in 1994.

Elsewhere, in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, the EthioTrees project was launched in 2016 to tackle land degradation through community-based reforestation, enclosures to limit grazing, and reinvestment of funds generated through climate finance mechanisms.

Despite challenges including drought and limited financial resources, these large-scale restoration projects have transformed the landscape and lives of people living there.

But the Loess plateau and Tigray projects have been complex and expensive. A lot of coordination between people across huge regions and in different sectors is required to ensure a successful, integrated approach. AI can take these successful but resource-intensive restoration efforts and help scale them up.

I’m also involved with a European Commission-funded project called AI4SoilHealth, which aims to advance the use of AI to monitor and quantify soil health across Europe. This project shows how data-driven initiatives can support more sustainable land management policies by providing timely, actionable information to governments, farmers and other stakeholders such as landowners, agribusiness companies and local communities.

By integrating satellite imagery with accurate data about soil properties in different locations, AI can help develop robust, scalable models that cross local boundaries. Knowing where best to invest money, resources and effort in scaling up soil health solutions will help protect people, businesses and ecosystems from extreme events in the future.

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Nima Shokri, Professor, Applied Engineering, United Nations University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When winter comes to Antarctica, seals and Adélie penguins leave the freezing shores and head for the edge of the forming sea ice. But emperor penguins stay put.

The existence of emperor penguins seems all but impossible. Their lives revolve around seasons, timing and access to “fast ice” – sea ice connected to the Antarctic coast. Here, the sea ice persists long enough into summer for the penguins to rear their chicks successfully.

But climate change is upending the penguins’ carefully tuned biological cycles. The crucial sea ice they depend on is melting too early, plunging the chicks from some colonies into the sea before they are fully fledged.

In the latest bad news for these penguins, research by the British Antarctic Survey examined satellite images from 2009 to 2024 to assess fast-ice conditions at 16 emperor penguin colonies south of South America. They noted an average 22% fall in numbers across these colonies. That translates to a decrease of 1.6% every year.

This rate of loss is staggering. As the paper’s lead author Peter Fretwell told the ABC, the rate is about 50% worse than even the most pessimistic estimates.

Breeding while it’s freezing

Just like polar bears in the Arctic, emperor penguins are the iconic species threatened by climate change in Antarctica.

Emperor penguins are a highly successful species. They’re the tallest and heaviest penguin alive today. They evolved about one million years ago, and are highly adapted to life in one of Earth’s harshest environments. As of 2009, the emperor penguin population was estimated at just shy of 600,000 birds.

Unfortunately, they are now in real trouble, because their breeding habitat appears to be reducing.

At the beginning of every Antarctic winter, the surface of the ocean begins to freeze and sea ice forms. Over March and April, emperor penguins aggregate into raucous breeding colonies along the coast of the ice continent. They need about nine months to care for their chicks, until the young penguins can go to sea and look after themselves.

The males frequently huddle to keep each other warm and their eggs safe. Meanwhile, the females spend months at sea catching krill, squid and fish, returning in July/August to feed their hungry chicks. When summer finally comes in December, the chicks start to shed their down and grow a dense, waterproof plumage – like a feathery armour against the intensely cold seas off the icy continent.

Breeding locations are a kind of “Goldilocks” zone. When choosing a home, the penguins have to find a place that is safe but not too far from the fast ice edge where they go to start hunting.

The greater the distance they have to travel, the longer it takes to return to their offspring, and the chicks may miss out on meals. But if a colony is too close to the edge of the fast ice, the risk increases that the ice breaks up before the chicks are ready to go to sea. Although fast ice can cover vast areas of the ocean surface, its edge is exposed to the swell of the Southern Ocean.

In recent years, the fast ice in different parts of Antarctica has been breaking up early, before the chicks have moulted into their adult plumage. Without waterproof plumage, chicks perish because the cold water kills quickly. As this happens more often, the size of a colony shrinks.

How bad is it?

We don’t yet know if this rate of loss is happening right across Antarctica. The study only covers a the part of the continent that includes the Antarctic Peninsula and the Weddell Sea.

What we do know is that Antarctica and its unique biodiversity are not immune to the consequences of still-rising global greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2021, emperor penguins were listed as endangered by the United States, because the risk of extinction by century’s end had increased. Australia has not yet listed the emperor penguin as a threatened species.

The new research suggests the future of these iconic birds is not looking good. Until the world gets serious about cutting greenhouse gas emissions, sea ice will retreat – and more chicks will fall into the icy water before they are ready to launch.

Seabird ecologist Dr Barbara Wienecke contributed to this article.

Dana M Bergstrom, Honorary Senior Fellow in Ecology, University of Wollongong

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

South Australian beaches have been awash with foamy, discoloured water and dead marine life for months. The problem hasn’t gone away; it has spread.

Devastating scenes of death and destruction mobilised locals along the Fleurieu Peninsula, Yorke Peninsula and Kangaroo Island. The state government has hosted emergency meetings, most recently with marine and environment experts from around Australia, and issued weekly updates.

Unfortunately, there are few ways to stop the bloom. Scientists had hoped strong westerly winds would break it up and push it out to sea. But so far, the wild weather has just pushed it through the Murray Mouth into the Coorong. And even if the bloom is washed away this winter, it could return in spring.

This bloom represents a stark warning to coastal communities, as well as tourism, seafood and aquaculture industries. It’s a sign of what’s to come, in Australia and around the world, as the oceans warm.

An unprecedented algal bloom

The first sign of trouble came in March this year, when dozens of surfers and beachgoers fell ill. Many reported sore eyes, coughing or trouble breathing.

Water testing soon revealed the cause: a harmful algal bloom of Karenia mikimotoi.

Most people felt better within hours or days of leaving the beach. But marine life of all kinds was washing up dead or dying.

Fish habitat charity OzFish set up a new citizen science project to capture the data, using iNaturalist.

OzFish SA project manager Brad Martin told a public forum the bloom was like an “underwater bushfire”, adding:

It’s suffocating fish, it’s taking the oxygen out of the water and it’s producing toxins.

Photos of dead fish, seahorses, octopuses and rays were already circulating on social media. So OzFish encouraged people to start using iNaturalist, to identify the species and capture the data.

The data shows more than 200 species of marine creatures died, including 100 types of fish and sharks. This includes popular recreational fishing species such as flathead, squid, crabs and rock lobsters.

Almost half the deaths were ray-finned fish species. A quarter were sharks and ray species. Then came soft-bodied “cephalopods” such as cuttlefish and octopus, and crustaceans such as crabs, lobsters and prawns.

Most of these species live on or near the sea floor with small home ranges. As in a bushfire, they have little chance of escape. Other fish that live in the open ocean, such as whiting, snapper and tuna, can swim away.

The culprit

K. mikimotoi is a type of microalgae. It uses sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow and divide, releasing oxygen.

In calm conditions, with plenty of light and warmth, the algal cells divide rapidly. Ideal conditions for algal growth are becoming more common as the climate changes and seas warm.

Algal toxins are known to cause illness and sometimes death in humans, pets and livestock.

K. mikimotoi is lethal to marine life, not humans. But the toxic effects in marine life are complicated and poorly understood.

The algae irritates fish gills, causing cell death and bleeding. It also causes hypoxia, or lack of oxygen in the blood. And when the algae die off, decomposition consumes huge amounts of oxygen – leaving marine life to suffocate.

Scientists now suspect other Karenia species may be involved too, due to the detection of brevetoxins in shellfish. This is the first detection of brevetoxins in Australia.

What can be done?

A marine heatwave is largely to blame. Sea surface temperatures have been 2.5°C warmer than usual since September. Relatively calm conditions, with little wind and small swells, also enabled the bloom to grow. Now it’s a matter of waiting for strong westerly winds to blow it all away.

The latest update shows sea surface temperatures have stabilised. But deeper gulf and shelf waters remain 1–2°C above average for this time of the year.

Climate change is making future blooms more likely. So tackling climate change is one way to help.

Another is minimising the runoff of nutrients into waterways. Microalgae can be found anywhere with enough water, light and nutrients. So reducing pollution can help reduce the risk of algal blooms.

This includes better management of fertiliser on farms and in home gardens. Lower levels of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous will reduce the risk of future blooms in marine and inland waterways.

When it comes to blue-green algae, flushing with freshwater and stirring it up can disperse the colonies and prevent a bloom.

Monitoring is also important. OzFish encourages South Australians to continue providing photo reports via iNaturalist. Any new fish kills should also be reported to the state government.

Microalgae are not all bad

It’s worth remembering life on Earth wouldn’t exist without microalgae. These tiny organisms produced 60% of the oxygen in the atmosphere today, and play an important role in balanced ecosystems.

The algae spirulina is a common dietary supplement. Microalgae are also potentially useful for water recycling, as a renewable biofuel and for capturing and storing greenhouse gases.

Heeding the lessons

Once a harmful algal bloom begins, it will persist for as long as conditions remain suitable.

This bloom already has lasted three months, and there’s no guarantee the end is near.

Recovery will be slow, as shown in the historical record and other parts of the world. And the risk of a repeat event is high.

Further research is needed to keep these ancient organisms in check.

With thanks to OzFish SA project manager Brad Martin, who contributed to this article.

Erin Barrera, PhD Candidate, School of Public Health, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As a teenager in the 1970s, I worked on a typical dairy farm in England. Fifty cows grazed on lush pastures for most of their long lives, each producing about 12 litres of milk daily. They were loved and cared for by two herdsmen.

About 50 years later, I visited a dairy farm in China. There, 30,000 cows lived indoors. Most of these selectively bred animals wore out after two or three years of producing 30–40 litres of milk every day, after which they were unceremoniously killed. The workers rarely had contact with the cows. Instead, they sat in offices, programming machines which managed them.

This speaks to a huge and very recent shift in how we treat animals. Over the last half century, the human population has soared – and so too our demand for meat, milk and many other animal products. As a result livestock populations have ballooned while living conditions for animals permanently kept inside have drastically worsened.

Even as farmed animals have multiplied, populations of wild animals have crashed. The two trends are deeply connected. Humans convert wildlife habitat into pastures and farms, expanding living space for farm animals at the expense of many other animals.

This cannot continue. Humans must reckon with how we treat the myriad other species on the planet, whether we rely on them or not. As I argue in my new open access book, the growing scarcity of animal species should make us grasp our responsibility towards the welfare of all animal species on the planet, not just those in farms.

Efforts to enshrine rights for animals is not enough. The focus has to be on our responsibilities to them, ensuring they lead good lives if in our care – or are left well alone if they are not.

Should we care?

In the last 50 years, two-thirds of all wild animal populations have been lost.

The main cause is habitat loss, as native forest is felled to grow grass for cattle or corn and soya for livestock.

By weight, the world’s farm animals and humans now dwarf the remaining wild animals. Farm animals weigh 630 million tonnes and humans 390 million tonnes, while wild land mammals now weigh just 20 million tonnes and marine mammals 40 million tonnes.

Wildlife numbers have fallen off a cliff across many kingdoms of life. Three quarters of flying insects are gone from monitored areas of Western Europe. One in eight bird species is threatened with extinction worldwide.

On animal welfare, philosophers have long argued one of two positions. The first is known as “utilitarianism”. This approach argues for minimising the bad things in the world and maximising the good things, regardless of who benefits from them, humans or other animals. This theory-heavy approach does little to restore our relationship with wild animals because of the difficulties in deciding what is good and bad for animals.

The second has more to recommend it. This is the view that animals have the right to be looked after well. This approach has also been used to give rights to rivers, nature and even the atmosphere.

But this doesn’t recognise the fact that only humans can attribute such rights to animals, who themselves do not have any concept of “rights”. It also doesn’t tackle the issue that most humans would not accord the same rights to a blue whale and an insect.

A better approach might be to recognise our responsibilities to animals, rather than attribute rights to them.

This would acknowledge the increasing rarity of animal species on Earth and the fact that – as far as we know – they’re unique in the universe. So far, no reliable signs have been found indicating life evolved on any other planets.

Earth formed just over 4.5 billion years ago. Some evidence suggests simple animal life began just 400 million years later.

The evolution of complex multicellular life on earth probably only happened once when a single celled organism – one of the ancient archaea, perhaps – engulfed a bacterium without digesting it. Instead, it found something better: putting it to work as an internal energy factory as the first mitochondrion. After that came life’s great flowering.

But now we’re currently losing between 0.01–0.1% of all species each year. If we use an average species loss rate of 0.05% and assuming human pressures remain similar, life on Earth could have only 2,000 years left.

Do we have responsibility to care for something just because it’s rare? Not always. But life is beautiful. We marvel when we are able to connect with wildlife. Other social animals also appear to derive pleasure from such relationships.

If we destroy wild animal life, we could undermine the natural systems humans depend on. Pollinators are essential for orchards, forests protect topsoil and produce clean drinking water and predators prevent herbivore populations from soaring out of control and destroying crops. As wilder areas shrink, the chance of another animal virus spillover into humans increases.

From small scale to industrial

For almost all of human history, livestock herds were small enough that people could build relationships with the animals they depended on.

But in only a couple of human generations, we’ve turned farm animal production into a factory process with billions of animals.

