A team of international scientists has discovered evidence that parts of the US suffered long dry spells, or ‘megadroughts’, during Pleistocene interglacial periods. The authors suggest these ‘megadroughts’ could be a sign of things to come.

The study also suggests the climate in these areas would probably be much cooler and wetter now if it weren’t for man-made climate change. One of the paper’s authors is associated with the University of Western Australian and Curtin University of Technology.

Feel free to use these quotes in your stories.  If you would like a copy of the paper or to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.

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Professor Steven Sherwood is Co-Director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales

“This is an interesting and useful study reminding us that global temperature swings can cause profound local changes to rainfall. But I would be cautious in inferring anything about future climate from this. While it does seem consistent with other evidence that subtropical zones move outward to higher latitudes in warmer climates, the proxy indicators in the small region they examined are likely to be influenced by a number of other factors on such time scales where, for example, the planetary orbit and deep ocean circulations are changing. This observation will make an interesting test for climate models; if and when they pass this test, we will know a lot more about past and future rainfall changes.”

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*Extended megadroughts in the southwestern United States during Pleistocene interglacials, Fawcett et al. doi:10.1038/nature09839. Vol 470, 24 February 2011 (Nature)

The Guide recommends an additional 3000-4000 GL/year is returned to the environment. An additional 3,000-4,000 GL/year represents a Basin-scale average 27-37 per cent reduction if the reduction is sourced only from watercourse diversions. If sustainable diversion limits in the range being discussed were adopted, they might reduce the Basin’s gross value of irrigated agriculture production by approximately $805 million/year (if 3,000 GL/year is adopted), which is around 13 per cent of current gross value of irrigated agriculture production.

A copy of the Guide is available here.

Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. Any further comments will be posted here. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.

Note – earlier this year the AusSMC hosted a briefing to launch a separate report by The Wentworth Group on the scale of reductions in diversions they believed were required within each of the 18 Catchments of the Basin. The Wentworth report is available from here.

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Max Finlayson is Professor for Ecology and Biodiversity and Director of the Institute for Land, Water and Society at Charles Sturt University

“The guide to the Basin Plan is a necessary and welcomed document. We need to manage the river and wetlands through a whole-of-system approach, and we need to rectify the mistakes. Failure to do so will lead to further decline of our inter-connected social, economic and ecological system. We have an ecological problem and we need an inclusive social process to find the solution.

We need to consider the impacts of the proposed water re-allocations. We have proposals to “return” between 3,000 and 7,600 Gigalitres of water. The lower amounts will not restore the ecological character of the river – we will need the higher amounts. We have previously committed to maintaining the ecological character of the river and the wetlands, but we now seem shy of taking the steps to do this. We need to keep in mind that a healthy river has benefits for our communities -to be healthy a river needs its water.

We have an opportunity to reset the baseline for the future of the Basin. We do not need more alarmism – we need a ‘grand coalition’ to join the discussions and negotiations. We do not need the warriors – we need those who can embrace the need for change.”

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Prof Mike Young is Executive Director of the The Environment Institute at the The University of Adelaide

“The devil is in the detail to emerge. For South Australia, the guide to the Basin Plan proposes a significant step forward. The approach taken is consistent with international best practice. There is a daunting amount of detail for 19 water resource regions is now on the table.

Current modelling predicts that the Murray’s Mouth will be closed 3.6 years in 10. The proposal is to increase flows so that the Mouth will be closed only 1 year in ten. The Coorong’s future will be easier to manage.

Depending upon decisions yet to be taken, the proposed reduction in allocations to Murray River irrigators in South Australia ranges from 26% to 35% coupled with a commitment to the removal of all barriers to trade from 2012. A high court challenge would no longer be necessary. South Australia could thrive in an environment where it is free to compete for water.

