Pittwater Online News

NEW FLYING FOX MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

Rob Stokes MP, Minister for the Environment, Minister for Heritage, Minister for the Central Coast, Assistant Minister for Planning

MEDIA RELEASE  - Monday 3 November 2014

Environment Minister Rob Stokes today announced a new strategy to minimise the  impacts of flying-fox camps surrounding populated areas.

Mr Stokes said human health must always be our first priority and this plan will empower councils to resolve issues within their communities and take appropriate local action at the earliest opportunity.

“Active management is needed where flying-fox camps are close to urban settlements, causing noise, odour and potentially putting health at risk,” Mr Stokes said. 

Flying-foxes remain protected and under the new policy land managers will be able to get a five year license to:

• Create buffer zones by removing vegetation to create a separation from populated areas and to disturb animals at the boundary of the camp to encourage roosting away from human settlement;

• Carry out camp disturbance or dispersal by clearing of vegetation or dispersal of animals by noise, water, smoke or light; and

• Undertake camp management such as removal of trees that pose a health and safety risk, weed removal (including removal of noxious weeds), trimming of understorey vegetation and the planting of vegetation.

“The policy encourages councils to prepare camp management plans for sites where there is a high level of impact on the community.

“The Office of Environment and Heritage will provide ongoing support to land managers and communities, including a suite of online resources and advice for preparing camp management plans; and local contacts to assist councils.

Mr Stokes also announced the finalisation of ‘special circumstances’ that will allow orchardists to continue to be able to apply for shooting licenses in rural areas. 

“While the orchard industry is moving towards netting as a long term solution, we recognise that in the short term, shooting licences will be needed in some circumstances to manage crop damage. 

“Licences will continue to be available for existing orchardists who need to use shooting to manage flying-fox issues in rural areas for five years. “More than $4 million is also being made available orchardists who want to use netting as an alternative to shooting.”

NSW Health advises that the public should avoid direct contact with flying-foxes as there is always the possibility of being scratched or bitten and it leading to infection.

Anyone who encounters an injured bat should contact the local Wildlife Information Rescue & Education Service (WIRES) network on 1300 094 737 or visit their website.

The Flying-fox Management Policy is now on public exhibition and can be viewed at:environment.nsw.gov.au/threatenedspecies/flyingfoxcamppol

 On My Agenda - The Message About Your Future They Don’t Want Seen

By 1 Million Women

The billboard pictured above was set to appear at Brisbane International Airport as world leaders and diplomats arrive for the G20 meeting. But Brisbane Airport has refused the image permission to go up – simply because it talks about climate change.

The billboard is part of a joint campaign by 1 Million Women and eight other leading civil society groups, calling on G20 leaders to place climate change on the agenda. The billboard at the airport may have been banned, but the campaign is going ahead - and now we’re relying on you to spread the word.

On 15 -16 November, leaders from the major 20 economies of the world will meet in Brisbane at the G20 summit. Climate change has been removed from the agenda, despite it being one of the biggest threats to global economies.

But this week, a breakthrough seems possible. For the first time in months, we’re seeing signals in news reports suggesting that world leaders may discuss climate change at the G20, but at this stage it’s a mere footnote.

That’s why it’s so crucial – now more than ever – that G20 leaders see our message. After all, G20 countries represent more than 85% of all the money in the world, and 80% of all the world’s carbon pollution.

Our climate change message may have been shut out of Brisbane airport, but you can make sure G20 leaders and their press secretaries see it on their social media accounts every time they check their phones and computers. 

The banned billboard showcases the real story from Australian farmer David Bruer who had $25,000 worth of grapes “cooked” in one day last year when temperatures reached 46 degrees at his South Australian vineyard. Climate change is squarely on the agenda of people like David – and we suspect it’s on your agenda too. Help climate change be more than a footnote at the G20 by contacting world leaders at www.onmyagenda.org 

As the campaign kicks and news of the banned billboard spreads, you’ll likely see #onmyagenda in your Facebook and Twitter feed. Join the conversation using the hashtag, and follow all of the posts as they are aggregated on www.onmyagenda.org

Thank you for all that you do,

The 1 Million Women Team xx

_________________

The 1 Million Women Campaign is a registered charity. Launched in June 2009 we have over 135,000 joined, almost 90,000 on Facebook and over 10,000 on twitter. Our goal is to inspire 1 Million Women to take practical action on climate change through the way we live and through the choices we make every day. It's easy. We will show you how. www.1millionwomen.com.au

We are daughters, mothers, sisters, grandmothers inspiring climate action.