For centuries, farm animals were walked to market. That, too, has changed. In 2005, I was undertaking research on a livestock ship alongside 80,000 sheep being transported from Australia to the Middle East. Hundreds of sheep die from the stress of these journeys, while many survivors arrive exhausted and terrified.

These changes have made it possible for humans all around the globe to eat meat or dairy products at every meal. But it has come at a real cost to livestock and wild animals.

Correcting this will not be easy. We have to learn to eat fewer animals or preferably none at all, restore habitat for wildlife and curb our consumption of the world’s natural resources.

It’s not too late to restore animal habitat. Rewilding efforts are drawing back long-missing wild animals. There are hopeful signs for farm animal welfare too. The live export of Australian sheep will end in 2028. Battery cage production of eggs is dying out.

These are big issues. But to paraphrase a quote reputedly by Confucius:

The man who asks big questions is a fool for a minute. The man who does not ask, is a fool for life.

Clive Phillips, Adjunct Professor in Animal Welfare, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

More people believe misinformation about electric vehicles than disagree with it and even EV owners tend to believe the myths, our new research shows.

We investigated the prevalence of misinformation about EVs in four countries – Australia, the United States, Germany and Austria. Unfortunately, we found substantial agreement with misinformation across all countries.

People who endorsed false claims about EVs were, not surprisingly, significantly less likely to consider buying one.

Electric vehicles are vital in the fight against climate change. But pervasive misinformation is a significant challenge to the technology’s uptake and has serious implications for the shift away from fossil fuels.

Widespread agreement with false EV claims

We conducted a survey of 4,200 people who did not own an electric vehicle across the four countries. We measured the extent to which they agreed with these nine misleading claims about electric vehicles:

What we found

To tally the results, we looked at participants’ responses for all nine misinformation statements – more than 36,000 responses in all. We then calculated how many of these responses indicated agreement or disagreement.

Of the 36,000 responses, 36% were in agreement with a statement and 23% were in disagreement. A further 24% were undecided and 17% did not know.

Misinformation agreement was highest in Germany and lowest in the US, but the differences between nations were small.

The most widely believed myth was that electric vehicles are more likely to catch fire than petrol cars. Some 43–56% of people agreed with the statement, depending on the country.

Agreement with misinformation was strongly correlated with a lack of support for electric vehicle policies and a lack of intention to buy an EV in future.

A separate part of the research involved 2,100 people in the US, about half of whom owned an electric vehicle. Surprisingly, EV owners did not significantly differ in their agreement with misinformation compared to non-owners. This underscores how embedded the problem has become.

It’s not about education

We also examined the factors that make individuals more susceptible to EV misinformation.

The strongest predictor was people who scored highly on a “conspiracy mentality” – in other words, they believed conspiracies were common in society, they saw the world through a lens of corruption and secret agendas, and distrusted institutions.

People with progressive political and environmental views were less likely to endorse misinformation about EVs.

A person’s scientific knowledge or level of education was not a predictor. This finding aligns with previous research, and suggests the pervasive endorsement of misinformation stems from distrust in institutions and expertise rather than from a lack of education.

Grounds for optimism

We tested whether misinformation could be reduced with two interventions among a different sample of US participants. One group was asked to converse with ChatGPT about their views on EV misinformation. The second was asked to read a traditional EV fact sheet from the US Department of Energy. On a third “control” group, no intervention was tested.

Participants who engaged with either ChatGPT or the fact sheet before we surveyed them showed significantly lower endorsement of EV misinformation compared to the control group. This persisted at a follow-up session ten days after the survey.

Notably, ChatGPT did not produce any misinformation about EVs. These results build upon existing research demonstrating ChatGPT’s potential to reduce endorsement of conspiracy theories.

How to tackle EV misinformation

Our findings show misinformation about electric vehicles has a substantial foothold in Western nations. Susceptibility is not a matter of education or knowledge, but rather stems from distrust of established institutions and expertise.

We also found people who engage with facts about electric vehicles are less likely to endorse misinformation.

This suggests a dual strategy is needed to reduce misinformation about EVs. First, those who deliberately spread misinformation should be held accountable. And second, evidence-based information, including accessible AI tools, can be used to build public resilience against false claims.

Christian Bretter, Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Psychology, The University of Queensland; Matthew Hornsey, Professor, University of Queensland Business School, The University of Queensland, and Samuel Pearson, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ahead of this week’s crucial United Nations ocean conference, federal Environment Minister Murray Watt promised that by 2030, 30% of Australian waters would be “highly protected”.

This is a telling pledge. After all, 52% of Australian waters are now protected following years of rapid expansion. But many are “paper parks” – lines on a map with very little real protection.

Watt is proposing to expand the area under gold-standard protection, meaning fishing, mining and drilling would be banned inside the parks. This is welcome. But it must be done strategically, protecting ecologically representative and high biodiversity areas.

If Watt is serious, he must ensure these upgraded marine parks cover poorly protected habitats important for biodiversity. These include shallow coastal zones, submarine canyons, seamounts and rocky reefs on the continental shelf. It’s not just about protecting 30% of the seas – marine parks must protect the full range of species and habitats in Australia.

Impressive on paper

Australia’s waters cover all five of the world’s climate zones, from the coral reefs of the tropics to the icy shores of Antarctica. At least 33,000 marine species are found in the nation’s marine boundaries – the most on Earth. Australia also has the most endemic marine species.

For more than 30 years, successive federal and state governments in Australia have claimed global leadership roles in conserving ocean areas. Just last year, the Albanese government claimed the latest expansion meant Australia now protected “more ocean than any other country on earth”.

When 196 countries committed to the goal of “30% by 2030” – the effective protection and management of at least 30% of the world’s coastal and marine areas by decade’s end – Australia was already well past that in terms of the size of areas considered marine protected areas.

About 45% of marine waters were protected in 2022, up from 7% in 2002. Now that figure is 52%.

Job done? Not even close. Even as Australia’s marine protected areas have rapidly expanded, marine species populations have shrunk while entire ecosystems hover on the brink.

More than half of Australia’s marine parks allow commercial fishing and mining. The latest large protection around the sub-Antarctic Heard and McDonald Islands doesn’t give strong protection to species-rich areas such as seamounts and undersea canyons.

Losses everywhere

Tasmania’s giant kelp forests once ringed the island state. At least 95% have vanished since the 1990s, wiped out by warmer waters and voracious sea urchins.

Before European settlement, oyster reefs carpeted shallow sea floors in temperate east coast waters. But 99% of these have gone.

Half the Great Barrier Reef’s coral cover died between 1995 and 2017 – a period with only two mass bleaching events. Bleaching has become more regular and more severe since then.

Many marine species are in serious trouble. The most comprehensive assessment to date found populations of 57% of species living on coral, rocky and kelp reefs had fallen between 2011 and 2021. In 2020, a Tasmanian endemic species, the smooth handfish, became the first marine fish officially listed as extinct on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

As the oceans get hotter, coral reefs are forecast to be wiped out. Poor marine water quality is drowning coastal species and ecosystems in sediments, nutrients, chemicals, and pathogens, including in The Great Barrier Reef.

That’s not to say marine park expansion and other government efforts have been worthless. Far from it.

Some whales have rebounded strongly due to the moratorium on commercial whaling. Good management of the southern bluefin tuna led to its removal from the threatened species list last year.

Efforts to phase out gill net fishing are bearing fruit, while water quality has improved a little in the Great Barrier Reef.

But these wins don’t offset an overall rapid decline.

Action needed on climate and improving marine parks

Giving Australia’s marine parks better protection won’t solve the problem of hotter, more acidic oceans due to climate change.

Australia’s current emission target is consistent with a 2°C warming pathway. That level of warming would mean the loss of 99% of the world’s coral reefs.

Australia is one of the world’s biggest producers of coal and liquefied natural gas and still has one of the world’s highest rates of land clearing, accounting for up to 12% of the country’s total emissions in some years.

Protecting life in the seas means Australia must dramatically reduce emissions, end widespread land clearing and halt the approval of new coal and gas projects.

Better protection inside marine parks will stop other major threats, such as seabed mining, gas and oil exploration and fishing.

To date, Australia’s marine parks with high levels of protection are typically in remote areas with minimal human activity threatening biodiversity.

From paper parks to real conservation leadership

For decades, Australian leaders have touted their efforts to protect the seas. It’s now abundantly clear that paper protection isn’t enough.

To arrest the steep decline in marine life, Australia must properly protect its marine areas by preventing fishing and mining in areas important for all marine species, while expanding its highly protected marine parks to save unprotected ecosystems.

Minister Watt’s pledge is welcome. But it must actually prevent damaging human activities such as fishing and oil and gas extraction which are major contributors to the extinction crisis.

Leaders must also focus on sustainable production and consumption of seafood and ramp up their ambition to tackle climate change and marine pollution.

If Australia continues to expand paper parks without doing the hard work of genuine protection, it will set a dangerous precedent.

Carissa Klein, Associate Professor in Conservation Biology, The University of Queensland; Amelia Wenger, Research Fellow in Conservation, The University of Queensland, and James Watson, Professor in Conservation Science, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Emission control systems in modern cars have slashed air pollutants such as particulate matter and nitrogen oxides.

But these systems face two major challenges: carmakers cheating on pollution tests and owner tampering. Cheating means high-polluting cars can be sold when they shouldn’t be, while tampering can increase some pollutants up to 100 times.

In our new research review, we found the impacts of cheating and tampering on emissions of pollutants are substantial across the globe. For instance, researchers in Spain found almost half the diesel trucks had been tampered with, while the Volkswagen Dieselgate cheating scandal uncovered in 2015 led to an estimated A$60 billion in health costs in the European Union. In California, researchers found one in 12 trucks had a damaged or malfunctioning diesel particulate filter – and these high-emitting trucks contributed 70% of the entire fleet’s emissions of tiny particulate matter.

The solutions? Better detection of tampering, cheating and malfunctioning emission systems – and vigilance to get high polluting cars off the road.

How did we get here?

From the 1950s onwards, smog, air pollution and health issues from car exhausts led many regulators to require carmakers to reduce dangerous air pollutants.

These days, modern combustion-engine cars are complex computer-controlled systems optimised to balance engine performance, durability and emission control. When working properly, new vehicles can reduce air pollutant emissions by 90% or more. However, they can increase carbon dioxide emissions by using slightly more fuel.

But these pollutants can soar if emissions control systems malfunction – or suffer from intentional cheating or tampering.

Cheating and tampering are not new. Cheating was first reported in the 1970s and it’s still happening. Tampering, too, dates back to the 1970s.

Both issues worsen air quality. These excess air pollutants have substantial costs to human health, as they can trigger respiratory conditions and can cause disability and premature death.

While the numbers of electric vehicles are rising, they’re only about 5% of the global fleet – about 60 million compared to about 1.5 billion cars powered by petrol, diesel and gas.

Because cars have relatively long lifespans, many fossil-fuel powered cars will still be in use in 2050, now just 25 years away. Many will be exported from rich countries to developing economies. That means effective pollutant control still matters.

Cheating by manufacturers

It’s well established combustion engine cars produce substantially more emissions and pollutants during real-world driving than they do in regulatory tests.

There are many reasons for this, including natural wear and tear. But one big reason may be cheating.

Authorities in many nations rely on testing to see if a new model is emitting at rates low enough to meet emission standards.

Manufacturers can take advantage of the known quirks of official tests and intentionally alter how their vehicles operate during testing. To do this, they may install a “defeat device”, usually deep in the car’s engine or its computer code.

These devices shift the car to a special low-emissions mode if testing is detected. They’re typically easy for the automaker to install and difficult to detect.

Defeat devices are mainly found in diesel cars and trucks, since diesel emissions control systems are more complicated and expensive than petrol or LPG. Adding an emission control system to meet Euro 6 standards costs about $600 for a petrol car. For diesel, the cost can be three to five times higher.

In 2015, the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the state of California announced Volkswagen had been using a software-based defeat device to make its diesel cars appear substantially cleaner. The scandal drew worldwide attention and cost the company about $50 billion.

For those caught, large fines and mandatory recalls have followed. But this hasn’t been enough to stop the practice.

The way these tests are conducted usually has to be disclosed by law to ensure transparency and make results comparable and repeatable. Unfortunately, having detailed knowledge of the tests makes it easier to cheat.

Tampering by car owners

Tampering is largely done by owners of diesel cars and trucks. Owners can tamper with emission control systems to improve performance, rebel against laws they don’t agree with or avoid extra costs such as Adblue, a liquid needed to reduce nitrogen oxides emissions from diesel trucks.

Tampering is usually illegal. But that hasn’t stopped the production of aftermarket tampering devices, such as software which deactivates emission control systems. It’s not necessarily illegal to sell these devices, but it is illegal to install and use them.

In the road freight sector, the use of aftermarket tampering by vehicle owners also acts as an unfair economic advantage by undercutting responsible and law-abiding operators.

What should be done?

Combustion engine cars and trucks will be on the world’s roads for decades to come.

Ensuring they run as cleanly as possible over their lifetime will require independent and in-service emissions testing. Authorities will also need to focus on enforcement.

Creating an internationally agreed test protocol for the detection of defeat devices will also be necessary.

Combating tampering by owners as well as malfunctioning emissions systems will require better detection efforts, either through on-road emissions testing or during a car service.