There is a significant gap in the allocation system to be closed through the purchase of water from willing sellers. For the upper environmental benefit scenario and assuming no innovation, jobs are predicted to drop by up to 1200 people. For communities, this represents a decrease in around 1%. The economic analysis on social and economic impacts and analysis of system benefits needs further work. Significant adjustment and change should be expected in some parts of the Basin as we move to a system that is sustainable. Some regions, however, will be severely affected.

The guide proposes that the new plan will have hydrological integrity. This is a major step forward. There is a significant shift in exposure to risk. Once the new plan is in place, the environment and all other water users will share risks much more equally. In the past, most of the climate change and other risks have been imposed on the environment.

It is not clear how the new sustainable diversion limit regimes will be implemented. Disappointingly, this is left for negotiation with States. It is not clear how the Commonwealth will administer the environmental water entitlements is will acquire.

Issues to consider carefully include the question of why groundwater are much less than surface water reductions. States are given the option of imposing some of the impact of the proposed changes on those who own farm dams and plant forests.

The proposed minimum reallocation increases flow to the mouth, beyond that most environmental benefits will be retained within the region from which water is sourced. How far we go is a question that each community will need to resolve.

There is a lot of opportunity to implement the plan is beneficial to communities. Careful engagement is critical. It will be important for all to step beyond the numbers and debate the policy detail so that Australia never has to go through this process again.”

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Peter Cosier is Director of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists

“The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists welcomes the release of the draft Guide issued by the Murray Darling Basin Authority today. There is a lot of work ahead and this draft Guide provides the basis for an informed discussion on the options available to ensure we have a healthy Murray Darling Basin.

We all recognise that we have taken too much water from the rivers of the Murray Darling Basin to sustain their long-term health. We must now reset the system. We would like to congratulate the Authority on their whole of system approach. The plan appears to have hydrologic integrity in the development of a range of 3,000GL to 7,600GL of water for the river.

However, the Guide document does not provide either socio-economic or environmental benefit justification for limiting the options to a range of only 3,000GL to 4,000GL. Our analysis shows that it is in the public interest that the Authority look at options above 4,000GL.

The socio economic impacts of this reform are not fixed. These impacts can be substantially reduced if water is bought to bridge the gap and money for physical infrastructure is re-directed to help communities deal with a future with less water. This will be a difficult adjustment. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that the Commonwealth government has allocated in excess of $9 billion to facilitate this adjustment to a future with less water.

This provides sufficient money to fully compensate irrigators for lost profits and provide significant additional funds to invest in the communities hardest hit by these reforms, to assist them adjust to a future with less water.”

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Professor Wayne Meyer is Professor of Natural Resource Science at the University of Adelaide

“I previously lived in Griffith NSW for 17 years, so I understand their dependence on water for irrigation. I now live downstream and have watched the drying and dying from the mouth, the dependant wetlands and the floodplains.

The projected reductions are consistent with the minimum needs to keep this river system from becoming a highly degraded saline drain – that prospect is good for no-one.

This will be a very difficult adjustment but it is imperative for our longer term wellbeing that we adjust, refine and re-organise. Our wellbeing is not only about our immediate financial position; it is also about maintaining our Australian rivers and our unique plants and animals.

Water is a finite resource and our demand has grown to severely compromise the functioning of the complete river system. The adjustment is about some difficult trade-offs – short term economics against medium and longer term retention of quality natural resources for everyone’s benefit.

The adjustment for irrigated areas will be difficult but it is possible given the right help, clear direction and a defined timeframe. There will be less area irrigated on a permanent basis but it can be just as productive as it is now. In fact, it will certainly be more productive than it has been over the last seven years of drought. If we make this change now it will increase reliability of water quantity and quality, an improvement we should all welcome.

People are great innovators – we respond magnificently to crises when they are clear and present. Some areas will perceive this as a crisis and will mobilise to relocate, consolidate and improve.

We have needed to adjust and relocate in our landscape before as evidenced by our expansion into and subsequent withdrawal from some of our more arid areas. That adjustment was without the financial and social support that is on offer now.”