 NEW RECREATIONAL FISHING RULES NOW COMMENCED 

The Hon Katrina Hodgkinson MP Minister for Primary Industries - MEDIA RELEASE -  Tuesday 4 November 2014 

Minister for Primary Industries, Katrina Hodgkinson, has reminded recreational anglers that changes to NSW recreational fishing rules have commenced this week. 

Ms Hodgkinson said the changes are now in place, after taking into account feedback from thousands of recreational fishers. 

“These changes, supported by a majority of people who made submissions, include modified bag and size limits and gear usage rules,” Ms Hodgkinson said. 

“The NSW Liberals & Nationals Government remains committed to ensuring rules reflect the recreational fishing community’s needs and expectations, while maintaining quality recreational fishing for the future.” 

Key changes include: 

• bag limit reduced from 20 to 10 for Flathead species (other than Dusky Flathead), Bream and Tarwhine, Tailor, Blue Swimmer Crab, Trevallies and Luderick. The possession limit of 20 will remain for these species; 

• spawning closure for Australian Bass and Estuary Perch extended to four months to protect early migrating bass. Catch and release will be permitted during the closure; 

• number of witches hats/hoop nets/lift nets is reduced from five to four and the number of crab traps is increased from one to two in saltwater. 

• change of marking requirements of recreational nets and traps to specify trap type, fisher’s initial and surname, year of birth and postcode; 

• five hoop nets are permitted to be used to take yabbies in Lakes Lyell, Lake Wallace and Googong Dam; and 

• revised Murray cod minimum size of 55cm and a maximum size of 75cm. 

Ms Hodgkinson said of the 16 changes, five include minor rule adjustments to reduce red tape and streamline fishing rules. 

“The NSW Government is proud to support our recreational sector, which contributes more than $1.6 billion to the State’s economy each year,” Ms Hodgkinson said. 

“A three-month advisory period will be in place to allow recreational anglers time to adjust to the new rules.” 

To view a video explaining the changes, and for more information, visit www.dpi.nsw.gov/au/fisheries/recreational

 Squirrel Glider Local Area Management Plan

Find out more at: www.wirraminna.orglamp-for-threatened-squirrel-glider/

 A fraction of the global military spending could save the planet's biodiversity, say experts: Only one in four protected areas is well managed

November 5, 2014 – A fundamental step-change involving an increase in funding and political commitment is urgently needed to ensure that protected areas deliver their full conservation, social and economic potential, according to an article published today in Nature by experts from Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Queensland, and the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA).

The paper, The performance and potential of protected areas, comes ahead of the IUCN World Parks Congress 2014 - a once-in-a-decade global forum on protected areas opening next week in Sydney, Australia.

According to the authors, allocating US$45 - $76 billion to protected areas annually - just 2.5% of the global annual military expenditure - could help adequately manage those areas, ensuring their potential contribution to the well-being of the planet is fully met.

Many threatened species, such as the Asian elephant, the tiger, and all rhinoceros species, as well as numerous plants, reptiles and amphibians, survive thanks to protected areas. Well-managed marine protected areas contain more than five times the total large fish biomass and 14 times the shark biomass compared with fished areas.

"Protected areas offer us solutions to some of today's most pressing challenges" says Dr James Watson of the Wildlife Conservation Society and The University of Queensland and lead author of the study. "But by continuing with 'business as usual', we are setting them up for failure. A step-change in the way we value, fund, govern and manage those areas is neither impossible nor unrealistic and would only represent a fraction of what the world spends annually on defense."

According to the latest data, protected areas cover around 15% of land and 3% of oceans. Experts warn, however, that despite the significant increase in their coverage over the past century, this is still short of the global 2020 targets to protect at least 17% of land and 10% of oceans. Many ecosystems remain poorly conserved because protected areas do not always encompass the most important areas for biodiversity.

In addition, the vast majority of existing protected areas that are well placed do not have sufficient resources to be effective, with some studies finding as few as one quarter of them are being effectively managed. Growing threats from climate change and the escalating poaching crisis place additional pressures on protected areas globally.

