Aussie Enviro

In short:

More than 30 dead turtles washed up dead on beaches in Port Stephens this month.

Some showed unusual symptoms, including bleeding around the eyes.

What's next?

Authorities are working to determine the cause of the deaths, including analysing tissue samples at Taronga Zoo.

Less than a year after Western Australia's environmental watchdog was stripped of its powers to assess the emissions of some of the state's most highly polluting projects, environmental advocates and experts say they are concerned the Northern Territory is moving in the same direction.

The WA Environmental Protection Authority (EPA)'s powers were weakened following a review co-written by its former chair Paul Vogel, which recommended a broad set of changes to environment protection laws that one MP characterised as an industry "wish list".

Among the review's recommendations were that major projects, including mining, oil and gas projects, should only be examined at the federal level using the Commonwealth's "safeguard mechanism", to avoid duplication and cut bureaucracy.  

Mr Vogel is now the chair of the Northern Territory EPA.

A first database has been compiled of the frog and freshwater fish species on hundreds of Australian islands.

It was developed at The University of Queensland to help target conservation efforts across Australia’s 9,300 islands using information from multiple sources, including the Atlas of Living Australia platform and thousands of published wildlife surveys.

The 2024-25 summer was also the second year in a row that scientists from CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology delivered trial seasonal forecasts at national marine climate briefings as part of the Marine Heatwave Prediction Project.

The briefings are designed to help prepare researchers and governments for possible marine heatwave (MHW) emergence and impacts, supported by Fisheries Research and Development Corporation and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

The long-range marine heatwave outlook will now be a regular fixture over the summer with forecasts made available publicly leading into and throughout the 2025-26 summer season. These forecasts will provide up to three months’ advance warning of ocean temperature extremes and the likelihood and location of marine heatwaves.

Scientists have called for urgent funding for recovery measures for species affected by a catastrophic algal bloom off South Australia as images emerged of a dead dolphin that washed up on a beach in Adelaide.

The call comes in response to an Albanese government announcement that it would fast-track an expert assessment of the impact of the crisis on marine life, similar to a step taken after the black summer bushfire crisis.

The South Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service collected the deceased adult common dolphin on Wednesday morning from Henley beach, with a necropsy to determine the cause of death – including any potential links to the toxic algal bloom that has killed tens of thousands of marine animals.

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But experts have told Guardian Australia that while the effects of the algae were not fully understood, mammals were not believed to be at immediate risk of death from the algal bloom because they do not have gills.

Australia has agreed to take sole responsibility for the management, security and storage of all nuclear waste from its fleet of proposed nuclear-powered submarines, including the spent fuel from the submarines’ reactors – high-level nuclear waste that will be radioactive for millennia once the submarines are decommissioned from the early 2050s.

The spent fuel is also a nonproliferation risk: Australia’s nuclear submarines will run on highly enriched uranium which can be reprocessed to make nuclear weapons.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/25987191

An unreleased Australian government report on the economic and environmental risks posed by the climate crisis is “intense and scary”, and confronting even for those who work in the area, according to people familiar with the assessment.

Maybe Vote Green ?

The 2024/25 marine heatwave that brought heat stress to coral reefs off the Western Australian coast was the longest, largest and most intense on record for the state, resulting in the most widespread coral bleaching event ever recorded for WA, scientists and managers say. 

While the full impact of the coral bleaching will take months to be known, experts from multiple organisations and agencies which make up the WA Coral Bleaching Group have so far reported bleaching and mortality ranging from medium (11%-30%) to extreme (>90%) levels across systems up to 1500km apart as a result of the marine heatwave. A newsletter summarising the event has been released today by the Group, available here.

One of my interests is documenting their rare drumming behaviour. They are the only species other than humans known to both produce music with a rhythmic beat and to manufacture sound tools – a fact we’ve just reported in Science Advances.

I wonder if other animals with this behaviour have been discovered since this was published.

