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For decades, scientists, policymakers, graziers and land managers have been locked in a surprisingly high-stakes debate over what defines a dingo. Are these wild canids their own species? Or are they simply feral dogs?

The intensity of the debate can seem baffling. But the naming of animals influences how they are perceived and managed. The dingo debate has very real consequences for conservation laws, cultural recognition and respect, and the future of one of Australia’s iconic animals.

In 2020, researchers proposed four conditions dingoes would have to meet to be considered separate from domestic dogs: reproductive isolation (they don’t mate and produce fertile offspring), genetic distinctiveness, independent evolutionary path and distinctiveness from South-East Asian village dogs, which superficially resemble dingoes.

In our new research, we lay out the scientific case showing dingoes do indeed meet these requirements, across genetic, behavioural, ecological and archaeological evidence. We now have a clear answer: dingoes are distinct.

Australia’s wild canines have been on their own evolutionary path for thousands of years. As a distinct lineage, they should be recognised in their own right as a species or subspecies. They are not Canis familiaris, the domestic dog. They should be named either Canis dingo or Canis lupus dingo.

Species aren’t always in neat boxes

One of the greatest challenges for modern taxonomy is how to categorise “species” that don’t fit in neat little boxes but exist along a continuum.

It’s harder still for species whose long and significant associations with humans can lead to substantial changes that are evolutionarily significant.

It’s widely accepted domestic and wild animal populations should be distinguished and be given different scientific names. Domestication is often portrayed as a simple before-and-after event. But this isn’t accurate.

Domestication is a long, messy continuum. Some domesticated species such as cattle and modern dog breeds depend on humans for their survival. But dingoes are different. They have lived alongside people but are also entirely capable of surviving without us, and have done so for thousands of years.

In evolutionary terms, what matters is the trajectory. Did human contact fundamentally alter the appearance, biology and behaviour of the species, locking it into a domestic lifestyle? Or did human influence have little effect, meaning the species has been shaped primarily by natural selection in the wild?

Do dingoes meet the criteria to be considered taxonomically distinct?

Our research shows how the four conditions have been met to consider dingoes separate:

1. Reproductive isolation

Dingoes have been separated from other Canis lineages for 8,000-11,000 years. Genetic studies show dingoes have little contemporary interbreeding with domestic dogs, even when they live in the same areas. While all Canis species can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, differences in breeding seasons and behaviour act as natural barriers. Unlike dingoes, domestic dogs rarely establish wild, self-sustaining populations.

2. Genetic distinctiveness

Genome-wide analyses reveal dingoes descend from an ancient “eastern” dog lineage, while most modern domestic dogs come from “western” and “Arctic” dog lineages. Since their arrival in Australia, dingoes have remained genetically isolated.

3. An independent evolutionary lineage

From a genetic point of view, dingoes are more distinct from domestic dogs than domestic dog breeds are from each other. Modern dog breeds have undergone waves of mixing and human selection, while dingoes have not. This is why dingoes lack the genetic adaptations to starch-rich diets that domestic dogs evolved alongside agriculture and human contact.

Dingoes have carved out their own ecological niche in Australia’s unique environments, from deserts to snowy mountains. They have developed separate traits such as hyperflexible joints and a single breeding season over autumn and winter. By contrast, humans have heavily shaped the evolutionary path of domestic dogs, making them reliant on us.

4. Clear up whether dogs found in South-East Asia are dingoes

Some researchers have suggested dingo-like village dogs in South-East Asia are actually dingoes. While dingoes share some ancestors with these dogs, modern genetic evidence shows dingoes and their closest relatives, New Guinea singing dogs, are a separate population.

What’s in a name?

The question over how dogs evolved is not yet resolved. Some taxonomists believe dogs are a subspecies of wolf, while others disagree. Given this uncertainty, giving dingoes a unique scientific name can be done in two ways.

If we consider dingoes distinct from both dogs and wolves, the most appropriate name would be Canis dingo — recognising the dingo as its own species with a long, separate evolutionary history.

But if dingoes are not distinct from wolves, the correct name would be Canis lupus dingo. This would treat it as a subspecies of wolf, while still acknowledging its wild lineage separate to domestic dogs.

The name of the dingo matters

There is real power in the name of a species.

Under some state laws, dingoes are defined as “wild dogs”. This means dingoes are targeted for lethal control – even in many national parks. If treated as a domestic dog, dingoes can be ineligible for official threatened species lists.

As a result, the species is often overlooked for targeted conservation, while its culturally significant role for many First Nations peoples is often not recognised nor respected.

Defining dingoes as a distinct species or subspecies would allow governments to differentiate them from domestic dogs in laws, policies and conservation programs, and align western science with First Nations knowledge holders who have long distinguished between dingoes and dogs.

Ending decades of confusion will take work

To clear up long-running disagreement over the dingo, we believe the time has come for an independent, evidence-based review by a national scientific body. This would bring together geneticists, ecologists, taxonomists and First Nations representatives.

This approach helped untangle similarly knotty problems overseas, such as the United States National Academies’ review to settle the taxonomy of red and Mexican wolves.

An Australian review could finally end decades of confusion for the dingo and ensure our laws reflect the most up-to-date scientific evidence.

Taxonomic debates might sound obscure. But this naming question will shape the future of one of Australia’s ecologically and culturally significant animals.

We believe the evidence shows the dingo is not a domestic dog – it’s on its own path. The question is whether Australia can accept this evidence.

Kylie M. Cairns, Research fellow in canid and wildlife genomics, UNSW Sydney; Bradley Smith, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, CQUniversity Australia; Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, 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.

Antarctica has long been seen as a remote, unchanging environment. Not any more.

The ice-covered continent and the surrounding Southern Ocean are undergoing abrupt and alarming changes. Sea ice is shrinking rapidly, the floating glaciers known as ice shelves are melting faster, the ice sheets carpeting the continent are approaching tipping points and vital ocean currents show signs of slowing down.

Published today in Nature, our new research shows these abrupt changes are already underway – and likely to significantly intensify in the future.

Several authors of this article have witnessed these startling changes during fieldwork on the ice. These changes spell bad news for wildlife, both iconic and lesser known. But the changes will reach much further. What’s happening in Antarctica right now will affect the world for generations to come, from rising sea levels to extreme changes in the climate system.

What is an abrupt change?

Scientists define an abrupt change as a climatic or environmental shift taking place much faster than expected.

What makes abrupt changes so concerning is they can amplify themselves. For example, melting sea ice allows oceans to warm more rapidly, which melts more sea ice. Once triggered, they can be difficult or even impossible to reverse on timescales meaningful to humans.

While it’s common to assume incremental warming will translate to gradual change, we’re seeing something very different in Antarctica. Over past decades, the Antarctic environment had a much more muted response overall to human-caused climate warming compared to the Arctic. But about a decade ago, abrupt changes began to occur.

Shrinking sea ice brings cascading change

Antarctica’s natural systems are tightly interwoven. When one system is thrown out of balance, it can trigger cascading effects in others.

Sea ice around Antarctica has been declining dramatically since 2014. The expanse of sea ice is now shrinking at double the rate of Arctic sea ice. We found these unfolding changes are unprecedented – far outside the natural variability of past centuries.

The implications are far reaching. Sea ice has a reflective, high-albedo surface which reflects heat back to space. When there’s less sea ice, more heat is absorbed by darker oceans. Emperor penguins and other species reliant on sea ice for habitat and breeding face real threats. Less sea ice also means Antarctica’s ice shelves are more exposed to waves.

Vital ocean currents are slowing

The melting of ice is actually slowing down the deep ocean circulation around Antarctica. This system of deep currents, known as the Antarctic Overturning Circulation, plays a critical role in regulating Earth’s climate by absorbing carbon dioxide and distributing heat.

In the northern hemisphere, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is facing a slowdown.

We’re now observing a similar risk in Southern Ocean currents. Changes to the Antarctic Overturning Circulation may unfold at twice the rate of the more famous North Atlantic counterpart.

A slowdown could reduce how much oxygen and carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs and leave vital nutrients at the seafloor. Less oxygen and fewer nutrients would have major consequences for marine ecosystems and climate regulation.

Melting giants

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet as well as some regions of East Antarctica are now losing ice and contributing to sea level rise. Ice loss has increased sixfold since the 1990s.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone has enough ice to raise global sea levels by more than five metres – and scientists warn we could be nearing the point where this ice sheet could collapse even without substantial further warming, though this might take centuries to millennia.

These enormous ice sheets represent the risk of a global tipping point. They contribute the greatest uncertainty to projections of future sea level rise because we don’t know just how quickly they could collapse.

Worldwide, at least 750 million people live in low-lying areas near the sea. Rising sea levels threaten coastal infrastructure and communities globally.

Wildlife and ecosystems under threat

Antarctica’s biological systems are also undergoing sudden shifts. Ecosystems both under the sea and on land are being reshaped by warming temperatures, unreliable ice conditions and human activity bringing pollution and the arrival of invasive species.

It’s essential to protect these ecosystems through the Antarctic Treaty, including creating protected areas of land and sea and restricting some human activities. But these conservation measures won’t be enough to ensure emperor penguins and leopard seals survive. That will require decisive global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Which future?

Antarctica is often seen as a symbol of isolation and permanence. But the continent is now changing with disturbing speed – much faster than scientists anticipated.

These abrupt changes stem largely from the extra heat trapped by decades of unchecked greenhouse gas emissions. The only way to avoid further abrupt changes is to slash emissions rapidly enough to hold warming as close to 1.5°C as possible.

Even if we achieve this, much change has already been set in motion. Governments, businesses and coastal communities must prepare for a future of abrupt change. What happens in Antarctica won’t stay there.

The stakes could not be higher. The choices made now will determine whether we face a future of worsening impacts and irreversible change or one of managed resilience to the changes already locked in.

Nerilie Abram, Chief Scientist, Australian Antarctic Division and Professor of Climate Science, Australian National University; Ariaan Purich, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, Monash University; Felicity McCormack, Antarctic Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer, Monash University; Jan Strugnell, Professor of Marine Biology and Aquaculture, James Cook University, and Matthew England, Deputy Director of the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science and Scientia Professor in Oceanography, UNSW Sydney

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

Climate change is reshaping fish habitats. Some fish are winners, others are losing out.

Fish already face plenty of pressure from overfishing and pollution. Climate change is adding more: warmer waters and shifting food supplies cause what’s known as a predator-prey mismatch. This means prey and predator are not in the same place at the same time, which not only affects our diets but also fishing industries and ocean health more widely.

As the ocean heats up, fish try to stay in the conditions they’re best suited to. Some species will move, but others can’t relocate so easily – for example, if they need to live in a certain habitat at a particular life-stage, such as in kelp that offers shelter for breeding. So, depending on the species and location, climate change could create new fishing opportunities for some countries, and big losses for others.

Fisheries managers typically group fish into “stocks”. These are populations of the same species in a defined region, often based on national borders. But those human-made boundaries don’t matter to fish. As they shift in response to climate change, managing their populations will become more complex and will need to be flexible and responsive.

By 2050, waters around the UK are expected to warm by about 1°C if we follow a “moderate” emissions path. If emissions continue to rise unchecked, the increase could reach 2-3°C by the end of the century. At the same time, the food that fish eat (such as tiny plankton) could drop by as much as 30%.

My team and I used advanced computer modelling to predict how 17 key commercial species such as mackerel, cod, plaice, tuna and sardines might respond to two future climate scenarios. Our results show a patchwork of winners and losers.

Take sardines and mackerel. These species live in the upper ocean and are sensitive to temperature. Both are expected to shift northward. This shift would be around 20 miles in the North Sea and up to 80 miles in the north-east Atlantic by 2100 under a moderate emissions scenario.

While sardines may thrive, with a 10% boost in Atlantic abundance, our model suggests mackerel could decline by 10% in the Atlantic and 20% in the North Sea. Consequently, the type and quantity of fish available will change.

Warm-water species like bluefin tuna may benefit within UK waters. Tuna is projected to shift only slightly (by approximately 4 miles) under the same scenario, but their abundance could rise by 10%, potentially bringing more of them into UK waters. That’s good news for fishers already targeting this high-value catch, or those looking to change their main target species.

But bottom-dwelling species like cod and saithe (pollock) face a tougher future. These fish prefer colder, deeper waters and have fewer options to escape warming seas due to depth limitations.

In the North Sea, they’re projected to shift southward by around 9 miles because that’s where the remaining cool, deep water is. But this won’t be enough to avoid a significant decline in their numbers: their populations are expected to drop by 10-15% under a moderate scenario by 2050.

Do the seasons feel increasingly weird to you? You’re not alone. Climate change is distorting nature’s calendar, causing plants to flower early and animals to emerge at the wrong time.

This article is part of a series, Wild Seasons, on how the seasons are changing and what they may eventually look like.

Changing tides

And if climate change accelerates, the declines become far more severe. By the end of the century, North Sea cod and saithe could fall by 30-40%, according to our model. Mackerel abundance could drop by 25% in the Atlantic, while sardines might see only a modest 5% increase, despite moving 155 miles northward. Bluefin tuna could see a 40% rise in numbers, shifting 27 miles further north.

We’ve estimated how species will shift their locations – but computer models can’t account for every interaction between marine species. For example, predator-prey relationships can be crucial in shaping an ecosystem. Bluefin tuna is a predatory species which hunts shoals of herring, mackerel and other fish.

Other predators including dolphins, seals and seabirds will all be influenced differently by climate change, with varying responses in terms of eating their favourite fish snacks.

Our projections also don’t account for continued fishing pressure – for example, 24% of north-east Atlantic fisheries are not sustainable. Further overfishing will compound the strain on fish populations.

To keep stocks healthy, fishery managers need to start planning for these changes now by factoring climate into their stock assessments. Industry regulators will also need to reconsider who gets to fish where as species move.

Fish don’t carry passports. Their shifting habitats will challenge longstanding fishing agreements and quotas. Nations that once relied on particular species might lose access. Others may find new, unexpected opportunities.

With smart management and serious action on climate, seafood can thrive in the future. Doing nothing now isn’t an option — unless we want familiar favourites like cod to vanish from our plates.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

Sevrine Sailley, Senior Scientist, Marine Ecosystem Modelling, Plymouth Marine Laboratory

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

From Melbourne’s proposed Outer Metropolitan Ring Road to Sydney’s recently completed Westconnex, Australia’s addiction to mega roads continues despite the spectre of climate change.

The stream of projects shows Australia’s approach to urban transport is stuck in the car-obsessed past. It’s an approach at odds with state planning policies that prioritise other less-polluting transport modes, such as train and tram extensions, bike lane infrastructure and better pedestrian footpaths.

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned, roads hinder national efforts to meet climate targets. They “lock in” emissions, by establishing long-term infrastructure that commits societies to greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come.

Expanding freeway networks undermines efforts to reduce emissions and encourage cleaner transport. It points to a deep-seated flaw in Australia’s urban planning systems which must be solved.

No road to net zero

Australia has committed to reach net zero greenhouse emissions by 2050.

Meeting the goal requires, among other measures, dealing with greenhouse gas emissions from transport – which is set to become the nation’s largest source of emissions by 2030.

Globally, roads account for 69% of transport emissions, and this is growing.

Despite this, a number of mega roads are planned or being built in Australian cities. They include:

• Sydney’s M12 Motorway
• Brisbane’s Gateway Motorway and Bruce Highway upgrades
• Adelaide’s River Torrens to Darlington Project
• Perth’s Tonkin Highway Extension and Thomas Road Upgrade
• Melbourne’s Outer Metropolitan Ring Road.

Here, we examine the Melbourne project in more detail.

Melbourne’s mega ring road

The Outer Metropolitan Ring Road would involve a 100-kilometre freeway orbiting Melbourne’s north and west. With a current price tag of A$31 billion, it would be among the most expensive road projects in an Australian city.

In 2009, the Brumby Labor government in Victoria deemed the project could proceed without an “environmental effects statement” – including assessment of it climate impacts.

Rationales for the decision included that the project passes through land extensively disturbed in the past, and because sustainability implications had been considered in overarching state planning blueprints.

It is unclear whether, given the time that has lapsed, whether the project will be reconsidered for environmental approval – and if so, what level of scrutiny would be applied.

Given the project’s potential contribution to transport emissions, authorities should reverse the exemption and ensure it is subject to the highest environmental scrutiny. This is vital to ensure the public is fully aware of – and can object to – the project’s climate impacts.

Our research has previously identified such issues involving public consultation and major road projects. They include Melbourne’s East West Link and West Gate Tunnel, and Sydney’s Westconnex . In the case of Westconnex, the “public interest” was narrowly defined and inadequate in addressing climate change concerns.

A 2017 Victorian Auditor-General Report also found a power imbalance between project proponents and community participants. For instance, proponents usually had legal representation while community members did not.

What’s more, emissions reduction must be central to the policies governing Australia’s built environments, as we discuss below.

Climate must be key

Residents in Australia’s capital cities are largely car-dependent. More climate-friendly transport modes, such as walking and cycling, can be difficult due to long distances between destinations, and lack of supporting infrastructure such as bike paths.

The IPCC recommends minimising emissions generated in cities through:

• infill development (building on unused land in urban areas)
• increasing density (the number of people living in a certain area)
• improving public transport
• supporting walking, cycling and other “active” transport options.

State planning blueprints in Australia typically consider land use and transport together. Victoria, for example, wants more homes built in established areas, close to public transport, services and jobs. Transport plans in states such as NSW and Queensland have similar goals.

However, the need for climate action and emissions reduction is typically not fully integrated across these policies. And federal government guidelines on transport planning also give little regard to net zero targets.

This means major road projects can proceed without direct consideration of emissions reduction and net zero goals.

A different road

Urban planning policies are not the only government levers available to reduce vehicle emissions.

The federal government’s fuel efficiency standards, for example, began in January this year. But some experts say the policy – which is weaker than that initially proposed – does not go far enough to cut transport emissions.

Separately, the National Electric Vehicle Strategy is a positive step. But Australia is badly lagging in EV uptake, and much more work is needed.

As Australian cities continue to grow, the demand for travel will also increase. But new freeway projects are not the answer – they will only make climate change worse.

Reform is needed to ensure emissions reduction is at the heart of transport investment in our cities.

Crystal Legacy, Associate Professor of Urban Planning, The University of Melbourne; Anna Hurlimann, Associate Professor in Urban Planning, The University of Melbourne, and Eric Keys, PhD Candidate, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

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

In 1770, after Captain Cook’s Endeavour struck the Great Barrier Reef and was held up for repairs, botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander collected hundreds of plants.

One of those pressed plants is among 170,000 specimens in the herbarium at the University of Melbourne.

Worldwide, more than 395 million specimens are housed in herbaria. Together they comprise an unparalleled record of Earth’s plant and fungal life over time.

We wanted to find a better, faster way to tap into this wealth of information. Our new research describes the development and testing of a new AI-driven tool Hespi (short for “herbarium specimen sheet pipeline”). It has the potential to revolutionise access to biodiversity data and open up new avenues for research.

The digitisation challenge

To unlock the full potential of herbaria, institutions worldwide are striving to digitise them. This means photographing each specimen at high resolution and converting the information on its label into searchable digital data.

Once digitised, specimen records can be made available to the public through online databases such as the University of Melbourne Herbarium Collection Online. They are also fed into large biodiversity portals such as the Australasian Virtual Herbarium, the Atlas of Living Australia, or the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. These platforms make centuries of botanical knowledge accessible to researchers everywhere.

But digitisation is a monumental task. Large herbaria, such as the National Herbarium of New South Wales and the Australian National Herbarium have used high-capacity conveyor belt systems to rapidly image millions of specimens. Even with this level of automation, digitising the 1.15 million specimens at the National Herbarium of NSW took more than three years.

For smaller institutions without industrial-scale setups, the process is far slower. Staff, volunteers and citizen scientists photograph specimens and painstakingly transcribe their labels by hand.

At the current pace, many collections won’t be fully digitised for decades. This delay keeps vast amounts of biodiversity data locked away. Researchers in ecology, evolution, climate science and conservation urgently need access to large-scale, accurate biodiversity datasets. A faster approach is essential.

How AI is speeding things up

To address this challenge, we created Hespi – open-source software for automatically extracting information from herbarium specimens.

Hespi combines advanced computer vision techniques with AI tools such as object detection, image classification and large language models.

First, it takes an image of the specimen sheet which comprises the pressed plant and identifying text. Then it recognises and extracts text, using a combination of optical character recognition and handwritten text recognition.

Deciphering handwriting is challenging for people and computers alike. So Hespi passes the extracted text through OpenAI’s GPT-4o Large Language Model to correct any errors. This substantially improves the results.

So in seconds, Hespi locates the main specimen label on a herbarium sheet and reads the information it contains. This includes taxonomic names, collector details, location, latitude and longitude, and collection dates. It captures the data and converts it into a digital format, ready for use in research.

For example, Hespi correctly detected and extracted all relevant components from the herbarium sheet below. This large brown algae specimen was collected in 1883 at St Kilda.

We tested Hespi on thousands of specimen images from the University of Melbourne Herbarium and other collections worldwide. We created test datasets for different stages in the pipeline and assessed the various components.

It achieved a high degree of accuracy. So it has the potential to save a lot of time, compared to manual data extraction.

We are developing a graphical user interface for the software so herbarium curators will be able to manually check and correct the results.

Just the beginning

Herbaria already contribute to society in many ways: from species identification and taxonomy to ecological monitoring, conservation, education, and even forensic investigations.

By mobilising large volumes of specimen-associated data, AI systems such as Hespi are enabling new and innovative applications at a scale never before possible.

AI has been used to automatically extract detailed leaf measurements and other traits from digitised specimens, unlocking centuries of historical collections for rapid research into plant evolution and ecology.

And this is just the beginning — computer vision and AI could soon be applied in many other ways, further accelerating and expanding botanical research in the years ahead.

Beyond herbaria

AI pipelines such as Hespi have the potential to extract text from labels in any museum or archival collection where high-quality digital images exist.

Our next step is a collaboration with Museums Victoria to adapt Hespi to create an AI digitisation pipeline suitable for museum collections. The AI pipeline will mobilise biodiversity data for about 12,500 specimens in the museum’s globally-significant fossil graptolite collection.

We are also starting a new project with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) to make the software more flexible. This will allow curators in museums and other institutions to customise Hespi to extract data from all kinds of collections — not just plant specimens.

Tranformational technology

Just as AI is reshaping many aspects of daily life, these technologies can transform access to biodiversity data. Human-AI collaborations could help overcome one of the biggest bottlenecks in collection digitisation — the slow, manual transcription of label data.

Mobilising the information already locked in herbaria, museums, and archives worldwide is essential to make it available for the cross-disciplinary research needed to understand and address the biodiversity crisis.

We wish to acknowledge our colleagues at the Melbourne Data Analytics Platform, including Karen Thompson and Emily Fitzgerald, who contributed to this research.

Robert Turnbull, Senior Research Data Specialist, The University of Melbourne and Joanne Birch, Senior Lecturer in the School of BioSciences, and Herbarium Curator, The University of Melbourne

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

South Australia’s catastrophic harmful algal bloom now affects almost 30% of the state’s coastline, stretching from the Coorong in the state’s southeast to the seafood-rich Spencer Gulf to the west.

With no end in sight, many South Australians are searching for solutions.

Trials of physical, chemical and biological solutions have been run around the world at much smaller scale, usually in aquaculture fish pens and leases.

Unfortunately, the enormous Karenia mikimotoi bloom in SA is far too big for any of these technologies. But they could provide temporary relief at high-risk sites, such as vital breeding grounds for vulnerable species such as the giant Australian cuttlefish.

How can algae be managed at smaller scales?

This disaster arose from a triple threat: marine heatwaves linked to climate change, floodwaters and cold upwellings carrying nutrients algae need, and marine habitat loss leaving coasts extra vulnerable. Prevention is the best cure – so we need to tackle each of these threats.