"Some of the most iconic protected areas, such as Ecuador's Galapagos National Park, are undergoing significant degradation, partly due to an inability to manage them effectively," says Professor Marc Hockings of The University of Queensland,co-author of the study and member of the IUCN WCPA. "But governments cannot be solely responsible for ensuring that protected areas fulfill their potential. We need to find new, innovative ways to fund and manage them, actively involving government, business and community groups."

The paper also highlights an alarming increase in governments -- in both developing and developed countries -- backtracking on their commitments through funding cuts and changes in policy. A recent global analysis has documented 543 instances where protected areas saw their status downgraded or removed altogether.

For example, recent cuts to the Parks Canada budget have reduced conservation spending by 15%¬. In Uganda, active oil exploration and development is occurring inside many protected areas, including Murchison Falls National Park. In Indonesia, in 2010, mining permits were issued inside 481,000 hectares of protected areas and in the Virgin Komi Forests in Russia, significant boundary changes have been made to reserves such as the Yugyd Va National Park to allow mining. The Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in Oman was removed from the World Heritage List after the government reduced the size of the reserve by 90% to allow for oil and gas extraction.

"There is a fundamental need for an increase in support of global protected areas, including better recognition, funding, planning and enforcement" says Nigel Dudley, co-author of the paper, from Equilibrium Research and The University of Queensland, member of the IUCN WCPA. "It is government's responsibility to step up but there is also the need for the wider community to take collective responsibility for protected areas."

Protected areas conserve biodiversity and sustain a large proportion of the world's poorest people by providing them with food, water, shelter and medicine. They play a key part in climate change mitigation and adaptation and bolster national economies through tourism revenues. In Rwanda, for example, tourism revenue from visits to see mountain gorillas inside Volcanoes National Park is now the country's largest source of foreign exchange, raising US$200 million annually. In Australia, the 2012-2013 budget for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority was approximately AUS$50 million, but tourism to the reef was worth more than A$5.2 billion annually to the Australian economy.

"The growth of the modern global protected area movement over the last 100 years is arguably the greatest conservation achievement," says Julia Marton-Lefèvre, IUCN Director General. "It is also increasingly important for livelihoods and global security. The key now is for countries to recognize the return on investment that protected areas offer and realize that those places are fundamental to the future of life on earth. This is exactly what we hope to achieve at the upcoming IUCN World Parks Congress."

Effective management of protected areas, the threats they face and the solutions they offer to today's global challenges will be discussed at the IUCN World Parks Congress taking place in Sydney from 12 to 19 November 2014.

1. James E. M. Watson, Nigel Dudley, Daniel B. Segan, Marc Hockings. The performance and potential of protected areas.Nature, 2014; 515 (7525): 67 DOI: 10.1038/nature13947

This image shows Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda. A fundamental step-change involving an increase in funding and political commitment is urgently needed to ensure that protected areas deliver their full conservation, social and economic potential, according to an article published today in Nature by experts from Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Queensland, and the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA). Credit: Julie Larsen Maher, copyright WCS

 $3.3 million boost for Tuggerah Lakes

Media release - 4 November 2014

Tuggerah Lakes on the New South Wales Central coast will benefit from a $3.3 million boost as part of the Australian Government’s National Landcare Programme.

Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt and Federal Member for Dobell, Karen McNamara, today visited the Tuggerah Lakes estuary on the New South Wales Central Coast to inspect progress on infrastructure to improve water quality.

“The Australian Government is delivering on its election commitments to take action and improve the health of this beautiful region and protect it from the impacts of pollution, weeds and urban population growth,” Minister Hunt said.

“Karen McNamara is passionate about the Tuggerah Lakes and this funding has come about as a result of her strong advocacy.”

The Member for Dobell, Ms Karen McNamara, said she welcomed the announcement that Wyong Shire Council will receive $3.3 million over the next three years to help improve the water quality of the Tuggerah Lakes estuary.

“This funding will help upgrade stormwater treatment zones and gross pollutant traps including the removal of sediment and other organic matter and reprofiling the Canton Beach foreshore to recreate the natural beach shoreline,” Ms McNamara said.

“This is vital work that will be of benefit to both the environment and the local community.”

“The people of New South Wales’ Central Coast region care deeply about the Tuggerah Lakes.  This project builds on the great work previously undertaken by both the council and community groups in and around the Tuggerah Lakes area.”

Tuggerah Lakes is one of five iconic waterways across Australia to share in more than $9 million of Coastal River Recovery funding.