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Professor Kevin Parton is from the Institute for Land, Water and Society at Charles Sturt University

“Uncertainty, Uncertainty and More Uncertainty:

The release of this document marks the start of a process by which we can put things right in the Murray Darling Basin (MDB). Additional water flows for the environment of 3,000-4,000 GL/y are envisaged. What does this imply?

Some startling truths are revealed in the document. The most significant is that there is uncertainty everywhere you look. Uncertainty about how much water is required to restore the ecological balance. Uncertainty about how much agricultural output will be reduced as water is diverted to the environment. Uncertainty about how resilient communities will be as they face the challenge of less water. And on top of all this, how uncertainty about the vagaries of the climate will pervade and magnify all the other uncertainties.
The existence of this substantial uncertainty does not mean that we know nothing. Previous research, backed up by the report, shows that reductions in agricultural output will be far less in proportionate terms than reductions in the amount of irrigation water. This is because water in low productivity activities will be removed first, and because there is scope for investment in more efficient forms of irrigation.

The projected cost to irrigated agriculture is ‘$805 million/y (if 3,000 GL/y is adopted).’ This is estimated to be about ‘13% of the gross value of irrigated production’ and will result in a flow-on effect to regional economies producing a reduction of around ‘1.1% in gross regional product’.

On the ecological side of the equation there are likely to be significant gains in critical locations as more water is released. While some ecological niches require periodic floods, other locations will respond to relatively small amounts of additional water. These considerations suggest that the report is correct in emphasising a whole-of catchment approach.

Despite some positive aspects, social costs may be significant in some locations where adjustment is difficult. The document states that ‘the Authority is concerned that the short-term social and economic impacts on some communities and regions could be severe without structural adjustment’. In these instances it will be important to engage with the members of the communities concerned to develop a sustainable future that they support.

More research to generate information and reduce the uncertainty would of course be useful in all of these various fields. The world is observing Australia to see how it will deal with these massive challenges of water re-allocation. As suggested in the document, the process before us is one of striving for balance. I’m sure this will be a process of vigorous debate between the various interests. This is a normal process, in a democracy, of dealing with uncertainty.”

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Professor John Quiggin is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in the School of Economics at the University of Queensland

“A crucial feature of the draft plan that has not received much attention is the determination that the entire reduction in water allocations should be regarded as the result of a change in policy, rather than as a correction of previous over-allocation. This means that the full cost of the reduction in allocations will fall on the Commonwealth Government. To finance this, it will probably be necessary to increase the proportion of funding from the Water for the Future Plan allocated to the buyback of water entitlements.”

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The report is accessible online at www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au and at www.vic.gov.au (and also in hard copy form at Information Victoria, 505 Little Collins Street, Melbourne).

There is also a media release online.

Please let us know if you have trouble accessing the report and we will email it to you.

The State Government plans to provide its response to the final report within a few weeks of its release.

Here we have compiled reactions to the report from experts in the areas of bushfire and arson.

If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 8207 7415 or by email.

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David Packham is an adjunct Senior Research Fellow in the School of Geography and Environmental Science at Monash University, Victoria

“The Royal Commission has been a very useful exercise because it has collected in one place a whole spectrum of opinions and information that will serve scholars for years ahead.

The people of Victoria spent about $100,000,000 on this process. We will wait and see whether we have got value for our efforts.

There are two really interesting recommendations.

One is the recommendation on fuel reduction burning where it refers to five per cent of the total state land area, and that is the minimum that can achieve any effect. But the government, in their response to the council assisting of the Royal Commission, have already rejected that recommendation. However, they may change their response after today’s cabinet meeting. I would anticipate that if they did achieve the five per cent we would see effectively a decrease of about 25 to 50 per cent of the deaths we see in this sort of disaster, but it won’t be until we see about a 10 to 12 per cent fuel reduction per year that we will reduce the problem to bearable proportions and make the forests healthy and safe.

The other really interesting recommendation is the last one, where the Royal Commission reflects on itself, which implies that the Commission has had trouble being a Royal Commission.

