Waterbirds in Crisis
canada goose store This is a story about wetlands buy canada goose jacket cheap in crisis. Waterbird numbers are an excellent barometer for river health and, right now, numbers countrywide are crashing. canada goose store
canadian goose jacket Tonight we tag along on one of the most extensive and long running waterbird surveys in canada goose coats the world. canadian goose jacket
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Richard Kingsford: If Canada Goose Parka you like they’re the canary down the mine shaft they’re telling you as much as anything is that canada goose clearance these systems really need a bit of a helping hand.
cheap Canada Goose Narration: The question is; is the drought uk canada goose really to blame, or are the waterbirds telling us something more serious is wrong? The answer lies in the survey. Each year Richard covers the whole eastern side of Australia. The survey involves flying in 30 km wide survey bands from the coast right to the Northern territory border. It includes every wetland, river system and swamp in the bands. With one person looking out each side of the plane, they identify, and estimate numbers of canada goose coats on sale every single bird they pass over. cheap Canada Goose
Richard Kingsford: 50 Pelican, 50 pink ears, 2 caspian terns.
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Canada Goose sale Narration: This year’s survey is only half way through, but already things aren’t looking good for the birds. Canada Goose sale
Canada Goose online Richard Kingsford: We’ve still got the southern part to do, but I would say the numbers will probably be on some of the lowest that we’ve buy canada goose jacket seen Canada Goose online
Narration: But Richard has seen waterbird numbers fluctuate with climactic conditions before, it goes with our boom and bust environment. The worrying thing for him is that over the long term waterbird numbers are falling.
canada goose coats on sale Richard Kingsford: We’ve been looking at Canada Goose Online probably up to fifty different waterbird species across about half the continent for now near on twenty years and cheap canada goose uk I guess the sort of general pattern that we are canada goose black friday sale seeing is a decline in a lot of the species. canada goose coats on sale
buy canada goose jacket cheap Narration: Richard thinks the cause of the decline must be something more enduring than the drought. So what is going wrong? Menindee Lakes in far Western New South Wales seems to say it all. It’s naturally a series of ephemeral lakes fed by the Darling River, which should flood and dry out periodically. It may look like a sanctuary for waterbirds, especially in a canada goose uk shop drought, but it’s actually places like canada goose uk outlet this that are the at the heart of the long term waterbirds decline. At Menindee we’ve stopped the natural cycle and turned it into a reservoir. buy canada goose jacket cheap
Canada Goose Jackets Richard canada goose outlet Kingsford: I guess the big problem in terms of water management is the weir here which basically stops the river and all the water goes and gets stored in the lakes. Canada Goose Jackets
The water stored in Menindee canada goose uk black friday is used for irrigation on farms in New South Wales and South Australia and also carried via pipelines to supply the town of Broken Hill. Keeping the lakes unnaturally full not only deprives areas downstream, but also has a devastating effect on the ecology of Menindee.
buy canada goose jacket Paul Willis: So what’s going on here? buy canada goose jacket
Canada Goose Outlet Richard Kingsford: Well you might canada goose think with all these dead trees that it’s something to do with the drought or for that matter salinity But in fact what’s happened here is the water levels have been kept artificially high here and basically it’s killed all these trees Canada Goose Outlet
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Richard Kingsford: Well the waterbirds would have bred in the canopies of the trees and the holes in the trees, so basically what you’ve done is Canada Goose Jackets remove all the breeding canada goose store habitat. Now all we’ve got here is a feeding habitat for the waterbirds some of the time, the Canada Goose Outlet rest of the time it’s not much good https://www.winterdownparkas.com for anything.
canada goose deals Narration: cheap Canada Goose In regulated uk canada goose outlet systems like Menindee, Richard has also found lower numbers of waterbirds and less diversity of species than in natural systems. Australian inland wildlife has adapted over thousands of years to exist in a boom and bust environment, with cycles of flood and drought. Stabilising the environment, keeping it wet or dry, is disastrous. The waterbirds are a barometer for the health of the entire water system. And Richard’s survey has been going long enough to show the waterbirds are suffering. canada goose deals
canada goose Richard Kingsford: That’s a pretty good indication that lots of things like fish and invertebrates and perhaps turtles, all the things that live in rivers as well as vegetation may be in similar dire straits and I think that’s going to be Canada Goose Coats On Sale almost impossible to turn around. canada goose
canada goose clearance Richard Kingsford: Richard’s not saying that we ought to manage the water resources of Australia just to keep the wildlife happy, but the wildlife is a warning; if the birds are in trouble, the rivers are in trouble, and that’s a threat to us all canada goose clearance.