In addition to this funding, there is potential for other National Landcare Programme and Green Army projects to deliver practical, grass-roots action to further improve the environmental health of our rivers and lakes.

Support for our iconic rivers is an important part of the Government’s commitment to a healthier environment.

 Coexist or perish, new wildfire analysis says: Changing wildfire paradigm from fighting to coexistence

November 5, 2014 - Many fire scientists have tried to get Smokey the Bear to hang up his "prevention" motto in favour of tools like thinning and prescribed burns, which can manage the severity of wildfires while allowing them to play their natural role in certain ecosystems. But a new international research review led by the University of California, Berkeley, says the debate over fuel-reduction techniques is only a small part of a much larger fire problem that will make society increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic losses unless it changes its fundamental approach from fighting fire to coexisting with fire as a natural process.

The paper, "Learning to Coexist with Wildfire," published in the Nov. 6 issue of the journal Nature, examines research findings from three continents and from both the natural and social sciences. The authors conclude that government-sponsored firefighting and land-use policies actually encourage development on inherently hazardous landscapes, amplifying human losses over time.

"We don't try to 'fight' earthquakes -- we anticipate them in the way we plan communities, build buildings and prepare for emergencies. We don't think that way about fire, but our review indicates that we should," said lead author Max Moritz, Cooperative Extension specialist in fire at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources. "Human losses will only be mitigated when land-use planning takes fire hazards into account in the same manner as other natural hazards, like floods, hurricanes and earthquakes."

The analysis looked at different kinds of natural fires, what drives them in various ecosystems, the ways public response to fire can differ, and the critical interface zones between built communities and natural landscapes. The authors found infinite variations on how these factors can come together.

"It quickly became clear that generic one-size-fits-all solutions to wildfire problems do not exist," Moritz said. "Fuel reduction may be a useful strategy for specific places, like California's dry conifer forests, but when we zoomed out and looked at fire-prone regions throughout the Western United States, Australia and the Mediterranean Basin, we realized that over vast parts of the world, a much more nuanced strategy of planning for coexistence with fire is needed."

Planning for co-existence

If humans choose to live in fire-prone regions, fire must be managed on par with other naturally occurring hazards, the authors argue, and research must seek to understand what factors and outcomes we can and cannot affect.

One common tool is applicable to the vast array of ecological and social science interactions at the critical wildfire/urban interface: more effective land-use planning, along with the regulations that guide it.

The authors recommend prioritizing location-specific approaches to improve development and safety in fire-prone areas, including:

• Adopting new land-use regulations and zoning guidelines that restrict development in the most fire-prone areas;

• Updating building codes, such as requiring fire-resistant construction to match local hazard levels and encouraging retrofits to existing ignition-prone homes;

• Implementing locally appropriate vegetation management strategies around structures and neighborhoods;

• Evaluating evacuation planning and warning systems, including understanding situations in which mandatory evacuations are or are not effective;

• Developing household and community plans for how to survive stay-and-defend situations; and

• Developing better maps of fire hazards, ecosystem services and climate change effects to assess trade-offs between development and hazard.

As an example of positive steps, the report cites new fire danger mapping efforts, including an existing fire hazard severity zone map that guides building codes in California. Produced by the state's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the current map does not explicitly incorporate locally varying wind patterns, which influence the worst fire-related losses of homes and lives, but future iterations will include these data.

Fire ecology and climate

The authors underscore that wildfires are a natural part of many ecosystems and can have a positive long-term influence on the landscape, despite people labeling them as "disasters." They can stimulate vegetation regeneration, promote a diversity of vegetation types, provide habitat for many species and sustain other ecosystem services, such as nutrient cycling.

Around the world, the numbers, sizes, and intensities of fires vary greatly. In some ecosystems, big, severe wildfires are natural events and more climate-driven -- by drought or high winds -- so fuel reduction is not a very effective tool in these locations. By contrast, many ecosystems that would naturally experience frequent lower-severity fires may respond to vegetation management aimed at both reducing fire hazard to humans and restoring crucial ecosystem processes. But, the authors agree, where fuel reduction is an appropriate goal, it would ideally be achieved by letting wildfires do their job.

A changing climate will complicate management strategies.

"How should future fire patterns compare to this historical variability? That's the big question," Moritz said.