One approach would be to add telemetry to the onboard diagnostics systems now common in modern cars. Telemetry radio transponders can report emissions problems to the owner and relevant authorities, who can then act.

Shifting to EVs offers the most robust and cost-effective way to combat fraud and cut exhaust pollutants and carbon emissions from road transport. But this will take decades. Authorities need to ensure diesel and petrol vehicles run as cleanly as possible until they can be retired.

Robin Smit, Adjunct Professor of Transport, University of Technology Sydney and Alberto Ayala, Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering, West Virginia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

President Donald Trump is trying to unravel the signature climate policy of his predecessor Joe Biden, the Inflation Reduction Act, as part of a sweeping bid to dismantle the United States’ climate ambition.

The Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, is a A$530 billion suite of measures that aims to turbocharge clean energy investment and slash emissions in the US. Once hailed as a game-changer for the global clean energy transition, it set in train a fierce international competition for renewable energy investment.

But the policy is now hanging by a thread, after the US House of Representatives last month narrowly passed a bill to repeal many of its clean energy measures.

Should the bill pass the Senate, billions of dollars in renewables investment once destined for the US could be looking for a new home. Now is the time for the Albanese government to woo investors with a bolder program of climate action in Australia.

What is the Inflation Reduction Act?

The Inflation Reduction Act passed US Congress in 2022. It legislated billions of dollars in tax credits for solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and geothermal plants, among other technologies.

It included around A$13 billion in rebates for Americans to electrify their homes, tax credits of almost A$11,000 to electrify their cars, and billions more to establish a “green bank” and target agricultural emissions.

The money flowed. Last year, almost A$420 billion was invested in the manufacture and deployment of clean energy – double that in 2021, the year before the legislation passed.

Even in the first quarter of this year, under a Trump presidency, A$103 billion was invested in clean energy tech – an increase on the first quarter results of 2024. Electric vehicle manufacturing projects, especially batteries, were standout performers.

But then came the proposed repeal. The Trump administration wants to gut tax credits for clean energy technologies. The measures passed the House of Representatives and must now clear the US Senate, where the Republicans have a margin of three votes.

Initial modelling suggests the bill, if passed, could derail clean energy manufacturing in the US – including in Republican states where new projects were planned.

The potential economic damage has sparked concern even among Trump’s own troops. Some Republicans last week reportedly urged the scaling back of the cuts, despite voting for the bill in the House.

Opportunities for Australia

After the IRA was enacted, many countries followed the US’ lead – including Australia’s Albanese government, which legislated the A$22.7 billion Future Made in Australia package.

So how will Trump’s unravelling of the policy affect the rest of the world?

The economic impacts are still being modelled. Some studies suggest the US could cede A$123 billion in investment to other countries.

The US axing of tax credits for battery and solar technology paves the way for nations such as China and South Korea to capitalise – given, for example, they already dominate battery manufacturing.

Australia should be doing its utmost to attract investors that no longer see the US as an option. Our existing policies are a start, but they are not sufficient.

In February this year, Labor increased the investment capacity of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation – Australia’s “green bank” – by A$2 billion. But more will be needed if the government is serious about crowding-in private investment in low-emission technologies exiting the US.

The government would also be wise to remove incentives that increase fossil fuel use. This includes the diesel fuel rebate, which encourages the use of diesel-powered trucks on mine sites. Fortescue Metals this week announced a push for the subsidy to be wound back – potentially providing the political opening Labor needs.

What about nuclear?

Trump has also promised a “nuclear renaissance”, signing four executive orders designed to reinvigorate the US nuclear energy industry.

But those measures are likely to fail, just as Trump’s 2016 promise to revive the coal industry never eventuated.

In fact, his cuts to the Loan Programs Office – which helps finance new energy projects including nuclear – threaten to undermine the viability of new nuclear plants. The office has been the guarantor for every new US nuclear plant this century, bar one.

If the US is struggling to scale up its existing nuclear industry, this does not bode well for the technology’s hopes in Australia. Here, the prospect of a nuclear energy policy still appears alive in the Coalition party room, even though the technology remains politically unpopular, and the economics don’t stack up.

What’s next?

Predicting US climate and energy policy is a fool’s errand, given the potential IRA repeal, flip-flopping tariff announcements and daily social media tirades from Trump, including a social media bust-up with former ally Elon Musk over the merits of the repeal itself.

Stepping back from the politics, we cannot ignore the climate harms flowing from a walk-back on US climate action.

The US is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. As climate change reaches new extremes, the policy vacuum created by Donald Trump must urgently be filled by the rest of the world.

Christian Downie, Professor, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For decades, scientists have known that platypuses and echidnas – Australia’s unique egg-laying mammals – have another developmental quirk: they don’t use the same genetic toolkit as other mammals to develop male and female embryos.

What’s more, just how they do it has been a mystery. Until now.

In a recent study published in Genome Biology, our research team has found strong evidence that monotreme sex comes down to a single gene – one that’s much more like what we see in some fish and amphibians than other mammals.

The search for the secret of monotreme sex

The Australian platypus and echidna are monotremes, the most ancient living group of mammals. These unique creatures are famously the only mammals to lay eggs, and they also have other reptile-like features.

Humans and many other mammal species have two sex-determining chromosomes, X and Y. An embryo with an XX pair of chromosomes will develop as female, while an XY pair leads to a male embryo.

In many mammals, the process that makes an embryo develop as male is triggered by a gene called SRY on the male Y chromosome. However, the SRY gene in monotremes has never been found.

About 20 years ago, it was discovered that monotremes have an entirely different system that uses multiple X and Y chromosomes. Scientists assumed the Y chromosomes must still hold a gene that determined sex, but very little was known about what it might be.

In 2008 a full genome sequence of a platypus was published, which was a step in the right direction. However, the genome was from a female so it had no information about Y chromosomes.

By 2021, a new and improved platypus genome and a first echidna genome included sequences of multiple Y chromosomes. A gene emerged as the frontrunner for the role of sex determination in monotremes: the anti-Muellerian hormone (or AMH), which is involved in the sexual development in many animals.

A 100-million-year-old change

Our new research provides the first real evidence that an adapted version of AMH found on one of the monotreme Y chromosomes (dubbed AMHY) is the sex determination gene in monotremes.

We showed that changes in the AMH gene long ago, early in the evolution of monotremes, could explain how AMHY arose and took on a role in male sexual development.

This event would have set the stage for the evolution of the novel sex chromosome system in the ancestor of today’s platypus and echidna, about 100 million years ago when the AMH gene on the XY chromosomes embarked on separated paths.

We showed that although the AMHY gene has changed significantly from the original AMH gene (AMHX), it has retained its essential features. Importantly, we could show for the first time that AMHY is turned on in the right tissue and at the right time to direct development of the testes during male development, which was an important missing piece of the puzzle.

A first for mammals

Unlike the other mammal sex determination genes, which act directly on the DNA to switch on other genes that lead to male development, AMHY is a hormone. It does not interact with DNA, but instead acts at the surface of cells to turn genes on or off.

There is growing evidence that AMHY also plays a role in sex determination in a number of fish and amphibian species. However, AMHY in monotremes would be the first known example of a hormone playing a sex-determining role in mammals.

What’s next? Our ongoing research investigate in detail how AMHX and AMHY work differently in monotremes compared to other mammals.

The work discussed in this article was carried out by researchers from the University of Adelaide, the University of Melbourne, the University of Queensland, Monash University and Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.

Linda Shearwin, Researcher, Comparative Genome Biology Laboratory, University of Adelaide and Frank Grützner, Professor, School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Over the past 50 years, global aquaculture including fish, mussel and seaweed farms has grown dramatically. Almost half of the world’s wild-caught fish is used to produce fishmeal and oils that feed farmed fish.

Mussel farming provides a more sustainable alternative protein source for human diets, because mussels filter feed on plankton and do not have to be fed wild-caught fish. Mussel farming also takes some pressure off the need for so much industrial agriculture and fish farming, and could therefore help reduce greenhouse gas emissions of food production – in line with the UK’s goal to reach net zero by 2050.

Most mussel farms are typically located in sheltered bays but as space to grow mussels inshore is limited, there isn’t always room to grow mussels at scale.

Some coastal mussel farms can damage the environment as the mussel waste accumulates and can deplete oxygen in sediments, which in turn affects the animals that live in and on the seabed. As a result, offshore mussel farming (growing and harvesting mussels far from the coast) is becoming increasingly attractive.

In Lyme Bay on the south coast of England, the UK’s first offshore mussel farm has been in operation since 2013. This farm has a licensed area of 6 square miles (15.4km²) and is located 2-6 miles away from the coast. To grow the mussels, the farmers deploy long ropes that are anchored to the seabed and kept afloat using large buoys.

Local science, global stories. This article is part of a series, Secrets of the Sea, exploring how marine scientists are developing climate solutions. In collaboration with the BBC, Anna Turns travels around the West Country coastline to meet ocean experts making exciting discoveries beneath the waves.

Blue mussels (Mytilus edulis) naturally settle on these ropes. Hands-on input is minimal – the farmers need only distribute small mussels around the farm so they have space to naturally grow to the desired size, before they are harvested after 12-to-18 months. This farm is now producing more than 2,000 tonnes of high-quality, rope-grown mussels in a fully offshore marine environment.

The Lyme Bay mussel farm, managed by family-run company Offshore Shellfish Ltd, was the first in Europe to be certified for best aquaculture practices by the Global Aquaculture Alliance. Its infrastructure creates physical habitat for marine species such as fish and crabs to feed, breed and shelter. The rope farm structure also prevents destructive fishing such as trawling and dredging in the area.

Our team of marine researchers have been monitoring marine life in and around this mussel farm since before the first ropes were deployed in 2013 – with the help of the local fishing community. We use their boats as research vessels to monitor how the farm’s biodiversity has changed in the past decade.

We use a range of non-destructive, remote underwater video cameras and more traditional sampling techniques to count animals that live on the mussel ropes, on the seabed and in the water column inside the farm, as well as at reference sites to the east and west of the farm.

Before the first ropes were deployed, the habitat had been degraded from years of destructive fishing, so our early observations didn’t detect much marine life. That has changed over the life of the farm, and we now see significantly increased productivity and greater biodiversity.

Over many years, our studies have shown how some mussels from the farm have fallen to the seabed and regenerated lost shell reefs. The farm has also boosted populations of crabs, lobsters, scallops, starfish, fish, conger eels, sharks and rays.

Our team’s Defra-funded Ropes to Reefs project builds on this annual monitoring to help us understand the potential conservation benefits of the mussel farm. We are also studying how the farm affects the nearby Lyme Bay marine protected area, and recording any “spillover effect” as commercial fish breeding within the farm move out into local fishing grounds.

We use cutting-edge technology such as acoustic telemetry and an echosounder to tag and track lobsters, thornback rays and small-spotted catsharks, and measure the total amount of fish to better understand why and when species use the farm.

This new data will enable us to calculate the full value of the Lyme Bay mussel farm to species of both conservation and commercial importance. Our findings to date show that offshore aquaculture farms like this can have positive effects on the surrounding marine ecosystem.

By creating structure and excluding the damaging effects of bottom-towed fishing, offshore mussel farms can restore degraded fishing grounds and provide a sustainable and healthy source of marine protein.

As demand for mussels increases, offshore mussel farming and other types of shellfish farming can help improve the UK’s food security and economic resilience, and enhance its seafood industry, while contributing to marine conservation and net zero goals.

Listen to episode three of Secrets of the Sea here on BBC Sounds, presented by Anna Turns for The Conversation.

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Emma Sheehan, Associate Professor of Marine Ecology, University of Plymouth and Llucia Mascorda-Cabre, Postdoctoral Researcher, Applied Marine Ecosystem Research Unit, University of Plymouth

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As Australian cities heat up and dry out, street trees are emerging as frontline defenders of urban liveability.

Street trees make city life more bearable during heatwaves. They also improve human health and wellbeing, filter pollutants and support biodiversity.

But as climate change intensifies droughts and dials up more extreme heat, can urban forests survive in a hotter, drier future?

To find out, we studied how ten of Australia’s most common non-native street trees grow and tolerate drought across seven cities. The familiar species we chose are the well-loved jacaranda and widely planted London plane tree as well as box elder, European nettle tree, honey locust, sweetgum, southern magnolia, callery pear, black locust and Chinese elm.

Unexpectedly, our new research shows several species tolerate drought better than predicted, including jacaranda and London plane. Some even put on growth spurts during droughts of unprecedented duration and heat. But others showed greater sensitivity than we had anticipated, including honey locust and black locust.

As cities plan for a hotter future, our research will help urban planners choose the toughest, most resilient street trees.

What did we do?

Street trees cool cities both through their shade and by giving off water through transpiration. These effects can lower local temperatures by several degrees, which helps offset the extra heat trapped by roads, rooftops and hard surfaces.

But the trees we rely on for cooling are vulnerable to mounting pressures from climate change. Drought, heatwaves and limited soil and water availability in cities can all threaten tree health, growth and survival.

To test how these species were coping, we chose more then 570 street trees in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, as well as Mildura in regional Victoria, Mandurah south of Perth and Parramatta and Penrith in Western Sydney.