In the meantime, the bloom’s persistence presents an opportunity to experiment with potential solutions.

Chemical

Anyone who has managed a pool knows how effective chemicals are in removing unwanted algae. But in the sea, chemicals can have unintended impacts. There’s more than one type of algae out there and we don’t want to kill the good guys.

In response to algal blooms at sea, researchers have even tried chemical crop-dusting by planes.

Clay has been used against marine algal blooms for more than 50 years in China and Japan. The clay particles bind to algal cells in surface waters, causing them to settle to the bottom where they stop growing or die. But to date, it has required a huge amount of clay to be effective.

Modified clay technology is a promising environmentally friendly solution. Released as a slurry, the clay binds and removes phosphorus, essentially removing the bloom’s fuel source.

Physical

Physical solutions often involve mixing the water column to break up the warm surface layers suitable for algal growth.

Other solutions physically block and disturb algae. Pumping air through tubes to create “bubble curtains” can stop algae from passing through.

This technology is useful in aquaculture pens. But bubble curtains can do little against intense algal blooms, forcing fish farmers to simply drag their pens out of harms’ way. So they’re never going to work at scale.

Biological

Natural systems have their own checks and balances. The oceans are full of microorganisms that naturally prey on algae – such as single-celled organisms (ciliates and flagellates) – or suppress it, including bacteria and viruses.

Such natural microbial warfare may help solve the SA bloom, with promising signs of bioluminescent “sea sparkle” algae dining on Karenia.

Scientists in the United States are working to extract natural algicides produced by algae-killing marine bacteria to combat Red Tide blooms in Florida.

Some bacterial algicides only kill specific harmful algae species, offering promise for low-risk application. To date, these solutions have largely been used at small, experimental scale.

By contrast, algicidal bacteria are found in abundance on common seagrasses around the world, providing healthy seagrass meadows with natural immunity. Conserving and restoring seagrass offers one way to tackle the problem longer term.

Helping nature to help itself

SA was once home to 1,500km of shellfish reefs, formed by billions of native oysters. These ecosystems served as the natural kidneys of our coastline. A single oyster is capable of filtering a bathtub of water a day, removing excess nutrients and algae.

Within a century of European settlement, these natural reefs were all but destroyed by overharvesting. The good news: they can be restored. For example, restoring two hectares of shellfish reef at Adelaide’s Glenelg Beach saw oysters filtering over 12 million litres of water a day within 1.5 years of reef construction.

These figures suggest SA’s lost shellfish reefs would have been filtering over half a trillion litres of seawater daily. This natural wastewater treatment system could have removed nutrients washed into our coastal seas before they could feed a bloom.

Diving on the restored shellfish reef during the algal bloom has given us some hope. Despite the soupy green water, the native oysters appear to be doing well. Similarly, oysters on leases in the affected areas are thriving as they feed on the highly nutritious Karenia algae.

By contrast, many filter-feeding bivalves have been devastated by the bloom, notably the habitat-forming razorfish (pen shells) and cockles.

Earlier this month, Premier Peter Malinauskas announced plans to restore a total of 15 hectares of shellfish reef alongside community groups across 15 locations. This provides an opportunity to learn whether larger-scale oyster restoration can help future-proof SA seas against harmful algae.

Rebuildling resilient ecosystems

This devastating algal bloom will eventually dissipate. Once the harmful algae have fallen back to normal levels, nature can rebuild.

But future blooms are likely as the climate warms and strengthens heavy downpours that flush nutrients out to sea. To prepare, we should explore ways of restoring ecosystems able to hasten recovery and rebuild natural resilience.

Investing in scaling up conservation and restoration of filter-feeding shellfish reefs and bacteria-harbouring seagrass meadows – the sea’s kidneys and immune system – will be necessary alongside long-term underwater monitoring.

If we continue with a reactive, fragmented approach to climate, nutrient pollution, and biodiversity loss, we’re guaranteed to face more costly catastrophes. We need to act to build long-term ecological and socio-economic resilience.

Dominic McAfee, Postdoctoral researcher, marine ecology, University of Adelaide and Sean Connell, Professor, Sustainable Marine Futures, Environment Institute, University of Adelaide

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

As demand for artificial intelligence technology boosts construction and proposed construction of data centers around the world, those computers require not just electricity and land, but also a significant amount of water. Data centers use water directly, with cooling water pumped through pipes in and around the computer equipment. They also use water indirectly, through the water required to produce the electricity to power the facility. The amount of water used to produce electricity increases dramatically when the source is fossil fuels compared with solar or wind.

A 2024 report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that in 2023, U.S. data centers consumed 17 billion gallons (64 billion liters) of water directly through cooling, and projects that by 2028, those figures could double – or even quadruple. The same report estimated that in 2023, U.S. data centers consumed an additional 211 billion gallons (800 billion liters) of water indirectly through the electricity that powers them. But that is just an estimate in a fast-changing industry.

We are researchers in water law and policy based on the shores of Lake Michigan. Technology companies are eyeing the Great Lakes region to host data centers, including one proposed for Port Washington, Wisconsin, which could be one of the largest in the country. The Great Lakes region offers a relatively cool climate and an abundance of water, making the region an attractive location for hot and thirsty data centers.

The Great Lakes are an important, binational resource that more than 40 million people depend on for their drinking water and supports a US$6 trillion regional economy. Data centers compete with these existing uses and may deplete local groundwater aquifers.

Our analysis of public records, government documents and sustainability reports compiled by top data center companies has found that technology companies don’t always reveal how much water their data centers use. In a forthcoming Rutgers Computer and Technology Law Journal article, we walk through our methods and findings using these resources to uncover the water demands of data centers.

In general, corporate sustainability reports offered the most access and detail – including that in 2024, one data center in Iowa consumed 1 billion (3.8 billion liters) gallons of water – enough to supply all of Iowa’s residential water for five days.

How do data centers use water?

The servers and routers in data centers work hard and generate a lot of heat. To cool them down, data centers use large amounts of water – in some cases over 25% of local community water supplies. In 2023, Google reported consuming over 6 billion gallons of water (nearly 23 billion liters) to cool all its data centers.

In some data centers, the water is used up in the cooling process. In an evaporative cooling system, pumps push cold water through pipes in the data center. The cold water absorbs the heat produced by the data center servers, turning into steam that is vented out of the facility. This system requires a constant supply of cold water.

In closed-loop cooling systems, the cooling process is similar, but rather than venting steam to the air, air-cooled chillers cool down the hot water. The cooled water is then recirculated to cool the facility again. This does not require constant addition of large volumes of water, but it uses a lot more energy to run the chillers. The actual numbers showing those differences, which likely vary by the facility, are not publicly available.

One key way to evaluate water use is the amount of water that is considered “consumed,” meaning it is withdrawn from the local water supply and used up – for instance, evaporated as steam – and not returned to its source.

For information, we first looked to government data, such as that kept by municipal water systems, but the process of getting all the necessary data can be onerous and time-consuming, with some denying data access due to confidentiality concerns. So we turned to other sources to uncover data center water use.

Sustainability reports provide insight

Many companies, especially those that prioritize sustainability, release publicly available reports about their environmental and sustainability practices, including water use. We focused on six top tech companies with data centers: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Digital Realty and Equinix. Our findings revealed significant variability in both how much water the companies’ data centers used, and how much specific information the companies’ reports actually provided.

Sustainability reports offer a valuable glimpse into data center water use. But because the reports are voluntary, different companies report different statistics in ways that make them hard to combine or compare. Importantly, these disclosures do not consistently include the indirect water consumption from their electricity use, which the Lawrence Berkeley Lab estimated was 12 times greater than the direct use for cooling in 2023. Our estimates highlighting specific water consumption reports are all related to cooling.

Amazon releases annual sustainability reports, but those documents do not disclose how much water the company uses. Microsoft provides data on its water demands for its overall operations, but does not break down water use for its data centers. Meta does that breakdown, but only in a companywide aggregate figure. Google provides individual figures for each data center.

In general, the five companies we analyzed that do disclose water usage show a general trend of increasing direct water use each year. Researchers attribute this trend to data centers.

A closer look at Google and Meta

To take a deeper look, we focused on Google and Meta, as they provide some of the most detailed reports of data center water use.

Data centers make up significant proportions of both companies’ water use. In 2023, Meta consumed 813 million gallons of water globally (3.1 billion liters) – 95% of which, 776 million gallons (2.9 billion liters), was used by data centers.

For Google, the picture is similar, but with higher numbers. In 2023, Google operations worldwide consumed 6.4 billion gallons of water (24.2 billion liters), with 95%, 6.1 billion gallons (23.1 billion liters), used by data centers.

Google reports that in 2024, the company’s data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, consumed 1 billion gallons of water (3.8 billion liters), the most of any of its data centers.

The Google data center using the least that year was in Pflugerville, Texas, which consumed 10,000 gallons (38,000 liters) – about as much as one Texas home would use in two months. That data center is air-cooled, not water-cooled, and consumes significantly less water than the 1.5 million gallons (5.7 million liters) at an air-cooled Google data center in Storey County, Nevada. Because Google’s disclosures do not pair water consumption data with the size of centers, technology used or indirect water consumption from power, these are simply partial views, with the big picture obscured.

Given society’s growing interest in AI, the data center industry will likely continue its rapid expansion. But without a consistent and transparent way to track water consumption over time, the public and government officials will be making decisions about locations, regulations and sustainability without complete information on how these massive companies’ hot and thirsty buildings will affect their communities and their environments.

Peyton McCauley, Water Policy Specialist, Sea Grant UW Water Science-Policy Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Melissa Scanlan, Professor and Director of the Center for Water Policy, School of Freshwater Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

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

Over recent decades, farmland values in Australia have soared. Nationally, the price of broadacre farmland – used for cropping or sheep and beef grazing – has increased by more than eightfold since 1992.

It might seem like this could only be good news for those who own and operate farms. But this boom carries surprising downsides for the profitability of the farming industry.

Our new study examined the dynamic relationship between farmland prices and the profitability of Australia’s farming sector. To do this, we used national and state-level data from 1992 to 2022.

We found when farm profits rise, farmland prices tend to increase as well, with a lag of two to five years. But there’s a catch: higher land values push up production costs, which can erode profits over time.

This feedback loop – where higher profits lifts farmland prices but those higher prices eventually squeeze profitability – has some serious implications for farm business viability.

What’s driven farmland’s surge?

Several factors have contributed to the rapid growth in Australia’s farmland prices in recent years. These include strong commodity prices and good seasonal conditions, periods of low interest rates and increased demand for land.

While some of these forces have rewarded existing landholders, they have also increased barriers to entry for younger or less wealthy farmers to enter the industry.

This isn’t just an Australian phenomenon. Between 2002 and 2023, global farmland values grew at an average annual rate of 10%.

Analysts argue the major drivers of this surge include “growing concerns about food and land scarcity” and the increasing practice of valuing farmland for its environmental benefits, such as carbon storage, water rights, or biodiversity credits. They also note its appeal as a desirable investment, offering stable long-term returns with relatively low risk.

High land values can make it hard to farm

Rising land values can create a complex situation. For one, they mean farmers need more fund to buy new land or to improve existing operations, particularly those looking to expand or who are newcomers to the industry.

Farm expansion is important for farmers, because farm size has proven a key factor driving productivity gains.

Many Australian broadacre farms have benefited from what are called “economies of scale”. By spreading fixed costs such as machinery and management expenses over larger operations, they’re able to lower their average costs and gain a competitive advantage.

Other hurdles

Rising land prices also raise costs in less obvious ways. In recent years, a significant proportion of farmers have grown to rely on leasing additional land to run their operations.

A 2020 report from Rabobank found 45% of farmers in South Australia and 38% in Western Australia lease a portion of the land they operate.

But leasing rates tend to rise in line with land values, which in turn erodes the profitability of those who lease land for farms for farming operations.

The rise in farmland values may also lead to significant borrowing costs for new farmers and existing farmers expanding their businesses if they finance their farmland purchases with debt.

This is because higher property prices require larger loans, which lead to higher interest repayments and ultimately diminish profitability.

For those who do own land outright, there is a potential upside. Higher land prices boost farmer wealth and equity levels. This increases borrowing capacity and supports productivity growth by making it easier for farmers to access capital for further investments, such as upgrading machinery or adopting new technology.

But even for this group, rising land values can inflate property taxes and insurance premiums, eroding profits.

Headed for the exit

This trend has real consequences for farmers and rural communities.

When farmland prices rise sharply, many long-time farmers see an opportunity to sell up and leave the industry. But when they go, their years of knowledge about how to run farms efficiently and productively go with them, leaving a gap that’s hard to replace.

High land prices also push some farmers, especially younger ones, out of the market altogether. In parts of Australia, it’s becoming harder to afford land to buy or lease, which threatens their ability to make a decent living from farming.

If fewer people can make a living on the land, that puts pressure on Australia’s food supply. It also affects the towns and communities built around farming. Fewer farmers mean fewer families in the region, which can lead to schools and local businesses closing and a weakening of the community fabric.

At the same time, when farmland becomes very expensive, there’s more pressure to squeeze every dollar out of it. That can encourage farming practices that put short-term profit ahead of long-term environmental care.

Policymakers, farmers and the public can’t afford to ignore these hidden costs.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Florian Gerth, who co-authored the research discussed in this article.

Amir Arjomandi, Associate Professor of Economics, School of Business, University of Wollongong; Hassan F. Gholipour, Associate Professor of Property, Western Sydney University; Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, Professor of Economics of the Middle East, University of Marburg, and Sharon Yam, Associate Professor of Property, Western Sydney University

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

Imagine the weight of three Sydney Harbour Bridges. Between 2022 and 2023, product manufacturers were responsible for 540,000 tonnes (or three Sydney Harbour Bridges) of soft plastic packaging in Australia. Even worse, only 6% was recovered for recycling.

Following the spectacular collapse of REDcycle’s recycling program a few years ago, Australians discovered that instead of being recycled as promised, huge stockpiles of soft plastics had been secretly stockpiled in warehouses.

The consumer watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, is proposing a new voluntary scheme where supermarkets and manufacturers work together to collect and recycle soft plastics. Public submissions on the scheme are due by next Monday, August 25.

So what’s being proposed? And how could buying more food without plastic packaging potentially save you money?

How the new recycling scheme would work

The commission’s proposed industry-led scheme aims to collect and recycle more soft plastic packaging from consumers, such as shopping bags and food packaging. Once approved, the program is proposed to run for eight years, with an initial review after three.

Australia’s three largest supermarket chains – Woolworths, Coles and Aldi – are all involved, along with multinational food manufacturers Nestle, Mars and McCormick Foods. It would be run by Soft Plastics Stewardship Australia, a not-for-profit industry body overseen by a board of senior supermarket and manufacturing executives.

It would be funded through a levy on the companies involved. For example, when a manufacturer sells its product to a supermarket, the manufacturer will have “placed” the soft plastic on the market – so they would pay.

The levy would start at A$160 per tonne of soft plastic and is expected to increase over time.

The companies involved may decide to pass on the cost of the levy through the supply chain, including to consumers. So it remains to be seen who’ll end up paying.

Other countries have taken a different approach. For example, in Germany producers have to take back and recycle any packaging from consumers free of charge.

Why soft plastics are hard to recycle

“Soft” plastics are used by manufacturers, suppliers and supermarkets to package everything from fresh produce, frozen foods, chip packets, muesli bar wrappers and deli counter film, to the inner and outer packaging on countless other supermarket items.

Soft plastics are made up of multiple layered and flexible materials, making them difficult to recycle.

They are often contaminated with food, and their “soft” nature tends to jam conventional sorting and processing machinery. They also take up a lot of space without yielding much usable material, making the whole process uneconomical for recycling organisations.

Why is so much supermarket food pre-packed?

For stores, it keeps things moving: pre-weighed packs speed up checkouts, cut staff time, and prolong shelf life for some products. That thin film on a cucumber can stretch its life from 3 days to 14.

Packaging also standardises portions, allows for company branding and promotion, and makes stock easier to store, stack and transport.

For shoppers, the appeal is convenience and familiarity.

When you’re in a hurry, it’s often simpler to grab what’s ready to go than to think about how much food you actually need, and the extra plastic you’ll bring home.

Buying unpackaged food could save you money

Commendable as it is, on its own the proposal for a new recycling scheme is not a long-term fix. Technical solutions to environmental problems – such as recycling soft plastics – can stop us dealing with the ultimate cause: our own behaviour.

Economists call this “moral hazard”. A classic example is drivers who are insured take greater risks when driving. Or in this case, knowing the plastic will be recycled means many of us could feel we don’t need to reduce our plastic use.

But while systematic change is clearly needed, as shoppers we can do our bit – and there can be payoffs for doing so.

Selecting loose fresh fruit and vegetables allows you to check for ripeness and avoid hidden spoilage.

It’s often also cheaper. Last year, Choice compared supermarket unit prices of a range of foods sold both loose and pre-packed. They found loose produce was cheaper 50% of the time, while prepackaged was cheaper 35% of the time (15% it was about the same).

Thinking beyond recycling

We need more profound changes to tackle our local and global packaging waste crisis.

One example is zero-waste shops that sell everything loose, from fresh food to dry goods and liquids.

We can start by changing our behaviour from the bottom up, avoiding pre-packaged goods as much as practical.

But manufacturers and supermarkets need to do their part too, giving shoppers more choice with more loose products and less plastic.

A sustainable solution to too much plastic has to go beyond recycling, otherwise our Harbour Bridge-sized stockpiles will continue to grow.

Louise Grimmer, Associate Professor of Marketing, Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, University of Tasmania; Robert Hoffmann, Professor of Economics, Tasmanian Behavioural Lab, University of Tasmania, and Swee-Hoon Chuah, Professor of Behavioural Economics, Tasmanian Behavioural Lab, University of Tasmania

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

Australia is home to an extraordinary variety of wildlife, ranging from striking palm cockatoos to elusive mountain pygmy-possums and remarkable rat-kangaroos.

Most of us never get to see these creatures in real life – and that’s a real shame. Spending time in nature looking for wildlife is more than just a hobby – it’s a way to reconnect with the natural world and remember why it matters.

But how do you actually see these creatures for yourself? It’s often easier than you think.

As wildlife researchers, we’ve spent a long time in the field looking for wildlife. Here are ten standout locations where you have a good chance of seeing some genuinely remarkable Australian creatures – and tips on doing so without causing them stress or harming the environment.

1. Kutini-Payamu/Iron Range National Park, Queensland

Located in far north Queensland, Iron Range is renowned for lush rainforests and rich wildlife. Here, you can spot majestic palm cockatoos, secretive green pythons, the striking green, red and blue hues of eclectus parrots and the adorable common spotted cuscus, a species of possum. These species also occur in Papua New Guinea, but the Cape York region is the only place to spot them in Australia.

Spotting tips: Walk the trails with binoculars during peak times for bird activity, early morning or late afternoon. At night, use a head torch to spot pythons, frogs, death adders, geckoes, rufous owls, cuscus and other nocturnal fauna.

2. Atherton Tablelands, Queensland

Inland from Cairns lies the Atherton Tablelands, an elevated region with a cooler climate and abundant and diverse wildlife. Here, you can spot vibrant Ulysses butterflies, shy platypuses and rare marsupials. Australia’s largest snake, the scrub python, can block entire roads as it warms itself up before the night’s hunt. Rare waterfall frogs can be spotted in fast-flowing falls.

Lumholtz’s tree kangaroos can be spotted hopping along limbs at Curtain Fig National Park and Mount Hypipamee National Park, alongside green ringtail possums and striped possums with elongated fingers to ferret out grubs.

Meanwhile, musky rat-kangaroos can be seen “gardening” on the forest floor at Lake Eacham and Lake Barrine. These are the smallest kangaroos and the only non-hopping species. Your best chance of sighting an elusive northern quoll or northern bettong is at Davies Creek National Park.

Spotting tips: Take guided night walks to glimpse nocturnal wildlife. Use a head torch with a red filter. Move quietly and regularly stop to listen for movement and animal calls. Binoculars are a must for spotting creatures high in the canopy.

3. Western Treatment Plant, Victoria

Surprisingly, Melbourne’s Western Treatment Plant is a mecca for birdwatchers. The huge wastewater facility is recognised as a wetland of international importance. Migratory birds such as sharp-tailed sandpipers and red-necked stints can be seen, while well-hidden bitterns, rare orange-bellied parrots and Australia’s dancing crane, the brolga, can be glimpsed feeding in dense heath during cooler months. Almost 300 species have been recorded here.

Spotting tips: Visit during migration seasons (spring and autumn) for the best birdwatching opportunities. Use binoculars, telescopes, or telephoto lenses for close-up views without disturbance. Visitors need a permit.

4. Lunawanna-allonah/Bruny Island and Wukaluwikiwayna/Maria Island, Tasmania

South of Hobart lies Bruny Island, a sanctuary for endangered species such as eastern and spotted-tailed quolls. Most of Tasmania’s endemic bird species are found here, such as green rosellas and forty-spotted pardalotes. Rare swift parrots can also be seen.

North of Hobart is Maria Island, an island national park where no cars are allowed – and where Tasmanian devils, bandicoots and wombats can readily be seen.

Spotting tips: Join guided tours to see nocturnal wildlife or birds in Bruny Island’s tall forests. Eastern quolls can often be seen at night on the main road when heading north from the island’s isthmus. Tasmanian devils and bandicoots can be seen around campsites at Maria Island at night.

5. Flinders, Portsea and Blairgowrie piers, Victoria

Snorkelling the cool waters beneath Flinders, Portsea and Blairgowrie piers is a revelation. Here live spectacular weedy sea dragons, sand octopuses, big-belly seahorses, ornate cowfish, smooth and eagle rays, Port Jackson and banjo sharks and vividly coloured nudibranchs.

Spotting tips: Snorkel or dive during calm weather for best visibility. Keep your distance from marine life for their safety (and yours).

6. Sydney Harbour and cliff tops, New South Wales

Sydney’s iconic harbour and surrounding cliffs are well suited for marine life enthusiasts. Every winter, humpback and southern right whales migrate past the headlands, while pods of bottlenose dolphins can be seen year-round. White-bellied sea eagles, Australasian gannets and short-tailed shearwaters add to the spectacle in the skies.

Spotting tips: Join whale-watching cruises between May and November for the best chance. Clifftop spotting is best done with binoculars from Royal National Park, North Head, Clovelly and The Gap.

7. Binybara/Lee Point, Northern Territory

Just north of Darwin is Lee Point, one of the best places to glimpse the elusive black-footed tree-rat. Weighing almost a kilo, this threatened native rodent is an expert climber and lives in tree hollows.

Around 200 bird species have also been recorded here. Flocks of great knots, eastern curlews and grey-tailed tattlers feed on the mudflats, while the woodlands are home to the dazzling colour of Gouldian finches and the charismatic blue-winged kookaburra.

Spotting tips: Visit at night to see the tree-rat moving between trees, or come at low tide to watch thousands of shorebirds feeding. Binoculars will be invaluable.

8. Wadjemup/Rottnest Island, Western Australia

Offshore from Perth, Rottnest Island is rightly famous for its smiling quokkas. But other unique species such as King’s skink and venomous dugites can be seen here too, while osprey nests occupied for decades can be seen on rock stacks. The reefs around the island have WA’s southernmost coral.

Spotting tips: Cycling is the best way to explore different habitats on the largely car-free island. Keep your distance from quokkas and other wildlife to ensure they stay wild.

9. Kunama Namadgi/Kosciuszko National Park, New South Wales

Australia’s highest peaks are home to the nation’s most remarkable alpine wildlife. Birdwatchers can spot gang-gang cockatoos feeding in eucalypts, while lucky hikers might glimpse an alpine dingo crossing a snow-dusted plain, or see a strikingly coloured Corroborree frog in a bog or fen.

