Gary Dunnett, CEO, NPA NSW
Over Christmas I took a walk to one of my favourite birding sites, Merries Reef near Cronulla. Small groups of Red Knot and Ruddy Turnstones were flitting along the water’s edge. Red Knot are all about probing into crevices and under rocks in search of crabs and other small invertebrates. Turnstones have a shorter, stout beak they use as a crowbar to lever chitons and other molluscs off the reef. Both species seem unperturbed by the waves hitting the reef, frequently disappearing from view in the froth and spray.
I’ve been observing shorebirds at Merries for around 30 years. Like Long Reef on Sydney’s northern beaches, Merries Reef provides a pit stop and feed for the many local and international migratory species that traverse our coast. Most of the international migratory species, including the Sharpies and Turnstones, are only present in Australia in summer.
These birds have been familiar companions over the decades, and I’ve taken it for granted that their antics would continue to provide pleasure in years to come. But perhaps not.
I recently took a call from a journalist asking for comment on species that had been added to the threatened species lists over the last year. It just so happens that amongst the additions to Commonwealth list are Red Knot and Ruddy Turnstones.
I’m still trying to get my head around how two species that I thought relatively abundant could have declined in so short a time. I suspect that there are a few factors at play. One is that classic of environmental decline, shifting baselines. In the case of the waders, would I notice if the flocks of eight or ten birds a decade ago now average five or six birds? Almost certainly not.
Another factor is that tendency to think in terms presence/absence rather than abundance. After all, there is a certain satisfaction in sighting poorly known species, and the satisfaction increases when the species is rare. Think of all the keen birders who will drop everything to see that vagrant individual in their local patch.
It is only through the analysis of large scale, repeated surveys that declines in abundance and distribution truly become apparent.
So where does this leave conservationists?
I’ve always been a little cynical about threatened species listings, mostly because NSW and the Commonwealth have largely abandoned recovery planning (the process of figuring out what is needed to reverse a species’ slide into extinction), in favour of simply calculating the offset payments that developers pay to destroy threatened species habitat. Nonetheless, the listing process does involve rigorous scientific assessment of the status of the nominated species. While the process will never pick up all species at risk, at least we can be confident that those that do get listed are in trouble.
The experience prompted me to go back and look at the threatened species schedules that applied when I first visited the site 30 years ago. The 1995 NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act (TSC Act) listed five species that I regularly observed at Merries, namely Little Tern, Sooty Oystercatcher, Pied Oystercatcher, Sanderling and Eastern Osprey. Thirty years later, the threatened species schedules in the Biodiversity Conservation Act (which replaced the TSC Act in 2016) retain those same five species plus an occasional Merries visitor, the Eastern Curlew. All up, not a lot of change over 30 years.
Where the picture changes in a major way is the Commonwealth listings. Merries’ regulars that are listed as threatened by the Commonwealth include Ruddy Turnstone, Red Knot, Sharp-tailed Sandpipers, Grey Plover and Bar-tailed Godwit.
The Commonwealth listings reflect how a species is faring at the national and, for migratory species, the international level. The loss of coastal and wetland habitats across the migratory path of these species affects their populations. Coastal infill development across the world is making life very difficult for ‘our’ migratory waders.
So what are the implications for Merries Reef or your local patch? I reckon there are a few lessons we can draw from this example. The first is to question our assumptions that everything is OK just because we still see the species in their familiar places. Continued presence is great, but it is far from the full story. We need to consider real data, based on solid science, to know whether species are truly secure.
The other issue is that few people will ever see more than a tiny fraction of the places species inhabit. I might expect to see certain wader species out on my local reef, yet those very same individuals depend upon patches of habitat strung between NSW and the edge of the Arctic Circle.
It’s a common observation that the conservation of migratory species requires us to think globally and act locally. For migratory waders, acting locally means everything from scrutinising development applications that potentially impact on intertidal habitats through to reducing low level disturbance at key foraging and roosting sites.
Knowing that more of the migratory species that frequent Merries have hit the threatened threshold has triggered a change in my attitude towards the site. I’ve always been frustrated about the 4WDs, dogs and walkers that swarm across the reef on weekends and public holidays. No more treating this as an intractable problem, time to work on solutions!