Describing wildfire as "one of the most basic and ongoing natural processes on Earth," the authors call for a paradigm shift in the way society interacts with it, changing to an approach that achieves long-term, sustainable coexistence that benefits the planet's ecosystems on the landscape scale, while minimizing catastrophic losses on the human scale.

"A different view of wildfire is urgently needed," said Moritz. "We must accept wildfire as a crucial and inevitable natural process on many landscapes. There is no alternative. The path we are on will lead to a deepening of our fire-related problems worldwide, which will only become worse as the climate changes."

1. Max A. Moritz, Enric Batllori, Ross A. Bradstock, A. Malcolm Gill, John Handmer, Paul F. Hessburg, Justin Leonard, Sarah McCaffrey, Dennis C. Odion, Tania Schoennagel, Alexandra D. Syphard. Learning to coexist with wildfire. Nature, 2014; 515 (7525): 58 DOI: 10.1038/nature13946

Above: The lightning-sparked Castle Rock Fire burned nearly 50,000 acres in 2007 in the Sawtooth National Forest and adjacent state and private lands surrounding Ketchum, Idaho, in the Smoky Mountains region of the Rocky Mountain range. Credit: Kari Geer, courtesy of the National Interagency Fire Center

 First amphibious ichthyosaur discovered, filling evolutionary gap

November 5, 2014 – The first fossil of an amphibious ichthyosaur has been discovered in China by a team led by researchers at the University of California, Davis. The discovery is the first to link the dolphin-like ichthyosaur to its terrestrial ancestors, filling a gap in the fossil record. The fossil is described in a paper published in advance online Nov. 5 in the journal Nature.

The fossil represents a missing stage in the evolution of ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles from the Age of Dinosaurs about 250 million years ago. Until now, there were no fossils marking their transition from land to sea.

"But now we have this fossil showing the transition," said lead author Ryosuke Motani, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. "There's nothing that prevents it from coming onto land."

Motani and his colleagues discovered the fossil in China's Anhui Province. About 248 million years old, it is from the Triassic period and measures roughly 1.5 feet long.

Unlike ichthyosaurs fully adapted to life at sea, this one had unusually large, flexible flippers that likely allowed for seal-like movement on land. It had flexible wrists, which are essential for crawling on the ground. Most ichthyosaurs have long, beak-like snouts, but the amphibious fossil shows a nose as short as that of land reptiles.

Its body also contains thicker bones than previously-described ichthyosaurs. This is in keeping with the idea that most marine reptiles who transitioned from land first became heavier, for example with thicker bones, in order to swim through rough coastal waves before entering the deep sea.

The study's implications go beyond evolutionary theory, Motani said. This animal lived about 4 million years after the worst mass extinction in Earth's history, 252 million years ago. Scientists have wondered how long it took for animals and plants to recover after such destruction, particularly since the extinction was associated with global warming.

"This was analogous to what might happen if the world gets warmer and warmer," Motani said. "How long did it take before the globe was good enough for predators like this to reappear? In that world, many things became extinct, but it started something new. These reptiles came out during this recovery."

1. Ryosuke Motani, Da-Yong Jiang, Guan-Bao Chen, Andrea Tintori, Olivier Rieppel, Cheng Ji, Jian-Dong Huang. A basal ichthyosauriform with a short snout from the Lower Triassic of China. Nature, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nature13866

Picture: Fossil remains show the first amphibious ichthyosaur found in China by a team led by a UC Davis scientist. Its amphibious characteristics include large flippers and flexible wrists, essential for crawling on the ground. Credit: Ryosuke Motani/UC Davis

 Anti-terror laws undermine democracy

03 November 2014 - 

OPINION: October 2014 will go down as the month in which the federal Parliament made some of its greatest ever inroads into freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Ironically, this occurred only weeks after our politicians extolled the virtues of these freedoms in the debate over section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

It is disturbing that our political leaders have moved so quickly from this to anti-terror measures that impose lengthy jail terms for journalists and others who speak about matters of public importance. It reveals a shallow adherence to freedom of speech, and an unwelcome, authoritarian streak on behalf of the government and the opposition when it comes to restricting democratic freedoms.

Most of the attention has focused on section 35P of the first anti-terrorism bill passed on October 1. This provision says: "A person commits an offence if the person discloses information and the information relates to a special intelligence operation." The penalty is jail of up to five years, or 10 years if, for example, the disclosure prejudices a special intelligence operation.