This is the only place in the world where you can encounter a critically endangered mountain pygmy-possum. These tiny marsupials hibernate under winter snow and emerge to feed on bogong moths in spring.

Kosciuszko is also home to the native smoky mouse and – remarkably – to Leadbeater’s possum, long thought to be confined to Victoria’s Central Highlands.

Spotting tips: For the best chance of spotting a mountain pygmy-possum, visit between late spring and early summer when the snow has melted. Stick to alpine boulder fields such as those around Charlotte Pass and Mount Kosciuszko. You may need to camp overnight to see nocturnal possums and the smoky mouse. Binoculars and patience are essential to glimpse these shy species.

10. Karta Pintingga/Kangaroo Island, South Australia

Southwest of Adelaide lies the large Kangaroo Island, home to echidnas, tammar wallabies, a rare subspecies of the glossy black-cockatoo and Kangaroo Island dunnarts. Koalas are common. While the island’s isolation has protected these species, the 2020 megafires caused much damage. Wildlife is now bouncing back.

Spotting tips: Explore national parks and conservation areas with a local guide. Observe from a distance.

Take care of wildlife

Wildlife spotting has to be done with care. Think of yourself as a guest in someone else’s home.

Keep a respectful distance, don’t touch wildlife, move quietly and use binoculars or a zoom lens for a closer look rather than creeping closer.

If you’re out after dark, make sure your head torch has a red light option. This light is vastly less damaging to animal eyes optimised for the dark.

When snorkelling or diving, avoid hitting corals and sponges with your fins.

It can be tempting to use playback of calls to attract birds such as owls. But this is very disruptive and can do real damage.

Avoid moving logs, bark, stones and other habitat in your effort to see animals. This is disruptive and risks bites from venomous creatures.

Clean and disinfect your boots before moving between areas to avoid spreading soil-borne pathogens such as cinnamon fungus and chytrid fungus.

Whatever you do, don’t feed wildlife. It might seem harmless, but it can change their natural behaviour, make them ill and even make them dependent on people.

Posting sightings on citizen science apps such as iNaturalist and FrogID can help scientists learn more about these species and aid their conservation.

Enjoy the journey

As wildlife researchers, we often seek out species in their natural habitat. These moments never lose their impact.

It’s a remarkable thing to see a creature in its natural habitat. A successful sighting gives a sense of awe and joy. At a time when many people are cut off from nature, deliberately seeking out these species is a powerful and rewarding act.

Patrick Finnerty, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Conservation and Wildlife Management, University of Sydney; Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, and Rhys Cairncross, Ecologist and PhD Researcher, University of Sydney

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

Poohsticks, the game in which Piglet and Winnie the Pooh throw sticks into the river from one side of a bridge, and then rush over to the other side to see whose stick appears first, is all about current flow. Disappointingly, neither Piglet nor Pooh mention fluid dynamics despite its pivotal importance in determining who won.

Unlike sticks, though, animals can respond to those flows. The movement of water and air – with their winds and currents – can affect flying and swimming animals profoundly. And as we recently discovered, penguins are far more tuned in to these dynamics than anyone realised.

Anyone who’s ever swum in the sea will know how cross-currents can drag you along the coast, even when you’re trying to swim straight in. Magellanic penguins, a South American penguin, face this challenge daily, but they appear to have found a clever solution.

Penguins can swim far from land but seem to know exactly where they are. More importantly, they seem to know how to get back to their breeding colonies, whether currents are confounding them or not.

To understand how they do this, our team – which included researchers from Argentina, Germany, Japan and the UK – fitted high-tech tracking tags to Magellanic penguins breeding in Argentina. These birds often forage up to 43 miles offshore, far beyond the range of visual landmarks. And it’s unlikely they’re using the seafloor as a map, as Magellanics rarely dive that deep.

The tech we placed on the penguins recorded some pivotal information. Global positioning systems (GPS) gave the birds’ positions when they were at the surface between dives. And trajectories underwater could be calculated using dead reckoning. This is what a car navigation system does when it goes into a tunnel – it starts with the last GPS position and uses vectors on the car heading and speed to work out the path.

Our team did this with the penguins’ data, calculating the underwater pathways for every second of their one to three day trips. We then integrated this with the currents. This was no simple undertaking because currents change dramatically over the tidal cycle and vary with position.

So what could the penguins do in such a dynamic environment? One option (assuming they somehow knew both where they were and where home was) would be to head straight for the colony. But doing this would often have meant swimming against strong currents, sometimes of up to 2 metres per second (around 4.5mph). That’s about the same speed as an Olympic swimmer.

Although penguins can cruise at that speed, going faster to beat the current would cost them a lot of extra energy.

Interestingly, we found that during slack water, when the currents were trivial, the penguins headed directly home. So, somehow they knew where they were in relation to the colony. Theories about how animals might do this include them using magnetic field sensing, celestial cues, or even using smell to find their way but it’s a mysterious and hotly debated topic among experts.

When the current was strong, the penguins generally aimed in the right direction to return home. But they often combined this with swimming in the same general direction as the current, which typically flowed across the direct line to the nest. So, some birds appeared set to overshoot the colony, probably landing further down the coast.

However, the yin and yang of tidal currents means that what flows one way on the rising tide reverses on the ebb. The penguins seemed to understand this. They swam roughly equivalent, but mirror-imaged, trajectories on both incoming and outgoing tides, according to the direction of the current.

This strategy effectively cancels out potential overshoots over the course of a tidal cycle. Once they were close enough to the colony, the penguins launched into a final burst of power and made a direct line for home. This strategy increases the length of the path to get home. But it’s easy travelling since much of the work to move is done by the current and the increased distance gives the penguins opportunities to find prey.

Navigational experts

This suggests that Magellanic penguins can detect both the direction and speed of ocean currents. While some theories propose that animals sense small-scale turbulence to gauge flow, the mechanisms remain poorly understood.

Still, what these penguins manage is remarkable. It’s a kind of navigational party trick that helps ensure they return reliably to feed their chicks, seemingly untroubled by shifting currents.

Ocean and air circulation patterns are becoming more chaotic with climate change. If penguins, and other marine animals, can keep navigating our waters with skill and instinct, it’s one small piece of good news in a rapidly changing world.

Rory Wilson, Professor of Aquatic Biology and Sustainable Aquaculture, Swansea University and Richard Michael Gunner, Postdoctoral Researcher in Wildlife Biology, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior

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

For the tenth time this year, a wildfire warning covers most of Scotland. The latest alert came after a recent, and not the first, gorse fire on Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh’s iconic ancient volcano that draws millions of visitors every year. Fire crews think human activity caused the fire. This is exactly the kind of incident that triggers our instinct to find someone to blame.

But with over 41,000 hectares already burned across Britain in 2025 (an area larger than the Isle of Wight) pointing the finger misses the point. News reports focus on who lit the spark, but Arthur’s Seat was primed to burn: flammable gorse has flourished since sheep stopped grazing the slopes. The real question isn’t who started this fire, but why we are caught off guard when fires happen in the wrong places.

This isn’t just an Edinburgh problem. Millions of Britons live near fire-prone landscapes, from Dorset heathlands to the Scottish Highlands.

My colleagues and I work with national parks in southern Africa to understand how they manage this challenge. The challenges I see in South Africa mirror what Britain now faces because of climate change: how to keep people and infrastructure safe when fire an unavoidable part of our reality.

Research shows that climate change has made the UK’s risk of ideal conditions for wildfires six times higher. While ignition sources haven’t changed much – most UK fires still start from human activity like discarded cigarettes or campfires – the conditions that allow fires to spread have transformed. Warmer, wetter winters create more plant growth and therefore fuel, which turns bone-dry during hot, dry spells.

Fire is a natural and vital feature of many landscapes globally. In fire-adapted ecosystems it can clear invasive species while promoting native grasses, reduce the buildup of dead vegetation that fuels dangerous blazes and create some of our most iconic places where plants and animals thrive.

The problem isn’t fire itself, but where, when and how it happens. Over 1.8 million British homes now sit within 100m of countryside edges – exactly where most wildfires occur. During one of Britain’s biggest wildfires on a North Yorkshire moor in 2018, flames nearly reached homes and critical infrastructure: the trans-Pennine railway, M62 motorway, major power lines and drinking water reservoirs. Another recent fire in the same area was close to a ballistic missile base.

I have interviewed fire managers in South Africa, where humans have worked with fire for millennia. Their approach suggests a fundamentally different relationship with fire, understanding fire as part of a landscape’s natural processes. Instead of treating every fire as a crisis, they study how fire behaves – when it helps ecosystems, when it threatens communities, and how to work with these patterns rather than against them.

Take Cape Town as an example, where fire authorities publish daily risk ratings that residents check like weather forecasts. High-risk days mean banned barbecues and closed trails. When safe, fire crews deliberately burn mountain slopes in small sections – having the right fires at the right times to prevent catastrophic ones. Property owners in Cape Town form neighbourhood fire protection associations to support each other and the emergency services during unplanned fires, creating a coordinated response network.

The UK is catching on

The UK government is reviewing its wildfire management strategy, focusing on prevention, collaboration and risk reduction. Landowners are also taking a more proactive approach. The Cairngorms national park in Scotland approved the UK’s first comprehensive wildfire management plan in June 2025, introducing seasonal fire management plans and setting up community groups to communicate fire risk and response. Fire services in the Cairngorms now use drones for real-time aerial mapping and off-road vehicles to fight fires in tough terrain.

However, we are still playing catch up. Fire services recorded 286 wildfires between January and April 2025. That’s over 100 more than the same period in 2022’s record year. Yet services receive little dedicated wildfire funding.

Britain could learn from South Africa’s holistic approach. Starting with the need to understand our own landscapes first. What role does fire play in our landscapes? How can we safely manage fire risk in different landscape types? Which of our ecosystems and places might actually benefit from carefully managed fire?

Edinburgh could start by studying Arthur’s Seat as Cape Town studies Table Mountain – not to implement identical solutions, but to understand how fire behaves in this specific landscape. This means researching how gorse burns, whether controlled burns could reduce dangerous fuel loads, and how visitors can safely coexist with proactive fire management.

The lesson isn’t to transplant South African methods to British soil, but to embrace their comprehensive approach to understanding fire. Every landscape is different. What works on Cape Town’s fynbos shrubland won’t necessarily work on Scottish moors. But the principle of studying fire as a part of the landscape rather than simply an emergency to suppress could transform how Britain manages its growing fire risk.

Fire isn’t the enemy. Poorly understood, unmanaged fire is. Climate change guarantees greater fire risk. Britain’s choice is clear: continue reacting with shock to each blaze, or develop our own integrated understanding of how fire works in British landscapes. The Arthur’s Seat fire was a warning shot. The question is whether we’ll heed it.

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Elliot Convery-Fisher, Research Fellow in the Socio-Ecology of Fire Management, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

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

People often prioritize aesthetics when choosing plants for their gardens. They may pick flowers based on colors that create visually appealing combinations and varieties that have bigger and brighter displays or more fragrant and pleasant-smelling flowers. Some may also choose species that bloom at different times in order to maintain a colorful display throughout the growing season.

Many gardeners also strive for ecological harmony, seeking to maintain pollinator-friendly gardens that support bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and other pollinators. But there are some notable ways in which the preferences of humans and pollinators have the potential to diverge, with negative consequences for pollinators.

As a cognitive ecologist who studies animal decision-making, I find that understanding how pollinators learn about and choose between flowers can add a helpful perspective to garden aesthetics.

Pollinator preferences and rewards

Over millions of years, plants have evolved suites of floral traits to attract specific types of pollinators.

Pollinators can be attracted to flowers based on color, pattern, scent and texture. For instance, hummingbirds typically visit bright red and orange flowers with narrow openings and a tubular shape. The striking red cardinal flower is one that is primarily pollinated by hummingbirds, for example.

Bees are often attracted to blue, yellow and white flowers that can be either narrow and tubular or open. Lavender, sage and sunflower plants all bear flowers that attract bee pollinators.

Flowers offer rewards to visiting pollinators. Nectar is a sugar-rich solution that flowers produce to attract pollinators, which use it to meet their energy needs.

Flowers have an ulterior motive for providing this energy source. While drinking the nectar, pollen can get stuck on the pollinator and transferred to the next flower it visits. This process is essential for the plant’s reproductive success. Pollen contains the plants’ male gametes, which, when deposited onto another flower in the right place, can fertilize the female gametes and produce seeds that grow into new plants. Pollen is also nutrient-rich, containing proteins, lipids and amino acids. Many species, such as bees, collect pollen to feed their developing young.

A battle for resources

Pollinators visit flowers in search of floral rewards. But modifying the features of flowers for aesthetics can be a hindrance to pollinators trying to get these rewards. For example, popular garden plants such as roses and peonies are often bred to have more petals and larger flower heads, making them more visually striking and appealing to humans. But these extra petals may block a pollinator’s access to the center of the flower, where floral rewards are located.

Further, plants have limited resources. Spending them on building aesthetically pleasing but energetically expensive features can mean there’s less left to invest in signals and rewards essential for attracting pollinators. In extreme cases, breeding for aesthetics has led to plants with what scientists and gardeners call “double flowers.” In these varieties, extra petals replace reproductive parts entirely. These plants are often altogether unrewarding for pollinators, since the flowers no longer produce nectar or pollen. Double flowers occur from mutations that convert the pollen-producing stamens and other reproductive organs into petals. They can occur naturally but are rare in wild populations.

Since these double flowers cannot spread pollen or produce seeds effectively, they are unable to reproduce in the wild and pass these mutations on. To cultivate them as garden varieties, people propagate these plants through cuttings – small sections cut from the stem that can be rooted to grow clones of the parent plant. Many common garden plants have popular double-flowered varieties, including roses, peonies, camellias, marigolds, tulips, dahlias and chrysanthemums.

Roses, for example, have become synonymous with having many densely-packed petals. But these popular garden varieties are usually double-flowered or have many extra petals blocking access to the center of the rose and provide no rewards to pollinators.

Consider making your gardens friendlier to pollinators by avoiding these double-flowered plants, and ask your local garden center for recommended varieties if you need help.

Sometimes gardeners intentionally prevent plants from flowering, which limits or eliminates their value to pollinators.

For example, herbs such as thyme, oregano, mint and basil are generally most flavorful and tender before the plant begins to flower. Once it flowers, the plant diverts energy to reproductive structures, and leaves become tougher and lose flavor. As a result, gardeners often pinch off flower buds and harvest leaves frequently to promote continued growth and delay flowering. Letting some of your herbs flower occasionally can help pollinators without affecting your kitchen supplies too much.

Finding the right flowers

Flowers with unusual colors and stronger fragrances can be difficult for pollinators to detect and recognize.

People might favor bright and unusual flower colors in their gardens over naturally occurring shades. But this preference might not align with what the pollinators have evolved to favor in nature. For example, planting human-preferred colors, such as white or pink morphs of hummingbird-pollinated flowers that are typically red, can reduce a flower’s visibility and attractiveness. Even when cultivated varieties have a similar enough color to natural ones to attract pollinators, they may lack other important visual components, such as ultraviolet floral patterns that can guide pollinators to nectar sources.

Breeding plant varieties to accentuate particular aesthetic traits may have unintended consequences for other traits. Changes in flower color through selective breeding can also affect leaf color, as genes involved in pigment production can affect multiple plant tissues. Besides changing the overall appearance of the plant, changing leaf color may alter background contrast between flowers and the leaves, which can make flowers less conspicuous to pollinators.

Many pollinators use a combination of color and scent to detect and discriminate between flowers. But breeding for traits such as color and brightness can alter floral scents due to unintended genetic changes or energetic trade-offs.

Scent helps pollinators locate flowers from farther distances, so unfamiliar or reduced fragrance may make flowers harder to find in the first place. Disruption in either color or scent can make flowers less noticeable to pollinators expecting a familiar pairing and can hinder a pollinator’s ability to learn which flowers are suitable for them in the first place.

A balanced approach for healthy gardens

When flowers are harder to find, pollinators are less likely to visit them. When they offer poor or no rewards, pollinators quickly abandon them for better options. This disruption in plant-pollinator interactions has implications not only for pollinator health but also for garden vitality. Many plants rely on animal pollinators to reproduce and make mature seeds. These are either collected by gardeners or allowed to drop to the ground and sprout on their own to grow new flowering plants the following year.

When selecting plants for a garden, gardeners who want to support pollinators might consider choosing native varieties that have evolved alongside local pollinators.

In most areas of the country, there are native plants with colorful and interesting flowers that bloom at different times, from early spring to late fall. These plants tend to produce reliable floral signals and offer the nectar and pollen needed to support pollinator nutrition and development.

Sterile varieties and double flowers offer little or no rewards for pollinators, and gardens with them may not attract as many pollinators. Letting herbs flower after some harvesting is another simple way to support beneficial insects.

With choices informed by not just your aesthetic preferences but also those of pollinators, you can create colorful gardens that support wildlife and stay in bloom across various seasons.

Claire Therese Hemingway, Assistant Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee

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

In March 2025, surfers and swimmers were the first to notice the harmful algal bloom taking hold in South Australian waters. People catching waves at a popular break on the Fleurieu Peninsula later reported feeling sick with flu-like symptoms.

Over the five months since, an “unprecedented” environmental disaster has unfolded, devastating marine ecosystems and the South Australian economy. It has also fundamentally changed the way people connect to the ocean.

This particular bloom – caused by Karenia mikimotoi – is deadly to various marine species, while in humans it can cause milder illness and irritation.

But the impact on mental health and wellbeing is profound.

When people can no longer use “blue spaces” such as the ocean to surf, swim, fish and walk on the beach, they are losing activities that calm and relax them – exactly when they’re most sick with worry about their beloved coastline.

A perfect storm

South Australia’s algal bloom is the result of a “perfect storm” – a marine heatwave, nutrient rich water from previous flooding, and a rare cold-water upwelling.

Current public health advice tells surfers and swimmers to stay out of water if it looks “discoloured, foamy, or where there’s dead marine life”.

Given that dead marine life is washing up across many South Australian beaches, this means it’s hard to find any place to surf or swim.

Recreational fishers are advised that catching fish (and other marine species) is safe if it’s cleaned thoroughly before eating. But many are not throwing their lines in due to concerns about depleting the surviving marine life.

Blue spaces and health

Activities such as swimming, surfing and fishing are not only enjoyable, they have a range of health benefits.

There is mounting empirical evidence about the range of benefits from spending time in “green spaces”, such as parks and bushland.

In 2020, a review of evidence about “blue spaces” – meaning oceans, rivers and lakes – found similar benefits.

For example, swimming outdoors in nature – sometimes known as “wild swimming” – can reduce fatigue and improve mental health. There is also early evidence that it can promote immune functioning.

Surfing also has physical and mental health benefits, and increases community connections. One study of recreational fishers found three in four (75.5%) fish for stress relief.

But these are benefits people in areas affected by the algal bloom are no longer getting.

Grief and anxiety

The algal bloom means people can’t access blue spaces and their health benefits. In fact, the devastation can mean engaging with blue spaces actually makes people’s mental health worse, through worry and grief about the environment.

Eco-anxiety describes the extreme fear, worry, sadness or a generally heightened emotional state we may feel in response to changes in the climate or environment. When people experience grief and other negative emotions about changes to a place they love, this is sometimes called “solastalgia”.

Both eco-anxiety and solastalgia can be responses to global changes, such as warming temperatures and rising sea levels. But they are felt most acutely among those affected directly by a disaster.

Research after Australia’s 2019–20 bushfires found high levels of eco-anxiety and solastalgia among those who survived, with the environment becoming a source of pain and grief.

Given this harmful algal bloom is being referred to as an “underwater bushfire”, it is unsurprising we are seeing people describe similar concern, worry, sadness and loss.

I am part of a team from the University of South Australia currently researching this impact, by surveying people who live near and use the beach to better understand their experience.

Are there any silver linings?

Grief about the destruction of a place we love is the sign of how much we care about it – and this can be galvanising.

Research shows eco-anxiety can be a form of practical anxiety. This means unlike other forms of worry it is more likely to also drive behaviour change.

We are already seeing this in South Australia. Over 12,000 recordings on iNaturalist – a website where members of the community upload photos and help identify species – provide shocking visual evidence of the loss and devastation.

Distressed beachgoers who are participating in citizen science programs such as these help keep the spotlight on the disaster, as well as rescuing stranded sea animals and protesting for action from government and industry.

Amid the grief, it’s important to try and still maintain our connection to our environment. When we can’t spend time in our usual natural spots, we can still benefit from connecting with nature beyond blue spaces – even if it’s simply visiting a park or planting something new.

Brianna Le Busque, Lecturer in Environmental Science, University of South Australia

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

Human-driven climate change threatens many species, including birds. Most studies on this topic focus on long-term climate trends, such as gradual rises in average temperatures or shifts in rainfall patterns. But extreme weather events are becoming more common and intense, so they warrant further attention.

Our new research shows extreme heat is having a particularly severe effect on tropical birds. We found increased exposure to extreme heat has reduced bird populations in tropical regions by 25–38% since 1950.

This is not just a temporary dip – it’s a long-term, cumulative effect that continues to build as the planet warms.

Our research helps explain why bird numbers are falling even in wild places relatively untouched by humans, such as some very remote protected tropical forests. It underscores the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to conserve the remaining biodiversity.

Digging into huge global datasets

We analysed data from long-term monitoring of more than 3,000 bird populations worldwide between 1950 and 2020. This dataset captures more than 90,000 scientific observations.

Although there are some gaps, the dataset offers an unmatched view of how bird populations have changed over time. Some parts of the world such as western Europe and North America were better represented than others, but all continents were covered.

We matched this bird data with detailed daily weather records from a global climate database that stretches back to 1940. This allowed us to track how bird populations responded to specific changes in daily temperatures and rainfall, including extreme heat.

We also looked at average yearly temperatures, total annual rainfall, and episodes of unusually heavy rainfall.

Using another dataset that reflects human industrial activity over time, we accounted for human pressures such as land development and human population density.

By combining all these sources of data, we created computer models to evaluate how climate factors and human impacts influence bird population growth.

Our research confirmed the work of other climate scientists showing extreme heat events have increased dramatically over the past 70 years, especially near the equator.

Birds in tropical regions are now experiencing dangerously hot days about ten times more often than they did in the past.

What we found: extreme heat is the biggest climate threat to birds

While changes in average temperature and rainfall do affect birds, we found the increasing number of dangerously hot days had the greatest effect – especially in tropical regions.

This is a major concern because tropical birds often have small home ranges and are highly specialised in terms of the habitats and climates they persist in. In many cases tropical birds exist within a small range of heat tolerance.

At temperatures beyond a bird’s limit of endurance, they go into hyperthermia, where their body temperature rises uncontrollably. In this state, birds may adopt a drooped-wing posture to expose more skin for heat loss, hold their beaks open and pant rapidly, spread their feathers, and become lethargic or disoriented. In severe cases, they lose coordination, fall from perches, or even collapse unconscious.

If they survive the experience, they can suffer long-term damage such as heat-induced organ failure and reduced reproductive capacity. Heat exposure reduces breeding success by lowering adult body condition and reducing time spent foraging – because the birds must rest or seek shade during the hottest hours.

It also causes heat stress in eggs and nestlings. In extreme events, nestlings may die from hyperthermia, or parents may abandon nests to save themselves.

Heat also increases a bird’s demand for water — not because they sweat (birds lack sweat glands) but because they lose water rapidly through evaporative cooling. This happens mainly via panting (respiratory evaporation) and, in some species, gular fluttering (rapid vibration of throat skin to increase airflow), as well as evaporation through the skin. As temperatures climb, these processes accelerate, causing significant dehydration unless birds can drink more frequently or access moister food.

