tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/central-australia-5813/articlesCentral Australia – The Conversation2024-02-06T21:38:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2193972024-02-06T21:38:09Z2024-02-06T21:38:09ZA 380-million-year old predatory fish from Central Australia is finally named after decades of digging<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568893/original/file-20240111-21-jl663h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=609%2C0%2C2039%2C1138&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Harajicadectes cruises through the ancient rivers of central Australia ~385 million years ago.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brian Choo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than 380 million years ago, a sleek, air-breathing predatory fish patrolled the rivers of central Australia. Today, the sediments of those rivers are outcrops of red sandstone in the remote outback.</p>
<p>Our new paper, published in the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2023.2285000">Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology</a>,
describes the fossils of this fish, which we have named <em>Harajicadectes zhumini</em>. </p>
<p>Known from at least 17 fossil specimens, <em>Harajicadectes</em> is the first reasonably complete bony fish found from Devonian rocks in central Australia. It has also proven to be a most unusual animal.</p>
<h2>Meet the biter</h2>
<p>The name means “Min Zhu’s Harajica-biter”, after the location where its fossils were found, its presumed predatory habits, and in honour of eminent Chinese palaeontologist <a href="http://english.ivpp.cas.cn/people/members/202305/t20230530_331150.html">Min Zhu</a>, who has made many contributions to <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-kung-fu-kick-led-researchers-to-the-worlds-oldest-complete-fish-fossils-heres-what-they-found-190749">early vertebrate research</a>. </p>
<p><em>Harajicadectes</em> was a fish in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrapodomorpha">Tetrapodomorpha</a> group. This group had strongly built paired fins and usually only a single pair of external nostrils.</p>
<p>Tetrapodomorph fish from the Devonian period (359–419 million years ago) have long been of great interest to science. They include the forerunners of modern tetrapods – animals with backbones and limbs such as amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.</p>
<p>For example, recent fossil discoveries show fingers and toes arose <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2100-8">in this group</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/when-fish-gave-us-the-finger-this-ancient-four-limbed-fish-reveals-the-origins-of-the-human-hand-129072">When fish gave us the finger: this ancient four-limbed fish reveals the origins of the human hand</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Devonian fossil sites in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnHVPgvrn2M">northwestern</a> and <a href="https://australian.museum/learn/australia-over-time/fossils/sites/canowindra/">eastern</a> Australia have produced many spectacular discoveries of early tetrapodomorphs.</p>
<p>But until our discovery, the poorly sampled interior of the continent had only offered tantalising fossil fragments. </p>
<h2>A long road to discovery</h2>
<p>Our species description is the culmination of 50 years of tireless exploration and research. </p>
<p>Palaeontologist Gavin Young from the Australian National University made the initial discoveries in 1973 while exploring the Middle-Late Devonian Harajica Sandstone on Luritja/Arrernte country, more than 150 kilometres west of Alice Springs (Mparntwe).</p>
<p>Packed within red sandstone blocks on a remote hilltop were hundreds of fossil fishes. The vast majority of them were small <em>Bothriolepis</em> – a type of widespread prehistoric fish known as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placodermi">placoderm</a>, covered in box-like armour.</p>
<p>Scattered among them were fragments of other fishes. These included <a href="https://bioone.org/journals/Acta-Palaeontologica-Polonica/volume-54/issue-4/app.2008.0057/A-New-Genus-of-Lungfish-from-the-Givetian-Middle-Devonian/10.4202/app.2008.0057.full">a lungfish known as <em>Harajicadipterus youngi</em></a>, named in honour of Gavin Young and his years of work on material from Harajica.</p>
<p>There were also spines from acanthodians (small, vaguely shark-like fish), the plates of phyllolepids (extremely flat placoderms) and, most intriguingly, jaw fragments of a previously unknown tetrapodomorph. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565947/original/file-20231215-21-3lshgi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565947/original/file-20231215-21-3lshgi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565947/original/file-20231215-21-3lshgi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565947/original/file-20231215-21-3lshgi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565947/original/file-20231215-21-3lshgi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565947/original/file-20231215-21-3lshgi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565947/original/file-20231215-21-3lshgi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565947/original/file-20231215-21-3lshgi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The moment of discovery when we found a complete fossil of <em>Harajicadectes</em> in 2016. Flinders University palaeontologists John Long (centre), Brian Choo (right) and Alice Clement (left) with ANU palaeontologist Gavin Young (top left).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many more partial specimens of this Harajica tetrapodomorph were collected in 1991, including some by the late palaeontologist <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-man-who-found-4000-fish-fossils-in-a-nsw-country-town-20231205-p5ep2m.html">Alex Ritchie</a>.</p>