As Attorney General George Brandis has said, section 35P "applies generally to all citizens". It does not discriminate between people who seek to harm our security by revealing secret information, and journalists and whistleblowers who shine a spotlight on government wrongdoing, incompetence or even the death of an Australian citizen at the hands of an intelligence officer.

It is not easy for journalists to know whether they are complying with this law. Special intelligence operations are by their nature covert, and the information that cannot be disclosed covers these operations and anything that "relates to" them. This means that the ban extends to other, connected operations by ASIO and agencies such as the Australian Federal Police.

All this can create doubt in the mind of a journalist about whether they can publish a story. They may decide not to do so on the basis that it is better to be safe than sorry. Governments and agencies can exploit this zone of uncertainty by warning off journalists so as to prevent the publication of compromising information.

Brandis has defended section 35P by saying that it is not intended to apply to journalists. If this is the case, it is easy to fix the provision. He should sponsor an amendment that exempts the disclosure of information that is part of a media report in the public interest.

Instead, the Attorney General will direct federal prosecutors to consult with him on any charges laid against journalists. He has said that prosecutions against journalists will only proceed with his consent.

This is far from satisfactory. The scope of the law should be certain, and not subject to executive discretion. This is a basic facet of the rule of law.

Brandis has highlighted a problem, rather than solved it. Journalists must be free to report on matters of public interest without seeking the permission of the government. They should not operate under the shadow of a jail term that can only be lifted at the discretion of a minister.

In any event, Brandis' concession is a frail shield. Although he has made this commitment, will his successors? And will Brandis or future Attorneys General exercise their discretion when a media story is deeply embarrassing to them? After all, what a government may wish to see suppressed can be exactly the sort of information that the community needs to hear.

Brandis' response also assumes that the government and the media have the same concept of what journalists ought to be reporting. He has said that section 35P is directed primarily at a "Snowden" type situation. Does that mean he would refuse to shield journalists who report on such revelations?

Unfortunately, this problem is not limited to section 35P. It is one among several measures in the new anti-terror bills that compromise freedom of speech, and freedom of the press in particular. Further problems are contained in the foreign fighters bill, which was rushed through Parliament last week.

That Bill has a clause similar to section 35P that imposes jail for revealing information relating to delayed-notification search warrants. These enable the authorities to search a person's home without notifying them that this has occurred until a year or more has passed.

The bill extends ASIO's questioning and detention regime, which can subject journalists to five years jail for not revealing their sources to ASIO. Journalists can be jailed for a further five years for reporting on the operation of this regime.

Freelance journalists and documentary makers can also be imprisoned for 10 years for entering parts of the world declared by the government to be no-go zones. Jail is also imposed for revealing information about preventative detention orders, and even for certain items of news connected to the recruitment of foreign fighters.

The government is right that a very high level of secrecy is justified in many of these areas. Sensitive national security matters should not be reported routinely in the media. On the other hand, there is no evidence that this is occurring now, and no government activity should be immune from investigation and exposure.

Sometimes, the secret activities of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies must be subjected to public scrutiny. A blanket prohibition upon disclosure may be good for the government of the day, but it is dangerous for our democracy.

George Williams is the Anthony Mason Professor of Law at UNSW.

This opinion piece was first published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

 Animator receives Antarctic Arts Fellowship

Media release - 2 November 2014

Australian animator and producer Jilli Rose is the 2014 Australian Antarctic Arts Fellow.

Each year, the Australian Government awards an Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship to enable those with a non-science focus to experience Antarctica first-hand so they can communicate this unique experience and understanding to other Australians.

The recipient of this year's Fellowship, Jilli Rose, from Castlemaine in Victoria, will travel to Casey station in Antarctica in December, for two weeks.

Ms Rose has 18 years' experience creating animations for clients around the world, and work featuring in many major natural history museums, on television, in cinemas and film festivals. 

She has won a number of national and international awards for her work, including the title sequence for the Discovery Channel series Mythbusters, and her recently released short animated documentary Sticky, about the Lord Howe Island stick insects.

Ms Rose will use her Fellowship to produce a series of science-themed short animated films, with segments created for television, film, the internet, educational apps and arts festivals.

These animations will be particularly aimed at children, using stories, imagery and emotion to encourage them to engage with science.

Ms Rose will use her experience in Antarctica, including conversations with scientists, to inform her work.

She also aims to produce a film and sketchbook documentary about the making of the animations for an adult audience, focussing on the communication between scientists and artists.