Our study found that across tropical areas, the impact of climate change on birds is perhaps even greater now than the impact of direct human activities such as logging, mining or farming. This is not to say habitat destruction due to these activities is not a serious issue – it clearly is a major concern to tropical biodiversity. But our study highlights the challenges climate change is already bringing to birds in tropical regions.

A clear warning

Our research highlights the importance of focusing not just on average climate trends, but also on extreme events. Heatwaves are no longer rare, isolated incidents – they are becoming a regular part of life in many parts of the world.

If climate change continues unchecked, tropical birds – and likely many other animals and plants – will face increasing threats to their survival. Change may be too fast and too extreme for many species to adapt.

And as tropical regions host a huge share of the world’s biodiversity, including nearly half of all bird species, the ripple effects could be far-reaching.

Conservation strategies must take this into account. Protecting habitats from human industrial development remains important, but it’s no longer enough on its own. Proactive action to help species adapt to climate change needs to be part of wildlife protection plans – especially in the tropics.

Ultimately if we are to preserve global biodiversity, slowing down and eventually reversing climate change is essential. That means cutting greenhouse gas emissions, investing in ways to draw down existing carbon dioxide levels, and supporting policies that reduce our impact on the planet. The fate of tropical birds – and countless other species – depends on it.

James Watson, Professor in Conservation Science, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland; Maximilian Kotz, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), and Tatsuya Amano, Associate Professor, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland

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

As the annual humpback whale migration is underway with thousands of whales passing by the Australian coast, there are reports of dolphins joining the mass movement.

But this isn’t a one off. In fact, our new study, published today in Discover Animals, shows interspecies interactions between dolphins and whales are widespread and frequent around the world.

An astonishing interaction

There have been several reports of whale and dolphin interaction in the past.

One that astonished the public back in 2004 featured a humpback whale in Hawaii repeatedly lifting a bottlenose dolphin on its head.

Researchers suggested such close contact between whales and dolphins is likely very rare – and maybe related to care giving.

But other forms of interactions resembling joint feeding, play and harassment are now being frequently documented thanks to drone technology. Many are also featured on social media.

A ‘whale’s-eye view’ of the world

For our new study, we undertook an analysis of 199 independent whale-dolphin interaction events involving 19 different species. These interactions spanned two decades and occurred across 17 countries.

We drew from social media platforms – such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram – and footage contributed by citizens to get a variety of observations.

Each entry was carefully reviewed to identify the species involved, validate the interaction and categorise behaviours. Two additional cases came from camera tags attached to humpback whales. These offered an underwater “whale’s-eye view” of their encounters with dolphins.

We categorised behaviours such as rolling, tail slaps, bow riding, and rubbing, and classified dolphin positions relative to whale body parts such as head, flank and tail fluke.

Having fun or fighting?

The study contradicted earlier assumptions that interspecies interactions between dolphins and whales are very rare.

The most common interaction was dolphins swimming near the whale’s head (akin to bow riding). This accounted for 80% of observed dolphin positions. Humpback whales were the most involved whale species, while bottlenose dolphins led the dolphin side.

Based on videos we analysed, dolphins initiated most interactions through bow riding, swimming in formation, or even touching whales.

In more than one-quarter of the events, the whales responded in seemingly similar ways. For example, humpback whales often rolled, exposed their bellies, or gently turned toward dolphins.

Tail slaps and other signs of distress or aggression were rare (roughly 5% of cases).

As a result of this, we classified more than one-third of all interactions between humpback whales and dolphins as positive or possible social play.

The two camera-tag videos revealed previously undocumented interaction. Dolphins were observed following humpback whales not only at the surface but down to the ocean floor. They maintained eye contact or even touched the whales’ head – suggesting intentional, possibly social, engagement.

Reflecting advanced emotional capabilities

The findings reshape our understanding of how social marine mammals interact across species. They suggest interspecies interaction among marine mammals may be far more prevalent and complex than previously believed.

Dolphins may seek out whales as companions for stimulation, play or even courtship-like behaviour. Meanwhile, certain whale species, particularly humpback whales, may not only tolerate but also engage with dolphins in a social capacity.

This interspecies dynamic adds a new dimension to marine mammal social ecology and could point to cultural elements in whale and dolphin societies. The playfulness, cooperation and apparent enjoyment observed in many interactions reflect advanced cognitive and emotional capabilities.

The study also demonstrates the power of new technologies and community science. Social media and drones proved invaluable for collecting a range of diverse behavioural data that traditional surveys might miss.

Social media data has limitations, such as geographic and observer bias caused by different angles, heights, equipment and frequency of use of social media. But it does complement other data and helps uncover previously unknown behaviours.

Whales and dolphins don’t just coexist but also seek each other out. Future studies incorporating acoustic recordings and longer observation periods could further unravel the motivations and meanings behind these fascinating encounters.

Olaf Meynecke, Research Fellow in Marine Science and Manager Whales & Climate Program, Griffith University

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

Until now, many of Western Australia’s most pristine coral reefs have avoided the worst bleaching brought by marine heatwaves. But their luck has now run out. The state’s longest lasting, largest and most intense underwater heatwave has hammered them.

The unusual heat began late last year off the northwest coast, before spreading south, eventually affecting seas along more than 1,500km of coastline. Surface temperatures hit up to 4°C above average in places.

For coral, sustained heat stress is measured using degree heating weeks (DHW). At 4 DHW, coral bleaching is likely. At 8 DHW, many corals are at risk of bleaching and dying.

The data so far suggests heat stress on most reefs was more than double that. Central Ningaloo hit 20 DHW. Off some parts of the Pilbara coast, heat stress hit an almost unthinkable 30 DHW.

My colleagues and I have recorded the result: intense bleaching at iconic Ningaloo reef, as well as across the spots we hoped would be more resilient, such as the Rowley Shoals well offshore, and the vast but little-known reefs of the northern Kimberley.

It’s undoubtedly the most widespread coral bleaching event yet recorded in WA. For the worst-hit reefs, it’s hard to see how recovery to their previous glory is possible, given temperatures will continue to rise in the coming years.

Sustained heat over a huge area

The heat started building towards the end of 2024. In the absence of monsoonal storms and cyclones, the unprecedented heat stress continued to rise throughout December 2024 and January 2025. Soon, reefs and other ecosystems off the Kimberley coast began to suffer. Ningaloo was feeling the heat by February.

A late monsoon gave a slight reprieve, but the heat was back on in March and April. By then, the underwater heatwave had swept across the northwest coast between Ningaloo and remote offshore reefs such as Ashmore and the Rowley Shoals. It took until May for the heat to begin to dissipate.

Because unusually warm water sat in place for months in some regions, corals had no reprieve. Worse, the heat spread far down into the ocean. Our surveys of coral 20–30 metres below the surface found similar levels of heat stress and bleaching as those in shallower water, while higher temperatures were documented hundreds of metres deep in some places. While cyclones and other storms often offer temporary cooling by churning up the sea and mixing warm water with cooler, there was very little reprieve this time. The seas were simply too hot.

It will take months for scientists to understand the full extent of what’s happened underwater. Many of these reefs are remote. What we do know is coral reefs over a 1,500km span of ocean are bleaching at levels ranging from medium (11–30% of all corals) up to extreme (more than 90%).

At the Rowley Shoals’ Mermaid and Clerke Reefs, field surveys in April found very high (61–90%) death rates across most coral types. Bleaching had hit every type of habitat, from sheltered lagoons to the 30m-deep outer reef slope.

At Ningaloo, coral bleaching and death was at high levels (31–60% of corals) in the northern and central regions in May, with southern Ningaloo less affected, while reefs across the vast Kimberley ranged from high (31–60%) to very high levels.

One way to measure marine heatwaves is by using satellites to monitor sea surface temperatures. But when our researchers arrived at the remote Ashmore Reef, they found the temperatures in shallow lagoons were even hotter in real life than they were in satellite data.

It’s often said coral reefs are the tropical jungles of the sea due to their wealth of species. When the coral bleaches or dies, it threatens many other species. Our scientists saw this clearly. The most obvious change was a drop in the numbers of colourful coral-eating butterflyfish.

There are some small silver linings to the event. WA coral reefs still remain among the world’s healthiest. Bleaching damage can be patchy. Some coral species are less susceptible, and some parts of the reef can escape the worst of the heat. Bleaching hasn’t been spotted this year at Shark Bay, the Houtman Abrolhos Islands, or WA’s southernmost reefs at Rottnest Island.

Will coral have a future?

Witnessing this silent devastation has taken a toll on our scientists and everyone in the reef community in WA. It is very hard to see these natural marvels suffering.

What makes it worse is that we know this isn’t a single event. On the contrary: climate change gets steadily worse, year after year. As ocean temperatures rise and rise, the destruction underwater can only increase.

The bleaching in WA is only a small part of the spate of underwater heatwaves that has swept through coral reefs globally since 2023 – the fourth event of its kind to affect all the world’s coral reefs. More than 80% of the world’s reefs have suffered bleaching, including the Great Barrier Reef.

It’s not the end of WA’s coral reefs. Reefs can recover, given enough time. Not all reefs, sites on a reef or types of coral are affected equally. While some will be devastated, others will escape the worst damage and others still may prove resistant to future conditions or adapt faster. Only time will tell what their path to recovery might look like.

But giving these these hard-hit coral reefs a chance will require rapid, meaningful action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Good management of local issues and trialling ways of helping coral reefs cope with the heat will also be essential.

James Paton Gilmour, Research Scientist: Coral Ecology, Australian Institute of Marine Science

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

In the vast, arid landscapes of South Australia’s northeast, on the lands of the Adnyamathanha and Wilyakali, a surprising discovery is changing our understanding of one of Australia’s most endangered birds.

The plains-wanderer (Pedionomus torquatus) has long hovered on the brink of extinction. Conservation efforts focus on protecting its known grassland habitats, mainly in Victoria and and New South Wales. But our new research shows more than 250 of these birds are thriving in habitats previously considered unsuitable, on the western edge of its range.

We used tracking devices – attached to a harness resembling a tiny backpack – to discover that this new population prefers open shrublands to grasslands. This could change how we conserve one of Australia’s most unique birds.

Studying the Goldilocks bird

Most people agree Australia is home to some pretty special birds, but the plains-wanderer often goes unnoticed. This small, mottled brown, ground-dwelling bird is the sole surviving member of an ancient lineage. It’s often called a “living fossil” because its closest relatives died out long ago.

It’s so unique that in 2018 the Zoological Society of London put the plains-wanderer on top of its “evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered” bird list. Fewer than 2,000 plains-wanderers remain in the wild.

Known as a habitat specialist, the plains-wanderer has been nicknamed the “Goldilocks bird” because its survival depends on conditions being just right.

Historically, this included well-managed native grasslands in Victoria and NSW, while habitat in SA was considered too degraded or unsuitable.

Our new research challenges this view, uncovering a population thriving in habitat nobody expected the species to use.

Strap on the birdie backpacks

Against all expectations we found 272 plains-wanderers living in Boolcoomatta Station Reserve, 100km west of Broken Hill in semi-arid rangeland.

To learn more about this new population, we used miniature GPS data loggers to track their movements for a month. Then we used VHF (very high frequency) devices to locate the birds, so we could retrieve and download the information.

Both devices are lightweight and designed to sit comfortably between the birds’ wings, like a tiny hiking pack. Researchers conducted extensive testing with captive birds to ensure the fit was safe and comfortable.

Once we had ethics approval in place, we fitted 29 plains-wanderers with these miniature backpacks. Then, like following breadcrumbs through the bush, we traced the steps of our tracked birds to find the habitats they selected.

Choosing shrublands over grasslands

We found this new population of plains-wanderers consistently selected open shrublands dominated by a low-growing woody herb, Sclerolaena.

This prickly, hardy, drought-tolerant plant does not seem like particularly hospitable habitat. It’s more often associated with grazed rangelands than endangered birds. But time and again, our GPS-tracked birds chose these sparse, open areas. Their preferred habitat featured about 55% plant cover with large patches of bare ground. The plants were an average 11cm tall.

Grassy places could also be found in the landscape. But these areas were particularly dense, providing the wrong kind of cover for plains-wanderers. The birds’ consistent avoidance of these denser grasslands suggests vegetation structure, rather than just plant species, is key.

This challenges decades of ecological thought. The plains-wanderer, long considered a “grassland specialist”, may actually be more selective about vegetation structure than species composition. In other words, habitat use is not solely about grass cover but the right mix of plant height, density and bare ground.

Unanswered questions

Our discovery of more than 250 so-called grassland specialists in shrubland raises important questions about the management of this threatened species.

For decades, conservation efforts have focused on protecting core habitat of the plains-wanderer in NSW and Victoria. While these areas remain crucial, our findings suggest the species lives in a broader range of habitats than previously thought. Interestingly, the habitat we found is widespread in SA’s arid interior, opening up new possibilities for conservation in areas often dismissed as unsuitable.

Peripheral populations of threatened species are often overlooked, but they remain vital for survival of a species. These populations may have unique traits, behave differently, or buffer declining core habitats.

Our findings show conservation shouldn’t focus solely on assumptions about habitat. If we only search where we expect to find a species, we risk missing important parts of the bigger picture — or, in this case, vital parts of the population.

Yet, there is much we still do not know about this population. Where did it originate? How far does its range extend? How will it cope with droughts and climate change? Our discovery raises more questions than answers.

To better understand this population, we are now conducting genetic analyses to explore how it interacts with the core population. The results should tell us more about how closely they are connected.

We are also incorporating this new data into computer models to identify other possible hidden populations, refine the species’ range, and aid in population discovery.

Perhaps most importantly, this research allows us to protect not just the places we’ve always looked — but the places we’ve overlooked.

Keep searching for more surprises

It’s uncommon to write a positive story about a species listed as critically endangered, especially when they’re in better condition than expected.

Even as biodiversity loss accelerates, discoveries like this remind us nature still holds surprises.

This find serves as a strong reminder to keep searching, not just in the usual spots, but in the misunderstood areas at the edges of a species’ range. Because sometimes, hope can be found in the most unexpected places.

Saskia Gerhardy, PhD Candidate, School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide and Steven Delean, Lecturer in Biostatistics and Ecology, University of Adelaide

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

Living in cities exposes people to all sorts of chemical pollutants. Many are harmful even at low concentrations. But it is hard to know what the risks and consequences might be.

The animals we share our cities with can indicate potential sources and effects of such pollution. In this way, they act as sentinels — just like the canary in the coalmine, used to alert underground miners to the presence of dangerous levels of toxic gases in the 19th century.

Our research on house sparrows in three Australian towns revealed subtle but disturbing effects of pollution on these birds.

In the mining town of Broken Hill, New South Wales, sparrows suffered from exposure to lead in areas where thousands of people live. Similarly, in Portland, Victoria and George Town, Tasmania, sparrows living near aluminium smelters were affected by the smelting byproduct fluoride. The results suggest the health and wellbeing of city people may also be at risk.

Anxiety: aversion to the human gaze

Sparrows have lived alongside people for thousands of years. In that time they have picked up useful skills, such as feeding off food scraps, while avoiding harm.

Most people are familiar with the sight of a sparrow boldly feeding from leftover food at a café, even indoors. If the birds are ignored they often feed within arm’s length. But as soon as someone looks directly at them, they fly away and become very wary.

This is one of the sparrow’s super skills, allowing them to thrive in the urban environment. People mostly ignore them and cause them no harm. But if a person is focused on them, they respond as if they suspect something bad might happen.

Sensitivity to the human gaze is well studied in human psychology. It has also been shown in urban gulls that steal food in Europe.

We explored the effects of lead pollution on sparrow gaze sensitivity in Broken Hill.

Sparrows have small home ranges (about 300 metres). We established enclosed feeding stations at four sites across the city. We also tagged each bird and measured the amount of lead in their blood.

Then we erected boards with a photograph of a man either looking directly at the feeding station, or to the side. We presented different pictures over several days. Our results showed a clear distinction between responses to the images.

Sparrows flocked to the feeding stations. But they took much longer to visit the feeder when the man in the picture appeared to be looking at them. Those living in areas with high lead levels were especially sensitive to the direction of gaze.

Video recordings of sparrows revealed those with high levels of lead in their blood were more anxious. They spent more time looking up and checking for predators than sparrows in areas where lead pollution levels were relatively low.

Anxiety is a common symptom of lead poisoning in people. It is caused by damage to the nervous system during development.

Our research showed sparrows living in contaminated areas of Broken Hill were more anxious. This would help reduce the risk of being caught by a predator. But there are downsides to being an anxious sparrow, not least because less time is spent feeding.

Another common consequence of lead poisoning is impaired mobility. When we analysed video recordings of sparrow escape flight, we found sparrows with high blood lead levels were slower to take off. Every second counts when being attacked by a sparrowhawk or cat.

Longevity: checking chromosomes for ageing

The length of the “telomeres” — caps that prevent chromosomes from damage — has proven to be a good marker of how long an individual will live.

When we measured telomere length in the sparrows across Broken Hill, we discovered sparrows with higher levels of lead in their blood had shorter telomeres. Generally, birds with shorter telomeres die at a younger age.

Previous studies of humans exposed to lead through industrial occupations also found telomere shortening.

Brittle bones and pitted teeth

We also studied sparrows in two towns near aluminium smelters: Portland, Victoria and George Town, Tasmania.

Fluoride is a major byproduct of aluminium smelting. After fluoride is emitted into the air it falls back to Earth where it can contaminate land, water and plants. So animals may breathe it in, drink contaminated water or eat contaminated food. Fluoride then accumulates in the animal’s bones and teeth.

Earlier studies found high exposure to fluoride deposited around the Portland aluminium smelter caused bone lesions in nearby kangaroos and dental problems in koalas.

We found sparrows living up to 10km from these smelters had unnaturally high fluoride levels in their bones.

Excess fluoride uptake changes the balance of the essential bone minerals, calcium and phosphorus. These minerals play an important role in bone structure. Changes in their composition could compromise bone strength, with implications for activities such as flight.

Heed the lessons

Pollution affects virtually all aspects of life — from how organisms behave to how they age and grow. The health of the environment, animals and people are tightly intertwined.

Further, in light of strengthening evidence that even low levels of lead and fluoride exposure might be harmful at times, reviewing environmental management controls and pollution limits is warranted.

We should heed the lessons of sentinels such as the sparrow, and reduce pollution at the source. This will benefit urban ecosystems and, in turn, the health and wellbeing of humans.

Simon Griffith, Professor of Avian Behavioural Ecology, Macquarie University; Mark Patrick Taylor, Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, and Max M Gillings, PhD Candidate, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

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

You’ll pay substantially less to charge an electric vehicle (EV) than if you were refuelling a petrol car to go the same distance.

But what often surprises new EV owners is how much the cost of a charge can vary. Using a smart charger to draw from rooftop solar at home can cost as little as 10 cents per kilowatt-hour — or almost nothing if you use “excess” solar that would otherwise be exported for a low feed-in tariff or not paid for at all. Charging from the grid off-peak might cost around 20 cents per kWh.

For an EV with a 60kWh battery, paying 10 cents per kWH means it would cost about A$6 for a full charge – enough to drive 300–400 kilometres. But if you’re on a road trip and want to charge quickly at an ultra-fast public charger, it might cost up to 60c per kWh – or about $36 for a 60kWh battery. By contrast, driving the same 350km in a new petrol car would cost almost $50 at Sydney’s recent average of 203.5c per litre – and likely more, given petrol cars often burn more fuel than their manufacturers claim.

It makes sense to charge your EV as cheaply as possible, given many drivers are switching to save on running costs and help tight household budgets. Here’s how.

How does EV charging work?

Charging an EV is like charging your phone, but on a larger scale.

How much driving range you gain per hour depends on the charging speed (measured in kilowatts) and the battery’s total capacity (measured in kilowatt-hours). On average, EVs use about 18kWh per 100km of driving, and most EVs have battery capacities between 40kWh and 120kWh.

There are three main charger levels. Each offers different speeds of charging and are designed for different situations.

Level 1: Trickle chargers (1.4–2.4kWh)

Trickle chargers are essentially slow portable chargers plugged into a standard home power point. They add 10–15km of range per hour, making them best suited to overnight charging or emergency top-ups. On the plus side, these chargers come with the car and typically only need access to a standard plug.

Level 2: Top-up chargers (7–22kWh)

Level 2 chargers include home wallbox chargers and destination chargers at hotels, car parks and shopping centres. These AC chargers are faster, adding about 40–120km of range per hour – great for when your car is parked for a while.

Level 3: Rapid chargers (25–350kWh)

You’ll find these fast and ultra-fast DC chargers at motorway rest stops and along major travel routes. They can add 150–300km of range per hour. They’re ideal for long trips and short breaks with quick turnarounds, but they usually cost more.

Home charging is cheapest – if it’s available

If you live in a standalone house with off-street parking, home charging is generally the cheapest option. You can easily use Level 1 or 2 chargers at home, although Level 2 speeds require a wallbox charger. These can cost $1,000–2,000, plus installation.

If you have solar power, it makes sense to plug in your car on sunny days. Over the past 15 years, the value of home solar power exports has fallen 99% as the market hits saturation point. It’s now much more useful to just use the power at home.

Alternatively, charge from the grid overnight on off-peak rates. With the right electricity plan, charging at 20c per kWh is possible.

Not everyone can access cheap charging

Making the EV transition fair will mean ensuring broad access to affordable charging. Apartment residents and regional drivers may be forced to rely on more expensive public options due to a lack of access to dedicated chargers or the need for strata approval.

Community chargers, standardised pricing and smart grid incentives can help here. New South Wales is now offering grants to help apartment residents get EV-ready.

Public charging is fast and convenient – but watch the fees

Public charging stations often offer Level 2 destination chargers for longer stops and Level 3 rapid chargers for quick top-ups. There’s a wide range of pricing models and fees.

Australia’s major public charging networks include Chargefox, Evie, BP Pulse and Tesla Superchargers.

These networks may charge by kilowatt-hour or by time. Many apply idle or congestion fees to encourage drivers not to leave their cars plugged in after charging – especially at busy highway sites.

Level 3 fast chargers are great for topping up quickly, but speed usually means they cost more.

Apps such as PlugShare and NextCharge offer useful ways to find available chargers in real time and check the price.

It’s smart to limit charging to between 20% and 80% of your battery capacity. Charging slows down substantially when almost full, meaning more time and cost for relatively little gain.

Charging on the cheap

It’s hard to give definitive answers on the cheapest way to charge your EV, as costs can vary by charger type, location, electricity tariff, EV efficiency and driving habits. But it is possible to offer general estimates.

Timing, planning and avoiding unnecessary fees will help too, such as:

• charging overnight at home using off-peak or time-of-use electricity tariffs. If you have solar, charge up while solar generation is highest

• consider installing a smart charger so you can schedule and automate charging via an app

• plan your longer trips carefully to avoid expensive or busy chargers.

Cheaper than petrol – and cheaper still with planning

Overall, EVs are more affordable to drive than petrol cars. But you can make the most of the technology by charging smartly.

Charging at home on solar or off-peak electricity offers the best value by far. Public charging adds flexibility but comes at a cost, especially at ultra-fast motorway sites. With a little planning, most drivers can avoid expensive options most of the time.

Making the EV transition fair will mean expanding access to affordable, reliable charging for everyone – not just those with off-street parking or rooftop solar.

Hussein Dia, Professor of Transport Technology and Sustainability, Swinburne University of Technology

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

A new road charge is looming for electric vehicle drivers, amid reports Treasurer Jim Chalmers is accelerating the policy as part of a broader tax-reform push.

At a forum in Sydney this week, state and federal Treasury officials are reportedly meeting with industry figures and others to progress design of the policy, ahead of next week’s economic reform summit.

