Queensland has a “new” species of bandicoot.
Courtesy Queensland Museum.
After carefully examining about 100 specimens’ teeth and skulls in six museum collections Kenny Travouillon realised the northern long-nosed bandicoot was a separate species and may require more effort to conserve it.
Dr Travouillon says not every museum in Australia has a mammals curator, and many research collections in museums are not being worked on.
Science Network WA [read this story]
The Kimberley has a new seed bank that will function as a seed shop for bush tucker (Aboriginal food) plants, and for those needing to propogate plants for mine site rehabilitation and gardening.
Tamara Williams (Nyul Nyul Rangers), Cat Williams (Apace WA), Devena Cox (Nyul Nyul Rangers), Debbie Sibasado (Bardi Jawi Oorany Rangers), Kylie Weatherall (Environs Kimberley) and Cissy Tigan (Bardi Jawi Oorany Rangers).
It is also intended to be a supplier to high-end restaurants serving Aboriginal food-influenced dishes.
It also has a serious conservation purpose in preserving rare species for ecological renewall.
This may become important when, for example, rare Kimberley vine thickets are destroyed by bushfires.
Science Network [read this story]
A library of soil samples is being established at Muresk, the old agricultural college near Northam in WA’s wheatbelt.
It will mostly consist of specimens collected during studies for the grain industry, but others will be welcome.
This will be an exciting resource for researchers.
Science Network WA [read this story]
Rangers Herbert and Wesley Alberts with Georgia Ward-Fear. Photo courtesy Georgia Ward-Fear
Almost every conceivable measure to stop cane toads advancing into the Kimberley has been tried and failed.
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Collecting cane toads and killing them has failed.
Constructing barriers to keep them out of waterholes has failed.
Experiments with lungworm showed the worms were even more harmful to native frogs.
Meanwhile, other researchers have been training larger predators to avoid eating the toxic amphibians.
And strange as it may seem, a future program could involve releasing more toads into the environment, ahead of the invading wave.
Science Network WA [read this story]
This story has been republished in The West Australian, Friday, January 15, 2016.
The pindan scrub, which is a type of arid heathland, is not a place toxic cane toads care to tarry.
Click on this image to read the story as printed in Kimberley Echo, Kununurra WA, 26 Nov 2015.
As a result, the large reptiles that tend to eat them have had a better survival rate in this drier environment.
This is an interesting, opportunistic study by government scientists working out of Kununurra in the East Kimberley.
It has now been republished in The Kimberley Echo.
Science Network [read this story]
26 Nov 2015
Kimberley Echo, Kununurra WA
A scientist says West Australians have no need to worry about new oil exploration wells in the Great Australian Bight.
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A company wishes to explore for oil, and there have been fears a potential oil spill from the wells would drift westwards to Albany and beyond.
Oil spills expert Monique Gagnon says the heavy crude oil the explorers are seeking would degrade and sink before it had a chance to reach WA shores.
The Great Southern Weekender, October 29, 2015 p7
While Broome is home to several unique and vulnerable ecosystems, two ecologists say builders and planners could take fairly simple steps to preserve them.
The Minyjuru tree within the restricted Broome PEC, provides a much coveted sweet fruit and traditional Yawuru Mayi (pictured).
They have exhaustively mapped the four ecosystems so that making small zoning changes and planning new works and subdivisions around them would be a fairly simple matter most of the time.
Science Network WA [read this story]
RADIO carbon data from prehistoric occupation sites are providing insights into Australia’s fluctuating human population levels tens of thousands of years ago.
ANU archaeologist Alan Williams used radio carbon dating technology to examine charcoal dates from more than 1000 prehistoric campfires and based on this he says populations appear to have increased steadily until 25,000 years ago.
Dr Williams compared these dates with climatic change profiles provided by a recent synthesis of Australia’s palaeoclimate from the OZ-INTIMATE (Australasian INTegration of Ice core, Marine and TErrestial records) project.
Co-author UWA archaeologist Winthrop Professor Peter Veth says Dr Williams’ comparison showed a clear correlation between datasets.
Science Network WA [read this story]
GEOFF VIVIAN
The Bremer Canyon has become a “mecca” for international whale watchers because it contains an important feeding ground for killer whales, or orcas.
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“We’re getting international group bookings now where people are flying in from the States, from Europe, China, from wherever,” said film-maker and tour boat operator Dave Riggs.
[From The Great Southern Weekender, July 16, 2015, p7.]
The story goes on to talk about his new doco on Discovery Channel.
In our interview he made an assertion about a scientific matter and, as neither he nor I are scientists, I ran it past a prominent cetacean researcher that I know.
That is all a journlist needs to do when presented with a matter of “science” that is not in a reputable peer-reviewed journal – get an expert opinion.
A SUB-SPECIES of a small shorebird spends much of the northern winter feeding at Roebuck Bay and Eighty Mile Beach in the Kimberley.
The red knot sub-species (Calidris canutus piersmai) breeds in the Siberian Arctic tundra, and travels to and from the Kimberley via China’s Yellow Sea—a round trip of at least 20,000km.
PhD student Ying Chi Chan is one of a group of Netherlands-based scientists conducting detailed longitudinal studies of shorebirds’ flight paths and foraging ecology.
“Habitat destruction is happening in a lot of places but the rate is particularly fast in China,” she says.
“The main thing I want to know is how the bird adapts to this change in environments.”
When I wrote this piece I was unaware of the Wilson Inlet (Denmark WA)’s importance to this intrepid little traveller.
Science Network WA [read this story]