Toondah is a Ramsar Wetland that is threatened from impacts by a coastal property developer. The developers have said that because Eastern Curlews have become rare, this makes the site less important. In actual fact this is the very opposite of the legislation’s intent. This undermines biodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More principles and even endangers the local economy. Toondah proposals are unwise. Saving shorebird habitat is the only hope left for a coastline under risk. Here I set out the reasons that I will be submitting to the authorities for consideration. These are important test cases to establish whether our decision-makers understand the consequences of wildlife loss. Wildlife is still considered only the icing on the cake. For conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More to start being taken seriously we must understand that animals are key to restoring critical life support systems. Can you help me tell this story?
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Saving wetlands for life
Here is a video we made with Judith Hoyle of BirdLife Australia.We talked about the project, why Toondah proposals are unwise and why wetlands are for life, not for developing.
Australia’s interpretation of biodiversity is out of date
The idea that rarity defines ecosystem function(Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. More is as ridiculous as it is out of date. But it’s also the reason behind many a failure of conservation legislation. It’s among the reasons why Australia has among the worst extinction records on Earth. But it’s not just here. In the last 50 years humanity has, on average, presided over the decline of 69% of all wildlife species. Unless we understand the connection between animals and ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More we will all be worse off.
This would be true if it wasn’t the birds creating the habitat in the first place. This single profound mistake turns the whole impact statement on its head.
Take for instance, a statement by the developer’s spokesperson reported by The Guardian:
“Crucially, scaremongering about negative environmental impacts to bird life, marine ecology and koalas has been proven wrong by the best, independent science”.
The rationale put forward by the developer is that fewer birds means more available habitat. This would be true if it wasn’t the birds creating the habitat in the first place. This single profound mistake turns that statement (and the whole impact statement) on its head. It’s why Toondah proposals are unwise.
Ecosystems will not function unless wildlife is present at previous abundance. This development might be destroying a small proportion of intertidal habitat, seagrass and mangrove, but it is within the Ramsar Site. This is habitat for rapidly declining wildlife.
While Australian law is quite clear – that endangered species and habitatsWhat is habitat for animals and people? Habitat, hence the word "habitable" describes the natural surroundings in which any animal (or human) lives, that houses basic needs, such as food and shelter. Vegetation, for example, is habitat for animals. On its own, habitat is not necessarily stable or sustainable, which is why it differs from an ecosystem. Habitat in disrepair More must be protected – decisions can be inherently flawed by a common misunderstanding. A meaningful rationale is the exact opposite of how people tend to understand ecosystems and wildlife.
In actual fact, the decline of Eastern Curlew (and other shorebirds) signifies the collapse of ecosystem function. Until Eastern Curlew populations are recovering there is no scope whatsoever to allow further development.
A correction to Australian biodiversity policy
It would be prudent to add the following to Australian policy. This would bring it in closer alignment to the most up-to-date scientific evidence:
That the rapid decline of any species that recently signified the importance of any ecosystem should be seen as indication of serious deterioration in ecosystem health and recovery potential. In that case, the resilienceReferring to an ecosystem’s ability to maintain a steady stable-state. The need to build resilience is entirely anthropocentric and symptomatic of ecosystems that are damaged or declining, leading to loss of ecosystem services on which humans depend. More of any ecosystem that has lost its wildlife, should be taken to be under serious threat. Any development that may impact on remaining ecosystem values must consider their consequence on the recovery of ecosystem function – this means, recovery of wildlife populations to previous levels, sufficient to sustain the human life support services.
In actual fact this definition is also, already consistent with the Ramsar Convention, and has been for decades.
The critical role of wildlife in ecosystem recovery
Australia cannot meet its obligations to the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity by further eroding shorebird populations.
- Wetlands are critical life support for humans and local economies; and
- That life support depends on a functioning ecosystem and abundant wildlife.
Irrespective of any international need, this is also essential to protect the local domestic economy from coastal ecosystem collapse.
Any argument that livelihoods are improved by destruction of Toondah habitat cannot be believed if there continues to be a decline in wildlife. We have to be able to restore shorebird populations. If numbers are allowed to reach extinction level, this restoration potential is permanently gone and the consequences will be measured in taxpayer funded flood defence and other problems.
The wise would realise that a site so heavily compromised is unlikely to withstand even minor threats.