<p>There were early attempts at figuring out the species, but this proved troublesome. Then, our Flinders University expedition to the site in 2016 yielded the first almost complete fossil of this animal.</p>
<p>This beautiful specimen demonstrated that all the isolated bits and pieces collected over the years belonged to a single new type of fish. It is now in the collections of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, serving as the <a href="https://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/blogs/museumcollections/what-type-specimen">type specimen</a> of <em>Harajicadectes</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567575/original/file-20240102-21-i0b5nl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sandstone image of a fish shape along with two graphics showing it in more detail" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567575/original/file-20240102-21-i0b5nl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567575/original/file-20240102-21-i0b5nl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567575/original/file-20240102-21-i0b5nl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567575/original/file-20240102-21-i0b5nl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567575/original/file-20240102-21-i0b5nl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567575/original/file-20240102-21-i0b5nl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567575/original/file-20240102-21-i0b5nl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The type specimen of <em>Harajicadectes</em> discovered in 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A strange apex predator</h2>
<p>Up to 40 centimetres long, <em>Harajicadectes</em> is the biggest fish found in the Harajica rocks. Likely the top predator of those ancient rivers, its big mouth was lined with closely-packed sharp teeth alongside larger, widely spaced triangular fangs.</p>
<p>It seems to have combined anatomical traits from different tetrapodomorph lineages via convergent evolution (when different creatures evolve similar features independently). An example of this are the patterns of bones in its skull and scales. Exactly where it sits among its closest relatives is difficult to resolve. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569190/original/file-20240114-27-x8x87i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large fish seen on the bottom of the sea with two smaller armoured fish underneath it" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569190/original/file-20240114-27-x8x87i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569190/original/file-20240114-27-x8x87i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569190/original/file-20240114-27-x8x87i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569190/original/file-20240114-27-x8x87i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569190/original/file-20240114-27-x8x87i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569190/original/file-20240114-27-x8x87i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569190/original/file-20240114-27-x8x87i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artist’s reconstruction of <em>Harajicadectes</em> menacing a pair of armoured <em>Bothriolepis</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Artist: Brian Choo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most striking and perhaps most important features are the two huge openings on the top of the skull called spiracles. These typically only appear as minute slits in most early bony fishes.</p>
<p>Similar giant spiracles also appear in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gogonasus"><em>Gogonasus</em></a>, a marine tetrapodomorph from the famous Late Devonian Gogo Formation of Western Australia. (It doesn’t appear to be an immediate relative of <em>Harajicadectes</em>.)</p>
<p>They are also seen in the unrelated <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/am-pdf/10.1002/spp2.1243"><em>Pickeringius</em></a>, an early ray-finned fish that was also at Gogo.</p>
<h2>The earliest air-breathers?</h2>
<p>Other Devonian animals that sported such spiracles were the famous elpistostegalians – freshwater tetrapodomorphs from the Northern Hemisphere such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elpistostege"><em>Elpistostege</em></a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiktaalik"><em>Tiktaalik</em></a>.</p>