We extracted small cores of wood from the trunk, in a process that leaves the tree alive and largely unaffected. The oldest tree we sampled was a 70-year-old southern magnolia in Sydney.

Growth rings in these cores let us reconstruct their growth histories and assess how they responded both to long-term climate patterns and extreme events such as the Black Summer of 2019–20 and the Millennium Drought from 1997–2009.

How resilient are these trees?

What we found was both reassuring and surprising.

Across all seven cities, the fastest average growth for all species was recorded in Mildura in northern Victoria. Overall, the slowest growth was found in the warmest location – Penrith.

Some species behaved predictably. The black locust grew faster in cooler, wetter cities such as Melbourne, as expected, while honey locust and Chinese elms grew more slowly in hotter cities.

But others defied expectations. Species such as London plane and southern magnolia showed consistent growth trends across cities despite the difference in heat, while others varied depending on local conditions.

Crucially, the growth records showed many street trees responded positively to wetter conditions during the warmest months, most likely due to the longer growing season and increased access to water.

Surprisingly, species such as box elder and Callery pear actually increased their growth during the very hot periods over the Black Summer of 2019–20 as well as during wetter La Niña periods in 2021–22. This suggests these species have adapted to warm urban environments – or that care and watering was provided.

What happened during drought?

During drought, street trees generally demonstrated strong resistance. This means they maintained their growth during dry periods.

But their resilience – measured by their ability to bounce back to pre-drought growth rates – was often limited, especially in drier cities.

While many street trees can withstand short-term stress, this suggests repeated or prolonged droughts can still take a toll on their long-term health.

Interestingly, species identified as vulnerable in climate models did not always show greater sensitivity to drought or climate extremes in our real-world study.

Why? Local conditions and species-level characteristics such as leaf size, wood density and water use strategy may play a significant role in determining which individual trees will thrive as the climate changes.

We also know care provided by council staff or local residents is extremely useful. When trees are irrigated during stressful conditions, they can help get the tree through tough times.

Why no eucalypts?

During their growing season each year, many northern hemisphere trees produce growth rings. These rings make it possible to reliably reconstruct their growth histories using our methods.

But most eucalypts don’t form clear annual growth rings. This is why we didn’t include spotted gums and other common eucalypts seen on city streets.

Eucalypts tend to grow whenever conditions are favourable rather than being constrained by a strict annual cycle. Only a few native species reliably produce datable annual rings, such as snow gums and alpine ash. This is because they live in cold, high elevation areas, where winter consistently limits growth each year. These conditions aren’t found in any major Australian city.

What does this mean for city planners?

Our research shows that species selection matters a great deal.

Some street trees such as jacarandas, London plane and the European nettle tree can thrive even under extreme heat and drought, while honey locust and Chinese elms are more sensitive to local conditions.

Authorities can maximise the benefits of urban forests and reduce tree decline or loss by choosing resilient species and matching them to the specific climate of each city or neighbourhood.

As climate extremes become more common, even resilient species may face new challenges.

Planting and maintaining diverse, climate-adapted urban forests will help ensure our cities remain liveable, healthy, and green in the decades to come.

Manuel Esperon-Rodriguez, Senior Lecturer in Ecology, Western Sydney University; Mark G Tjoelker, Professor of Ecology and Associate Director, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University; Matthew Brookhouse, Senior Lecturer in Ecology, Australian National University, and Sally Power, Professor of Ecology, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia’s dairy industry is in the middle of a crisis, fuelled by an almost perfect storm of challenges.

Climate change and extreme weather have been battering farmlands and impacting animal productivity, creating mounting financial strains and mental health struggles for many farmers.

Meanwhile, beyond the farm gate, consumer tastes are shifting to a range of dairy substitutes. Interest and investment in alternative dairy proteins is accelerating.

Earlier this month, industry figures warned consumers to prepare for price rises amid expected shortages of milk, butter and cheese. Already mired in uncertainty, the dairy industry is now being forced to confront some tough questions about its future head on.

Dairy under pressure

Dairy is Australia’s third-largest rural industry. It produces more than A$6 billion worth of milk each year, and directly employs more than 30,000 people.

But the sector has been under sustained pressure. This year alone, repeated extreme weather events have affected key dairy-producing regions in southern and eastern parts of Australia.

In New South Wales, dairy farmers face increased pressure from floods. In May, many regions had their monthly rainfall records broken – some by huge margins.

In Victoria, drought and water shortages are worsening. Tasmania, too, continues to endure some of the driest conditions in more than a century.

Conditions have prompted many farmers to sell down their cattle numbers to conserve feed and water.

All of this heavily impacts farm productivity. Agriculture has long been predicated on our ability to predict climate conditions and grow food or rear animals according to the cycles of nature.

As climate change disrupts weather patterns, this makes both short and long-term planning for the sector a growing challenge.

High costs, low profits

Climate change isn’t the only test. The industry has also been grappling with productivity and profitability concerns.

At the farm level, dairy farmers are feeling the impacts of high operating costs. Compared to other types of farming (such as sheep or beef), dairy farms require more plant, machinery and equipment capital, mostly in the form of specialised milking machinery.

The price of milk also has many farmers concerned. The modest increase in farmgate milk prices – just announced by dairy companies for the start of the next financial year – left many farmers disappointed. Some say the increase isn’t enough to cover rising operating costs.

Zooming out, there are concerns about a lack of family succession planning for dairy farms. Many young people are wary of taking on such burdens, and the total number of Australian dairy farms has been in steady decline – from more than 6,000 in 2015 to just 4,163 in 2023.

What’s the solution?

Is there a way to make the dairy industry more productive, profitable and sustainable? Australian Dairy Farmers is the national policy and advocacy group supporting the profitability and sustainability of the sector.

In the lead up to this year’s federal election, the group called for $399 million in government investment to address what it said were key priorities. These included:

• investment in on-farm technologies to improve efficiencies
• funding for water security
• upskilling programs for farmers
• support for succession planning.

However, as the industry struggles to grapple with a changing climate, financial strain and mental health pressures, there should also be pathways for incumbent farmers to transition, either to farming dairy differently (such as by reducing herd sizes) or exiting out of dairy farming and into something else.

Dairy without the cows

The push to make dairy production more sustainable and efficient faces its own competition. A number of techniques in development promise dairy products without the cows, through cellular agriculture – and more specifically, “precision fermentation”.

Australian company Eden Brew, in partnership with dairy giant Norco, has plans to produce and commercialise precision fermentation dairy proteins.

And last year, Australian company All G secured approval to sell precision fermentation lactoferrin (a key dairy ingredient in baby formula) in China – another animal-free milk product.

It is important to note that cost and scalability for cellular agriculture remains a challenge.

Nonetheless, Australia’s rapidly growing non-dairy milk market – soy, oat, and so on – is now worth over $600 million annually. This reflects the global shift towards plant-based options driven by health, environmental, and ethical concerns.

Is there a win-win outcome?

Is there a possible future where more funding is given to produce milk at scale through precision fermentation while we also look after incumbent dairy workers, farms and the rural sector at large to diversify or leave the sector altogether?

Some believe this future is possible. This is what researchers call “protein pluralism” – a market where traditional and alternative proteins coexist. Long-term planning from both the dairy industry and government would be needed.

Remember, while techniques like precision fermentation offer the promise of animal-free dairy products, their benefits are largely yet to materialise. How they will ultimately benefit the whole of society remains speculative.

What we can do now

For this reason, some scholars have argued we should prioritise actions that can be taken now. This includes support for practices such as agroecology, which seek to address injustice and inequity in food systems to help empower primary food producers.

A recent study found Australian dairy farmers were interested in financial and technical advice to make decisions about where they take their business in future.

Despite growing recognition of the challenges facing the dairy sector, responses from government and alternative dairy remain uneven. A more coordinated approach is needed for affected farmers, helping them adapt or diversify with guidance from government and industry experts.

Milena Bojovic, Lecturer, Sustainability and Environment, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The international space industry is on a growth trajectory, but new research shows a rapid increase in rocket launches would damage the ozone layer.

Several hundred rockets are launched globally each year by a mix of commercial companies and nation-state space programmes. These take place at around 20 sites, almost all in the northern hemisphere, with the most prolific launch rates currently from the United States, China, New Zealand and Russia.

Our latest research explores the tipping point when launching more rockets will begin to cause problems. Our findings show that once rates reach 2,000 launches a year – about a ten-fold increase on last year – the current healing of the ozone layer slows down.

We argue that with care, we can avoid this future. The economic benefits of industry growth can be realised, but it will take a collaborative effort.

Rocket launches thin the ozone layer

The ozone layer protects life on Earth from harmful solar ultraviolet (UV) rays. It is slowly healing from the effects of chlorofluorocarbons and other damaging chemicals emitted last century, thanks to global cooperative agreements under the Montreal Protocol.

Gases and particulates emitted by rockets as they punch through the atmosphere are known to thin the ozone layer. So far, they don’t cause appreciable ozone depletion, as relatively few launches take place each year.

However, launches are steadily increasing. In 2019, there were 102 launches. By 2024, that increased to 258 worldwide. There are expected to be even more in 2025. At multiple sites worldwide, the launch industry projects impressive levels of future growth.

For US-based launches, a three-fold increase in the number of rockets launched in 2023 is expected as soon as 2028.

One driver of this growth is the effort to build out satellite constellations to tens of thousands of units, positioned low in Earth’s orbit. These require many launches to create and are happening in several nations, run by a number of companies.

Once in place, these constellations require ongoing launches to keep them supplied with active satellites.

Potential delay in ozone recovery

To figure out how future launches could affect the ozone layer, we first built a database of ozone-depleting chemicals emitted by rockets currently in use. We then fed this database into a model of Earth’s atmosphere and climate, and simulated atmospheric composition under several scenarios of higher rates of rocket launches.

We found that with around 2,000 launches worldwide each year, the ozone layer thins by up to 3%. Due to atmospheric transport of rocket-emitted chemicals, we saw the largest ozone losses over Antarctica, even though most launches are taking place in the northern hemisphere.

Fortunately, the ozone losses are small. We wouldn’t expect to see catastrophic damage to humans or ecosystems. However, the losses are significant given global efforts underway to heal the ozone layer. The global abundance of ozone is still around 2% lower than before the onset of losses caused by chlorofluorocarbons.

Future ozone losses are not locked in

Encouragingly, we found no significant ozone loss in a scenario of more modest rates of around 900 launches per year. However, this is for the types of rockets that are in use right now around the world.

We focus on current launch vehicles because it is uncertain when the new and massive rockets currently in development will enter use. But these larger rockets often require far more fuel, which creates more emissions at each launch.

Rocket propellant choices make a big difference to the atmosphere. We found fuels emitting chlorine-containing chemicals or black carbon particulates have the largest effects on the ozone layer. Reducing use of these fuels as launch rates increase is key to supporting an ongoing recovery of the ozone layer.

Re-entering spacecraft and satellite debris can also cause damage. However, the global scientific community doesn’t yet fully understand the chemistry around re-entry. Our work provides a realistic “floor” for the lowest level of damage that will occur.

But it is important to remember that these effects are not locked in. It is entirely possible to create a launch industry where we avoid harmful effects, but that would require reducing use of chlorine-containing fuels, minimising black carbon emissions by new rockets and monitoring emissions.

It will take keen effort and enthusiasm from industry and regulators, working together with scientists. But this needs to start now, not after the damage is done.

Laura Revell, Associate Professor in Atmospheric Chemistry, University of Canterbury and Michele Bannister, Senior Lecturer in Astronomy, School of Physical and Chemical Sciences Te Kura Matū, University of Canterbury

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Until now, Victorians believed their state was the sole home for Leadbeater’s possum, their critically endangered state faunal emblem. This tiny marsupial is clinging to life in a few pockets of mountain ash and snow gum habitat in the Central Highlands of Victoria.

But a few days ago, seven grainy photos taken by a trail camera in New South Wales revealed something very unexpected: a Leadbeater’s possum hundreds of kilometres away in the wet forests of Kosciuszko National Park.

For decades, we and other researchers have sought proof this possum existed in these forests. Now we have it. This is a moment of celebration. But it also signals the importance of well-resourced biodiversity surveys in uncovering our most threatened species and large national parks for conserving them.

While this newly discovered population reduces the risk of extinction, it doesn’t change the decline and risk of extinction of its Victorian relatives – or the steps needed to safeguard them.

Detected entirely by chance

In 2024, New South Wales threatened species ecologists Fred Ford and Martin Schulz set about looking for an entirely different species, the endangered smoky mouse. To find it, they set up a wide array of camera traps throughout wet forest areas of Kosciuszko National Park. A year later, they collected them and trawled through millions of photos.

Among all these images (including of smoky mice), there were seven which stunned them. A camera deployed near Yarrangobilly Caves captured a tiny possum scampering through leaf litter, holding its distinctive club-shaped tail erect. The possum looks around the monitoring site, showing its back and face stripes and heart-shaped face.

Experts at The Australian National University and Zoos Victoria verified the photos, setting the ecology world abuzz.

A hunch confirmed

While we are delighted at this remarkable discovery, the detection is not a complete surprise.

Over three decades ago, this article’s lead author searched for Leadbeater’s possum around Yarrangobilly and many other parts of Kosciuszko National Park, guided by a bioclimatic model suggesting the cool wet forests in Kosciuszko National Park should suit the possum.