In the case of Toondah, Eastern Curlew is one of the animals left that can help rebuild what’s been lost. It’s down to three individuals where there may have been 15 just thirty years ago (though more may flow through – see below). But this is not only an argument about numbers of one bird or another. It never has been.
Eastern Curlew is a signature species among many others that collectively define the wetlands ‘character’. This includes birds like the Bar-tailed Godwit, long-distance migrants, that have no choice but to return to this place every year. The fact curlews still occur, even in relatively small numbers, signifies the existence of a vital trophic structure that is still somewhat intact. To make it about one or two ‘listed’ species is to overlook the whole basis of the Ramsar Convention, which is to preserve a whole functioning ecosystem.
A note to the wise
The developer identifies unavoidable residual impacts to wetland habitats. These are: ‘2.5 ha of mangroves; 24.7 ha of seagrass; and 7.5 ha of unvegetated intertidal sandbanks and mudflats’. Any decision will come down to the question of whether this is ‘wise use’. The Ramsar Convention specifically identifies as ‘unwise’:
‘Species removals as a direct driver of change that affects human ecosystem services’.
Again, the question is, how resilient is the site and is it going to sustain itself? A Ramsar site with so few remaining shorebirds though, can only be on the verge of ecosystem collapse. The developer cannot have taken this into account. Or else they could not possibly have thought that so few animals make it unimportant.
The wise would realise that a site so heavily compromised is unlikely to withstand even minor threats.
A wise government might have strongly objected to such proposals before a (presumably) million dollar EIS is written. This would have saved everyone the risk of pursuing such proposals that destroy internationally significant wetlands during an extinction crisis. Toondah proposals are unwise.
It’s never been about the area impacted
Consultant ecologists too readily jump to blunt metrics like ‘area’ to evaluate biodiversity significance but this is a crude over-simplification of ecosystem function.
The area to be destroyed has been considered less than ‘significant’ because it represents under 1% of the overall Ramsar site. Such thresholds, however, are meaningless. As early as 1999, Stroud, Mudge and & Pienkowski in advice to the UK government, questioned its validity.
‘the only cities in Britain which would qualify as ‘nationally important’ would be London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool … clearly a policy of conservation for historic buildings (habitats for the human population) based on this criterion would be excessively conservative and probably liable to cause irritation to all the Welsh, most Scots and a considerable proportion of the English, including those from the south-west, north-east and East Anglia! If one used the definition of ‘international importance’, only London would qualify’.
The people of Toondah will permanently lose something irreplaceable and the consequences are predictably dire.
Furthermore, it’s not about the percentage at all. Again, it’s about impact on functionality and the inherent importance of an internationally significant protected area.
Habitat is not an ecosystem without its animals. If critical Eastern Curlew habitat is removed, it is removing both the ecosystem values and the mechanism to maintaining and restoring wetland ecosystem function.
It’s about the simple fact that Eastern Curlew represents an area of the Ramsar site that is of global significance. If the scientists involved have not linked the ecosystem to the birds, they have failed to understand the definition of the Ramsar Convention, which is that:
The “ecological character” [is] the structure and inter-relationships between the biological, chemical, and physical components of the wetland. These derive from the interactions of individual processes, functions, attributes and values of the ecosystem(s)
Coastal flooding risk and increased household tax
Worse though is failing to recognise the link between shorebird nutrientA substance that contains the raw materials for life. At a chemical level, these are contained inside compounds that are absorbed into the body and essential energy-containing molecules are extracted, so that energy can be transformed into other chemical processes that use the energy for living. More processes, seagrass, mangroves and services like flood defence. Collapse of those systems puts the coastal environment at even greater risk of inundation.
Seagrass and mangroves are both critical for absorbing wave energy. The fish that breed there (that depend on the inflow of nutrientsEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More from shorebirds and other marine animals) also maintain nearshore environments that slow down changes in coastal geomorphology.
In short, if you destroy wetlands, there is a greater risk of coastal erosion. Either this could destroy properties elsewhere or result in taxpayer-funded sea defence into the future. In Australia, where eighty-five per cent of the population lives near the coast, it’s been shown that the cost of sea defence construction, maintenance and upgrades is not economically viable. To make it so depends on increasing regional taxes – when these services are provided ‘for free’ by the birds.
