Conservation Matters

Peter Valentine | Conservation Officer

Right now is a good time for reflection and preparation….and some basic truth-telling. But as the outstanding climate scientist Dr Joelle Gergis puts it in The Saturday Paper (22 November 2025), “Can we handle the truth?”

Clearly the vast majority of global leaders have lost their way on the climate emergency. The Conference of the Parties (COP) in Brazil last month (November 2025) gave the world nothing but marking time as the disaster rolls out.

So too the Australian opposition shambles reveals a total failure on behalf of the (Liberal National Party (LNP). Rather than articulate the gaping loopholes of the pathetic Environment Protection legislation proposed by the Australian Labor Party (ALP), the LNP has made a spiteful decision to rescind all commitments for climate change, and to renew support for coal and gas, the very industry that has the greatest responsibility for the climate change we are experiencing.

And all of this occurs as clarity about the impacts of climate change on biodiversity has never been greater. Our scientists have given excellent guidance but decision-makers once again fail the nation.

As I write, we in northern Australia are experiencing yet another “extreme heat wave” condition even before summer officially arrives. And a hugely destructive cyclone started the season early in the Northern Territory (NT).

But these are really minor illustrations of what science has already told us will happen. A much harder truth is this, from Climate Scientist Dr Joelle Gergis:

“Since the 2023–2025 mass coral bleaching event that devastated 85 per cent of the world’s coral reefs, it is widely accepted that the tipping point for their survival has been breached. This means most people alive today will witness the death of the “rainforests of the sea”, including Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.”

In plain English – our Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is doomed and there is nothing we can now do to save it. This conclusion has been on the board for a long time, and leading coral reef biologists such as Charlie Veron have been pointing this out for more than a decade, particularly following the impacts of increasing acidity in GBR waters.

Of course the political perspective will no doubt rely on the prospect that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will come to the rescue like some white-hat cowboy, despite the form of CDR most relied upon (vegetation) being unable to keep pace with our daily additions. Indeed we have just learned that our fabulous rainforests in the Wet Tropics have now become net contributors of carbon dioxide (CO2) – a shift from their role as a carbon sink, to the new reality of a carbon source (Nature, Vol15: October 2025).

This flip has been caused by climate anomalies including extreme temperature and cyclone activity, leading to increased tree mortality and higher decaying woody mass as a result. But even more significant to this wilful blindness of our political class, is the reliance on CDR when there is no natural functioning ecosystem that can actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at anything near the necessary rate.

The other “hard truth” which continues to be ignored, is that nothing we can now do will avert the failure to achieve the Paris Agreement of limiting global temperature increase to not more than 1.5 degrees C. That limit will be exceeded, and it is increasingly clear that until we stop the use of fossil fuels, the temperature increase over pre-industrial levels will just continue to rise, with disastrous outcomes for all.

A related element to these very serious concerns is the question of the National Protected Area system. Many of us have worked hard to ensure that we have an adequate amount of Protected Areas in place to support the survival of all of our wonderful biodiversity. And that outcome has been gradually improved over the past few decades, unfortunately much less so in Queensland where despite our terrific biodiversity, we remain the worst served for Protected Areas (the lowest percentage of our State terrestrial land area in formal Conservation Reserves).

However, when Protected Areas were being developed and planned, consideration of the impacts from climate change was not a factor. Criteria for protected areas were about providing habitat that suited the species that existed there, with no attempt to anticipate long-term changes. And so we do have some excellent reserves that function as hoped, despite many reserves that are incapable of ecological function that would preserve all species (too small; poorly managed due to inadequate funding).

But a new factor has emerged and that is the impacts of climate change on the conservation capacity of our reserves. Environments that may best support species in the face of climate change may be quite different from the environmental conditions selected for Protected Areas in the past. Scientists have been considering these matters for quite some time, but little or no action has occurred to highlight and adapt our reserve system for climate change. It is barely even a conversation at the national level.

In 2013 a valuable study was undertaken, by Dr April E Reside and many co-authors, which considered what biological refugia for climate change might look like, and where they might occur across Australia (Climate Change Refugia for Terrestrial Biodiversity). Results were clear and not altogether surprising, and help advance planning for direct impacts of climate change on biodiversity.