But detection cameras were not available then, and this possum is notoriously hard to spot. It’s tiny, nocturnal and spends its waking hours dashing through the dense understory of some of the world’s tallest forests looking for nectar, sap and insects.

Species experts from Zoos Victoria and Deakin University have also scouted parts of Kosciuszko National Park over the past decade, identifying potentially promising habitat.

In 2010 we got confirmation the possum had once occurred in the area, when jaw bones were identified among bones regurgitated by owls on the floor of a nearby cave.

But other bones from the cave floor date back an estimated 140–200 years. The bones were far from proof of a living population.

The possum’s existence remained an open question until these photos.

What does this mean for this possum?

We don’t know anything about this newly discovered Leadbeater’s possum population in NSW, other than the fact that it exists. Given the distance from the Victorian populations, we suspect that they may be genetically distinct.

In theory, the existence of a separate population 250 km away from the Victorian populations cuts the risk a single megafire or other catastrophe could push the species to extinction.

But while welcome, the discovery doesn’t reduce the need to urgently protect surviving Victorian populations, which remain highly threatened by bushfire, climate change, predation by cats, and the legacy of logging and land clearing.

In Victoria, some populations have dwindled as low as 40 animals and inbreeding is now a concern.

The possum typically relies on large old trees with hollows where it can breed and den. But these trees have substantially declined in Victoria over the past 150 years. Leadbeater’s possum also needs smaller trees for feeding and movement.

Surveys across the historical range of the species in Victoria since 2017 have failed to find any other hidden populations. Most surveys have found the habitat highly degraded from logging and fire.

The discovery won’t alter the possum’s critically endangered status at this stage, nor the ongoing work to support it.

In welcome news, the NSW Environment Minister announced the possum’s state conservation listing will be fast-tracked.

Of surveys and parks

Why did it take so long to find the possum? The main reason: a lack of resources preventing targeted investigations.

Even basic inventories of species have not been done across many of Australia’s important conservation areas.

Without well conducted surveys and monitoring, we are left overly reliant on chance detections for critical information. There could be other populations of imperilled species waiting to be rediscovered.

Properly managing our growing number of threatened species shouldn’t be based on luck. It should be enabled by adequate resources for threatened species recovery teams to discover, map, protect and manage threatened species and their habitat.

Increasing federal spending on the care of nature to 1% of the budget would go a very long way to closing these gaps.

Trail cameras, call playback and environmental DNA sampling mean we can now survey large and remote natural areas with relatively little effort for long periods of time.

Big parks are essential

Kosciuszko National Park supports much more than Australia’s highest mountains. The huge park spans 690,000 hectares, much of it forest.

Many of our most imperilled species are hard to detect. Protecting extensive areas of good-quality habitat boosts the survival chances for these species, even if we don’t yet have proof of life.

With so little high-quality habitat left in Australia, proper protection through new national parks (including in Victoria) is vitally important for the possum and many other species.

Passive protection isn’t enough either – adequate funding is critical to stop the environmental condition of parks from declining, due to threats like invasive species and extreme fires.

The world still contains wonder

These seven photos have given ecologists and nature lovers a real boost to their spirits. As detection techniques improve, what else is out there waiting to be found?

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Leadbeater’s possum experts Dan Harley, Arabella Eyre, John Woinarski and Brendan Wintle to this article.

David Lindenmayer, Distinguished Professor of Ecology, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University; Darcy Watchorn, Threatened Species Biologist, Wildlife Conservation & Science Department, Zoos Victoria, and Visiting Scholar, School of Life & Environmental Science, Deakin University, and Jaana Dielenberg, University Fellow in Biodiversity, Charles Darwin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Big animals of the ocean go about their days mostly hidden from view. Scientists know this marine megafauna – such as whales, sharks, seal, turtles and birds – travel vast distances to feed and breed.

But almost a third are now at risk of extinction due largely to fishing, shipping, pollution and global warming.

Protecting them can be difficult, because we don’t often know where these animals are.

New research I led sought to shed light on the issue. My colleagues and I gathered 30 years of satellite tracking data to map hotspots of megafauna activity around the globe.

We tracked 12,794 animals from 111 species to find out where they go. The results reveal underwater “highways” where megafauna crisscross the global Ocean. They also show where megafauna dwell for feeding and breeding. Now we know where these special places are, we have a better chance of protecting them.

Pulling all the data together: a mega task

For more than 30 years, marine biologists have tagged large animals in the sea with electronic devices and tracked their movements via satellite. The trackers capture data on everything from speed of travel, to direction of movement and where the animals spend most of their time.

I put a call out to the global research community to bring together the tracking data. I hoped it would help scientists better understand the animals’ movements and identify their favourite places.

Some 378 scientists from 50 countries responded. We assembled the world’s largest tracking dataset of marine megafauna. It includes species of flying birds, whales, fishes (mostly sharks), penguins, polar bears, seals, dugongs, manatees and turtles. They were tracked between 1985 and 2018, throughout the world’s oceans.

Mapping reveals a lack of protection

When we started analysing the data, it showed the tagged animals used some parts of the ocean more frequently than others. Most of them travelled to the central Indian Ocean, northeast Pacific Ocean, Atlantic north, and waters around Mozambique and South Africa.

It’s likely this reflects a lack of data from elsewhere. However, these species are known to go to places where they are most likely to find food, so we expect some areas to be used more than others (including the areas we detected).

Then we were able to identify the world’s most “ecologically and biologically significant areas” for the tracked animals.

Currently only about 8% of the global ocean is protected. And only 5% of the important marine megafauna areas we identified occur within these existing marine protected areas.

This leaves all of the other important marine megafauna areas we identified unprotected. In other words, the species using those areas are likely to suffer harm from human activities taking place at sea.

More than 90% of the important marine megafauna areas we identified are exposed to high plastic pollution, shipping traffic or to intensifying global warming. And about 75% are exposed to industrial fishing.

We also found marine megafauna tend to spend most of their time within exclusive economic zones. This area lies beyond the territorial sea or belt of water 12 nautical miles from the coast of each country, extending 200 nautical miles from shore. The presence of megafauna in these exclusive economic zones means individual countries could increase the protection afforded within their jurisdictions.

About 40% of the important marine megafauna areas were located in these zones. But about 60% were on the high seas.

The future of marine megafauna conservation

The High Seas Treaty, recently adopted by the United Nations and signed by 115 countries, governs the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological biodiversity on the open ocean.

Working alongside this treaty, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework aims to protect 30% of the global ocean by 2030. This presents an opportunity to ensure important marine megafauna areas are well represented.

We used an optimisation algorithm to identify the best areas to protect, when it comes to marine megafauna. We gave priority to areas that are potentially used for feeding, breeding, resting and migrating across all the different species.

But even if important marine megafauna areas are selected when 30% of the ocean is protected, about 60% of these areas would still stay unprotected.

Significant risks from human activities will remain. Management efforts must also focus on reducing harm from fishing and shipping. Fighting climate change and cutting down noise and plastic pollution should also be key priorities.

Like for most megafauna on land, the reign of marine megafauna might come to an end if humanity does not afford these species greater protection.

Ana M. M. Sequeira, Associate Professor, Research School of Biology, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Robert Macfarlane is not easy to pin down – song writer, nature writer, children’s author, environmental activist, documentary film maker, mountain climber and restless adventurer, spoken word performer, literary historian, librettist, linguist and researcher. Likewise, his books are so various and yet so much themselves, it seems he has forged his own genre.

Review: Is a River Alive? – Robert Macfarlane (Penguin Random House)

He has won many kinds of prizes for his books, so many that he has been spoken of as a likely Nobel Prize winner several times over the past few years. Each of his books changes the world a little, possibly sometimes profoundly.

His latest takes as its title and starting point a question his young son once put to him, “Is a River Alive?” If we can talk of rivers dying (and we do), then isn’t there an assumption somewhere along that line of thought that a river does indeed constitute a life?

MacFarlane lives south of Cambridge, England, not far from a rare chalk stream spring that feeds the early reaches of the River Cam, which flows through the town. This is one of the four troubled rivers he explores across the pages of his book.

In England, climate change will put such springs at risk not too far into the future. He reports in his brief inter-chapters on the River Cam that the nationwide privatisation of riverways has put the health of England’s rivers at risk of dying as viable natural ecosystems.

His book takes us across the globe. To the Ecuadorian cloud-forest named Los Cedros, where the “river of the Cedars” is under threat from gold-mining.

Then to Chennai in south-east India, a city of three rivers and a surrounding marshland. All three rivers have been declared “dead” due to a total lack of dissolved oxygen in their waters as they pass through this city of three million people, taking up raw sewage and industrial waste in huge quantities.

The final journey is into Quebec’s wild Magpie River, named Muteshekau-Shipu by the Innu people who have lived for 8,000 years with this river. Its flow, he writes, is now threatened by a hydro scheme that would transform it into a series of chained reservoirs – an incursion into one of the largest intact ecosystems in the world. Already, power lines from a just-completed hydro scheme that has drowned a nearby river are crossing the Muteshekau.

We visit, alongside Macfarlane, each of these rivers, and encounter with him the characters entangled with them. Often these individuals are quixotically heroic, damaged by their tilting against governments and corporations, deeply insightful, determinedly optimistic, and always (in his appreciative hands) articulate.

Each river is at the forefront of the emergence of what Macfarlane calls a new-old idea. This idea has been newly pioneered in recent years by the ecologist, historian and theologian-turned-geologian Thomas Berry, one of the philosophical fathers of the Rights of Nature Movement.

Berry has coined the phrase “Earth Jurisprudence” to recognise and uphold the idea of earth as “a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects”. Under this juridical philosophy, “trees have tree rights, insects have insect rights, rivers have river rights, and mountains have mountain rights”.

An idea beginning to happen

Towards the end of Macfarlane’s book, the Innu poet, artist, therapist, river guide and mystic Lydia Mestokosho-Paradis declares,

It seems crazy that we give a corporation that’s ten years old rights, but we won’t give rights to a ten-thousand-year-old river.

How to bring such an imagined and imaginative, partly spiritual idea into the realm of law? It has begun to happen, perhaps most strikingly in 2008 when Ecuador under the guidance of the socialist government of Rafael Correa passed into existence a new constitution that recognised the Rights of Nature alongside those of humanity and its corporations.

The major article of the new constitution stated,

Nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.

It is possible this declaration in their constitution will in time close the gold mines in the cloud-forest of Los Cedros.

In 2017, extraordinarily, New Zealand passed legislation called the Te Awa Tupua Act, which recognises the Whanganui River in the North Island is alive, is an ancestor to the Whanganui iwi (tribe), and is itself a spiritual and physical entity, “an indivisible and living whole”.

This legislation has encouraged individuals and groups around the world to agitate for their rivers’ lives to be recognised and respected in law.

“There are few things as powerful as an idea whose time has come,” Macfarlane writes, certainly more in hope than hubris at this tipping point for the world’s climate and its climate politics.

Many difficult questions connected to these ideas must be raised, and they have no easy answers. To what, exactly, does a river have a right? Who can speak for a river? What might be the reasonable consequences or compensations to be made when a river’s rights are compromised or denied? Can a river sue a corporation? Can a river act purposefully? What do sciences have to say about the idea of a river being an entity?

And so the conversation goes, on into the night, by riverbanks, around small camp fires, often among people who feel connected to their rivers, responsible for them, or just lucky to have a chance to kayak them before they disappear.

This book will in part be a test of whether this idea’s time has indeed come, and of how urgent we feel it is to find legal, actionable answers to the many claims and consequences it gives rise to. That is the great gift Macfarlane’s “future-dreaming” has given to the world.

Kevin John Brophy, Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia’s economy slowed sharply in the March quarter, growing by just 0.2% as government spending slowed and extreme weather events dampened demand. That followed an increase of 0.6% in the previous quarter.

The national accounts report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed annual growth steady at 1.3%, below market forecasts for an improvement to 1.5%.

The result is also weaker than the Reserve Bank of Australia’s forecasts.

The ABS said: “Extreme weather events further dampened domestic demand and reduced exports”, with the impact particularly evident in mining, tourism and shipping.

This report on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be a key consideration for the Reserve Bank’s next meeting on July 7–8, helping shape its decision on whether to cut rates again. In May, the central bank cut the cash rate by 0.25% to 3.85%.

On balance, the softer than expected pace of growth makes another rate cut in July a bit more likely.

Private demand drives growth as public spending slumps

Household spending slowed to 0.4% in the quarter from 0.7%. Essential spending led the way, with a sharp 10.2% rise in electricity costs due to a warmer-than-usual summer and reduced electricity bill rebates. Food spending also increased as Queenslanders stocked up ahead of Tropical Cyclone Alfred.

Investment also contributed to growth, though its composition shifted. Private investment rose 0.7%, driven by a rebound in house building and strong non-dwelling construction, particularly in mining and electricity projects. But business investment in equipment and machinery slumped.

Public investment fell 2.0%, ending a run of positive growth since September 2024. This decline, which detracted 0.1 percentage points from GDP, reflected the completion or delay of energy, rail and road projects.

“Public spending recorded the largest detraction from growth since the September quarter 2017”, the ABS said.