The last recommendation says the state consider the development of legislation for the conduct of inquiries in Victoria – in part, the conduct of Royal Commissions.

Most of the other recommendations are useful, but will make little difference to the overall threat of bushfires in Victoria.”

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Professor David Bowman works in Forest Ecology at The University of Tasmania’s School of Plant Sciences

“The Bushfire Royal Commission report makes a series of very sensible recommendations that can form the basis for social adaptation to the threat of increasingly serious bushfires in Australia. The threat of more severe bushfires is driven by increased settlement into fire prone bushland areas and climate change causing more dangerous fire weather.

I was pleased to see the report highlight the need for evidence-based evaluations of bushfire management and policies, and investment into independent research across a broad spectrum of disciplines. The real test of the impact of the Bushfire Royal Commission, however, will be how the raft of recommendations are translated into action. There are numerous barriers to their implementation, but the most obvious is political will, institutional inertia, and adequate resourcing, particularly in the longer-term. Without sustained investment the opportunity to refine approaches for people to co-exist with highly-flammable landscapes may be lost. We need to critically evaluate what works and why and this will require trialing the recommendations, and accepting that they are not the last word on sustainable bushfire management – we must be open to changing our perspectives of living with bushfires in the light of new evidence.

It would be sad to see this report join the queue of past reports and inquiries into bushfire disasters that have only had limited impact of our adaptation to living in a land of bushfires. There is little doubt that the way Australian communities live with bushfires will be increasing tested in the near term – this report provides important framework for Australians to step up to this challenge. The next steps are implementation, commitment for the long haul and willingness to accept a culture of change.”

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Professor John Handmer is Director of the Centre for Risk and Community Safety at RMIT University, Melbourne

“After exhaustive examination, the Royal Commission has not dumped the ‘stay or go’ approach as many had predicted, concluding ‘that the central tenets … remain sound’. Instead it advocates emphasis on a wide range of safety related strategies, including the development of evacuation plans and community refuges or shelters, and acknowledges that staying and defending may be a sound option in some circumstances.

However, recommendations for refuges or shelters, and those concerning ‘vulnerable’ people, may prove challenging for government as they reverse the trend to shift most of the responsibility onto the people at risk. Until fairly recently, there were designated refuges and places understood locally to offer relative safety. These had disappeared well before Black Saturday, and in some areas local government has indicated that it will close down completely on Code Red days, effectively abandoning the community. This recommendation places responsibility back onto government and is probably well aligned with community expectations. The Commission also recommends that fire agencies take more responsibility for those who are especially vulnerable.

Some recommendations are likely to be more than challenging such as that to remove development from ‘unacceptable high bushfire risk’ areas. This makes good sense for risk management, but development tends to win out and fire and emergency services are expected to deal with the risks.

The Commission’s report covers most aspects of the bushfire risk, and has thankfully avoided the option of emphasising a single strategy, such as massive fuel reduction or agency amalgamation, as the solution.”

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Mae Proudley is a bushfire researcher in the Gender, Leadership and Social Sustainability (Glass) Research Unit at Monash University, Victoria

“The recommendation to revise Victoria’s bushfire safety policy acknowledges the failure of the ‘stay or go’ policy which assumed homogeneity across all locations irrespective of the geographic landscape and the capacities and needs of particular communities. Policy applied generally has limited impact; the CFA’s own research (back in 1999) was critical of the prescriptive and authoritarian approach to community education. For bushfire community education programs to be successful there must be an understanding of the dynamics and complexities of families and how they react under the pressure of a disaster. The heavy emphasis on preparing, staying and defending undermined the option of leaving early.

The lack of transparency surrounding the levels of funding allocated to community education programs needs to be addressed. Comprehensive and tailored community engagement and education in high bushfire risk areas is a priority. It will be interesting to see how the Government supports and resources this challenging task.