Much discussion in favour of the charge assumes drivers of electric and hybrid vehicles don’t “pay their way”, because they are not subject to the fuel excise tax.

This view is based on an economic misconception: that fuel taxes are justified by the need to pay for the construction and maintenance of roads.

This is incorrect. In a properly functioning economic system, fuel taxes should be considered a charge on motorists for the harmful pollution their vehicles generate.

That leaves the problem of paying for roads. To that end, a road-user charge should be applied to all motorists – regardless of the vehicle they drive – so no-one gets a free ride.

What is the fuel excise?

The fuel excise in Australia is currently about 51 cents a litre and is rolled into the cost of fuel at the bowser.

Some, such as the Australian Automobile Association claim revenue from the excise pays for roads. But it actually goes into the federal government’s general revenue.

The primary economic function of the fuel tax is that of a charge on motorists for the harmful pollution their vehicles generate.

Paying the cost of pollution

Vehicles with internal combustion engines – that is, those that run on petrol or diesel – create several types of pollution.

The first is carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to human-caused climate change. Others include local air pollution from particulates and exhaust pollution as well as noise pollution.

In economic terms, these effects are known as “negative externalities”. They arise when one party makes another party worse off, but doesn’t pay the costs of doing so.

How big are the costs to society imposed by polluting vehicles? Estimates vary widely. But they are almost certainly as large as, or larger than, the revenue generated from fuel excise.

Let’s tease that out.

A litre of petrol weighs about 0.74 kg. But when burned, it generates 2.3 kg of CO₂. That’s because when the fuel is combusted, the carbon combines with heavier oxygen atoms.

Before the re-election of United States President Donald Trump, the nation’s Environmental Protection Agency estimated the social cost of carbon dioxide emissions at about US$190 (A$292) per metric tonne.

So in Australian terms, that means CO₂ emissions from burning petrol costs about 67 cents a litre, more than the current excise of 51 cents per litre.

Even using a more conservative estimate of US$80 a metric tonne, CO₂ emissions generate costs of around 28 cents a litre, more than half the fuel excise.

A spotlight on health impacts

Motor vehicles are a major cause of air pollution. Air pollution is causally linked to six diseases:

• coronary heart disease
• chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
• stroke
• type 2 diabetes
• lung cancer
• lower respiratory infections.

Estimates of the deaths associated with air pollution in Australia range from 3,200 to more than 4,200 a year.

Even the lower end of that range is far more than the roughly 1,200 lives lost in car crashes annually.

University of Melbourne analysis in 2023 landed at an even higher figure. It suggested vehicle emissions alone may be responsible for more than 11,000 premature deaths in adults in Australia a year.

Putting a dollar value on life and health is difficult – but necessary for good policy making.

The usual approach is to examine the “statistical” reduction in deaths for a given policy measure. For example, a policy measure that eliminates a hazard faced by 1,000 people, reducing death risk by 1 percentage point, would save ten statistical lives.

The Australian government ascribes a value of $5.7 million per (statistical) life lost or saved. So, hypothetically, a saving of 2,000 lives a year would yield a benefit of more than $10 billion.

This is more than half the revenue collected in fuel excise each year.

The best road forward

Given the harms caused by traditional vehicles, society should welcome the decline in fuel excise revenue caused by the transition to EVs – in the same way we should welcome declining revenue from cigarette taxes.

If we assume fuel excise pays for pollution costs, then who is paying for roads?

The cost of roads goes far beyond construction and maintenance. The capital and land allocated to roads represents a huge investment, on which the public, as a whole, receives zero return.

Vehicle registration fees make only a modest contribution to road costs. That’s why all motorists should pay a road-user charge. Such a system will soon be introduced in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The payment should be based on a combination of vehicle mass and distance travelled. That’s because damage to roads is overwhelmingly caused by heavy vehicles.

Then comes the question of Australia’s emissions reduction. The switch to electric vehicles in Australia is going much too slowly. A road user charge targeting only electric and hybrid vehicles would be a grave mistake, slowing the uptake further.

John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

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

Rogue waves have captivated the attention of both seafarers and scientists for decades. These are giant, isolated waves that appear suddenly in the open ocean.

These puzzling giants are brief, typically lasting less than a minute before disappearing. They can reach heights of 65 feet (20 meters) or greater and often more than twice the height of surrounding waves. Once a nautical myth, rogue waves have now been observed around the world. Because they’re so tall and powerful, they can pose a danger to ships and offshore structures.

To rethink what rogue waves are and what causes them, I gathered an international team of researchers. Our study, published in Nature Scientific Reports, sheds light on these oceanic giants using the most comprehensive dataset of its kind.

By analyzing 18 years of high-frequency laser measurements from the Ekofisk oil platform in the central North Sea, we reached the surprising conclusion that rogue waves aren’t just freak occurrences. They arise under the natural laws of the sea. They are not mysterious, but somewhat simple.

27,500 sea states

We analyzed nearly 27,500 half-hour wave records, or sea states, collected between 2003 and 2020 in the central North Sea. These records, taken every 30 minutes, describe how elevated the sea surface was compared to the average sea level. They include major storms, such as the Andrea wave event in 2007.

Under normal conditions, waves arise from wind blowing over the sea surface. It’s like when you blow over your cup of coffee and form small ripples on the surface. At sea, with enough time and space, those ripples can turn into large waves.

We focused on understanding what causes waves to suddenly go rogue and rise far above their neighboring waves. One proposed theory is based on modulational instability, a phenomenon described by complex mathematical models. I’ve revised these models in the past, as my work suggests that this theory doesn’t fully explain what causes rogue waves in the open ocean.

When waves are trapped within a narrow channel, the modulational instability theory describes their rippling movement well. However, it starts to fall apart when you look at the real ocean. In open environments such as the North Sea, waves are free to propagate from multiple directions.

To understand the difference, imagine a crowd of spectators leaving a stadium after a football game. If the exit is a long, narrow hallway with tall walls, people are forced to move in a single direction. Those at the back push forward, and some may even climb over others, piling up between the confining walls. This catastrophic pileup would resemble a rogue wave, caused by their confinement.

In contrast, if the stadium’s exit opens onto a wide field, spectators can disperse freely in all directions. They don’t push on each other, and they avoid pileups.

Similarly, researchers can generate rogue waves in a confined channel in the lab, where they obey modulational instability. But without the confinement of a channel, rogue waves usually won’t follow those physics or form the same way in the open sea.

Our team knew we had to study the open sea directly to figure out what was really going on. The real-world data my team examined from the North Sea doesn’t line up with modulational instability – it tells a different story.

It’s just a bad day at sea

We analyzed the sea state records using statistical techniques to uncover patterns behind these rare events. Our findings show that instead of modulational instability, the extreme waves observed more likely formed through a process called constructive interference.

Constructive interference happens when two or more waves line up and combine into one big wave. This effect is amplified by the natural asymmetry of sea waves – their crests are typically sharper and steeper than their flatter troughs.

Rogue waves form when lots of smaller waves line up and their steeper crests begin to stack, building up into a single, massive wave that briefly rises far above its surroundings. All it takes for a peaceful boat ride to turn into a bad day at sea is a moment when many ordinary waves converge and stack.

These rogue waves rise and fall in less than a minute, following what’s called a quasi-deterministic pattern in space and time. This type of pattern is recognizable and repeatable, but with touches of randomness. In an idealized ocean, that randomness would almost vanish, allowing rogue waves to grow to nearly infinite heights. But it would also take an eternity to witness one of these waves, since so many would have to line up perfectly. Like waiting for Fortuna, the goddess of chance, to roll a trillion dice and have nearly all of them land on the same number.

In the real ocean, nature limits how large a rogue wave can grow thanks to wave breaking. As the wave rises in height and energy, it can’t hold itself beyond a certain point of no return. The tip of the wave spills over and breaks into foam, or whitecap, releasing the excess energy.

The quasi-deterministic pattern behind rogue waves

Rogue waves aren’t limited to the sea. Constructive interference can happen to many types of waves. A general theory called the quasi-determinism of waves, developed by oceanographer Paolo Boccotti, explains how rogue waves form, both in the ocean and in other wave systems.

For example, for turbulent water flowing through a confined channel, a rogue wave manifests in the form of an intense, short-lived spike in vortices – patterns of spinning swirls in the water that momentarily grow larger as they move downstream.

While ocean waves seem unpredictable, Boccotti’s theory shows that extreme waves are not completely random. When a really big wave forms, the waves in the sea around it follow a recognizable pattern formed through constructive interference.

We applied Boccotti’s theory to identify and characterize these patterns in the measured North Sea wave records.

The giant waves observed in these records carry a kind of signature or fingerprint, in the form of a wave group, which can reveal how the rogue wave came to life. Think of a wave group like a small package of waves moving together. They rise, peak and then fade away through constructive interference. Tracking these wave groups allows researchers to understand the bigger picture of a rogue event as it unfolds.

As one example, a powerful storm hit the North Sea on Nov. 24, 2023. A camera at the Ekofisk platform captured a massive 55 foot (17 meter) rogue wave. I applied the theory of quasi-determinism and an AI model to investigate the origin of this extreme wave. My analysis revealed that the rogue event followed these theories – quasi-determinism and constructive interference – and came from multiple smaller waves repeatedly stacking together.

Recognizing how rogue waves form can help engineers and designers build safer ships and offshore platforms – and better predict risks.

Francesco Fedele, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

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

Soaking mid-winter rains have brought some relief to drought-stricken farms and rural towns across southern Australia, but the crisis is not over yet.

And there’s more to this challenging episode than you might think. As climate scientists, we see more than a single drought. Rather, it’s a trilogy of droughts.

Across southern Australia over the past six months, three interconnected phases have unfolded in rapid succession: flash drought, green drought and fodder drought.

Each phase brings its own challenges. Together, they reveal the complex and cascading nature of climate stress in southern Australia.

Flash drought: the sudden onset

To state the obvious, drought in Australia happens when there’s a severe lack of rain.

Unlike traditional droughts that develop over months, flash droughts intensify within weeks. They can come out of nowhere and hit hard.

In early 2025, flash droughts struck Australia in waves:

• January in parts of South Australia

• February along the SA-Victoria border and western Tasmania

• March in the Otway Ranges in southern Victoria

• April in northern Tasmania and southern Mallee in Victoria

• May in central Victoria and southern New South Wales.

The May event was the most intense — short-lived but severe — catching many people by surprise.

Flash droughts are marked by a rapid increase in the “thirstiness” of the atmosphere, as measured by the “Evaporative Stress Index”. When the index drops quickly, farmers often have little time to respond — whether through destocking, securing feed or adjusting plans for sowing crops.

Within four to eight weeks of flash drought onset, the health of pasture in open grasslands declines.

Pasture recovery is slow, often taking more than 12 weeks depending on the amount of sunlight, temperature and soil moisture. The impact on growth can linger for months. This delayed response sets the stage for the next phase: green drought.

Green drought: a deceptive recovery

Many southern regions received winter rain, but not enough to break the drought.

Fields turned green, but these plants lacked the nutritional value needed to support livestock. This phenomenon – known as “green drought” – gives the appearance of drought recovery, but the deeper soils remain stubbornly dry and plants stressed.

Satellite data tracking the greenness of vegetation shows that even after soil moisture briefly improved in June, plant health continued to decline. This is due to ongoing dry soils and high evaporation rates (think thirsty atmosphere), which limit plant growth.

Green droughts are particularly challenging because they mask the true extent of agricultural stress. People see green fields but farmers continue to face shortages of feed for livestock, leading to the next phase: fodder drought.

Fodder drought: the hidden crisis

Fodder drought is the third phase of the drought trilogy — a less visible but deeply distressing condition. It’s about whether there’s sufficient feed to keep livestock alive.

Pasture growth across southern Australia has remained well below average since late January, even though this period typically coincides with the off-peak season. With the late autumn break and soils remaining dry, the winter growing season is faring poorly.

Fodder droughts often go unnoticed by city people, but they have serious implications for rural communities. Farmers become increasingly reliant on imported feed, driving up costs and straining supply chains.

What lies ahead?

As we approach the end of winter, the outlook for rainfall in the drought-stricken communities of SA and Victoria’s Mallee is looking more promising.

The Bureau of Meteorology’s long-range forecast for spring shows a high chance of unusually wetter conditions for much of the southeast. In turn, soil moisture is likely to improve in these regions.

The changing climate

This trilogy of droughts — flash, green and fodder — highlights the complexity of climate extremes. These events are occurring against the backdrop of declining cool season rainfall, which is projected to continue.

It’s not just about rainfall totals; it’s about timing, temperature, soil health and vegetation response. Understanding how these drought types evolve and interact is crucial for building resilience in agriculture.

There’s still much to learn. What triggers the transition from one phase of drought to the next? How long do the impacts last? And what strategies can help farmers adapt?

The current drought emerged as a prolonged dry spell coincided with unusually high temperatures. This placed immense pressure on farms.

A call to action

The trilogy of droughts in 2025 is a wake-up call. As climate variability increases, so does the need for better forecasting, adaptive farming strategies, and policy support. Agricultural drought definitions may need to be updated to reflect the new realities of drought.

Farmers are on the frontline of climate change, so the experiences of those in southern Australia this year offer valuable insights into how communities can prepare for future extremes. By investing in research, improving early warning systems, and supporting rural communities, we can build a more resilient agricultural sector — one that’s ready for whatever the climate throws at us next.

This article includes scientific contributions from Hanh Nguyen and Jessica Bhardwaj from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Tim Cowan, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Applied Climate Sciences, University of Southern Queensland and Thong Nguyen-Huy, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Applied Climate Sciences, University of Southern Queensland

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

Pollinators play a vital role in fertilising flowers, which grow into seeds and fruits and underpin our agriculture. But climate change can cause a mismatch between plants and their pollinators, affecting where they live and what time of year they’re active. This has happened before.

When Earth went through rapid global warming 56 million years ago, plants from dry tropical areas expanded to new areas – and so did their animal pollinators. Our new study, published in Paleobiology today, shows this major change happened in a remarkably short timespan of just thousands of years.

Can we turn to the past to learn more about how interactions between plants and pollinators changed during climate change? That’s what we set out to learn.

A major warming event 56 million years ago

In the last 150 years, humans have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations by more than 40%. This increase in carbon dioxide has already warmed the planet by more than 1.3°C.

Current greenhouse gas concentrations and global temperature are not only unprecedented in human history but exceed anything known in the last 2.5 million years.

To understand how giant carbon emission events like ours could affect climate and life on Earth, we’ve had to go deeper into our planet’s history.

Fifty-six million years ago there was a major, sudden warming event caused by the release of a gigantic amount of carbon into the atmosphere and ocean. This event is known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

For about 5,000 years, huge amounts of carbon entered the atmosphere, likely from a combination of volcanic activity and methane release from ocean sediments. This caused Earth’s global temperature to rise by about 6°C and it stayed elevated for more than 100,000 years.

Although the initial carbon release and climate change were perhaps ten times slower than what’s happening today, they had enormous effects on Earth.

Earlier studies have shown plants and animals changed a lot during this time, especially through major shifts in where they lived. We wanted to know if pollination might also have changed during this rapid climate change.

Hunting for pollen fossils in the badlands

We looked at fossil pollen from the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming – a deep and wide valley in the northern Rocky Mountains in the United States, full of sedimentary rocks deposited 50 to 60 million years ago.

The widespread badlands of the modern Bighorn Basin expose remarkably fossil-rich sediments. These were laid down by ancient rivers eroding the surrounding mountains.

We studied fossil pollen because we wanted to understand changes in pollination. Pollen is invaluable for this because it is abundant, widely dispersed in air and water, and resistant to decay – easily preserved in ancient rocks.

We used three lines of evidence to investigate pollination in the fossil record:

• fossil pollen preserved in clumps
• how living plants related to the fossils are pollinated today, and
• the total variety of pollen shapes.

What did we discover?

Our findings show pollination by animals became more common during this interval of elevated temperature and carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, pollination by wind decreased.

The wind-pollinated plants included many related to deciduous broad-leaved trees still common in moist northern hemisphere temperate regions today.

By contrast, the plants pollinated by animals were related to subtropical palms, silk-cotton trees and other plants that typically grow in dry tropical climates.

The decline in wind pollination was likely due to the local extinction of populations of wind-pollinated plants that grew in the Bighorn Basin.

The increase in animal-pollinated plants means that plants from regions with warmer, drier climates had spread poleward and moved into the Bighorn Basin.

Earlier studies have shown these changes in the plants of the Bighorn Basin were related to the climate being hotter and more seasonally dry than before – or after – this interval of rapid climate change.

Pollinating insects and other animals likely moved 56 million years ago along with the plants they pollinated. Their presence in the landscape helped new plant communities establish in the hot, dry climate. It may have provided invaluable resources to animals such as the earliest primates, small marsupials, and other small mammals.

A lesson for our future

What lessons does this ancient climate change event have to offer when we think about our own future?

The large carbon release at the beginning of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum clearly resulted in major global warming. It dramatically altered ecosystems on land and in the sea.

In spite of these dramatic changes, most land species and ecological interactions seem to have survived. This is likely because the event occurred at about one-tenth the rate of current anthropogenic climate change.

The forests that returned to the region after more than 100,000 years of hot, dry climate were very similar to those that existed before. This suggests that in the absence of major extinction, forest ecosystems and their pollinators could reestablish into very similar communities even after a very long period of altered climate.

The key for the future may be keeping rates of environmental change slow enough to avoid extinctions.

Vera Korasidis, Lecturer in Environmental Geoscience, The University of Melbourne and Scott L. Wing, Curator of Fossil Plants, Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian Institution

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

Many electric vehicles (EVs) now come with range estimates of 400–500 kilometres, while some premium models claim ranges of more than 600km.

Drivers new to EVs may look at the range figures given by the manufacturer and think that’s how far their new car will go on a single battery charge.

But this isn’t quite accurate. In reality, an EV’s actual range is usually less. Recent real-world testing of five popular EV models by the Australian Automobile Association showed the real range was an average of 11.6% less than the official figures. There was wide variation: BYD’s Atto 3 had 23% less range, while the Smart #3 had just 5% less.

This is because official figures come from a standardised laboratory test done in idealised conditions different to the way people actually drive.

The problem is not confined to EVs. When the same testing was done on popular petrol cars, some were found to use up to 35% more fuel than official figures claim.

Real-world testing is an important public service. Drivers looking for a new EV could knock off 10–20% from official ranges as a rule of thumb. But it’s worth looking for testing of the exact model to see what the true difference is.

How are official range figures produced?

To produce official range estimates, new EVs are run through a standardised test.

This test, the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure, is used to estimate the distance an EV can drive on a full battery as well as a combustion engine car’s fuel consumption.

Vehicles are tested on a dynamometer – a treadmill for cars – in a controlled laboratory environment on a 30-minute driving cycle. During the cycle, the cars are driven at four levels of intensity: low (up to 60km per hour), medium (up to 80km/h), high (up to 100km/h) and extra high (above 130km/h), with a set sequence of accelerations, steady speeds and decelerations.

Testing is done at an ambient temperature of 23°C, with no passengers, accessories, or use of heating or air conditioning. The EV is driven by computer through repeats of the 30‑minute cycle until the battery is fully depleted. The total distance covered becomes the official range used by the manufacturer.

This testing regime is very useful, as it offers a single consistent way to compare cars worldwide. But the test doesn’t take conditions such as congestion, driving style and weather variations into account.

That means drivers should take the official range figures as a benchmark, not a guarantee.

How EVs perform in real-world driving

Testing the realistic range of EVs requires real-world testing. To get these figures, testers drove the EVs on a 93km circuit in and around Geelong, including a mix of urban, rural and highway driving conditions.

Their findings are similar to international results. European testing suggests everyday use cuts between 10% and 30% off the official range. If an EV is driven hard during winter, the range can drop as much as 40%.

Under Australian conditions, drivers can reasonably expect the real range to be 10–20% less.

What real world conditions affect range?

Real-world ranges can be less for several reasons, such as driving style, weather and extra weight.

Driving style is important. High speeds increase wind resistance and energy use. Driving in hilly terrain uses more energy, though some of this is returned to the battery through regenerative braking, where EVs convert the kinetic energy of braking back into electricity.

Temperature and weather can also have an impact. Very cold conditions can temporarily reduce range, while very hot conditions force the car to use some power to keep battery packs cool. Using air conditioning and heating can also reduce range, particularly in extreme temperatures.

Adding weight (passengers, cargo) can reduce range, as can roof racks or roof boxes.

Trip planning is key

The average Australian commute is around 35km per day – well within the capabilities of even the shortest-range EVs.

But range becomes important when doing longer trips.

Most EVs display real-time consumption and estimated remaining range, which adjusts as you drive. This makes it easier to plan ahead, especially on longer trips.

Some EV owners use route planning tools such as A Better Route. These tools estimate how much energy you’ll use on a given journey, taking into account elevation, speed and temperature.

Setting EVs to eco-driving mode and reducing the use of energy hungry air-conditioning will help get more range. Keeping tyres properly inflated and avoiding unnecessary weight or roof racks where possible will also help.

Cooling or heating your EV before departure — known as preconditioning — can be done while plugged in or running off the battery. Doing it while plugged in is preferable, as it uses grid power rather than draining the battery, helping preserve range.

Petrol and diesel cars use more fuel in the real world

There’s nothing new about the gap between lab-testing and real-world performance.

Combustion engine cars are sold with official figures for their fuel consumption. But they can use significantly more fuel in the real world.

Real-world tests in Europe found fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions from diesel and petrol vehicles were around 20% higher than under lab testing.

Range doesn’t have to be a guessing game

While countries such as Norway and China have streaked ahead in taking up EVs, Australia is still at the early stages. Clear, independent information is essential to help people make informed choices and encourage EV uptake.

Real-world testing helps bridge the gap between marketing promises and the reality on the road, giving drivers the confidence to plan their trips.

Lower real world ranges aren’t a deal breaker. Savvy drivers can use this data together with trip planning and an understanding of conditions to travel with confidence.

Hussein Dia, Professor of Transport Technology and Sustainability, Swinburne University of Technology

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

The latest round of negotiations for a UN global plastics treaty has ended without a deal. After more than three years of talks, deep divisions remain. Agreement is only marginally closer than before talks began. For many countries, campaigners and observer organisations, the outcome is deeply disappointing.

After the final intense meetings which went through the night in Geneva, the chair of the intergovernmental negotiating committee that governs the treaty discussions formally closed the session on August 15 without agreement on the treaty text. This is not the end. The process has not collapsed.

However, there is no confirmed date or venue for the next round of negotiations and no mandate for formal intersessional activities. Many delegates called for a period of reflection and even a reset of the process to allow for a refreshed approach.

As in previous negotiation rounds, progress was slow. Talks were hampered by procedural ambiguity, deliberate delay tactics from fossil fuel and petrochemical countries opposing an ambitious treaty, and the sheer complexity of the issues on the table. Time ran out before a consensus could be reached.

As the talks wrap up, we reflect on three aspects that contributed to this ongoing deadlock:

1. Chair’s efforts fell short

Ambassador Luis Vayas Valdivieso took a more active role than in earlier sessions, pushing the pace and producing two draft treaty texts to focus debate. The first draft omitted key provisions, including limits on plastic production, global rules for regulating plastic products, controls on harmful chemicals and strong financing arrangements.

Many high-ambition countries pushing for strong measures and outcomes, rejected the first draft as imbalanced, unambitious and unfit for further discussion. A second draft, issued just before 1am on the final night after intense consultations, included some improvements but still left out these core elements. Many nations again saw it as one-sided, tilted towards the demands of lower-ambition countries and petrostates.

2. Entrenched positions remain

Throughout the negotiations, lower-ambition states gave little ground. They refused to compromise on their “red lines” while expecting others to give up on theirs.