Disappointing trade performance

Exports unexpectedly became the main drag on growth in the March quarter, marking a sharp turnaround from December 2024.

Total exports fell 0.8%, led by a drop in services – particularly travel – due to weaker foreign student arrivals and lower spending. Goods exports also declined as bad weather disrupted coal and natural gas shipments, and demand from key markets like China and Japan softened.

The growth outlook is soft

Given the weaker-than-expected growth in the March quarter, Australia’s economic outlook remains soft.

A disappointing sign in the report was another fall in GDP per head of population, known as GDP per capita. This measure declined by 0.2%, after just one quarterly rise and seven previous quarters of a “per capita recession”, when population growth outpaces economic growth.

The household saving rate continue to rise in the March quarter, back to pre-COVID levels at 5.2%. This is because income grew faster than spending, and households remain cautious amid economic uncertainty. Additional government support also boosted savings.

The economic slowdown reflects weak household spending and a notable pullback in public sector investment. With domestic demand under strain, short-term growth prospects appear limited as the economy continues to adjust to past interest rate hikes and the early effects of the recent cuts.

The Reserve Bank began cutting official rates in February – its first move after 13 consecutive hikes between May 2022 and November 2023 – but the impact has yet to flow through. The next GDP figures, due on September 3, will offer a clearer picture of how the February and May rate cuts are shaping the recovery.

Trade tensions add uncertainty

Global conditions have become more unsettled, with rising trade tensions and shifting geopolitical alliances putting pressure on international trade. Renewed tariff threats – particularly from the US – are disrupting global supply chains. For export-reliant Australia, this increases the risk of weaker trade volumes and greater exposure to external shocks.

At the same time, China’s post-pandemic recovery is losing momentum, dragged down by weak consumer demand and a struggling property sector.

Given Australia’s close trade ties with China, any sustained slowdown there poses a clear threat to export earnings and broader economic growth. Together, these global headwinds are adding to the uncertainty surrounding Australia’s economic outlook.

A balancing act on rates

With demand soft and the economy losing momentum, the Reserve Bank may cut interest rates again at its July meeting to help boost growth. Key sectors like household spending, public services and mining have been under pressure. A further rate cut could support confidence and encourage more spending.

However, the monthly inflation report for April adds uncertainty. While headline inflation held steady at 2.4% over the year to April, underlying measures ticked higher. The monthly rate excluding volatile items such as fuel and fresh food rose to 2.8%, up from 2.6%. That suggests price pressures are becoming more widespread.

These mixed signals leave the RBA facing a delicate balancing act. Upcoming data, particularly the employment report on June 19 and the May monthly inflation indicator on June 25, will be critical in determining whether inflation is easing enough to justify another cut or showing signs of persistence that call for caution.

Stella Huangfu, Associate Professor, School of Economics, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“I wish adults knew that I really care about the environment and want to help, but I sometimes feel like my ideas don’t matter because I’m just a kid.”

This is what a nine-year-old respondent told us when we asked how they feel about the environment.

In today’s current political climate, many adults seem resigned to climate catastrophe and even dabble in climate change denialism. However, our survey of 1,000 youth aged eight to 14 from Canada and the United States found that children care deeply about the planet and are ready to take action.

The findings from our report were produced as part of an ongoing study with the Humanity in Motion Society, a Canadian non-profit organization focused on engaging youth as key stakeholders in advancing environmental stewardship.

Almost 90 per cent of the kids we spoke to recognize climate change as a real and urgent problem, calling for intergenerational collaboration and bolder environmental mitigation and adaptation commitments.

It turns out that our nine-year-old respondent speaks for many children. Kids know what’s at stake, want a seat at the table and need adults to act with them.

What kids told us

Many of the kids told us they regularly take action to mitigate their carbon footprint, including recycling, embracing reusable items and conserving energy. Their accounts are consistent with numerous academic studies on youth involvement in environmental citizenship.

However, many understand individual action alone is not enough. In fact, most kids recognize that systemic accountability is necessary to tackle the climate crisis. As one kid in Grade 6 shared:

“I wish big industry and governments would stop asking us to do something when they continue to fly in private jets [and] drill for oil and more; we are asked to recycle.”

Kids have a deep understanding of current political issues, including the cost-of-living crisis and the harmful “drill baby drill” sentiments, but also underscore a stark disconnect: while we instil environmentally responsible values in our children, elected leaders remain consistently inactive on these very same issues.

Kids play active roles in knowledge sharing

The kids in this study display impressive knowledge about the steps that need to be taken to address the climate crisis. Our findings demonstrate that youth are not just passive recipients of knowledge but, rather, play an active role in being climate communicators.

For example, two thirds of our respondents say their friends learn about climate change directly from them. Even though many children note that they do not have climate clubs at school, they are curious about the role of big oil, deforestation and corporate greed in the ongoing climate crisis.

In addition to teachers and parents being the most influential sources of knowledge for children, social media content has an impact on kids’ environmental behaviour and feelings of empowerment.

Specifically, our data shows that talking to others online has a significant positive relationship with reported sustainable behaviour, and that watching videos has a significant positive relationship with how much kids feel they can make a difference. One young girl reflected on using Tiktok for insights on climate change while also capturing an awareness among her generation:

“I would say if there’s a really big issue, like, I know there’s something called the Climate Clock in New York…I mean, the thing with social media, you never know what’s true and untrue, but that thing [Climate Clock] came on my ‘For You’ page…and everybody in the comments, they were saying ‘this is very real, we have to do something about it.’”

This shows that kids would benefit greatly from spaces to continue in-person environmental discussions with adults in the room. One young respondent captured the potential for meaningful engagement:

“There are a lot of things that can be done, curriculum integrations…sustainable skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and maybe explore the ecosystems and biodiversities and actually encourage students to design and implement climate-friendly projects and carry out field trips and organize visits to renewable energy sites or environmental organizations and sometimes, maybe occasionally, the school can invite climate experts, activists or scientists.”

These ideas were shared by others who called on adults to lead more experiential approaches to climate education inside the classroom and beyond.

Five calls to action

Here are five ways to help bring about change:

1. Adults need to step up. Adults play a critical role in shaping how youth engage in climate action. Our report found that teachers and parents, in addition to the internet, are among the most influential learning sources for youth today. Kids often take pro-environmental values, actions and cues from their parents.

2. Apathy is not an option if we want change. Youth are looking to leaders and elected officials to invest heavily in infrastructure and education to improve our environment.

3. Intergenerational collaboration promotes better environmental values. Despite the consequences of climate change, youth share a sense of optimism and emphasize the need for intergenerational responsibility.

4. Provide spaces for youth to take leadership roles and engage in climate dialogue. Kids want to do more to build a sustainable future, but don’t know where to begin. Providing opportunities in the classroom and beyond are critical next steps to raise the next generation of climate leaders.

5. Promote bold action. Kids should be able to answer the call of many climate activists who recognize the need to pursue a greener economy by working together.

Our survey findings highlight a hopeful message about young people’s engagement in climate action, underscoring their impressive knowledge of the systemic changes required to address the crisis.

As adults across the political spectrum bicker about climate policy, young people are growing impatient and hoping to lead the way. Our results refocus attention on the future we’re creating and challenge us to listen seriously to children when they seek to address what may be their generation’s greatest crisis.

Jen Kostuchuk, PhD Candidate, Sociology, University of Victoria; Erik Steiner, Ph.D. Student, Marketing, York University, Canada, and Sean Lyons, Professor, Leadership and Management, University of Guelph

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Top End of Australia’s Northern Territory contains an extensive, awe-inspiring expanse of tropical savanna landscapes. It includes well-known and much-loved regions such as Darwin, Kakadu National Park, Arnhem Land and Nitmiluk Gorge.

These tropical savannas feature open forests and woodlands dominated by eucalypts and a diverse grassy understorey. They experience an intense monsoon-driven wet season and long dry season during which fire is common.

The area is home to a spectacular range of plants and animals, including crocodiles, barramundi, speartooth sharks, the spectacularly coloured Leichhardt’s grasshopper and flocks of magpie geese. Some groups are extraordinarily diverse. Several thousand ant species are thought to live there – compared to just 1,000 species in South America’s Amazon basin.

Yet, despite their immense ecological and cultural significance, the NT’s tropical savannas face an uncertain future. The landscape is under increasing pressure from invasive species, more frequent and severe fires, climate change, mining, agriculture and development – including water extraction.

Our new report outlines what should be done to ensure conservation and sustainable management of this unique and special region.

A region in trouble

As ecologists, we share a deep passion for tropical Northern Australia but fear for its future. To aid environmental policy and decision-making, we set out to describe the current condition and likely future of the NT’s tropical savannas. This involved identifying existing, emerging and possible future threats.

We found biodiversity in decline. Many species, particularly mammals that were once common and widespread, have disappeared from much of the region. These include the northern quoll, brush-tailed rabbit-rat and black-footed tree-rat.

Habitats are degraded and ecosystems are showing signs of collapse. Feral animals are widespread. Cats prey on native wildlife. Feral pigs feast on turtle nests and trash plants in and around waterways, reducing water quality. Cattle, water buffalo, horses and donkeys eat their way through native plants, reducing habitat structure and complexity, aiding the establishment and spread of weeds.

In many parts of the Top End, fires are becoming more frequent and severe. This is in part due to the increasing dominance of invasive grasses, particularly Gamba and buffel grass. Both grasses are highly flammable, increasing the risk and harm of fires.

Longer and hotter dry seasons also increase fire risk and severity, as well as making water less available to wildlife due to higher rates of evaporation. Plants and animals also face greater heat stress and risk of dying during extended periods of extreme temperatures.

The changing nature of land-clearing

Land-clearing is increasing in the Top End, too. We estimate about 45,000 hectares of savanna habitat was destroyed between 2000 and 2020. That’s equivalent to an area roughly the size of 22,500 Melbourne Cricket Grounds.

Another 146,000 hectares have approval to be cleared, and an additional 100,000 hectares could be cleared for an expanded cotton industry.

It is not just the amount of clearing that matters, but where it occurs. The habitat mainly destroyed to date has been in higher rainfall areas between Darwin and Katherine. This is where most threatened species live. On average, the cleared areas overlapped with more than 12 nationally listed threatened species.

What should be done?

Our report shows current laws are insufficient to protect the Northern Territory’s tropical savannas. Evidence-based law reform is urgently needed.

Decision-making must be collaborative, not controlled by individuals, based on sound science. It must also actively support and involve First Nations peoples and their goals.

The situation in the NT reflects broader calls to strengthen national environmental laws as a matter of urgency and greatly boost investment in conservation to achieve positive results for nature.

Nature is the lynchpin of northern Australia. It characterises and nurtures the place, underpins and embraces Indigenous culture, is a major tourist attraction and helps make our country healthy. We need to recognise its value, and guard against its ongoing loss.

Our report was independently reviewed by experts in the ecology and conservation of Northern Australia, Professors Richard Williams and Christopher Johnson.

Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University; Brett Murphy, Professor of Ecology, Charles Darwin University, and John Woinarski, Professor of Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

According to Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, the latest emissions data show “we are on track to reach our 2030 targets” under the Paris Agreement. In 2024, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions were “27% below 2005 levels”. That’s great news, right?

Well, yes and no. Australia continues to rely on changes in land use to compensate for emissions released into the atmosphere.

In other words, Australia’s plants are considered to be taking more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere now than in 2005. Their efforts are captured in the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector, which is the single largest reason for the significant reduction in Australian emissions.

Without accounting for land use, Australia’s emissions have only decreased 3% since 2005, not 27%.

If Australia is serious about reducing emissions and tracking towards net zero by 2050, we need to tackle a series of inconvenient truths about fossil fuels. Fossil fuels feed into almost every aspect of our lives, not just cars and power plants. There are substitutes, but they are not easy to source – and they don’t come cheap.

How fossil fuel exports drive up emissions here and overseas

Australia is one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel exporters. The coal, oil and natural gas we export is either burnt or combined with our sizeable iron ore exports to produce iron. But the greenhouse gases are released overseas, so they don’t count in Australia’s emissions data.

This is in line with our international commitments under the Paris agreement. But there is an argument to be made that even though Australia doesn’t burn those exports, we should acknowledge our central role in contributing to global emissions. We may need to account for these in future reporting.

Australia’s export emissions are likely to be triple that of our domestic emissions. These emissions have been increasing consistently over the last decade.

But the process of extracting fossil fuels and preparing them for export does show up in Australia’s domestic emission figures, through what’s called “fugitive emissions”. These fugitive emissions are the unavoidable leaks that occur when we pull fossil fuels out of the ground, store, transport and process them.

In the year to 2024, fugitive emissions accounted for 10.6% of our emissions, which is far greater than emissions from industrial processes (6.8%).

Disturbingly, recent analysis suggests fugitive emissions could be drastically underreported. Because these emissions are tricky to measure, they are often estimated on an average basis. This means reported values do not accurately reflect true releases.

When it comes to fugitive and export emissions, Australia is not on track to meet 2030 targets. Recent export-focused fossil project approvals such as the North West Shelf gas project suggest we might even be backtracking.