It is good that more research, particularly social research, has been recommended. The little contemporary social science research conducted prior to Black Saturday in this country was often partly or fully funded by fire agencies and/or related organisations. Can there be a guarantee of independence and objectivity for future fire research in Australia?”

(If you need to use a title for Mae, please use Ms)

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Professor James Ogloff is Director of the Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science at Monash University and Director of Psychological Services at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health

“It was heartening to see that the Royal Commission recognised the importance of deliberately lit bushfires – an often overlooked component of bushfire prevention. In Volume II, Chapter 5, the Commissioners provided a helpful overview of the main issues in understanding deliberately lit fires and note the importance of ongoing work in the area.

Recommendation 25 notes the need for a coordinated state-wide approach to arson prevention by Victoria Police which should include ‘a research program aimed at refining arson prevention and detection strategies.’ This reflects the ongoing need to increase our understanding of arsonists to help prevent and detect deliberately lit bushfires. It would have been beneficial for the recommendation to have gone beyond the efforts of Victoria Police since many agencies are relevant to arson prevention (e.g; corrections, forensic and public mental health services).

Recommendation 36 also noted the importance of collecting data and ‘evaluating current and proposed programs in order to identify and share best-practice approaches’ to reduce bushfire arson in Australia. Similarly, Recommendation 65 highlights the importance of ongoing research and evaluation.

It is now critical that the State Government assist with funding appropriate research initiatives and practices to address the very important area of bushfire arson.”

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David Peterson is Principal Bushfire Consultant with Eco Logical Australia’s Central Coast Office in New South Wales. He is a specialist in bushfire protection planning and design and is a nationally certified practitioner

“I have been following the inquiry on and off especially as it pertains to changes required in the Victorian system for building and development, the development of risk planning for communities, and broad area fuel management. As an industry consultant based in NSW and predominantly working within the NSW system, it has been interesting to relate the Commission recommendations to the legislative requirements and the process of duty of care in our state.

Much of the recommendations relating to the three areas mentioned above will bring the state of Victoria in line with the approach taken in assessing bushfire attack to building and development in NSW. The recommendations rely on the word bushfire ‘risk’ often which implies a more involved assessment of bushfire impact and development of mitigation measures for new buildings. NSW assumes a worst case fire scenario which some may say is conservative however ‘risk’ elements of lower bushfire threat and extreme bushfire threat can be overlooked. The application of ‘risk’ is a positive for the state of Victoria although I believe that the recommendations provide too much reliance on the bushfire prone land mapping to identify the risk. This can only really be done at a site specific level.

I commend the recommendations on the development of risk plans for existing communities. This is an exercise that brings a systematic and prioritised approach to risk treatments in a larger area. Similarly, the recommendations relating to fuel management by the way of prescribed burning are also pragmatic and refer to research of those ecological communities where more understanding is required. I don’t believe providing an area based target for prescribed burning will achieve the intended goal.

I also commend the recommendations on changes to AS 3959-2009 and the BCA. Hopefully review of these documents can happen sooner rather than later.”

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Len Foster is Chairman of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre

“The Royal Commission final report indicates how much more Australians need to learn about living in one of the three most fire prone regions in the world.

Recommendation 65 calls for a permanent national centre for bushfire research with reasonable surety of long-term funding. Importantly it says the centre should be a collaboration of all Australian jurisdictions to support pure, applied and long-term research in the physical, biological and social sciences relevant to bushfires. Australia’s fire services have agreed that, consistent with this recommendation, the Bushfire CRC will transition into the Australasian Fire Research Institute. With support from the Australian Government and from partner contributions, the Institute will provide Australia and New Zealand with a much needed long-term, sustainable centre for bushfire research.

The transition to this Australasian Institute recognises the need to work together to protect communities all over Australia from the threat of bushfires. While Victoria’s involvement is critical to this research program, the only sensible approach is on a national basis, with strong international links. We all realise that all the answers to future community safety cannot be found in Victoria alone. An Australasian Fire Research Institute will give us the new knowledge required for community safety.”