This repeated familiar arguments over the purpose and scope of the treaty, despite these having been outlined in the UN mandate to deliver the treaty three years ago. Many believe a different approach is needed that focuses more time on points of disagreement, rigorously tests opposing arguments, and actively seeks areas of compromise.

3. Reluctance to vote

The process still relies on consensus for decision-making. In the final plenary, many delegates, particularly those with economic interests in plastics, stressed that consensus is essential. Yet over the past three years, some delegations have urged the chair to break deadlocks by moving to a vote – a rule of UN negotiations that must be applied when consensus cannot be reached.

Voting is seen as politically explosive, with serious implications for multilateralism. So far, the chair has resisted calling a vote, and higher-ambition countries have not pressed for it either, despite their repeated statements about urgency and ambition. Beyond rejecting treaty texts they considered weak, many did not use the tools available to them to push for a stronger outcome. As a result, stalemates have persisted.

The road ahead

The intersessional period – the time between now and the next formal meeting – is critical. Without a fixed date for the next stage of the process, this is the time to reset and prepare for decisive progress. One key focus must be to bridge political divides. High-ambition countries need to build broader alliances and find shared ground with those who may not fully back their vision but are open to stronger action.

Key details such as financing mechanisms, monitoring and reporting systems, and legal models for compliance should be developed now, outside formal negotiations, to save time later. And higher-ambition nations such as those in the EU, Panama, Colombia, Australia, the UK and small island states should coordinate more closely and be willing to use procedural tools such as voting when needed, even if politically uncomfortable.

The goal set by the UN in 2022 to end plastic pollution across its full life cycle is still achievable. But it will require governments to use the coming months to regroup, have frank political discussions and commit to a more decisive approach when they next meet.

The world cannot afford another round lost to procedural deadlock. The plastics crisis is worsening. The science is clear. The solutions are well known. What is missing is not knowledge, but the will to match words with binding action.

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Steve Fletcher, Professor of Ocean Policy and Economy, University of Portsmouth and Antaya March, Director - Global Plastics Policy Centre, University of Portsmouth

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

With conventional waste management systems falling short, many scientists are turning to nature for innovative solutions to the issue of plastic waste. One promising avenue is microbial degradation: harnessing the natural abilities of certain bacteria and fungi to break down plastics in ways that current technologies cannot.

These microbes produce specialised enzymes (proteins that carry out chemical reactions) capable of breaking the long, carbon-rich chains of molecules that form the backbones of many plastic polymers. They effectively use plastic as a food source.

Historically, scientists looking for plastic-degrading microbes have focused on plastic-polluted environments such as landfills and contaminated soils. These are logical starting points, as prolonged exposure to synthetic polymers may encourage the growth of organisms that are capable of using these materials as a food source. This trend has also been observed with other environmental pollutants including oil and pesticides.

This approach has led to the discovery of several promising candidate microbes that can degrade plastic. Among the most famous examples is Ideonella sakaiensis, a bacterium identified near a plastic bottle recycling facility in Japan.

It can completely degrade polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the plastic most commonly used in bottles and food packaging. It breaks PET into its (environmentally benign) building blocks. These can then be used as food by I. sakaiensis and other organisms.

But plastic-degrading microbes haven’t evolved this capability in response to plastic pollution. Instead, scientists are discovering and repurposing metabolic functions that already exist in nature. The potential for microbes to break down plastic long predates the invention of plastics themselves.

Many microbes already have the ability to decompose natural polymers such as cellulose (plant fibres), chitin (found in fungi and insects) and cutin (found on the surfaces of leaves). These naturally occurring materials share structural and chemical similarities with synthetic plastics. This overlap allows microbes to repurpose existing enzymes to tackle synthetic substances.

My team’s recent research, published in the journal Polymer Degradation and Stability, supports this idea. From unpolluted environments rich in natural polymers (a peat bog and domestic compost), we identified two bacterial strains, Gordonia and Arthrobacter, that degraded polypropylene and polystyrene by nearly 23% and 19.5%, respectively, in just 28 days. Crucially, this occurred without any pretreatment, which is often required to make plastics more susceptible to microbial attack.

While these numbers may seem modest, they are among the highest biodegradation rates ever recorded for these plastics. This suggests that we don’t have to stick to polluted sites. It’s possible that we could find microbes with excellent plastic-degrading potential anywhere.

This aligns with another fascinating study showing that waxworms (Galleria mellonella) can eat plastic bags, thanks to specific gut microbes. Waxworms do not naturally consume plastic, they are common pests in beehives where they feed on honeycomb. But, structurally, honeycomb is similar to polyethylene, the main component of plastic bags.

Drowning in plastic?

These advances are exciting because they show how nature can offer us tools to deal with the plastic problem we’ve created.

Plastic is one of the most pervasive materials on Earth. Lightweight, durable, cheap to produce and infinitely versatile, it permeates nearly every aspect of modern life. In critical applications such as medical devices and equipment, its presence is not just convenient but essential. Lives often depend on it.

But in the wrong context, the qualities that make plastics so useful and durable become their greatest flaw. Most plastics do not readily biodegrade, instead accumulating in natural environments, gradually fragmenting into microplastics that can persist for centuries. This poses a long-term threat to nature and human health.

Global plastic production now exceeds 460 million tonnes annually. Up to half of this is estimated to be single-use items, often used for only a few moments before being discarded.

While diligent users of recycling facilities might assume that most of our plastic is indeed recycled, the reality is sobering: the global recycling rate for plastics is only 9%.

Around half ends up in landfills, while around one-fifth is incinerated, and another fifth is mismanaged so it’s not recycled, incinerated or securely contained. That means it can end up in rivers, lakes and oceans. The result: a planet drowning in synthetic waste.

As plastic production and disposal continue to outpace our ability to manage it, the need for innovative, sustainable solutions is urgent. Recognising this, the UN’s ongoing negotiations for a global plastics treaty aims to build a more circular economy for plastics and end plastic pollution by 2040.

While challenges remain in enhancing the biodegradation capabilities of microorganisms to make them a viable solution for large-scale waste management and environmental remediation, progress is steadily being made.

Advances in microbial engineering, enzyme discovery and environmental microbiology are paving the way towards more efficient and scalable plastic biodegradation systems. With continued research and investment, what was once a distant possibility is now a realistic and promising component of a broader strategy to combat plastic pollution.

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Julianne Megaw, Lecturer in Microbiology, Queen's University Belfast

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

It’s summer, and it’s been hot, even in northern cities such as Boston. But not everyone is hit with the heat in the same way, even within the same neighborhood.

Take two streets in Boston at 4:30 p.m. on a recent day, as an example. Standing in the sun on Lewis Place, the temperature was 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34.6 degrees Celsius). On Dudley Common, it was 103 F (39.2 C). Both streets were hot, but the temperature on one was much more dangerous for people’s health and well-being.

The kicker is that those two streets are only a few blocks apart. The difference epitomizes the urban heat island effect, created as pavement and buildings absorb and trap heat, making some parts of the city hotter.

A closer look at the two streets shows some key differences:

• Dudley Common is public open space sandwiched between two thoroughfares that create a wide expanse of pavement lined with storefronts. There aren’t many trees to be found.

• Lewis Place is a residential cul-de-sac with two-story homes accompanied by lots of trees.

This comparison of two places within a few minutes’ walk of each other puts the urban heat island effect under a microscope. It also shows the limits of today’s strategies for managing and responding to heat and its effects on public health, which are generally attuned to neighborhood or citywide conditions.

Even within the same neighborhood, some places are much hotter than others owing to their design and infrastructure. You could think of these as urban heat islets in the broader landscape of a community.

Sensing urban heat islets

Emerging technologies are making it easier to find urban heat islets, opening the door to new strategies for improving health in our communities.

While the idea of reducing heat across an entire city or neighborhood is daunting, targeting specific blocks that need assistance the most can be faster and a much more efficient use of resources.

Doing that starts with making urban heat islets visible.

In Boston, I’m part of a team that has installed more than three dozen sensors across the Roxbury neighborhood to measure temperature every minute for a better picture of the community’s heat risks, and we’re in the process of installing 25 more. The Common SENSES project is a collaboration of community-based organizations, including the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative and Project Right Inc.; university researchers like me who are affiliated with Northeastern University’s Boston Area Research Initiative; and Boston city officials. It was created to pursue data-driven, community-led solutions for improving the local environment.

Data from those sensors generate a real-time map of the conditions in the neighborhood, from urban heat islets like Dudley Common to cooler urban oases, such as Lewis Place.

These technologies are becoming increasingly affordable and are being deployed in communities around the world to pinpoint heat risks, including Miami, Baltimore, Singapore and Barcelona. There are also alternatives when long-term installations prove too expensive, such as the U.S.’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration volunteer science campaign, which has used mobile sensors to generate one-time heat maps for more than 50 cities.

Making cooler communities, block by block

Although detailed knowledge of urban heat islets is becoming more available, we have barely scratched the surface of how they can be used to enhance people’s health and well-being.

The sources of urban heat islets are rooted in development – more buildings, more pavement and fewer trees result in hotter spaces. Many projects using community-based sensors aspire to use the data to counteract these effects by identifying places where it would be most helpful to plant trees for shade or install cool roofs or cool pavement that reflect the heat.

However, these current efforts do not fully capitalize on the precision of sensors. For example, Los Angeles’ massive investment in cool pavement has focused on the city broadly rather than overheated neighborhoods. New York City’s tree planting efforts in some areas failed to anticipate where trees could be successfully planted.

Most other efforts compare neighborhood to neighborhood, as if every street within a neighborhood experiences the same temperature. London, for example, uses satellite data to locate heat islands, but the resolution isn’t precise enough to see differences block by block.

In contrast, data pinpointing the highest-risk areas enables urban planners to strategically place small pocket parks, cool roofs and street trees to help cool the hottest spaces. Cities could incentivize or require developers to incorporate greenery into their plans to mitigate existing urban heat islets or prevent new ones. These targeted interventions are cost-effective and have the greatest potential to help the most people.

But this could go further by using the data to create more sophisticated alert systems. For example, the National Weather Service’s Boston office released a heat advisory for July 25, the day I measured the heat in Dudley Common and Lewis Place, but the advisory showed nearly the entirety of the state of Massachusetts at the same warning level.

What if warnings were more locally precise?

On certain days, some streets cross a crucial threshold – say, 90 F (32.2 C) – whereas others do not. Sensor data capturing these hyperlocal variations could be communicated directly to residents or through local organizations. Advisories could share maps of the hottest streets or suggest cool paths through neighborhoods.

There is increasing evidence of urban heat islets in many urban communities and even suburban ones. With data showing these hyperlocal risks, policymakers and project coordinators can collaborate with communities to help address areas that many community members know from experience tend to be much hotter than surrounding areas in summer.

As one of my colleagues, Nicole Flynt of Project Right Inc., likes to say, “Data + Stories = Truth.” If communities act upon both the temperature data and the stories their residents share, they can help their residents keep cool — because it’s hot out there.

Dan O'Brien, Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Director of the Boston Area Research Initiative, Northeastern University

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

Wild salmon are not just rarer than their farmed cousins – they’re better looking too. In a new study by my colleagues and I, we found that they are noticeably more symmetrical than those reared in captivity. In other words, they’re prettier (by human standards, at least). And that’s not just cosmetic.

The global sale of aquatic species reared in captivity (known as aquaculture) is worth more than US$300 billion (£225 billion) annually. That’s a huge figure that doesn’t even include the wholesale or retail markups and revenue generated from other industries such as processing or packaging.

Of all the cultured aquatic organisms, the Atlantic salmon is the most valuable but is seeing widespread declines in the wild.

To put salmon decline into perspective, in 2024 the aquaculture industry produced somewhere in the region of 3 million metric tonnes of Atlantic salmon for consumption, which is roughly 600 million fish (assuming a harvest weight of 5kg per fish). Yet, there are fewer than two million wild Atlantic salmon returning to rivers every year.

This has led to the Atlantic salmon being classified as endangered in Britain by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Some countries have turned to hatcheries as a way to boost wild numbers, releasing captive-bred fish into rivers to try to strengthen struggling populations.

But rearing fish in artificial hatchery environments changes elements of their biology, making them less likely to survive in the wild. Not only this, but when they are released into the wild, their genetics can pollute local gene pools.

So, while hatcheries seem to offer a solution to declining wild salmon populations, decades of research has shown that they largely have a negative effect on the populations they are trying to save. Despite these problems, hatcheries can sometimes be the only thing standing between a population and extinction.

We carried out our study on the Saimaa salmon in Finland, a critically endangered, landlocked population that’s been around since the last ice age. Once common in the wild, the Saimaa salmon would now go extinct in the wild if it were not for hatchery production sustaining the population. This is because the construction of hydropower stations and deforestation destroyed their natural spawning habitats in the 20th century.

In humans, facial symmetry is often associated with beauty. It’s no coincidence that stars like Zendaya and Harry Styles, whose features exhibit remarkable symmetry, are held up as icons of attractiveness.

In fish, symmetry is associated with low environmental stress. So, it can be a valuable tool for understanding how effective hatcheries are in producing more natural fish.

To understand how hatchery conditions shape fish development, we photographed Saimaa salmon from both sides and compared their features. Some fish had spent a year in tanks, others just a few days before being released into a river. We then measured their symmetry as an indicator of stress.

What we found was striking. Even fish reared in captivity for just one year showed clear signs of asymmetry. And efforts to enrich their lives, such as by adding shelters and fluctuating water flows, did not prevent asymmetry.

The only technique that prevented asymmetry was releasing the fish into a natural river after they had just hatched, minimising their exposure to the hatchery environment.

Fish released into the wild after hatching also had larger pectoral fins and lower jaws, relative to body size, when compared to those reared in captive environments. These traits may be beneficial in the wild where there are more complex river flows and diets. They were reduced in those fish who had spent most of their life in the hatchery.

Letting nature lead

Our research suggests that the hatchery environment – no matter how carefully managed – is no substitute for nature. While hatcheries can act as a stopgap for critically endangered populations like the Saimaa salmon, they are not a long-term fix for species in decline.

If hatcheries must be used, our study show it’s vital to get fish into natural conditions as early as possible. But ultimately, if we want wild salmon to not just survive but thrive, we have to fix the problems that caused their decline in the first place.

Humanity often tries to engineer its way out of environmental crises. But nature isn’t easily replaced. Sometimes, the best solution is to give it the space to recover on its own.

William Perry, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the School of Biosciences, Cardiff University

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

Each summer in the mountains above Juneau, Alaska, meltwater from the massive Mendenhall Glacier flows into mountain lakes and into the Mendenhall River, which runs through town.

Since 2011, scientists and local officials have kept a close eye on one lake in particular: Suicide Basin, an ice-dammed bowl on an arm of the glacier. Glacier ice once covered this area, but as the ice retreated in recent decades, it left behind a large, deep depression.

In the summers of 2023 and 2024, meltwater filled Suicide Basin, overflowed its rim and escaped through tunnels in the ice, sending surges of water downstream that flooded neighborhoods along the river.

On Aug. 12-13, 2025, the basin flooded again.

The surge of water from Suicide Basin reached record levels at Mendenhall Lake on Aug. 13 on its way toward Juneau, the state capital. Officials urged some neighborhoods to evacuate ahead of the surge. As the water rose, new emergency flood barriers appeared to have limited the damage.

The glacial flood risks that Juneau is now experiencing each summer are becoming a growing problem in communities around the world. As an Earth scientist and a mountain geographer, we study the impact that ice loss can have on the stability of the surrounding mountain slopes and glacial lakes, and we see several reasons for increasing concern.

The growing risk of glacial floods

In many mountain ranges, glaciers are melting as global temperatures rise. Europe’s Alps and Pyrenees lost 40% of their glacier volume from 2000 to 2023.

These and other icy regions have provided freshwater for people living downstream for centuries – almost 2 billion people rely on glaciers today. But as glaciers melt faster, they also pose potentially lethal risks.

Water from the melting ice often drains into depressions once occupied by the glacier, creating large lakes. Many of these expanding lakes are held in place by precarious ice dams or rock moraines deposited by the glacier over centuries.

Too much water behind these dams or a landslide or large ice discharge into the lake can break the dam, sending huge volumes of water and debris sweeping down the mountain valleys, wiping out everything in the way.

The Mendenhall Glacier floods, where glacial ice holds back the water, are classic jökulhlaup, or “glacier leap” floods, first described in Iceland and now characteristic of Alaska and other northern latitude regions.

Erupting ice dams and landslides

Most glacial lakes began forming over a century ago as a result of warming trends since the 1860s, but their abundance and rates of growth have risen rapidly since the 1960s.

Many people living in the Himalayas, Andes, Alps, Rocky Mountains, Iceland and Alaska have experienced glacial lake outburst floods of one type or another.

A glacial lake outburst flood in the Sikkim Himalayas in October 2023 damaged more than 30 bridges and destroyed a 200-foot-high (60 meters) hydropower plant. Residents had little warning. By the time the disaster was over, more than 50 people had died.

Avalanches, rockfalls and slope failures can also trigger glacial lake outburst floods.

These are growing more common as frozen ground known as permafrost thaws, robbing mountain landscapes of the cryospheric glue that formerly held them together. These slides can create massive waves when they plummet into a lake. The waves can then rupture the ice dam or moraine, unleashing a flood of water, sediment and debris.

That dangerous mix can rush downstream at speeds of 20-60 mph (30-100 kph), destroying homes and anything else in its path.

The casualties of such an event can be staggering. In 1941, a huge wave caused by a snow and ice avalanche that fell into Laguna Palcacocha, a glacial lake in the Peruvian Andes, overtopped the moraine dam that had contained the lake for decades. The resulting flood destroyed one-third of the downstream city of Huaraz and killed between 1,800 and 5,000 people.

In the years since, the danger there has only increased. Laguna Palcacocha has grown to more than 14 times its size in 1941. At the same time, the population of Huaraz has risen to over 120,000 inhabitants. A glacial lake outburst flood today could threaten the lives of an estimated 35,000 people living in the water’s path.

Governments have responded to this widespread and growing threat by developing early warning systems and programs to identify potentially dangerous glacial lakes. In Juneau, the U.S. Geological Survey starts monitoring Suicide Basin closely when it begins to fill.

Some governments have taken steps to lower water levels in the lakes or built flood-diversion structures, such as walls of rock-filled wire cages, known as gabions, that divert floodwaters from villages, infrastructure or agricultural fields.

Where the risks can’t be managed, communities have been encouraged to use zoning that prohibits building in flood-prone areas. Public education has helped build awareness of the flood risk, but the disasters continue.

Flooding from inside and thawing permafrost

The dramatic nature of glacial lake outburst floods captures headlines, but those aren’t the only risks.

Englacial conduit floods originate inside of glaciers, commonly on steep slopes. Meltwater can collect inside massive systems of ice caves, or conduits. A sudden surge of water from one cave to another, perhaps triggered by the rapid drainage of a surface pond, can set off a chain reaction that bursts out of the ice as a full-fledged flood.

Thawing mountain permafrost can also trigger floods. This permanently frozen mass of rock, ice and soil has been a fixture at altitudes above 19,685 feet (6,000 meters) for millennia.

As permafrost thaws, even solid rock becomes less stable and is more prone to breaking, while ice and debris are more likely to become detached and turn into destructive and dangerous debris flows. Thawing permafrost has been increasingly implicated in glacial lake outburst floods because of these new sources of potential triggers.

How mountain regions can reduce the risk

A study published in 2024 counted more than 110,000 glacial lakes around the world and determined 10 million people’s lives and homes are at risk from glacial lake outburst floods.

To help prepare and protect communities, our research points to some key lessons:

1. Some of the most effective early warning systems have proven to be cellphone alerts. If combined with apps showing real-time water levels at a dangerous glacial lake, residents could more easily assess the danger.

2. Projects to lower glacier lakes aren’t always effective. In the past, at least two glacial lakes in the Himalayas have been lowered by about 10 feet (3 meters) when studies indicated that closer to 65 feet (20 meters) was needed. In some cases, draining small, emerging lakes before they develop could be more cost effective than waiting until a large and dangerous lake threatens downstream communities.

3. People living in remote mountain regions threatened by glacial lakes need a reliable source of information that can provide regular updates with monitoring technology.

4. Recently it has become clear that even tiny glacial lakes can be dangerous given the right combination of cascading events. These need to be included in any list of potentially dangerous glacial lakes to warn communities downstream.

The U.N. declared 2025 the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation and 2025-2034 the decade of action in cryospheric sciences. Scientists on several continents will be working to understand the risks and find ways to help communities respond to and mitigate the dangers.

This is an update to an article originally published March 19, 2025, to include the latest Alaska flooding.

Alton C. Byers, Faculty Research Scientist, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder and Suzanne OConnell, Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, Wesleyan University

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

Sometimes the seeds of collapse are sown in the very soil of prosperity. Beneath the ancient city of Troy’s shining walls, the earth quietly cracked under the weight of its ambition.

When we think of environmental destruction today, images of oil rigs, coal plants or plastic islands come to mind. But long before industry, ancient societies were already pushing their ecosystems to the brink.

One striking example comes from early bronze age Troy – a story of economic brilliance shadowed by lasting ecological cost. It is not merely a tale of innovation and success, but a cautionary one about overreach, exhaustion and the hidden costs of unchecked growth.

Between 2500 and 2300BC, Troy emerged as a centre of power and experimentation in north-western Anatolia (the Asian part of what is now Turkey), centuries before Homer’s Iliad made it legendary. At its peak, the city is estimated to have had a population of 10,000.

Through years of excavation with the University of Tübingen’s Troy Project, I have come to understand how deliberate choices in production, planning and organisation gradually transformed a modest bronze age village into a vibrant community with early urban traits. Troy’s monumental stone buildings, orderly streets and distinct residential quarters reflected a society in transition.

At the heart of this transformation was the rise of mass production. Drawing on Mesopotamian models, the potter’s wheel revolutionised Troy’s ceramics, enabling faster, more uniform and large-scale output. Wheel-thrown pottery soon dominated, marked by deep grooves and simplified finishes that prioritised efficiency over artistry.

As production ramped up, so too did the need for a more structured and specialised workforce. Craftsmanship shifted from homes into workshops and labour became increasingly specialised and segmented. Trade flourished, reaching far beyond the Troad (the broader landscape around Troy) and surpassing the settlement’s local reach.

To manage this growing complexity, people introduced standardised weights and administrative seals – tools of coordination and control in an increasingly commercialised world.

But progress, then as now, came at a cost. The very innovations that fuelled Troy’s ascent unleashed forces that proved increasingly difficult to contain.

Prosperity through extraction

Troy’s wealth was built on relentless extraction. Monumental buildings demanded tons of limestone from nearby quarries. Clay was dredged from once-fertile riverbanks to feed kilns and brick-making. Forests were stripped bare for timber and firewood – the lifeblood of a booming ceramic industry that burned day and night.

Agriculture, too, underwent radical intensification. Earlier generations had rotated crops and rested their fields. Troy’s farmers, by contrast, pursued maximum yields through continuous cultivation. Emmer and einkorn (ancient wheat varieties well-suited to poor soils but low in yield and protein) dominated. They were hardy and easy to store, but nutritionally depleting.

As farmland expanded onto steep, fragile slopes, erosion took hold. Hills once covered in forest became barren, as archaeobotanical evidence confirms.

Livestock added further pressure. Herds of sheep and goats grazed intensively on upland pastures, tearing up vegetation and compacting the soil. The result was reduced water retention, collapsing topsoil and declining biodiversity. Gradually, the ecological equilibrium that had underpinned Troy’s prosperity began to unravel.

By around 2300BC, the system began to fracture. A massive fire ravaged the settlement – perhaps triggered by revolt or conflict. Monumental structures were abandoned, replaced by smaller dwellings and modest farmsteads. The centre of power faltered.