Of particular note to our region is that, when considered for capacity for species to survive climate change impacts, the Wet Tropics is highly important. However, many potential refugia of high priority exist outside Protected Areas, especially to the west and south of the present Wet Tropics bioregional boundary. I consider it a major failing that what passes for planning for large scale wind turbine projects along the Great Divide, failed to consider this issue. Such developments would damage these high priority potential refugia sites.

But here really is the bottom line - citing Joelle Gergis again: “The lack of scientific literacy and entrenched ideological resistance to net zero, even in an advanced country such as Australia, is a reminder that 35 years on from the first IPCC report, fossil fuel interests are still deliberately corrupting the political response to climate change.” [IPCC = Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]

We have a national government so captured by fossil fuel interests that it continues to approve more and more new coal and gas developments, committing Australia to a continued role as the greatest contributor of fossil fuels to the global economy after Russia. It suits the slippery ethics of the Australian Government to remove these from our formal carbon dioxide (CO2) contributions as they are burned elsewhere, but for the world to address climate change, these fossil fuels must stay in the ground.

Since 2010 Australia has increased its exports of fossil fuels by 40% and has now committed to continuing to expand these. This is hypocrisy in the extreme and against our supposed commitment to “transition away” from fossil fuels. And the latest COP had more fossil fuel lobbyists than the delegates from most countries, some 1600 lobbyists (and that is not counting captured states like Australia). Is it surprising that we are failing our grandchildren?

I recall like yesterday reading Rachel Carson’s ground-breaking book Silent Spring way back in 1962 when I was a young farmer in Western Australia. What a wake-up call that was. Here in Australia our Willie Wagtails were disappearing because of DDT spraying (as well as Peregrines of course - the predator-prey relationship). Thankfully that concern was addressed and many affected bird species recovered.

But we are now facing another ‘silent spring’ with our avian insectivores on the verge of disaster from the huge loss of insects across the world, including here in Australia. While some care to celebrate the absence of dead insects on their vehicle windscreens when they drive at night, I am much more concerned with the reduction of food for our insectivorous bird species.

The first manifestation of impact is likely to be reduced breeding success, so the more obvious impacts will occur in the future, not immediately. Clearly there is scope for serious research activity on this matter, but action is needed immediately if we are to have any chance of averting this disaster. Timelines for impacts and for solutions are quite different from the short-termism beloved of our political classes.

This week the 2025 IUCN Red List was released and further demonstrates our failure. Of the seven species of birds declared Extinct in Australia, only one was from the mainland (the Paradise Parrot). We cannot blame island vulnerability now as the Critically Endangered list (10 species) includes seven species from the mainland. These are birds that should be safe and secure if only we cared enough.

To bring it closer to home for BirdLife Northern Queensland (BLNQ) supporters, reflect on those birds of the Wet Tropics that are at greatest threat from our human failure in the matter of climate change: in particular the high altitude specialists.

It was concern for these species, and the need to learn more, that motivated Ceri Pearce to launch the Birds With Altitude Project with which many of our supporters have become engaged (Ceri is always looking for more volunteers).

The list of these high altitude specialists includes some of our most amazing bird species, endemic to our Northern Queensland region:

• the secretive Fernwren;

• the truly remarkable songster, our Chowchilla;

• the astonishing Golden Bowerbird (a focus of a monitoring program across the region led by Dominic Chaplin);

  
  

Golden Bowerbird. Photo by Peter Valentine.

• the Tooth-billed Bowerbird with a leafy diet and a gorgeous voice;

Tooth-billed Bowerbird. Photo by Peter Valentine.

• the Mountain Thornbill so active in the foliage;

  
  

Mountain Thornbill. Photo © Doug Herrington.

• and the Atherton Scrubwren with its busy fossicking near the ground.

Atherton Scrubwren. Photo by Peter Valentine.

Consider a Wet Tropics without these birds because that is what we are now committed to: our relentless pursuit of money via fossil fuels. Our conservation programs are too ineffective and slow to cope with the changes happening. But still we have Governments captured by the fossil fuel industry who insist on this blighted future: not in ignorance. This is deliberate choice.

It is past time for us to abandon old ways, and to seek radical change in our society to try and preserve some fragments of our natural world for the next generations, and for our own conscience.

Protest and advocate as often as possible.

Try to avoid becoming overloaded with grief by remembering for whom we are acting …. those many species of wildlife we love and which provide personal encounters that are our natural therapy.