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Professor Ross Bradstock is Director of the Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, and a Member of the Expert Panel on Land and Fuel Management, 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission

“The recommendations, in particular no. 56, are both unsurprising and challenging. The recommendation for establishment of 5% annual burning target for public land reiterates the principal recommendation of the ENRIC Inquiry in 2008. This was to be anticipated and will bolster the impetus to undertake more fuel reduction activity. Nonetheless the Commission, as with other inquiries does not deal explicitly with the issue of cost and feasibility of implementation of such a target. Such costings have proved to be elusive, yet they are vital. At present there are few coherent data that establish the financial and resource implications of such a target. This gives scope to the Government to consider but alter the level of treatment it decides to adopt in response. Ultimately a lift in fuel reduction burning is generally deemed to needed, but the promulgation of targets without thorough analysis of costs and benefits will do little to quell ongoing debate. While there is some work now available to indicate benefit (i.e. risk may be reduced appreciably but substantial residual risk will remain) costings are elusive and may make such a target prohibitive in the long-term. Greater transparency in this regard is urgently needed to help the community to make judgements about claims and counter-claims on burning targets. The commission has been useful in airing the issues but ultimately only the community can decide how much risk it can afford to mitigate, through reduction and the other broad range of measures.”

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Ross Brogan is a Lecturer and Course Co-ordinator of Fire Investigation subjects at Charles Sturt University, New South Wales

“In regard to the recommendations overall, the Terms of Reference for the Commission included the fact that ‘prevention’ be taken into consideration with most matters investigated by the Commission. Within the recommendations (67 in all), there are no recommendations regarding the use or provision of professional, trained and qualified fire investigators able to identify and determine (accurately) the origin of the fire and the cause of that fire. By accurately determining the origin and cause, prevention measures can be established, audited or verified as accurate, or efficient (as in prevention programmes Rec. #35 & #36).

Without accurate, professionally trained investigators, the origin and cause cannot be guaranteed and any prevention programmes or legal action taken against persons charged (or accused) with either negligence or deliberate fire lighting (arson) will be suspect and cannot be guaranteed to successfully prevent any similar incidents occurring in the future. Fire investigators must be provided with training that is up-to-date, comprehensive and professionally recognised by Australian and/or world-renowned authorities so that a uniform approach is adopted and established for investigators from fire and police services to work together as a team and a determination is reached that satisfies all interests.

Recommendations 35 and 36 on arson prevention programmes and training indicate that there should be prevention programmes established and implemented for the purposes of Arson Prevention and that these programmes are evaluated and any current or proposed programmes are audited to provide best practice for use in bushfire incidents. There is no mention of evaluation of these programmes from data indicating cause of the fire/s – without verification of cause of a fire there can be no accurate determination as to whether that programme has worked, is successful or valid for the area or situation that it has been established within. Data has to be gathered to indicate cause of the fire and whether the programme has been successful according to that cause data, without cause data then the programme viability cannot be guaranteed.”

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The researchers compared records of precipitation at Law Dome, Antarctica and in southwestern Australia, and found a strong inverse relationship. Ice-core data from Law Dome show that the recent snowfall anomaly at Law Dome is highly unusual relative to the variability throughout the full 750-year record, and suggests that the same may hold for the southwestern Australian drought.

The researchers point out that the airflow responsible for both southwest Australian drought and high East Antarctic snowfall is consistent with some projections for circulation changes associated with human-induced climate change.

Feel free to use the quotes below in your stories. Any further comments will be posted here. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.

Dr Tas Van Ommen is a Principle Research Scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, Tasmania. He is the Lead author of the research.

“This work sheds new light on the problem of understanding the drought in SW Western Australia. By identifying new processes that influence regional Australian climate, this work offers the possibility to improve understanding and reduce uncertainty in future projections of climate change. The research suggests that human influence is likely to be playing a role in the drought of recent decades and raises important questions for future trends that can only be addressed by more research.