This collapse is likely to have been driven by a combination of factors: political tensions, external threats and social unrest. But the environmental strain is impossible to ignore. Soil exhaustion, deforestation and erosion would have led to water scarcity, resource scarcity and possibly even famine. Each factor eroded the foundations of Troy’s stability.

In the aftermath, adaptation took precedence over ambition. Farmers diversified their crops, moving away from high-yield monoculture towards more varied and resilient strategies. Risk was spread, soil partially recovered and communities began to stabilise.

Troy did not vanish – it adjusted and found a new balance for another millennia. But it did so in the shadow of a crisis it had helped create.

Lessons from a worn landscape

Troy’s story is more than archaeological curiosity – it is a mirror. Like many societies past and present, its economic ambitions outpaced ecological limits. The warning signs were there: falling yields, thinning forests, eroding hillsides. But the illusion of endless growth proved too tempting to resist.

The parallels with today are stark. Resource depletion, short-term gain and environmental neglect remain central features of our global economy. Technologies may have evolved – the mindset, however, has not. We consume, discard, expand and repeat.

But Troy also offers a glimmer of hope: the possibility of adaptation after excess, resilience after rupture. It reminds us that sustainability is not a modern ideal – it is a timeless necessity.

Troy is proof that no society, however ingenious, is immune to the consequences of ecological overreach. The warning signs of imbalance are never absent – they are merely easy to ignore. Whether we choose to heed them is up to us.

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Stephan Blum, Research associate, Institute for Prehistory and Early History and Medieval Archaeology, University of Tübingen

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

As spring in Australia nears and the days get longer, you might be wondering what the rest of the year holds for our weather.

There are signs that changes in the Indian Ocean will bring a few wet months to our part of the world. Specifically, the Indian ocean may be entering a negative “dipole” phase.

When this happens, the tropical eastern part of the ocean is warmer than average, and the tropical western part is cooler than average.

These conditions influence moisture levels and affect circulation in the atmosphere, raising the probability of supercharged spring rains across much of Australia.

But the devil’s in the detail – and it’s too early to say all of Australia is definitely in for a drenching.

Looking for clues in the ocean

After early autumn heat, Australia has, on average, experienced a warmer-than-normal winter to date.

July was Australia’s second-coldest in a decade. But under climate change, our winters are gradually warming. So the July just gone was considerably warmer than the typical July of the 20th century.

When it comes to rain, this winter has been fairly average so far. Parts of South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia are, however, in drought with some of the lowest multi-year rainfall totals on record.

Recent falls have helped in some drought-stricken areas, but more is needed.

So what do the next few months hold? For clues, we can look to the oceans around Australia.

A nation girt by sea

Australia is surrounded by the Pacific, Indian and Southern oceans. That means our climate is heavily influenced by the seas around us.

Warm or cool conditions on the sea surface often persist for long periods. This affects where weather systems form and move, and where moisture builds in the atmosphere.

In turn, this helps drive changes in rainfall and temperatures on land over months or seasons. So, understanding and predicting these ocean conditions can be useful.

La Niña and El Niño events are the most well-known type of ocean variability to affect Australia.

During a La Niña, the west Pacific Ocean warms, increasing the likelihood of rain-bearing weather systems affecting Australia. In an El Niño, water warms further east in the Pacific and Australia is more likely to be drier.

At the moment, we’re in neither La Niña or El Niño conditions and the Pacific looks set to remain in a neutral state.

The Indian Ocean is a different story, though.

How the Indian Ocean shapes Australia’s weather

The Indian Ocean Dipole – or IOD for short – involves variations in tropical sea surface temperatures.

In negative IOD events, warmer waters build up in the east Indian Ocean, and cooler waters build in the west. In positive IOD events, the opposite occurs.

Negative dipoles typically make the air over much of Australia more moist, and make low pressure over the continent’s southeast more likely. This tends to bring wetter conditions to much of Australia’s southeast in late winter and early spring.

Currently, the Indian Ocean is in a neutral state. However, the Bureau of Meteorology’s outlook points to warmer waters building in the east Indian Ocean and, possibly, a negative IOD forming. This would mean a few wetter months ahead.

Outlooks by international organisations also suggest a negative IOD may become fully fledged.

Indian Ocean Dipole events typically weaken in late spring and lose influence over Australian rainfall by November. But they can last longer.

In 2019, a positive IOD persisted into late spring and contributed to the very dry conditions that led into the Black Summer of 2019–20.

The Indian and Pacific Oceans are, of course, connected. Negative IOD events often accompany La Niña, and the two can reinforce each other to bring big rains to much of Australia.

But without a La Niña on the horizon, however, we can’t say with full confidence that Australia is in for a very wet few months, or that rainy conditions will persist into late spring.

A fast-evolving Indian Ocean

Overall, scientists know a lot less about the Indian Ocean Dipole than we do about La Niña and El Niño.

Under climate change, the Indian Ocean is rapidly warming, which is altering the IOD. But there’s more work to do before scientists fully understand this trend.

However, studies suggest if humanity’s high rate of greenhouse gas emissions continues, we’ll see more extreme IOD phases and changes in sea temperature patterns.

Already, reconstructions of the climate over the past millennium, using coral growth records, suggest we are experiencing more positive IOD events than in the past.

Variability in the Indian Ocean is important not only to Australia’s climate, but also to those of south and southeast Asia and east Africa. It’s imperative we build a clearer picture of the Indian Ocean Dipole to support climate adaptation efforts, including in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions.

More research is needed into how the IOD will change if we continue emitting greenhouse gases – or if we succeed in reaching net zero. Scientists also need to know how these changes might intersect with regional climates.

At the moment, our projections are still unclear – and this hampers our ability to adapt.

Andrew King, Associate Professor in Climate Science, ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, The University of Melbourne

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

Official analysis of 124 reefs on the Great Barrier Reef shows coral cover has dropped sharply after a record-breaking marine heatwave in 2024, prompting grave fears over the trajectory of the natural wonder.

Over the past few years, fast-growing corals had pushed the Great Barrier Reef’s coral cover to record highs. But those corals were known to be extremely vulnerable and one bad summer away from losing those gains.

Our new report by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) shows these fears have been realised. The percentage of living hard coral covering the Great Barrier Reef’s surface dropped in each region we surveyed.

The recent extreme highs and lows in coral cover are a troubling phenomenon. It raises the prospect that the Great Barrier Reef may reach a point from which it cannot recover.

Another global marine heatwave

In healthy corals, tiny algae produce both the coral’s main food source and its vibrant colours. When the water gets too warm, the algae are expelled and the coral’s tissue becomes transparent – revealing the white limestone skeleton beneath. This is called coral bleaching.

Coral can recover if temperatures are reduced and the relationship with the algae is restored, but it’s a stressful and difficult process. And if recovery takes too long, the coral will die.

In June 2023, a marine heatwave bleached coral reefs from the Caribbean to the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

It reached Australia’s east coast in February 2024, causing extensive coral bleaching. Aerial surveys showed three quarters of 1,080 reefs assessed had some bleaching. On 40% of these reefs, more than half the corals were white.

In the aftermath, in-water surveys measured how much coral died in the northern, central and southern Great Barrier Reef. The worst damage lined up with the highest levels of heat stress.

Sharp declines in coral cover

AIMS has surveyed reefs of the Great Barrier Reef each year since 1986, in a project known as the Long-Term Monitoring Program. It is the most extensive record of coral status on any reef ecosystem in the world.

One component of the surveys involves towing an expert observer behind a boat around the full perimeter of each reef. The observer records the amount of live, bleached and dead coral. These observations are then averaged for each location, and for each of the three regions of the Great Barrier Reef.

After each monitoring season we report on the percentage of living hard coral covering the Great Barrier Reef’s surface. It’s a coarse but robust, reliable indicator of the state of the Great Barrier Reef.

Coral losses this year were not uniform across the Great Barrier Reef. On the northern Great Barrier Reef, from Cape York to Cooktown, average coral cover dropped by about a quarter between 2024 and 2025 (from 39.8% to 30%). The largest declines on individual reefs (up to 70% loss) occurred near Lizard Island.

Reefs with stable or increasing coral cover were mostly found in the central region, from Cooktown to Proserpine. However, there was still a region-wide decline of 14% (from 33.2% to 28.6%), and reefs near Cairns lost between 17-60% of their 2024 coral cover.

In the southern reef (Proserpine to Gladstone) coral cover declined by almost a third. In the summer of 2024, southern reefs experienced the highest levels of heat stress ever recorded, resulting in substantial coral loss (from 38.9% to 26.9%).

The declines in the north and south were the largest in a single year since monitoring began 39 years ago.

Despite these losses, the Great Barrier Reef still has more coral than many other reefs worldwide, and remains a major tourist attraction. It’s possible to find areas that still look good in an ecosystem this huge, but that doesn’t mean the large-scale average hasn’t dropped.

More frequent bleaching events

Mass coral bleaching is becoming more frequent as the world warms.

Before the 1990s, mass bleaching was extremely rare. That changed in 1998 with the first major event, followed by another in 2002.

Back-to-back bleaching events occurred for the first time in 2016 and 2017. Since then, bleaching has struck the Great Barrier Reef in 2020, 2022, 2024, and again this year. The impacts of this year’s bleaching event will be revealed following the next round of surveys.

The time between these events is shrinking, giving corals less time to recover. Cyclones and crown-of-thorns starfish are also continuing to cause widespread coral loss.

You’ll see in the following charts how the percentage of coral cover has changed over time. The vertical yellow lines show the mass coral bleaching events increasing in frequency.

Confronting questions

The coral reefs of the future are unlikely to look like those of the past. The loss of biodiversity seems inevitable.

But will the reefs of the future still sustain the half a billion people that depend on them for food and income? Will they continue to protect coastlines from increasing storm activity and rising sea levels? These are confronting questions.

Effective management and research into reef adaptation and recovery interventions may bridge the gap until meaningful climate action is achieved. But above all, the key to securing a future for coral reefs is reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Daniela Ceccarelli, Reef Fish Ecologist, Australian Institute of Marine Science; David Wachenfeld, Research Program Director – Reef Ecology and Monitoring, Australian Institute of Marine Science, and Mike Emslie, Senior Research Scientist in Reef Ecology, Australian Institute of Marine Science

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

At the start and end of every school day, many Australian children head to the carpark or street to get picked up. While they’re waiting, they will be breathing in a mix of toxic gases and particle pollution.

Why? Because many parents leave their car engines idling while parked. The practice leads to noticeable spikes in pollutants which can trigger asthma attacks and harm student health.

Idling is a surprisingly high cause of carbon emissions, too. Previous research suggests Australian drivers leave their cars idling up to 20% of their total travel time, producing as much as 8% of a trip’s emissions.

Our new research shows how primary school students from two Melbourne schools made a real difference using a simple, child-led solution: talking about the problem with their parents. Student-led conversations successfully helped cut idling by up to 40% during afternoon pick-up and 18% in the mornings.

At a time when many young people feel hopeless about climate change, programs like ours can help build a sense of agency and purpose.

A solution led by students

Around schools, idling cars create pollution hotspots exposing children to harmful pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter.

Children are particularly vulnerable. They breathe in and out more often, have a greater lung surface area relative to their body size and are shorter than adults, placing them closer to vehicle exhaust emissions. Even brief exposure can increase the risk of asthma, respiratory infections and inflammation. Idling cars poses a significant and preventable health risk to children.

To tackle the problem, we created the Idle Off program. We ran three hands-on sessions for 40 students in Melbourne’s inner western suburbs, where we presented information about air pollution from vehicle exhausts and what these fumes could do to human health and the climate.

While raising awareness of issues is important, we wanted to give students the tools to make a visible change. To that end, our sessions focused on how to advocate for change. Students designed posters and wrote speeches on the topic. Some stuck posters up around car parks. Others used their prepared notes to talk to their parents about why idling was a problem worth tackling and still others spoke at the school assembly.

It worked. A week after the program, we observed a drop in idling of 18% during morning drop-off and 40% during afternoon pick-up. The differing figures make sense, because parents are often in a rush to get to work in the mornings and are less likely to turn off their cars for a quick goodbye.

Why involve children?

Transport is one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise.

But car idling is one of the easiest behaviours to change. Internationally, anti-idling campaigns have led to improved air quality. In Australia, the problem of idling has largely been overlooked.

Many young Australians experience growing climate anxiety. They know the crisis is real but often feel powerless to do anything about it.

Our research found when children are given knowledge and practical tools, their anxiety can shift into confidence and a sense of control. After the program, the number of students believing children are able to advocate for change rose from 68% to 97%. Students felt proud to be part of something that made a real difference. As one student told us:

the part that made me feel like I had made a difference was when we did [a] speech [at] assembly […] I feel like that kind of taught people what we had learned […] and then lots more people understood and told their friends and family.

The parents of our student participants also noted a growing sense of responsibility – not only in their children, but in themselves. As one parent told us:

they remind me of what I can do as an individual […] If everyone does a little bit, things can improve massively.

These reflections suggest hearing messages directly from children may make environmental messages more relatable and perhaps harder to ignore. Previous research supports this idea.

The program shows children are not only capable of understanding complex issues, but able to influence adults, shape conversations and drive actual behaviour change.

Small programs, big impact

Simple, concrete programs for schoolchildren could be used to tackle other environmental issues – especially those visible locally, such as plastic waste, recycling and energy saving.

Students, teachers and parents rated Idle Off as “highly acceptable and feasible”. Programs focused on solving problems such as this one are affordable, easy to adapt and require only basic materials and brief training for educators.

We monitored idling behaviour for two weeks. While this follow-up was short, there’s strong potential for lasting change if Idle Off or similar programs are taken up widely by schools.

Tackling car idling is one of the simplest actions we can take to cut emissions and reduce how many pollutants schoolchildren inhale.

Meaningful climate action doesn’t always require big budgets or long timelines. It can start with a hand-drawn poster on the school fence and a child who feels able to use their voice to ask adults to turn their cars off.

Aria Yangfan Huang, PhD Candidate, School of Psychology, Deakin University; Anna Klas, Lecturer in Psychology, Deakin University; Clare Walter, Lecturer in Human Sciences and Health Geography, The University of Melbourne; Kate Lycett, Senior Lecturer in Child Health and NHMRC Early Career Fellow, Deakin University, and Yichao Wang, Executive Dean Health Research Fellow, Deakin University

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

Tasmania’s mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) is the world’s tallest flowering plant. It can grow 100 metres tall and live for more than 600 years.

These trees play a crucial role in their ecosystems, providing habitat and contributing to the overall health of the shared living world. But their numbers are dwindling due to logging, land degradation, fire and climate change.

This sad situation is indicative of a much bigger problem: humans consistently undervalue plants, despite having much to learn from them.

At Deep Design Lab, we design and build homes for wildlife, learning from successful solutions in the natural world. To compensate for the loss of large hollows in large old trees, our team has 3D-printed nest boxes for owls and other species. We have also studied what makes a good tree for birds, to replicate the design.

Our recent research on Tasmania’s large old eucalypts has given me another reason to reflect on the many things about trees that urban planners, designers and the public could learn from. Here are the top five.

1. Dead trees and fallen branches

People often cut down dead trees for fear they might fall, causing injury to humans or damage to property. They also tend to remove fallen logs and branches, to tidy up.

But dead trees provide vital habitat for wildlife. Microbes, insects, lizards, birds and mammals often prefer dead trees to live ones. That’s because dead wood is easier to digest and dead branches devoid of leaves are easier to land on, or view the surroundings from.

Exposure to diverse ecosystems also supports human health and wellbeing. So it’s much better to retain dead trees and design spaces to keep them safely in place, whether standing or fallen.

2. Old trees

Mature trees have many features younger trees don’t. These include hollows, cracks, peeling bark and large quantities of fruit, nectar and seeds.

Canopies of such trees have many more of the horizontal and dead branches that birds prefer to use.

More than 300 species of Australian native mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians use tree hollows. But suitable hollows take time to form – often hundreds of years.

Countless species of insects and microbes also flourish in tree hollows.

Designers and land managers should preserve old trees and incorporate them into the planning processes. Homeowners should also appreciate their unique contributions. With the help of trees, our urban environments could be wild, lush and green rather than clipped, neat, tidy and barren.

3. Roots

Trees obtain water and nutrients through their roots. When water is scarce, the roots change shape and adapt to maximise uptake.

The environment surrounding the roots supports the growth of beneficial microorganisms and inhibits harmful ones. This regulates the growth of neighbouring plants.

Unfortunately urban design often traps roots under hard, sealed surfaces such as bitumen or concrete.

Instead, we should create permeable surfaces using soil, gravel, bark chips or perforated pavers with holes that allow the passage of fluids and gases, enabling tree root growth. Urban spaces with healthy trees are more biodiverse, resilient, cooler, moister and aesthetically pleasing.

4. Bark ‘streamers’

Strips of peeling bark called streamers, hanging from tree trunks and branches, create their own microhabitats for insects such as flightless tree crickets.

Yet the role of bark streamers is often overlooked and requires more research. Understanding their value can informed maintenance of trees that grow in cities. Such maintenance should find ways to retain or even add useful features such as streamers while also controlling for fire danger and other risks.

Our lab is also interested in using bark streamers to design artificial features that could improve the ecological value of younger trees.

Such features can also add new home for wildlife to human-made structures such as building surfaces or utility poles. This approach might provide shelter or perching opportunities in places where natural trees cannot grow, for example on rooftops or near gas pipes.

5. Litter

The leaves, seeds, twigs and branches that fall to the ground enrich the soil, retain moisture and provide habitat for fungi, insects, and other organisms.

However, in urban areas, humans often remove this material for aesthetic or safety reasons, disrupting ecological interactions. As a result, trees are deprived of nutrients and risk drying out. Meanwhile, small plants, insects and fungi die. Animals, such as lizards and birds, must leave.

Designers and the public should find ways to retain organic litter using socially attractive strategies. This may include creating designated wild zones, putting up interpretive signage to explain what’s going on, or modifying maintenance practices to preserve ecological benefits while meeting public expectations.

Plants as designers

Humans tend to value forms of intelligence that resemble their own brain-based cognition and discount other forms of problem-solving and innovation.

The capacity of trees to construct supportive habitats for themselves and other organisms requires further research. Ecosystems are dynamic and complex, so our knowledge is far from complete.

In response, our lab examines trees and their functions using technology such as laser scanning, computer modelling and digital fabrication. We recognise, preserve and encourage the formation of patterns made of branches, leaves, roots and dead wood.

By taking tips from these natural designs, humans can create more sustainable and resilient environments for themselves and other living beings.

With thanks to my co-creators Julian Rutten and Alexander Holland of the Deep Design Lab, who co-authored the original research and contributed to this article.

Stanislav Roudavski, Founder of Deep Design Lab and Senior Lecturer in Digital Architectural Design, The University of Melbourne

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

Bold economic ideas are flowing ahead of this month’s roundtable convened by the Albanese government, aimed at boosting Australia’s productivity and economy, and repairing the budget. Among the biggest ideas to emerge is: should Australia resurrect its carbon price?

Many respected economists say the answer is a firm yes. Among them are former Treasury secretary Ken Henry, policy expert Rod Sims, and Ross Garnaut, a leading economist and former Labor climate advisor.

Of course, Australia has had this discussion before. In 2012, after much political debate, the carbon price established by Julia Gillard’s minority Labor government began. Two years later, partisan politics had killed it off.

Carbon pricing is clearly the most economically efficient way to tackle climate change, in Australia and around the world. But getting the policy back on the national agenda will take great political courage.

Why are we talking about this now?

Carbon pricing is not new – the theory underpinning it dates back to the early 20th century.

As the theory goes, pollution caused by the production of goods and services imposes a cost on society. If polluting companies don’t cover that cost, society bears it instead.

A carbon price forces industry to emit less by, for example, investing in cleaner technologies or energy efficiency. If a business continues to emit greenhouse gases, it pays a financial penalty.

The policy can take several forms, such as an emissions trading scheme or direct carbon tax.

Under Labor, Australia’s central climate policy is the “safeguard mechanism”, which limits emissions from about 220 of Australia’s most polluting facilities.

One major problem with the policy, however, is that companies can buy carbon credits to reduce their overall emissions – on paper, at least. Carbon credits represent emissions reductions made elsewhere. But carbon credit schemes are plagued by claims they do not lead to real emissions reduction.

And the safeguard mechanism targets only large industrial facilities, when many other parts of the economy contribute substantial greenhouse gas emissions. But a carbon price, depending on its design, can encourage emissions cuts across the economy.

A submission to the government roundtable by the Superpower Institute – the brainchild of Garnaut and Sims – argues a carbon price would neatly address the main economic conundrums Australia is grappling with.

As Garnaut noted in a speech last week, Australia is on a trajectory to miss its renewable energy targets, largely due to insufficient investment. He pointed to the Capacity Investment Scheme, expansion of which the federal government announced last week. The scheme uses taxpayer dollars to underwrite new renewables projects.

Garnaut says the scheme was valuable, but poses a risk to the federal budget. He called on the government to redesign its emissions-reduction strategy around a carbon price, describing it as “the most economically efficient tax reform available to Australia at a time when we need budget repair”.

The comments follow those of former Treasury secretary Ken Henry, who has a coveted seat at the roundtable. Henry last month described the Gillard-era carbon price as “the world’s best carbon policy”, and asked “Why the hell did we ever drop it?”

Among Australia’s best economic minds, momentum for the policy has been building. Indeed, a 2023 survey by the Economic Society of Australia asked 50 leading economists about the best way to reach net-zero emissions. The most popular answer? A carbon price.

The evidence is in

The argument for carbon pricing is backed by academic research.

A study published last year examined 21 carbon pricing schemes and found at least 17 yielded immediate and substantial emission reductions, despite a low carbon price in most instances.

And a large study in 2020 analysed 142 countries over more than two decades. In countries with carbon prices, the average annual growth rate in emissions was about two percentage points lower than countries without one.

The extent of emissions reductions depends on the mechanism and price applied to emissions. Had the Gillard government’s carbon price remained in place, for example, analysis suggests Australia would have saved 72 million tonnes of emissions between 2012 and 2020.

But would a carbon price fix the budget deficit? It’s not a silver bullet. However, it could be part of a reform package that also includes a higher goods and services tax (GST) or a tax on superannuation.

Together, the changes would mean Australia was less dependent on income tax revenue – a tax system that can place a disproportionate burden on young people and future generations.

Carbon pricing can, if not well designed, unfairly impact lower income-earners, by increasing electricity and other costs. But with the right fiscal measures, people in need can be supported through the transition – as occurred under Gillard’s policy.

It’s time to act

Australia is a leading coal exporter – and one of the world’s highest per capita emitters. It will also feel some of the worst effects of climate change.

So we have very good reasons to adopt the best possible emissions reduction policy.

Of course, carbon pricing was a poisoned chalice for the Gillard government, and famously fell victim to partisan politics, as experts predicted.

Ultimately, Labor was defeated in 2013 by the Abbott-led Coalition, which had campaigned to repeal what it branded a “carbon tax”.

But now, Treasurer Jim Chalmers says nothing is ruled in or out of discussion at next month’s roundtable. With many of the nation’s most celebrated economists in the room, the idea of a carbon price is unlikely to be quickly dismissed.

Felicity Deane, Professor of Trade Law and Taxation, Queensland University of Technology

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

Going “green” is not just good for the environment and climate, it can also be great for business. Consumers increasingly demand eco-friendly goods and services, and are willing to pay more for them.

But consumers aren’t always getting what they paid for – as evidenced by a number of high-profile “greenwashing” legal cases in Australia.

Greenwashing occurs when a business falsely markets its products and services as sustainable or good for the environment or climate. It is a form of misleading and deceptive conduct, and considered illegal under various Australian laws.

So, let’s take a look at the array of products and services involved in recent greenwashing claims, and how to avoid getting duped.