The transition to renewables

Closing dirty old coal-fired power stations and replacing them with renewable energy such as solar and wind power does cut emissions. The reduction in emissions from the electricity sector, down 23.7% on 2005 levels, is good news. But the difference is still small enough that seasonal variations from Tasmania’s hydro power plants can distort the annual figures.

At least there is a plan in place for the energy transition. Big, slow wheels are in motion.

Unfortunately the reality is we will need much, much more renewable energy in the future. Up to three times the current capacity of the National Electricity Market will be needed to cover future domestic energy requirements across electricity and other sectors out to 2050.

Significantly more would be required to generate enough additional green energy to also produce green value-added commodities.

Australia’s clean energy challenge

Discussions around transitioning from fossil fuels typically overlook how deeply they are embedded in our everyday lives.

Not just the fuel we use in our cars, but the roads we drive on. Not just the electricity we use to power our hospitals, but the steel used to build them and the pharmaceuticals we rely on.

Globally, around 13% of fossil fuels are not burned but used to make these key chemicals. What’s the alternative?

Clean electricity is the key.

Electricity can be used to make hydrogen from water through electrolysis. This hydrogen can then replace fossil fuels in manufacturing – making products such as green steel and ammonia for fertiliser.

When combined with non-fossil sources of carbon, hydrogen can also be turned into renewable fuels, such as sustainable aviation fuel. It can be used to synthesise green versions of petrochemicals used in industrial processes such as ethanol, propylene and ethylene, which are currently sourced from fossil fuels.

This takes energy. Lots of it. Fortunately Australia has all the ingredients needed for a booming green industry – one that’s much broader than just renewable electricity.

Currently, it costs more to produce these chemicals without using fossil fuels. That’s why some companies and state governments have been pulling back from their investments in green hydrogen.

Most people talk about green hydrogen in the context of energy storage or export. But it can also enable the transition away from fossil fuels in other sectors. The technology exists to make these chemicals and products, without the emissions and it’s slowly but steadily moving closer toward price parity.

If we can nail this switch to fossil-free alternatives to petrochemicals, Australia would be able to add value onshore, rather than exporting raw materials. For example, we could export iron, not iron ore. Methanol or ammonia, not hydrogen. Export the jumper, not the wool.

Heavy industry driven by renewables?

On Sunday, Bowen said he found some areas of the 2024 emissions figures “encouraging, like industrial emissions, way down and lower than 2021”.

Unfortunately, this result was partly due to a decline in manufacturing. Onshore manufacturing capability has been steadily decreasing, despite increased fossil fuel extraction.

Unless we ramp up green manufacturing – replacing fossil fuel exports with much needed renewable products and fuels – we will continue to bear responsibility, if not direct accountability, for large, exported emissions as well as onshore fugitive emissions.

And no amount of changes to land use can account for that.

Emma Lovell, Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, UNSW Sydney and Jessica Allen, Senior Lecturer in Chemical and Renewable Energy Engineering, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In June 2023, a record-breaking marine heatwave swept across the North Atlantic Ocean, smashing previous temperature records.

Soon after, deadly heatwaves broke out across large areas of Europe, and torrential rains and flash flooding devastated parts of Spain and Eastern Europe. That year Switzerland lost more than 4% of its total glacier volume, and severe bushfires broke out around the Mediterranean.

It wasn’t just Europe that was impacted. The coral reefs of the Caribbean were bleaching under severe heat stress. And hurricanes, fuelled by ocean heat, intensified into disasters. For example, Hurricane Idalia hit Florida in August 2023 – causing 12 deaths and an estimated US$3.6 billion in damages.

Today, in a paper published in Nature, we uncover what drove this unprecedented marine heatwave.

A strange discovery

In a strange twist to the global warming story, there is a region of the North Atlantic Ocean to the southeast of Greenland that has been cooling over the last 50 to 100 years.

This so-called “cold blob” or “warming hole” has been linked to the weakening of what’s known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – a system of ocean currents that conveys warm water from the equator towards the poles.

During July 2023 we met as a team to analyse this cold blob – how deep it reaches and how robust it is as a measure of the strength of the Atlantic overturning circulation – when it became clear there was a strong reversal of the historical cooling trend. The cold blob had warmed to 2°C above average.

But was that a sign the overturning circulation had been reinvigorated? Or was something else going on?

A layered story

It soon became clear the anomalous warm temperatures southeast of Greenland were part of an unprecedented marine heatwave that had developed across much of the North Atlantic Ocean. By July, basin-averaged warming in the North Atlantic reached 1.4°C above normal, almost double the previous record set in 2010.

To uncover what was behind these record breaking temperatures, we combined estimates of the atmospheric conditions that prevailed during the heatwave, such as winds and cloud cover, with ocean observations and model simulations.

We were especially interested in understanding what was happening in the mixed upper layer of water of the ocean, which is strongly affected by the atmosphere.

Distinct from the deeper layer of cold water, the ocean’s surface mixed layer warms as it’s exposed to more sunlight during spring and summer. But the rate at which this warming happens depends on its thickness. If it’s thick, it will warm more gradually; if it’s thin, rapid warming can ensue.

During summer the thickness of this surface mixed layer is largely set by winds. Winds churn up the surface ocean and the stronger they are the deeper the mixing penetrates, so strong winds create a thick upper layer and weak winds generate a shallower layer.

Thinning at the surface

Our new research indicates that the primary driver of the marine heatwave was record-breaking weak winds across much of the basin. The winds were at their weakest measured levels during June and July, possibly linked to a developing El Niño in the east Pacific Ocean.

This led to by far the shallowest upper layer on record. Data from the Argo Program – a global array of nearly 4,000 robotic floats that measure the temperature and salinity in the upper 2,000 metres of the ocean – showed in some areas this layer was only ten metres deep, compared to the usual 20 to 40 metres deep.

This caused the sun to heat the thin surface layer far more rapidly than usual.

In addition to these short term changes in 2023, previous research has shown long-term warming associated with anthropogenic climate change is reducing the ability of winds to mix the upper ocean, causing it to gradually thin.

We also identified a possible secondary driver of more localised warming during the 2023 marine heatwave: above-average solar radiation hitting the ocean. This could be linked in part with the introduction of new international rules in 2020 to reduce sulfate emissions from ships.

The aim of these rules was to reduce air pollution from ship’s exhaust systems. But sulfate aerosols also reflect solar radiation and can lead to cloud formation. The resultant clearer skies can then lead to more ocean warming.

Early warning signs

The extreme 2023 heatwave provides a preview of the future. Marine heatwaves are expected to worsen as Earth continues to warm due to greenhouse gas emissions, with devastating impacts on marine ecosystems such as coral reefs and fisheries. This also means more intense hurricanes – and more intense land-based heatwaves.

Right now, although the “cold blob” to the southeast of Greenland has returned, parts of the North Atlantic remain significantly warmer than the average. There is a particularly warm patch of water off the coast of the United Kingdom, with temperatures up to 4°C above normal. And this is likely priming Europe for extreme land-based heatwaves this summer.

To better understand, forecast and plan for the impacts of marine heatwaves, long-term ocean and atmospheric data and models, including those provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States, are crucial. In fact, without these data and models, our new study would not have been possible.

Despite this, NOAA faces an uncertain future. A proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year released by the White House last month could mean devastating funding cuts of more than US$1.5 billion – mostly targeting climate-based research and data collection.

This would be a disaster for monitoring our oceans and climate system, right at a time when change is severe, unprecedented, and proving very costly.

Matthew England, Scientia Professor and Deputy Director of the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, UNSW Sydney; Alex Sen Gupta, Associate professor, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW, UNSW Sydney; Andrew Kiss, Fellow, Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, and Zhi Li, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Centre for Marine Science & Innovation, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The UK government recently announced plans to fund five small-scale trials related to geoengineering. It’s the first time a state research funding body has put serious money into what’s known as solar radiation management, or SRM, which seeks to cool the planet by reflecting more of the Sun’s energy back into space.

It’s easy to see why countries have been so hesitant to proceed with projects of this nature: SRM is highly controversial, even among scientists.

Deliberately altering the atmosphere, a shared global resource, is fraught with ethical, geopolitical and practical problems. It is and always has been a crazy idea.

However, many consider the failure to control carbon emissions means not intervening in this way is an even crazier idea. They consider it necessary to avert the collapse of ecosystems and society. Perhaps solar geoengineering is the price we must pay for our wholly inadequate climate change response to date.

The good news is that SRM may be able to deliver some progress relatively quickly. Earth has become slightly less reflective over the past few decades. That’s mostly thanks to reduced cloud cover (warmer oceans cause clouds above them to evaporate), but also thanks to less snow and ice, and a significant reduction in nasty-but-reflective shipping fuel pollutants.

By my calculations (based on data from US climate scientist James Hansen), this reduction in the reflectivity of Earth has caused as much warming as the 750 gigatonnes of CO₂ emitted since 2005. And while it will take decades to achieve significant global cooling through decarbonisation, it can be achieved relatively quickly by small increases in reflectivity.

Of the 21 projects being funded by Aria, the UK government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency, five are likely to involve small-scale outdoor experiments. They account for about half the £57 million programme.

Three of the projects concern brightening clouds over the ocean, one explores a method of refreezing the Arctic and the fifth looks at a specific detail of injecting reflective aerosols into the stratosphere.

The other projects concern how to govern these technologies and model and monitor their effects. They could also yield insights vital for securing the public and governmental support necessary if these technologies are ever to be deployed on a much larger scale.

Marine cloud brightening

Marine cloud brightening seeks to make clouds over the ocean more reflective. This is done by turning seawater into an aerosol spray and allowing air currents to loft salt crystals into the clouds, where they enhance the creation of reflective water droplets.

The greatest challenge with this method is making enough seawater mist in which the droplets are of a uniform size, about 1 micron in diameter. The Reflect project led by the University of Manchester has received £6.1 million to explore “the technical feasibility and optimal methods” for generating these droplets.

A team from the University of Reading has developed a process using drones to fire electric charges through fog to alter the size of its water droplets. Their Brightspark project has been awarded £2 million to determine whether this process would be viable and safe if applied to clouds. A second phase involving small-scale testing in the UK is contingent on further approval by Aria.

Daniel Harrison, an oceanographer at Southern Cross University in Australia, has been researching marine cloud brightening for several years for the limited purpose of protecting the corals of the Great Barrier Reef. Preliminary results are positive.

His previous work will be extended to assess if, and how, marine cloud brightening could work safely and effectively, but still only as a regional intermittent intervention to protect coral from marine heatwaves.

This will also be a two-phase project (£1 million and £5 million respectively) in which the research will initially deal with modelling and spray design. Subject to further approvals, it will then test the newfound knowledge over the Great Barrier Reef.

The remaining two projects are both from teams led by the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge University (I’m an associate researcher of the centre but I have no involvement in either of these projects).

Arctic refreezing

Engineer Shaun Fitzgerald has been awarded £9.9 million to extend an existing research project to examine the feasibility of thickening Arctic sea ice by pumping seawater from below the ice on to the surface, where it freezes. The idea is to increase the extent and thickness of sea ice in winter so that it endures longer through the summer.

The project also includes modelling to assess the impact this would have on a range of climate phenomena. Most significantly, this includes the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, an ocean current that some fear is in imminent danger of weakening sufficiently to bring Siberian winters to north-west Europe.

Stratospheric aerosol injection

The final project being funded looks at the injection of aerosols into the stratosphere – higher than clouds – where they would reflect a little of the Sun’s energy back to space.

Many regard this as the form of geoengineering most likely to happen. It is the most studied, as it replicates the natural cooling effect of certain big volcanic eruptions that put massive amounts of sulphate-based aerosols into the stratosphere. Scaling it to be climatically significant is thought to be relatively straightforward, and would probably be the cheapest cooling option.

One significant concern is the health and environmental impact of these aerosols as they fall back to the planet’s surface. Hugh Hunt, also an engineering professor at Cambridge, has been awarded £5.5 million to examine a range of alternative aerosol compounds. The plan is to send tiny samples into the stratosphere in specially designed gondolas attached to balloons. The gondolas will later be recovered, so that the effect of the stratosphere on the samples can be examined. Nothing will be released into the atmosphere.

A small step towards something much bigger

Aria is treading a fine line with this programme.

On the one hand, the organisation recognises that further interventions might be needed to mitigate the harm from the continuing failure to phase out fossil fuels. On the other, it recognises how controversial such interventions are. It is clearly anxious not to provoke a public furore that could undermine the research effort.

In isolation, it is unlikely that this programme will fill any knowledge gaps that might encourage policymakers to push climate intervention up the international agenda. What it could demonstrate, however, is that with appropriate controls in place, it is safe to test these options.

Perhaps the next funding round will support bigger outdoor experiments. These would help determine which technologies can eventually become the safe and effective climate interventions we desperately need.

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Robert Chris, Honorary Associate, Geography, The Open University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In humans, it’s very common for the traditional family structure of two parents raising children to change abruptly. Usually, this happens when the parents decide to separate.

Many separated couples are able to navigate this change well to ensure their children are not overly affected. But this isn’t guaranteed. Parental separation can lead to behavioural, developmental and health issues in children. The effect can be long-lasting.

That’s humans. But many other species have a similar arrangement in choosing a long-term mate to raise offspring. What effect does it have when these couples split up?

