Pdf available of full report:
http://www.nccarf.edu.au/publications/adaptation-strategies-australian-birds
This research identifies Australian water birds likely to face strong challenges or extinction from climate change and recommends key actions to secure and manage vulnerable regions for the future. Abstract In the first continental analysis of the effects of climate change on a faunal group, we identified that the climate space of 101 Australian terrestrial and inland water bird taxa is likely to be entirely gone by 2085, 16 marine taxa have breeding sites that are predicted to be at least 10% less productive than today, and 55 terrestrial taxa are likely to be exposed to more frequent or intense fires.
Birds confined to Cape York Peninsula, the Wet Tropics, the Top End of the Northern Territory (particularly the Tiwi Islands), the arid zone, King Island and southern South Australia (particularly Kangaroo Island) are most likely to lose climate space. There was some variation in the predictions of the 18 climate models deployed, but all predicted that the rainforest avifauna of Cape York Peninsula is likely to face the strongest challenge from climate change, particularly taxa currently confined to the Iron and McIlwraith Ranges. For marine birds, those nesting on Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands, the Great Barrier Reef and the Houtman Abrolhos are likely to face the greatest declines in local marine productivity. Changes in local marine productivity may also affect the endemic terrestrial birds of these islands, for which no climate modelling was possible. A small group of beach-nesting and saltmarsh birds may be affected by sea level rise. Many taxa, and particularly seabirds, are potentially highly sensitive to climate change based on a set of ecological and morphological metrics. Small island taxa were most likely to be both exposed and sensitive to climate change, followed by marine and shoreline taxa. While threatened birds were more likely than non-threatened taxa to be exposed or sensitive to climate change, or both, a substantial proportion was neither.
A key action that needs to be undertaken immediately is fine scale modelling of regions identified as having numerous highly exposed bird taxa, in order to identify climatic refugia within the landscape. Such refugia can then be secured and managed appropriately for the future. The most urgent ongoing action is monitoring, with support for the Atlas of Australian Birds seen as a particularly cost-effective investment. In the future, the most expensive actions will be management of refugia, and captive breeding should all other approaches to conservation in the wild fail. However, most of those for which captive breeding is recommended as a last resort are subspecies of species that are widespread, either in Australia or in New Guinea.
For in situ management, the most important actions will be those that are already important – fire management, weed and feral animal control and, for marine taxa, controls on fishing. A small number of species-specific actions are suggested, and there appears to be no urgent requirement for corridors for the maintenance of taxa likely to be threatened with extinction – those few taxa not already living in areas where there are likely to be refugia will require assistance to colonise new climate space.
The cost of management over the next 50 years for persistence in the face of climate change of the 396 bird taxa that are very highly exposed, sensitive or both is estimated at $18.8 million per year – $47,700 per year for each taxon. The biggest ongoing costs are monitoring and direct species management but refugia management and captive breeding may eventually be needed, and will be much more expensive.
Please cite this report as: Garnett, S, Franklin, D, Ehmke, G, VanDerWal, J, Hodgson, L, Pavey, C, Reside, A, Welbergen, J, Butchart, S, Perkins, G, Williams, S 2013 Climate change adaptation strategies for Australian birds, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Gold Coast. pp.109. Visit the research project page
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Actually the modelling in your paper has exactly the same flaw. I’m no botantist but when I read A. verticillata grows from coastal shale near Sydney to rocky hills out towards Cobar, and papers say it “tolerates a broad range of environmental conditions” and its been grown overseas in places like Israel & Egypt, I wonder why a 1-2C warming of Kangaroo’s Island temperate climate would have the impact you describe.
The reason would seem to be your modelling excluded A. verticillata’s distribution outside SA. I looked at the citation you give to support this choice, and it definitely does not support your decision saying:
“More generally, studies aimed at modeling species distributions with climatic suitability models should consider global ranges, or at least ranges across large biogeographic units (such as the Palaearctic), otherwise they can lead to unfounded conclusions”
And this is also why i think Garnett et al.’s headline claim that the “climate space” of 106 bird taxa will be gone by 2085 is similarly unfounded.
It is possible climatic tolerance may not be uniform within A. verticillata, so using the distribution of the entire species might not accurately reflect the Kangaroo island populations climatic tolerance. But given the large effect this choice has on the modelling I’d want to model several distributional choices and look elsewhere for information as to the plausibility of the choices.
Even if you had good reason to believe the SA population has a different climatic tolerance, modelling an envelope derived from the entire species would provide insight to the feasibility of introducing A. verticillata from other populations as a conservation measure for the Kangaroo Island Glossy-blacks.
I don’t know what the future holds for the tiny population of Kangaroo Island Glossy-blacks, but I don’t think your modelling yields useful information about how many Allocasuarina verticillata they’ll have to feed on in upcoming decades.
Andrew ===============================
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Hi all,
Andrew Taylor raises an interesting point, but a separate analysis we did on one prominent Kangaroo Island endemic, South Australian Glossy Black Cockatoo, suggests that some subspecies could be in trouble even if other subspecies (of the same species) are found further north. We modeled the range of the cockatoo’s obligate food plant *Allocasuarina verticillata*based on the plant’s range across South Australia and found that its prefered climate will contract substantially on Kangaroo Island, which will likely threaten the cockatoo. Please see here http://bertonharris.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/harris-et-al-2012-j-appl-ecol-cockatoo1.pdffor more info.
Cheers, Bert Harris, New Jersey, USA
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While climate change will negatively affect many Australian bird taxa & this report seems to have some interesting analysis, I think some of the numbers above are nonsense – and I hope they don’t get reported in the popular media.
The modelling done infers the climatic needs of Australian bird taxa from their distributions. This may be interesting in many cases but the authors have lost sight of reality and reported cases where its a nonsense. They’ve modelled the climatic needs of subspecies based on the distribution of that subspecies alone. So subspecies limited to Kangaroo Island are assumed to need the climate of Kangaroo Island.
Kangaroo island is forecast to be 1-2 degress warmer and perhaps a little drier by 2085. Kangaroo Island 2085 climate doesn’t “overlap” with its current climate so the 18 subspecies endemic to Kangaroo island are apparently among the 101 species whose “climate space” will be gone by 2085.
But if you look at the endemic Kangaroo Island subspecies, almost all are subspecies of species, e.g Crimson Rosella, found here in Sydney and even further north – places warmer now than Kangaroo Island is forecast to be.
While its possible these subspecies have adapted to Kangaroo Island climate – I suspect Stephen Garnett et al. don’t really believe the modelling reported above.
For example Southern Boobook occupies a large climatic range from Tasmania to Alice Springs to Timor – but the Garnett et al. modelling indicates a 1-2 degree rise in temperture will make Kangaroo Island unsuitable for the boobooks there. If Garnett et al. did believe this I’d ask them to back their prediction with cash but sadly 2085 is rather too long to wait to collect a bet.
Andrew Taylor ===============================
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Just under 1 Billion Dollars to manage a few jumped up Corellas. Not much when you say it quickly
The last paragraph below states:
‘The cost of management over the next 50 years for persistence in the face of climate change of the 396 bird taxa that are very highly exposed, sensitive or both is estimated at $18.8 million per year – $47,700 per year for each taxon. The biggest ongoing costs are monitoring and direct species management but refugia management and captive breeding may eventually be needed, and will be much more expensive.”
colin trainor wrote:
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