The building is gorgeous from every angle. The five-story structure on Monash University’s Clayton Campus houses 30 classrooms, including a 360-person capacity lecture hall. Since construction finished in February 2020, it has won at least nine separate awards for its sustainable design that incorporates solar and passive systems to create ultra-low energy demand. The result is a sparkling feat of architecture and sustainable engineering, the pride of one of Australia’s most prestigious universities, which has positioned itself at the cutting edge of research on subjects like climate, ecology and sustainability.

The building is also named for the country’s biggest domestic gas producer, Woodside Energy, a company aggressively pursuing multi-billion-dollar gas megaprojects at a time when the World Meteorological Organization has warned that global average temperatures are on track to reach 2C warming by the end of the decade.

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“Students say: ‘I’ll meet you at Woodside.’ Or: ‘I’ve got a class at 2 at Woodside’ and do not know what it is named after. That’s greenwashing at its finest.. Students at Australia’s biggest university do not think ‘Woodside’ and associate it with the biggest fossil fuel company in the country that is drilling off the Pilbara.”

Researchers warn reef may reach tipping point where coral cannot recover fast enough between major catastrophic events

New South Wales Mining has come under fire for running an ad on its website which claims that the state’s “high quality” coal is “needed for energy security” – and “needed for many years to come.”

Climate group Climate Integrity filed a complaint with the ACCC on Wednesday claiming these statements were misleading and deceptive conduct under the Australian Consumer Law.

But South Australia’s killer algal bloom is advancing towards this natural wonder. If the algae reach the breeding site in the coming weeks or months, they could wipe the cuttlefish population out.

The Minns government has lost its way on environmental policy, according to the New South Wales opposition, the Greens and a member of the crossbench, after government data revealed a 40% surge in land clearing across the state.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/25171185

It also said Australia's climate targets should include a commitment to phase out fossil fuel use, production, exports and subsidies, including a clear plan with timelines.

Seems we voters have decided not to bother.

The New South Wales court of appeal has overturned the approval of the largest coalmine expansion in the state after a community environment group successfully argued the planning commission failed to consider the impact of all of the project’s greenhouse gas emissions.

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The court found the independent planning commission was required and failed to consider the impacts of all emissions associated with the project on the local environment, including from the exported emissions – known as scope 3 emissions – when the coal is sold and burnt overseas.

The commission approved the Mount Pleasant mine expansion in 2022. The project would double the mine’s coal output to 21m tonnes per annum until 2048 and 98% of the projected emissions are scope 3 emissions.

The Denman Aberdeen Muswellbrook Scone Healthy Environment Group (DAMS HEG) unsuccessfully appealed against the decision in the land and environment court last year but the court of appeal found in the group’s favour on Thursday morning.

Wendy Wales, the group’s president, welcomed the decision and said the burning of fossil fuels was causing increasingly destructive weather events globally, including in NSW.

“Our communities are enduring increasingly terrifying climate disasters, and nature is disappearing before our very eyes. Yet our governments are continuing to throw fuel on the fire by approving massive new coal projects like MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant,” she said.

“It shouldn’t be up to a small community group like DAMS HEG to fight this global battle, but in the absence of meaningful government action to protect us from climate harm arising from coalmines, we felt we had no choice but to stand up for our children and grandchildren, the public interest, the rule of law and nature itself,” she said.

Too right!

Australia could face international legal action over its fossil fuel production and failure to rapidly cut emissions, Vanuatu’s climate minister says, after a potentially watershed declaration by the world’s top court.

An International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion published in The Hague on Wednesday found countries had a legal obligation to take measures to prevent climate change and aim to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, and that high-emitting countries that failed to act could be liable to pay restitution to low-emitting countries.

The Albanese government was so worried a court case could halt native forest logging in northern New South Wales that it drew up plans to essentially sidestep federal environment laws in the event of a loss, documents released under freedom of information laws (FoI) reveal.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, played a key role as the commonwealth and NSW governments worked to ensure some logging could continue in the face of any “adverse decision” and to manage a potentially volatile situation between loggers and environmentalists.

In the end, the planning wasn’t needed, because the government won the case.