1. Garbage bags

In April this year, the Federal Court fined Clorox Australia A$8.25 million after finding the company falsely claimed its GLAD-branded kitchen and garbage bags contained “50% ocean plastic”.

The court found the bags were partly made from plastic collected from communities in Indonesia up to 50 kilometres from a shoreline, and not from the ocean or sea.

2. Superannuation

The Federal Court fined superannuation trustee, Mercer Superannuation (Australia) Limited, $11.3 million in August last year after it admitted to making misleading statements about its “Sustainable Plus” investment options.

The products were promoted as excluding investments in companies involved in the fossil fuel, gambling and alcohol industries. These representations were found to be false and misleading since the products did, in fact, include investments in each of those industries.

In March this year, the Federal Court found Active Super trustee LGSS made false and misleading statements about its ESG (environmental, social and governance) credentials. It imposed a $10.5 million penalty.

LGSS claimed the Active Super fund had eliminated investments risky to the environment and the community, including coal mining and oil tar sands. The claims were found to be untrue. In fact, LGSS held investments in various coal and oil companies, including Whitehaven Coal.

3. Ethical investment

In March last year, the Federal Court found investment giant Vanguard misled investors by claiming its $1 billion ethical bond fund would exclude certain fossil fuel investments.

The fund had, in fact, invested in activities associated with oil and gas exploration, including oil pipelines in the United States and Abu Dhabi and a petroleum company in Chile. Vanguard was fined $12.9 million.

4. Sunscreen

The ACCC has launched legal action against Edgewell Personal Care Australia (and its US-based parent company) over their Hawaiian Tropic and Banana Boat sunscreens.

Edgewell has claimed the sunscreens are “reef friendly” because they do not contain oxybenzone or octinoxate – chemicals banned in some countries due to the damage they cause to coral reefs.

But the ACCC claims the sunscreens contain other ingredients which either cause, or risk causing, harm to reefs. It says Edgewell has no reasonable or scientific basis to promote the environmental benefits of Hawaiian Tropic and Banana Boat sunscreens.

The manufacturer is contesting the ACCC’s allegations. An Edgewell spokesperson, quoted in The Guardian, said the company firmly stood by the products’ claims.

5. Carbon offsets

In May this year, EnergyAustralia reached a settlement with non-profit group Parents for Climate, which accused the energy giant of greenwashing its “Go Neutral” carbon offset product.

Under the scheme, EnergyAustralia sold energy sourced primarily from fossil fuels, while promising to “offset” related emissions by buying carbon credits.

Parents for Climate claimed customers were falsely led to believe their energy use under the scheme would not contribute to climate change.

As part of the settlement, EnergyAustralia apologised to customers for not being clear and acknowledged that “offsets do not prevent or undo the harms caused by burning fossil fuels for a customer’s energy use”.

How to spot greenwashing

While greenwashing litigation is helping to reshape corporate behaviour, consumers have an important role, too.

ASIC and the ACCC have issued guidelines to help businesses avoid greenwashing. Those resources are also useful for consumers.

First, beware vague, unsubstantiated labels such as eco-friendly, green or sustainable. As the ACCC’s guidelines observe, “without further qualification or clarification, consumers can easily be misled that the product, service or business is better for the environment than is actually the case”.

If vague words are used without explanation, concerned consumers should ask the company for clarification and evidence.

Watch out for businesses making selective claims about a product’s benefits while hiding its negative attributes.

For example, a clothing manufacturer might claim its new product line is “eco-friendly” because it uses recycled polyesters. But it might fail to acknowledge the negative environmental impact of water use when dyeing the products or emissions involved in transporting them to consumers.

To avoid this trap, investigate the brand’s history. Has it found to have been greenwashing in the past? Is it transparent about where it sources its materials or how the products are made?

And what about financial products? If a firm hasn’t provided adequate information about its sustainability claims, ask for verification.

You can also compare the environmental performance of a product with industry peers.

By learning how to make more informed choices, consumers can drive change through their purchasing power.

Riona Moodley, Lecturer in Law, UNSW Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney

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

Discussions are hotting up over Australia’s 2035 emission reduction target, which the federal government is due to reveal by September this year. It will be a crucial announcement, for several reasons.

The target signals to the world whether Australia is willing to do its fair share to tackle global warming. The decision will also guide Australia’s pathway to its net-zero goal. And it will be closely watched by Pacific nations urging Australia to step up on climate policy.

The government has been awaiting final advice from the independent Climate Change Authority before announcing its decision. The authority’s draft advice suggested an indicative 65–75% cut to emissions by 2035.

We are confident Australia can achieve this – and go further. Our modelling suggests emissions reduction up to 85% is achievable. A stronger target also makes economic sense, by positioning industry to make the most of Australia’s competitive advantages on the road to a net zero economy.

Building momentum

Under the Paris Agreement, to which Australia is signed up, nations must submit a series of plans outlining proposed emissions reductions.

Australia’s current plan commits to a 43% cut in emissions by 2030, based on 2005 levels. The next plan will identify ambition out to 2035 – and importantly, actions to get there.

A recent ruling by the International Court of Justice found countries are legally obliged to prevent harms caused by climate change. This increases pressure on all governments to set a target in line with scientific evidence on limiting global warming to 1.5°C.

The target is not just about fulfilling Australia’s international obligations. As United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell said last week, an ambitious 2035 target would maintain Australia’s strong economy and high living standards. Doubling down on clean energy, he said, was “an economic no-brainer”.

The road to success

Our analysis shows how far Australia can go. In late 2023, modelling by Monash University’s Climateworks Centre, undertaken with CSIRO, examined potential pathways for Australia to cut emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.

It showed with decisive and increased action across all sectors of the economy, Australia’s emissions could reach 85% below 2005 levels by 2035, while still meeting energy demand.

Our work shows there are opportunities across all sectors. These includes:

• electrifying buildings and making them more energy efficient
• significantly higher uptake of electric vehicles
• faster uptake of electrification and hydrogen in the industrial and resource sectors
• reducing emissions from agriculture through measures such as adding algae to livestock feed and using different fertilisers
• expanding tree planting and technologies to capture carbon in soil.

A strong 2035 target is not only sensible and achievable – it will set up the economy is to compete for trillions of dollars in global investment in the net-zero transition.

Some businesses and investors are already developing transition plans to build on government action and tap into opportunities.

There are other positive signs. They include a recently published tool, supported by the federal government, which helps investors determine if their capital supports activities aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Australia’s states and territories have set the foundation. As of December 2024, their combined emissions reduction targets totalled a 66–71% reduction in national emissions by 2035.

But state goals cannot be met without federal action on emissions reduction. Likewise, the federal government could set a stronger emissions-reduction target, confident in the knowledge state and territory policies were pulling in the same direction.

Getting over the humps

While Australia can feasibly go big on emissions reduction, there are barriers to overcome.

A rapid expansion of renewable energy is vital if Australia is to meet its climate goals. This requires support from communities being asked to host renewable energy infrastructure – so-called “social license”.

Governments are seeking to address this. In Victoria and NSW, for instance, explicit programs aim to increase the benefits communities receive from hosting projects. But there’s more work to do.

Green commodities produced in Australia, such as iron and steel, offer huge economic benefits and can help our global trading partners decarbonise. However, global demand for green products must ramp up to make this a reality.

Governments have an important role in building these new markets. For example, they can strike international trade agreements involving joint transition plans, and cooperate to harmonise green standards.

The federal government has made a good start on this, via policies such as Future Made in Australia and the National Reconstruction Fund. Additional measures are needed to build demand.

Of course, the right policy mix, plus business and investor action, will bring major benefits for everyday Australians.

Renewable energy, for example, is the cheapest form of new power, helping address household energy costs.

And energy-efficient homes are not just more climate-friendly – they are also more comfortable.

A golden opportunity

Australia’s 2035 target is a golden opportunity to show global leadership, and set ourselves up as a renewable energy superpower. A suite of other policies can help bring the goal to fruition.

The federal government will this year release a plan guiding Australia’s transition to net zero emissions by 2050, covering six major parts of the economy.

Other relevant policy reviews over the next few years involve the National Electricity Market, as well as the Safeguard Mechanism which limits pollution from Australia’s major industrial emitters.

And the federal government will this month convene a major economic roundtable. Setting and implementing a 2035 emissions reduction target is crucial to a resilient economy and should underpin economic reforms that flow from the talks.

The challenges for Australia are clear – but so too are the opportunities. With the right plans and policies in place, the federal government can set the economy up for success.

Anna Malos, Climateworks Centre Country Lead, Australia, Monash University and Anna Skarbek, Climateworks Centre CEO, Monash University

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

Insects are arguably the most important animals on the planet. Their variety is unparalleled in nature, and they carry out vital tasks such as pollinating plants and providing food for other animals.

But all is not well in the insect world. Research over the last few years has shown sustained declines in insect species and numbers. It appeared Earth was witnessing a global-scale crash in insects – and climate change was partly to blame.

The evidence was mostly confined to temperate regions in the Northern Hemisphere. But our new research – published today in Nature – shows it’s also happening in the tropics, where most of Earth’s species live.

We found significant biodiversity loss in spiders, as well as insects including butterflies and beetles. The likely culprit is long-term changes to the El Niño cycle, caused by climate change. It suggests the life-support system underpinning the tropics is at serious risk in a warmer world.

Uncovering the effects of El Niño

El Niños vary massively across tropical regions, but are often characterised by hot and dry conditions (as opposed to the cool and moist conditions of La Niña).

Alternating El Niño and La Niña events can naturally cause many insects to come and go. That’s due to changes in temperature and moisture levels which can affect insect breeding, life cycles and behaviour.

But as climate change worsens, strong El Niño events are becoming more frequent and intense. We wanted to know how this affected insects in tropical regions.

To find out, we examined 80 existing studies of insects in relatively pristine tropical forests – mostly from the tropical Americas. We linked that data to measures of strength in El Niño and La Niña through time.

We found cause for concern. El Niño events appear to cause a rapid decline in both insect biodiversity, and the ecological tasks they perform. These trends were persistent and highly unnatural.

Several types of insects have become more rare in the tropical Americas over recent decades. These included butterflies, beetles and “true bugs” – insects from the order Hemiptera distinguished by two sets of wings and piercing mouthparts used to feed on plants. Butterflies in tropical Asia were also declining.

The strongest declines were in rare insects that would naturally decrease during El Niño. These insect populations would usually bounce back in a La Niña. But climate-fuelled El Niños are causing many populations to fall so far, they cannot recover.

Drastic changes to forests

Our findings suggest the diversity of tropical insects could be chipped away with every El Niño event. This is not just a problem for the species themselves, but other parts of the ecosystem that depend on them.

Our research also involved modelling the decomposition and consumption of leaves by insects across the tropical Americas, Asia and Africa. Both processes are crucial to the health of tropical forests.

Decomposition fluctuated in line with the abundance of termites, which are probably the most important decomposers in the tropics. And worryingly, the amount of live leaves consumed by insects appears to have crashed in recent decades. This correlated strongly with the crash in butterflies and beetles.

These drastic changes may have implications for food webs and other organisms that rely on insects.

A difficult future ahead

Our research could not take in the huge diversity of tropical insects – most of which have not yet been formally described by scientists. But it points to a difficult future for insects – and their habitats – as climate change worsens.

Little data exists on insect numbers in Australia’s Wet Tropics, in Queensland. However, monitoring work is underway at facilities such as the Daintree Rainforest Observatory. Such projects will help us better understand changes in insect biodiversity under climate change.

More research is also needed at other locations around the world. Given the fundamental role insects play in supporting life on Earth, the urgency of this work cannot be overstated.

Nigel Stork, Emeritus Professor in the Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security, Griffith University and Adam Sharp, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Invertebrate Ecology and Conservation, University of Hong Kong

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

Glaciar Perito Moreno was once considered a rarity: one of Patagonia’s only stable glaciers. But scientists have found the glacier is now in sudden and probably irreversible retreat – and this collapse is a warning for the world’s remaining ice.

Perito Moreno is unusually accessible for such a large and spectacular glacier, with nearly 700,000 visitors a year. Fed by abundant snowfall high up in the Andes, the glacier descends through beech forest to end in Lago Argentino. From here, tourists can get up close and personal on a specially constructed observation deck to watch as icebergs break off the front of the glacier, a process called iceberg calving. Icebergs regularly crack off the ice front and tumble into the turquoise lake below. But now, it’s on the verge of disappearing.

While 90% of Patagonia’s glaciers are shrinking, Perito Moreno has long been the exception thanks to its unique setting. The glacier flows into a narrow channel of Lago Argentino, where it sometimes advances far enough to block one arm of the lake entirely. This forms a natural ice dam, cutting off water flow and causing water to build up behind it. When the pressure becomes too much, the dam bursts.

These ruptures typically happen every few years, but timing can be unpredictable. The glacier been stable up to now and has not been shrinking because it terminates in relatively shallow water where it bumps into the opposite shore.

But this is all about to change, as years of reduced snowfall and warmer summers have weakened the glacier. A team of scientists based in Germany and Argentina have tracked its changes over time, and used satellite data, helicopter-mounted radar and lakebed mapping to predict its future behaviour.

In a new study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment they report that the glacier’s surface has lowered sharply in recent years, and it’s now retreating faster – while the ice itself is flowing more quickly. They believe Glaciar Perito Moreno will never advance again onto the opposite lake shore.

Instead, it is predicted to keep pulling back further into the lake, encountering deeper and deeper water, which will only accelerate its collapse. That’s because glaciers calve more rapidly in deeper water. The authors predict the front of the glacier will soon begin to float, making it even more unstable.

The glacier is entering a phase of very rapid and probably irreversible retreat. Tourists may see more dramatic calving in the short term – but they’ll be watching the slow disappearance of one of Patagonia’s iconic natural wonders. Eventually, they’ll be unable to see the glacier at all, as it recedes back into the mountains behind.

A worldwide decline

The retreat of Perito Moreno will represent more than a missed photo opportunity – it’s symptomatic of what’s happening to mountain glaciers around the world. Glaciers are melting faster than ever recorded. Since 2000, mountain glaciers have lost more than 6,500 billion tonnes – or 5% – of their ice. In Iceland, they’ve even held funerals to mark the death of glaciers.

As these glaciers melt, they return their stores of freshwater to the oceans, pushing sea levels higher. If they melted entirely, mountain glaciers would raise global sea-levels by 32cm (just over a foot). We’re some way off that point, but this does mean people living along the coast are likely to feel the impact of melting glaciers.

The effects will also be felt far inland. As glaciers retreat, they can trigger huge floods as lakes backed up behind the ice and their moraine dams suddenly empty when the natural dam bursts. These so-called glacial lake outburst floods are a growing threat to 15 million people worldwide.

Other catastrophic events can be linked directly to glaciers changing. For instance, in May 2025 the Birch Glacier in Switzerland collapsed when a chunk of nearby mountain broke loose and fell into the ice. The resulting avalanche completely destroyed the village of Blatten. In cases like these, close monitoring and early evacuation save lives.

There are other human consequences related to water supply. Glaciers act as natural freshwater reservoirs; storing winter snow and releasing meltwater through the year. Hundreds of millions of people rely on them for drinking water, farming and sanitation. When the glaciers disappear, so does that steady supply of water.

The projected loss of Glaciar Perito Moreno is not just a problem for Patagonia. It is an icy warning of what lies ahead for the world’s remaining glaciers.

Neil Glasser, Professor of Physical Geography, Aberystwyth University

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

Companion cockatoos are renowned for their problem-solving and intriguing characters. It’s no surprise these large, long-lived and intelligent parrots are known to display complex behaviour.

Owners often film their birds dancing to music and post the videos to social media. Snowball, a famous dancing cockatoo, has been shown to have 14 different dance moves.

We wanted to find out more about the dance repertoire of cockatoos and why they might be doing this. In our new research, we examined videos of dance behaviour and played dance music to six cockatoos at an Australian zoo.

These birds weren’t just doing a side step or bobbing up and down. Between them, they had a rich repertoire of at least 30 distinct moves. Some birds coordinated their head bobbing with foot movements, while others undertook body rolls. Our research shows at least 10 of the 21 cockatoo species dance.

If we saw this behaviour in humans, we would draw a clear link between music and dancing and interpret the behaviour as enjoyable. After watching cockatoos voluntarily begin dancing for reasonable lengths of time, it was difficult to reach any conclusion other than cockatoos most likely dance because it’s fun.

How many moves does a cockatoo have?

Dancing is complicated. To dance to music, animals need to be able to learn from others, imitate movements and synchronise their movements. These complex cognitive processes are only known to exist in humans – but evidence is emerging for its presence in chimpanzees and parrots such as cockatoos.

To catalogue the dance moves of cockatoos, we began by studying videos of the behaviour. We analysed 45 dancing videos and recorded all distinct moves.

The five species in these videos were the familiar sulfur-crested cockatoos and little corellas, as well as Indonesian species such as Goffin’s cockatoos, white cockatoos and Moluccan cockatoos.

Across the videos, we spotted 30 movements, including 17 that hadn’t been described scientifically. We also observed 17 other movements, which we classified as “rare” because they were only seen in a single bird.

Head movements were the most common dance move, especially the downward bobbing motion. Half of all videoed cockatoos performed this move.

Dancing – but not to music

Once we catalogued the moves, we then tested whether music could elicit this behaviour in captive cockatoos who weren’t kept as companions.

We undertook a playback experiment with six adult cockatoos at Wagga Wagga Zoo in New South Wales, comprising two sulfur-crested cockatoos, two pink cockatoos and two galahs.

Over three sessions, we played a piece of electronic dance music on repeat for 20 minutes and recorded any responses on video. We repeated our experiment with no music and again with a podcast featuring people talking.

All six cockatoos we studied showed some dancing behaviour at least once over the three sessions. But the rates of dancing weren’t any higher during the playing of music – it was similar to dancing during silence and the podcast.

We don’t fully know why this is. One possibility could be because we played music to existing male-female pairs, and the social environment alone was sufficient to trigger dance behaviour.

Why do cockatoos dance at all?

To find out whether the cockatoo species most prone to dancing were those most closely related, we analysed similarities across species. Goffin’s cockatoos and white cockatoos had the most similar moves, while Goffin’s cockatoo and little corella were the furthest apart.

But this clashed with genetics, as Goffin’s cockatoos are most closely related to little corellas. This suggests dancing behaviour may not be connected to genetic links.

Interestingly, these behaviours are mainly recorded in companion birds. Music playback in the online videos does seem to encourage the bird to keep it going for longer than likely to be seen in zoo or wild birds. These dance moves might represent an adaptation of courtship display movements as a way to connect with their human owners.

Other researchers report being able to trigger dancing behaviour in an African grey parrot and a sulfur-crested cockatoo with music. But the zoo cockatoos in our playback study didn’t respond the same way. This suggests there may be an element of learning to respond to humans.

It’s usually easy to tell if a human behaviour is play or not. But in animals, it can be much more difficult. Researchers define a behaviour as play if it meets four criteria: it occurs while animals are relaxed, it’s begun voluntarily, has no obvious function and appears rewarding. Cockatoo dancing would meet all four of these criteria.

By contrast, repetitive behaviours such as pacing seen in animals kept alone in small cages would not be play – it’s not rewarding and the animals don’t seem relaxed. Parrots kept in poor conditions exhibit self-harming behaviours such as constant screeching and feather pulling.

Captive parrots have complex needs and can experience welfare problems in captivity. Playing music may help enrich their lives.

For cockatoo owners, this suggests that if their birds are dancing, they’re feeling good. And if they’re busting out many different moves in response to music, even better – they might be showing creativity and a willingness to interact.

Acknowledgement: Honours student Natasha Lubke is the lead author of the research on which this article is based.

Raf Freire, Senior Lecturer in Animal Behaviour and Welfare, Charles Sturt University

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

It sounds innocuous. But foot-and-mouth disease is one of the world’s most economically devastating diseases affecting livestock.

When this highly contagious virus infects cattle, many develop painful blisters. Some die, but the real damage is longer term. Milk yields drop sharply for dairy cows and overall health takes a hit. While the disease can infect other cloven-hoofed animals such as sheep, cows are the worst hit.

The last outbreak in Australia was in 1872. But three years ago, foot-and-mouth arrived in Indonesia, triggering widespread alarm and new biosecurity measures. If the virus made it to Australia, it would put livestock exports at real risk. Graziers are also on edge about the government’s decision to open the door to beef imports from the United States.

When an outbreak is detected, authorities usually have to cull huge numbers of animals to prevent it spreading. But now another option is emerging – a new locally-produced mRNA vaccine able to be tailored to specific viral strains.

If the vaccine proves safe and effective, it could let authorities respond rapidly to any outbreak by vaccinating animals in a ring around any outbreak.

What’s so bad about foot-and-mouth?

The virus which causes foot-and-mouth disease is extremely contagious. Many other infectious animal diseases only spread between animals in close proximity. But this virus can spread through the air and survive on surfaces for a long time.

The widespread and persistent damage it does to animal health, milk output and fertility is enough to make it a real concern for big farming nations such as Australia.

Livestock exporters rely on Australia’s status as a nation free of major animal diseases. This status means animals and animal products can be freely exported to many nations.

If foot-and-mouth entered Australia, it would devastate the export trade. Many countries would stop buying Australian animals and animal products to stop the virus getting into their own disease-free herds.

In 2001, an outbreak of the virus in the United Kingdom was detected after it had already spread widely. To control it, authorities culled over six million animals. It cost the industry an estimated A$16 billion in damages.

These mass culls are done because the virus is so contagious. Authorities have to race against its spread.

How would this vaccine fit in?

It’s unlikely Australia’s 30 million cattle would be preemptively vaccinated against the virus.

This is for several reasons. While vaccines help animals fight the virus, preemptive vaccination could actually affect Australia’s disease free status, as vaccination can make it harder to detect an outbreak. Immunity tends to last less than a year. The virus has many different strains, which makes it harder to get full protection. Any vaccine has to match the dominant strains in a region.

If foot-and-mouth got into Australia, the main goal would be to eradicate it as quickly as possible. Otherwise, the virus could jump into feral herds of pigs, goats and deer, after which it would become very difficult to control.

If the virus was detected early and confined to a small area, authorities would most likely lock down animal movement in the area and slaughter the affected herds.

But if the virus was detected late and a wider outbreak was under way, authorities would have to launch a different response. This would involve creating blockages to the virus as quickly as possible. Vaccinating animals in the wider area would act to create a barrier to the virus spreading, alongside other measures such as restricting animal movement and culling.

Vaccines for foot-and-mouth aren’t new. Stockpiles already exist overseas, and Australia would be able to access these in the event of an outbreak.

There are two reasons this new mRNA vaccine is a significant development.

First, it’s being locally produced, making it easier for authorities to ramp up a response at the speed required.

Second, mRNA technology offers the ability to rapidly tweak vaccines to match new strains. This would likely boost how effective it is. mRNA vaccine production can be scaled up very quickly too.

While the technology seems promising, it’s not guaranteed. Livestock vaccines have to pass rigorous regulatory checks to ensure they’re safe for the animals and for human consumers.

What’s next?

The news of this new vaccine for foot-and-mouth is welcome. But it’s not a silver bullet.

Australia has long relied on stringent biosecurity measures to protect its large agricultural export industries. To boost their effectiveness, authorities have also rolled out new technologies such as one of the world’s best livestock tracking systems. Each cow in Australia has a unique ID tag. The tag records where the animal has been over the course of its life.

If there’s an outbreak of an infectious disease such as foot-and-mouth, this tracking data will be invaluable. Authorities will be able to see where infected animals have been and which others may have been exposed.

Vaccines, culling and tracking might sound like overkill. But this simple virus cannot be underestimated.

Timothy J. Mahony, Professor of Animal Health and Director, Centre for Animal Science, The University of Queensland

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