Chris is an old-school academic – highly esteemed, with a
worldwide reputation in his area of expertise built during
a career that’s spanned more than three decades. He’s very
much a man of science who prefers to air his opinions via
peer-reviewed research published in highbrow journals.
But the softly spoken, usually mild-mannered, world-
leading ecological scientist is angry and, in fact, deeply saddened
that parts of Australia have been losing native forests and wood-
lands at extraordinary rates. Clearly, Chris says, we haven’t learnt
from past failures to protect our forests, and the potential conse-
quences for Australia are huge.I
T’S NOT AS IF MODERN Australia ever had a lot of trees to lose
in the first place. The continent was once covered with forests
but that was in the distant geological past. Tree coverage has
slowly been receding naturally during the past 5 million years as
the climate in this part of the world has dried. By the time of the
first European colonisation here, little more than two centuries
ago, mainland Australia was mostly desert and arid habitats with
only an estimated 30 per cent covered by forests and woodlands.
Today, that’s been almost halved, due to the broadscale clear-
ing of trees partly to make way for urban and industrial devel-
opment, but mostly for agriculture. That we’ve lost almost half
our forest and woodlands in just two centuries is a confronting
statistic, but it’s largely a historic legacy. Much of the clearing
occurred through the 19th century and first half of the 20th,
when environmental considerations came second to putting food
on the table. It was when our European forebears didn’t know
any better; before we discovered that most species living in Aus-
tralia’s forests occur nowhere else on the planet; before science
showed that healthy forests protect soils and waterways, reaping
multiple economic, environmental and social benefits; and it was
well before the realisation that trees are an outstanding place to
safely lock away carbon from the atmosphere, where it’s wreak-
ing havoc with the planet’s climate.
And yet, in recent years, deforestation has been proceeding in
some parts of Australia at rates claimed to be among the highest
on the planet. It prompted Chris and more than 300 of his
colleagues across the nation to release a joint declaration inMarch through the Ecological Society of
Australia calling for stronger laws that
would restrict the clearing of stands of
native trees.
Western Queensland and north-
western NSW are the main epicentres
of Australia’s deforestation activity, most
of which is to make way for pastures to
r un l ivestock, a nd, i n both st ates, it’s been
facilitated by changes in legislation (see
page 83).
The consequences of clearing forests
and woodlands on the level that’s been
occurring in Queensland and NSW are huge. The most direct
effect is a large-scale loss of native f lora and fauna. According to
a report released late last year by World Wide Fund for Nature
(WWF), forest clearing kills millions of native animals a year in
Australia. The report, on which Chris Dickman collaborated,
estimated that 87 million animals, including more than 9 million
mammals, would have died in NSW during the 17 years to 2015
due to the clearing of 5180sq.km of native bushland.
In Queensland, the woodland habitat most affected by clear-
ing has been brigalow forest. Brigalow is a type of wattle that
grows about 20m tall and forms dense stands. Because pasto-
ralism came to western Queensland much later than to the
southern states, these forests were largely intact up until the
1960s. They originally covered an estimated 130,000sq.km of
inland and eastern Queensland and north-western NSW but
in the past six decades more than 90 per cent of this forest
habitat has been cleared.
It’s estimated that brigalow forests can support as many as
1000 different plant species and provide niche habitats for a
huge variety of specialist animals, including the bridled nailtail
wallaby, black-breasted button-quail, northern hairy-nosed
wombat, golden-tailed gecko and ornamental snake, all of
which are now threatened and, in most cases, locally extinct
in many areas where they once occurred. Former brigalow
forest animal species that are already totally extinct are the
paradise parrot, white-footed rabbit-rat and Darling Downs
hopping-mouse.
“Australian f lora and fauna are highly endemic, particularly
the vegetation, mammals, reptiles and frogs,” Chris explains.
“If the habitat for these animals is destroyed, they’ve got
nowhere to go. We’re the only custodians for most of these
[woodland and forest species] and we’re driving them on an
inexorable path to extinction. There are global, regional and
local responsibilities for these habitats and I think much of that
is being abdicated at the moment.”
Tied in with species’ loss are more widely felt impacts,
including a suite of local ecological services that disappear with
the trees. One is f lood mitigation and there’s evidence the
impact of the f loods that hit towns in north78 Australian Geographic“It’s an absolute crisis...a source of national
shame!” Professor Chris Dickman says in
frustration as he leans across his desk at one
of Australia’s oldest scientifi c institutions,
the School of Life and Environmental
Sciences at Sydney University.
Continued page 82 PHOTO CREDITS, THIS PAGE AND PREVIOUS: SHUTTERSTOCK