We were surprised at first, given the complexity of climate processes, to find such a direct connection between our ice core and the climate of Western Australia. This work underscores the need for long-term records of past climate from sources like ice cores and it illustrates the important role that Antarctic climate processes play globally. Our understanding is built on observing how the climate system has changed in the past, and how it is responding now to human influence.”

Professor Neville Nicholls is Professorial Fellow in the School of Geography and Environmental Science at Monash University, Victoria.

“This is a fascinating paper, especially for those of us who have been struggling to understand the strong decline in southwest Western Australia rainfall. I’m sure we will mull over the results for quite a while. It may seem strange that scientists would use snowfall in Antarctica to estimate drought in Western Australia, but the authors’ argument does hang together well, and they make a good case for concluding that the post-1970 southwest drought is very unusual. In fact their approach may even underestimate just how unusual the drought actually is. Since about 1990 snowfall at their site in Antarctica appears to have decreased but southwest rainfall has not rebounded as we might have expected from this. So the southwest drought has continued longer than we would expect from the Antarctic snow record. This indicates that some additional mechanism is affecting either snowfall or the drought. This is not surprising in a time of strong global warming. But we do need to work out these extra mechanisms.”

Professor Andy Pitman is Joint Director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.

“This is an excellent example of how long climate records from the palaeoclimate community can tell us how unusual changes seen in recent climate observations are. Their finding that the rainfall over WA is outside the range of variability over the last 750 years is a good and bad news story.

It is good for those policy makers in WA who invested in alternative sources of water based on earlier research by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. This new science suggests they made a wise decision. It is, of course, less good news for the future of water dependent industries in WA and re-enforces the urgent need for global cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.”

The report warns that river regulation, over-allocation of water resources and persistent drought are responsible for the observed decline in the red river gum forests and the industries and social systems they support.

The health of red river gum forest ecosystems is driven by river flows and flooding regimes. As such, many of the river red gum forests are under high stress. The report suggests that even with ambitious water reforms there will not be enough water to restore all the red river gum forests to health.

The Natural Resources Commission have made 16 recommendations covering a wide range of actions. The report provides a blueprint for the NSW, Victorian, South Australian and Commonwealth Governments to work with regional communities to conserve these iconic forests while creating more sustainable forestry industries and helping local communities capable of adapting to a water scarce future.

The Red Gum Forests final assessment report is available here.

Feel free to use the quotes below in your stories. Any further comments will be posted here. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 **Note new number** or by email.

Dr John Radcliffe is Chair of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering Water Forum

“The NSW Natural Resources Commission report should be seen as an important contribution towards developing the Murray Darling Basin Plan now being grappled with by the Murray Darling Basin Authority. The report highlights a prospective reduction in consumptive water use that may have to occur in the future”.

Professor Jerry Vanclay is Professor of Sustainable Forestry and Head of the School of Environmental Science and Management at Southern Cross University

“I welcome the report. There is much to be commended in this report. I welcome the recognition that it is untenable to do nothing, that there is a need for active management, that large-scale trials are needed, and that there should be adaptive management. However, there are several issues that warrant further examination. The desire for active management seems at odds with substantial transfer of red gum forest into National Park. The call to codify forest management operations seems to pre-empt large-scale trials and to be at odds with adaptive management. I also suspect that ‘the devil is in the detail’, and that some of the critical challenges will only emerge when the full details are known and plans begin to be implemented. However, the report signifies an important step in the right direction, and I welcome vigorous and thoughtful discussion of the recommendations.”

Adjunt Professor David Mitchell is an internationally respected wetland ecologist from the Institute for Land, Water and Society at Charles Sturt University

“The sustainable management of these forests depends on an in-depth understanding of their ecology and water requirements. For active harvesting of the forest to be sustainable in the long-term, it must be capable of responding sensibly to the forest’s fundamentally variable water supply. Other forms of more passive use of the forest amenity and its cultural benefits would require committed sensitive development”.

For further information, please contact the AusSMC on 08 7120 8666 (note new number) or email us.