The Fellowship and its predecessor, the Antarctic Humanities program, have been running since 1985. Other previous Arts Fellows include writer Tom Griffiths, visual artists John Kelly and Stephen Eastaugh, sound artist Philip Samartzis, and children's authors Coral Tulloch and Alison Lester.

More information about the Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship is available at: http://www.antarctica.gov.au/art

 UNSW tops the country in ARC funding

05 November 2014

UNSW researchers have won the highest amount of Australian Research Council funding in Australia – with $45.3 million across three funding schemes announced today. 

The grants, starting in 2015, cover fields such as evolutionary biology, medicine, engineering, physics, the environment, economics, education, history, psychology, technology, mathematics and law. 

The university secured:

• $31.5 million for 84 ARC Discovery Projects, the highest in dollar terms in Australia.

• 23 Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards (DECRA) worth $8 million, which are given to the best and brightest young researchers – the equal highest number of awards in Australia.

• 12 Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grants worth $5.8 million – the highest in Australia by number and dollar amount.

Today’s announcement places UNSW as the leading Australian university for ARC funding this year with a total of $68.3 million. 

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Les Field welcomed the result. 

“This impressive result in ARC grants recognises the calibre of research underway at UNSW. Our position as number one in the country this year is a testament to the importance and impact of the work we are doing,” he said. 

“In particular, we have seen terrific results in grants for Science projects, up $5.5 million compared to last year, and Engineering projects, which are up $3.5 million.

Professor Field said that while it was pleasing that UNSW had increased its overall share of ARC funding, it was disappointing that the total size of the grant pie available to Australian researchers had shrunk this year. 

Among UNSW’s successful new Discovery project grant recipients was a team led by Professor Ricardo Cavicchioli from the Faculty of Science, which received the largest grant of $835,200 over five years to provide fundamental insight into the processes that control which life forms colonise the planet. 

The second largest grant went to Associate Professor Virginia Wiseman from the Faculty of Medicine, who will lead a team evaluating equity in health care financing in Cambodia. The results of the Discovery project – which received $683,700 over three years – could enable donor countries such as Australia to more effectively target aid investments to promote social and economic stability in the region.

Meanwhile, Scientia Professor Mark Bradford from the Faculty of Engineering landed $664,300 over five years to investigate the capacity of high-strength steel beams, with a view to contributing to the production of an advanced design standard.

Announcing the ARC funding, Federal Minister for Education Christopher Pyne said the Government “deeply values the need for a robust and thriving research sector that drives the future development of our industries”.

A full list of grant winners can be found on the ARC website.

www.arc.gov.au/media/2015_major_grant_announcement.htm

 THE DICTIONARY OF SYDNEY LAUNCHES GEORGES RIVER PROJECT

View on Georges River, 1947, image courtesy of SLNSW 

The Dictionary of Sydney is proud to launch eighteen new online entries on the history of the Georges River on the Dictionary of Sydney website! 

Funded by the Federal Government’s Your Community Heritage grant scheme, the new entries are laced with colourful characters and curious facts with stories of publicans and mill owners, encounters with sharks and cockatoos, and tragedies caused by flood.

Local historian Beverley Donaldson explores life in the internment camps at Holsworthy and Liverpool during World Wars I and II. Eminent historians Heather Goodall and Allison Cadzow look at Aboriginal communities along the Georges River from the 1820s, with fascinating profiles of Biddy Giles, Lucy Leane, Gogi and Ellen Anderson. Roger Robertson and Andrew Allen follow early attempts at farming and industry; from the ill‐fated attempts of wine grower Georges Frere to the thriving oyster farms of Oatley’s Neverfail Bay. Gary Darby and Rodger Robertson examine the history of swimming baths at Sans Souci and Jew Fish Bay and Oatley Park. Catie Gilchrist traces the transformation of the Casula Powerhouse from picnic pleasure ground to industrial landscape to thriving centre for arts and culture in western Sydney. Greg Jackson, Pam Forbes and Brad Duncan took to the water in nineteenth century rivercraft to explore how the maritime landscape of the river and its tributaries sustained the transport of wheat, flour and manpower between the Woronora and Brisbane Water mills. Karen Pentland traces the lives and legacy of the many publicans who ran the now demolished Prince of Wales Hotel on Sandringham Point. Then there is the extraordinary story of ‘Cocky Bennett’, a legendary cockatoo whose long life at sea was followed by many years on the bar of the Sea Breeze Hotel at Tom Ugly’s Point entertaining locals and raising money for charity. River advocate Sharyn Cullis looks at the history of encounters between swimmers and sharks in the river from the early days of the colony, as well as examining the consequences of urbanisation alongside one of the most flood‐prone rivers in NSW.