In our new research, we examine what happens after a family split in a tropical bird species known for its long-lasting partnerships. To our surprise, we found the separation had no long term effect on the health of their offspring.

Family drama on a tropical island

Most birds form strong partnerships to raise offspring as a couple. Raising baby birds is an intense job. Having two parents at the nest is often essential for the survival of the chicks.

The Seychelles warbler is no exception. These small songbirds live only on the Seychelles, northeast of Madagascar.

They often pair for life and defend a territory together. The longest documented partnership is 15 years.

Still, family life is not always perfect for these warblers. Of all warbler couples, about one in seven (14%) end in a separation.

In these cases, one of the parents leaves their territory and finds a new mate elsewhere when there is still an egg, young chick or fledgling in their original nest.

How do you know if a bird is stressed?

For decades, a team of international researchers has studied the population of warblers on Cousin Island nature reserve. The dataset they have gathered includes information about the relationship status of all birds, as well as measures of their wellbeing, lifespan and how many offspring they produce.

Using this data, we looked at what happened to the offspring of partners who had split up.

We measured the stress levels of chicks who hatched just before the ending of their parents’ relationship up to the moment they reached adolescence.

In humans, it’s common to measure stress by looking at the levels of cortisol in saliva and hair. But measuring stress in birds is a little different. To do this, we used three biomarkers which indicate physiological stress experienced by animals.

The first is telomere length, the protective “caps” on the end of chromosomes which protect DNA against damage. The shorter the telomeres, the higher the stress.

The second is the percentage of red blood cells in blood, which shows how well a warbler chick can use oxygen. The third is body condition, which indicates a bird’s fat reserves. These three markers let us gauge the stress levels and health of young warblers.

We also wanted to know whether parental separation would have lifelong consequences for the chicks. To find this out, we compared chicks from separated parents to those with more stable nests and assessed how long they lived and how many offspring they produced.

Warbler separation doesn’t stress chicks

What we found was surprising. There was no evidence the separation of parents affected the stress levels of chicks or their long-term survival and breeding success.

Why might this be?

One reason is that these birds don’t linger on the past. They move on very quickly.

When a partnership ends through separation or death, it opens up a vacancy – which can be quickly filled.

When separation happens, one bird leaves. The remaining partner can find themselves left with offspring to take care of themselves.

But parenting chicks is only half the story – nesting is also about territory. Cousin is a very small island of just 0.3 square kilometres with over 300 Seychelles warblers living on it.

That means the space to breed is very limited. As a result, when vacancies arise they’re often filled just hours after separation.

For the chicks, this means they now have a step-parent who can help raise them almost immediately. This means they don’t face a future with less parental care.

That’s not all. The Seychelles warbler is known for an unusual arrangement in which breeding couples sometimes receive help from other warblers, known as cooperative breeding.

On Cousin Island, there are more Seychelles warblers than there are breeding vacancies, meaning many adults can’t secure a partner and territory. These adults can join couples in established territories and help raise the offspring. This extra help may offset any reduced parental care after the ending of a partnership, meaning the offspring are still well off.

What we can learn from this

Our research shows Seychelles warbler chicks are better able to weather their parents separating than we expected.

Importantly, this humble bird is just one of a huge group of species who form socially monogamous partnerships where both parents raise the offspring.

Whether a parental relationship ending affects other species remains to be seen.

Frigg Janne Daan Speelman, PhD Candidate in Behavioural Ecology, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

On the surface, Queensland’s new government is doing exactly what it pledged before winning office in October – repealing the state’s ambitious renewable energy targets and cancelling a huge pumped hydro project near Mackay.

But since the start of the year, the Crisafulli LNP government has gone further, and it’s less clear where it’s heading.

Last week, the government abruptly cancelled the A$1 billion Moonlight Ridge wind farm proposal, citing insufficient consultation and a lack of community support.

At the same time, the government announced it would open another 16,000 square kilometres of the state for gas exploration. The government is also planning to open new gas peaking plants and keep its coal plants open longer.

So, is the Queensland government backsliding on renewables and climate change?

The Crisafulli government is still committed to net zero by 2050. Because Queensland still owns its own transmission infrastructure and power plants, the state could shift to clean energy faster than other states. But at present, they don’t appear to be in a rush.

Slowdown under way

Previous Labor governments in Queensland announced plans for large pumped hydro installations as a way to store energy to be available when intermittent wind and solar are not. The largest of these pumped hydro projects was the Pioneer-Burdekin proposal near Mackay, which the government has now canned.

The Crisafulli government has also asked the Queensland Investment Corporation to examine the financial viability of two other major proposals, the Borumba pumped hydro scheme inland from the Sunshine Coast and the Copperstring transmission project linking Townsville and Mount Isa. This isn’t unusual – new governments often review projects announced by their predecessors.

Another recent announcement is drawing stronger criticism, however. In April, the Crisafulli government announced plans to make sure large solar and wind farms have the social licence to operate. This, the government announced, would bring the “same rigorous approval processes as other major developments” to bear on renewables.

If these plans become law, they are likely to make it substantially harder and slower to build large renewables projects.

The cancellation of the Moonlight Ridge wind farm proposal is instructive. Of the 508 individuals who wrote in response to the development, only 142 were local. In his decision, planning minister Jarrod Bleijie noted: “the representations that I received evidence that the project has not acquired overriding community acceptance”.

What’s being proposed looks messy. The peak body for renewables in Queensland is highly sceptical, while miners and farmers have also signalled concern.

But while the Moonlight Ridge cancellation drew headlines, two other wind farm proposals have been approved after being asked to show they had consulted adequately.

No is easy, yes is hard

It’s easy to take office and reject the work of predecessors. It’s far harder to outline what will replace it.

In contrast to other east coast states, Queensland has largely kept control of its sprawling electricity system. The government owns most large coal and gas power plants and all the transmission infrastructure.

While the new government has indicated renewed support for private sector energy investment, it has provided support for government-owned corporations to develop new gas peaker plants. By contrast, there are very few proposals for new gas plants further south.

In one sense, it’s no surprise Queensland’s new government has eased off on renewables. Its coal plants are relatively new, and largely owned by the government. This may reduce the urgency for developing a new energy plan, but only for a few years. Planning for a smooth energy transition is a major task, as demonstrated by southern states.

The state has also profited hugely from gas exported from Gladstone. The government now receives around $1 billion from oil and gas royalties a year.

Go-fast federally, go-slow at state?

The thumping Labor majority at this year’s federal election means, at a national level, work on the clean energy transition will accelerate. But this transition is only possible if state and federal governments coordinate well.

The responsibility for building and maintaining electricity systems in Australia largely falls to the states and territories. But managing large power grids on the east and west coasts requires national-level coordination.

What the federal government can do, by and large, is set a goal and stump up the cash. As former Labor prime minister Paul Keating once quipped, “never get between a state premier and a bucket of money”.

The federal government is running a funding program to support renewable generation and storage projects across the country. Three Queensland renewable projects have been approved under this program, including solar farms with battery storage.

It’s hard to see the state government moving to block these projects.

Where does this leave us?

Queensland is signalling it’s not enthused about having an open gate for new renewable projects. Adding time consuming and expensive new consultation hurdles may cause prospective renewable developers to pack up and head south or west.

Yet the policy’s strategic intent is unclear and is not necessarily against clean energy for the state. Many projects are already under way. The Crisafulli government has shown interest in smaller scale pumped hydro schemes as a way to store energy. And gas peaking plants will be a necessary evil in a high-renewables grid, acting like an emergency diesel generator for the rare periods without enough wind, sun or water.

The big test will come later this year in the form of the state government’s five year energy plan. Will it deliver the investment to meet the net zero objective while maintaining affordable and reliable power? Right now, many in the clean energy industry are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We all want homes that keep us warm in winter and cool in summer, without breaking the bank. However, Australian homes built before 2003 have a low average energy rating of 1.8 stars out of 10. This means they’re often uncomfortable to live in and expensive to run.

There’s a strong case for a “renovation wave” of home energy upgrades across Australia. Reducing the use of fossil gas and improving the energy efficiency of existing housing by nearly 50% is also central to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

Energy-saving upgrades such as solar panels, batteries, insulation, draught-proofing and hot water heat pumps also reduce the cost of energy bills. So while there’s an upfront cost, upgrades can reduce household expenses in the long run.

We wanted to find out what’s holding people back from getting energy-saving upgrades. We surveyed 100 Australian households and interviewed 19 people about their experiences. Our new research revealed five major barriers that stop these upgrades from being accessible to most households. Suppliers, governments and community organisations can all help overcome these barriers.

1. Information about upgrades is confusing and overwhelming

Households told us the amount of information out there about energy saving upgrades is overwhelming and sometimes conflicting. There are many different types of upgrades and product choices, making it challenging to identify which options provide the best value and what to do first. People found it difficult to know what information and which suppliers to trust.

Households need clear information from a trusted source about what their homes need. Many governments internationally, such as Scotland, provide online resources and tools to provide tailored advice to help with this.

Energy upgrade programs run by neutral community organisations and councils can also help, such as Rewiring Australia’s Electrify 2515 or Geelong Sustainability’s Electric Homes Program. These programs use their expertise to vet suppliers and ensure households receive good deals and high quality products.

2. Homes need to engage multiple suppliers and tradespeople

Many households worked on their home gradually, one upgrade at a time. Each upgrade involved a labour-intensive process of researching products, selecting companies, getting quotes and managing the disruptions caused by the installation. One Sydney homeowner told us:

The process of needing both a plumber and an electrician to change to induction cooking was frustrating. [We had to] to coordinate availability times and appliance delivery.

Australians need companies that can do multiple upgrades at once, to simplify and streamline the process. In Ireland, the government helped stimulate a market for organisations that can cover all the upgrades needed by a household.

3. Households are losing opportunities for straightforward upgrades

Every year, Australians invest billions in home renovations. They spent more than A$3 billion in the December 2024 quarter alone.

One of the best times to improve your home is during major renovations or when old appliances, such as hot water systems, break down. If you’re already facing disruptions and need to spend money, it can be an easy and more cost-effective way to increase your home’s energy efficiency at the same time.

Yet our research found advice on energy-saving upgrades was rarely provided to people undertaking major renovations or emergency replacements unless they asked for it. Households needed to seek out builders, architects and tradespeople who specialised in sustainability to get advice on an energy-saving renovation.

Providing energy upgrades to homes should be a standard component of modern renovations. Otherwise, households are missing out on easy and more affordable opportunities to get these upgrades.

4. Many tradespeople lack knowledge of energy-saving upgrades

Our research found tradespeople are the most common point of contact for households. They can be a valuable source of information and advice to facilitate upgrades. However, many households reported difficulty finding tradespeople knowledgeable about – and willing to install – energy-saving upgrades.

Some upgrades, such as solar panels, require specialised workforces. Others, such as hot water heat pumps are usually installed by regular plumbers and electricians.

Some tradespeople lack the knowledge to advise on energy-saving upgrades or need training to install new technologies to a high standard. This situation leaves households vulnerable to misinformation, with a shortage of skilled workers to do their upgrades.

Tradespeople require increased support and incentives to make energy-saving measures part of their skill set. This is especially true in regional areas, where there are fewer products and workers available.

5. The costs are too high for many households

A final, significant barrier was the cost of home upgrades, which often caused households to drop out early in the process. Australian households, particularly those with less disposable income, need more help with the upfront cost.

One way to do this is through targeted government rebates, which are currently only available in some regions. Another is affordable and accessible financing, like that available in Tasmania and the ACT. The national Home Energy Upgrades Fund could also be extended to make sure available finance matches the scale of the challenge.

Also needed are long-term reforms such as mandatory disclosure of energy performance when homes are sold and minimum energy standards for rental properties, which are currently only required in some jurisdictions in Australia. When these are both addressed we can make comfortable, and affordable homes the norm rather than the exception.

A worthwhile journey

Roadblocks aside, households also shared the joy and satisfaction of completing home energy upgrades. While the journey was often difficult, those who reached the end of the road were overwhelmingly pleased with the results. A homeowner who had installed solar panels and undertaken draught-proofing and insulation in Adelaide said:

It’s nice not to have huge electricity bills, and but I find it’s that day to day stuff of actually being comfortable that makes the biggest difference.

This research was undertaken by Jaime Comber, Kamyar Soleimani, Ed Langham, Nimish Biloria, Leena Thomas and Kerryn Wilmot from the University of Technology, Sydney.

Jaime Comber, Senior Research Consultant in Energy Futures, University of Technology Sydney; Ed Langham, Research Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney, and Nimish Biloria, Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In a decision surprising very few people, Australia’s new environment minister Murray Watt has signed off on an extension for the gas plant at Karratha, part of the enormous North West Shelf liquefied natural gas project.

The decision had been deferred until after the federal election, given significant environmental concerns around the project.

This approval means the gas plant at Karratha can now keep running until 2070. The Woodside-operated project has helped to shape Australia’s reputation as one of the biggest suppliers of LNG in the world.

Watt did not have to consider climate impacts, but rather what damage the extension might do to ancient rock art as well as economic and social matters. His approval is “subject to strict conditions”, which largely focus on air emissions from the project. Critics claim the extension will threaten irreplaceable 50,000 year old rock carvings and petroglyphs.