Either way, locals pay the price, which is why the ‘percentage area affected’ argument is moot. This is not only about the Ramsar site as a whole, it’s about the part that’s being destroyed.
Impossible expectations?
There is an expectation that animals will recover themselves by moving to other places. This is a fundamentally flawed argument since the birds are declining due to other impacts on the ecosystem. If there were better quality habitat they would be there already.
The second is the expectation that habitat can be restored. The developer says that:
These residual impacts will be offset through the implementation of a fund that will deliver $4.75 million of beneficial projects in the Redland LGA and broader MBRS providing an overall benefit to migratory birds and wetland habitats in the MBRS.
There is little evidence this will work. In Sri Lanka, only ‘three sites [out of 23 mangrove restoration projects] showed a level of survival higher than 50%’, and nine showed no recovery at all. Restoration of existing mangroves next to habitat for signature species is an impossible expectation. Toondah proposals are unwise because evidence of success in seagrass restoration is limited.
Moreover, this avoids the fact that habitat is not an ecosystem without its animals. If critical Eastern Curlew habitat is destroyed, it is removing both the ecosystem values and the mechanism to maintaining and restoring wetland ecosystem function. The two components are inherently tied together. It’s the wildlife that leads to ecosystem function (and in doing so, makes its own habitat), not habitat that leads to wildlife.
Summarising
Ecosystem health depends on populations of animals existing in the right proportions and abundance. An internationally significant wetland that recently hosted abundant birdlife is as critically important today as it was when the birds were abundant.
The only difference is that Toondah no longer supports the number of birds needed to keep it ‘alive’ and functioning well. Its resilience has declined, offering up less scope to permit development that directly destroys the values by removing habitat. That habitat is signified by the presence of the larger species, which indicate an underlying importance value, that is unseen, complex and real.
That failure to maintain wildlife populations intact has occurred because of the erosion of wetlands in the past. There is no interpretation of environmental policy that can reasonably assume such erosion of values in the future, are wise. This is why Toondah proposals are unwise. Decisions to destroy a part of any wetland of international significance will almost always be unwise.
Unanswered questions
The responsible authority assessing this proposal needs to ask the developers’ scientists to clarify these points. Because as it stands, there is little evidence that the link between birds and ecosystem function and processes, has been assessed.
Answering these questions will help to consider whether Toondah proposals are unwise.
Q1. What role did shorebirds play in creating the characteristics of the Ramsar site and driving its benthic ecology through foraging, nutrient concentration and nutrient transfer(of nutrients) the thing that sets animals apart from plants, is that they can move. Some of the biggest migrations on Earth every day, are the movement of insects like caterpillars, from the stem of a plant to a leaf and back, before turning into butterflies and transferring the energy elsewhere. Large-scale migration of grazing animals and migratory songbirds moves More?
Q2. How many birds used to use the site? Not how many at one time, but how much of the site does any individual bird use? In other words, even through Toondah has few birds, how many of the birds that use the site in a season, use Toondah at some point? And how many birds pass between Toondah and other Australian Ramsar sites and international sites? E.g. what numbers of birds in total use the site each year?
Q3. How significant are shorebirds in nutrient transfer and how important is this to the Ramsar site, when it comes to adapting to natural environmental fluctuations and maintaining its character and the ecosystem services it provides? Including flood defence.
Q4. In light of the above, how much resilience has the site left, to cope with any additional stress imposed by human-induced change?
Q5. In regards to the answer to Q1 & Q4, what impact does the continuing rapid decline in shorebirds have on current resilience or the ability to maintain the Ramsar Site’s resilience in future, if declines continue at their current rate? How is the site’s ecological character likely to change?
About Simon Mustoe
Simon Mustoe is an ornithologist and ecologist with over 25 years international experience in ecological assessment, wildlife surveys, ecosystem and biodiversity assessment, including numerous Ramsar wetland evaluations. He wrote Bird Census Techniques (2000, Academic Press), co-authored the Handbook of Biodiversity Survey Methods (2005, Cambridge University Press) and is author of Wildlife in the Balance, about the role of wildlife in ecosystems. Simon helped draft the first ecological impact assessment guidelines in Australia and New Zealand, and launched the certification for practising ecologists for the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand. In recent years he has been advisor on restoration projects including threatened species recovery planning in Australia and in the marine environments of the Coral Triangle.