The Georges River Project places these histories within the wider picture of Sydney’s past. Both familiar and unexpected, they enrich our understanding of Sydney as both a place and a community.

 Oceans arrived early to Earth; Primitive meteorites were a likely source of water, study finds

Earth is known as the Blue Planet because of its oceans, which cover more than 70 percent of the planet's surface and are home to the world's greatest diversity of life. While water is essential for life on the planet, the answers to two key questions have eluded us: where did Earth's water come from and when?

While some hypothesize that water came late to Earth, well after the planet had formed, findings from a new study led by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) significantly move back the clock for the first evidence of water on Earth and in the inner solar system.

"The answer to one of the basic questions is that our oceans were always here. We didn't get them from a late process, as was previously thought," said Adam Sarafian, the lead author of the paper published Oct. 31, 2014, in the journal Science and a MIT/WHOI Joint Program student in the Geology and Geophysics Department.

One school of thought was that planets originally formed dry, due to the high-energy, high-impact process of planet formation, and that the water came later from sources such as comets or "wet" asteroids, which are largely composed of ices and gases.

"With giant asteroids and meteors colliding, there's a lot of destruction," said Horst Marschall, a geologist at WHOI and coauthor of the paper. "Some people have argued that any water molecules that were present as the planets were forming would have evaporated or been blown off into space, and that surface water as it exists on our planet today, must have come much, much later -- hundreds of millions of years later."

The study's authors turned to another potential source of Earth's water -- carbonaceous chondrites. The most primitive known meteorites, carbonaceous chondrites, were formed in the same swirl of dust, grit, ice and gasses that gave rise to the sun some 4.6 billion years ago, well before the planets were formed.

"These primitive meteorites resemble the bulk solar system composition," said WHOI geologist and coauthor Sune Nielsen. "They have quite a lot of water in them, and have been thought of before as candidates for the origin of Earth's water."

In order to determine the source of water in planetary bodies, scientists measure the ratio between the two stable isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and hydrogen. Different regions of the solar system are characterized by highly variable ratios of these isotopes. The study's authors knew the ratio for carbonaceous chondrites and reasoned that if they could compare that to an object that was known to crystallize while Earth was actively accreting then they could gauge when water appeared on Earth.

To test this hypothesis, the research team, which also includes Francis McCubbin from the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico and Brian Monteleone of WHOI, utilized meteorite samples provided by NASA from the asteroid 4-Vesta. The asteroid 4-Vesta, which formed in the same region of the solar system as Earth, has a surface of basaltic rock -- frozen lava. These basaltic meteorites from 4-Vesta are known as eucrites and carry a unique signature of one of the oldest hydrogen reservoirs in the solar system. Their age -- approximately 14 million years after the solar system formed -- makes them ideal for determining the source of water in the inner solar system at a time when Earth was in its main building phase. The researchers analyzed five different samples at the Northeast National Ion Microprobe Facility -- a state-of-the-art national facility housed at WHOI that utilizes secondary ion mass spectrometers. This is the first time hydrogen isotopes have been measured in eucrite meteorites.

The measurements show that 4-Vesta contains the same hydrogen isotopic composition as carbonaceous chondrites, which is also that of Earth. That, combined with nitrogen isotope data, points to carbonaceous chondrites as the most likely common source of water.

"The study shows that Earth's water most likely accreted at the same time as the rock. The planet formed as a wet planet with water on the surface," Marschall said.

While the findings don't preclude a late addition of water on Earth, it shows that it wasn't necessary since the right amount and composition of water was present at a very early stage.

"An implication of that is that life on our planet could have started to begin very early," added Nielsen. "Knowing that water came early to the inner solar system also means that the other inner planets could have been wet early and evolved life before they became the harsh environments they are today."

A. R. Sarafian, S. G. Nielsen, H. R. Marschall, F. M. McCubbin, B. D. Monteleone.Early accretion of water in the inner solar system from a carbonaceous chondrite-like source. Science, 2014; 346 (6209): 623 DOI:10.1126/science.1256717