<p>These animals were extremely close to the ancestry of limbed vertebrates. So, enlarged spiracles seem to have arisen independently in at least four separate lineages of Devonian fishes.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567607/original/file-20240102-21-evllkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567607/original/file-20240102-21-evllkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567607/original/file-20240102-21-evllkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567607/original/file-20240102-21-evllkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567607/original/file-20240102-21-evllkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567607/original/file-20240102-21-evllkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=789&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567607/original/file-20240102-21-evllkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=789&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567607/original/file-20240102-21-evllkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=789&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The skull of <em>Harajicadectes</em> seen from above, showing the enormous spiracles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The only living fishes with similar structures are bichirs, African ray-finned fishes that live in shallow floodplains and estuaries. It was recently confirmed <a href="https://theconversation.com/now-listen-air-breathing-fish-gave-humans-the-ability-to-hear-21324">they draw surface air through their spiracles</a> to aid survival in oxygen-poor waters.</p>
<p>That these structures appeared roughly simultaneously in four Devonian lineages provides a fossil “signal” for scientists attempting to reconstruct atmospheric conditions in the distant past.</p>
<p>It could help us uncover the evolution of air breathing in backboned animals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219397/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Choo receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is employed by Flinders University.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Clement receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is employed by Flinders University.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Long receives funding from The Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>For decades, the sandstone in central Australia yielded tantalising segments of some sort of fossil fish. Now, we have finally pieced together a complete picture of this remarkable species.Brian Choo, Postdoctoral fellow in vertebrate palaeontology, Flinders UniversityAlice Clement, Research Associate in the College of Science and Engineering, Flinders UniversityJohn Long, Strategic Professor in Palaeontology, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1735902022-01-26T19:02:54Z2022-01-26T19:02:54Z‘Life finds a way’: here’s how rainbowfish survive in Australia’s scorching desert<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442399/original/file-20220124-21-tjppn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4197%2C3354&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A trip into central Australia involves packing your 4WD to the brim with survival gear, water and food. Yet fish have managed to persist in that parched landscape for thousands of years – how do they do it?</p>
<p>We at the Flinders Molecular Ecology Lab went about finding out. Our recent <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/evo.14399">research</a> examined rainbowfish in Australia, to discover how they hold onto life in isolated pockets of water in the desert. </p>
<p>Pockets of water in the desert can only hold small fish populations. A small population means a small gene pool – which can lead to inbreeding and poor health, as we sometimes see in endangered species.</p>
<p>But we found even small populations can adapt to the harsh environments of water holes and small creeks. Life finds a way – even in one of the most extreme and unpredictable environments on Earth. </p>
<h2>Prospering in central Australia</h2>
<p>Native desert rainbowfish (<em>Melanotaenia splendida tatei</em>) live in the deserts of central Australia. They grow to <a href="https://www.mdba.gov.au/sites/default/files/archived/mdbc-NFS-reports/2202_factsheet_native_desert_rainbowfish.pdf">about 9cm</a> and are usually silver and iridescent, with a yellow and green chequered pattern on the fins.</p>
<p>Desert rainbowfish populations live in slow-flowing and still habitats, including impermanent rivers, waterholes, lakes, flowing bores and stock dams.</p>
<p>Their populations fluctuate during boom-bust cycles. During rare flooding events in the desert, rainbowfish breed in large numbers and spread along temporary streams and floodwaters.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-smallest-fish-among-22-at-risk-of-extinction-within-two-decades-144115">Australia's smallest fish among 22 at risk of extinction within two decades</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Desert rainbowfish" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442157/original/file-20220124-15-16886px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442157/original/file-20220124-15-16886px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442157/original/file-20220124-15-16886px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442157/original/file-20220124-15-16886px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442157/original/file-20220124-15-16886px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442157/original/file-20220124-15-16886px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442157/original/file-20220124-15-16886px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Desert rainbowfish live in slow-flowing and still habitats.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gunther Schmida</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Our findings</h2>
<p>Our research sought to determine how rainbowfish populations persist in desert regions of central Australia, and whether their genomes show evidence of adaptation to the local harsh conditions. </p>
<p>We collected 344 desert rainbowfish from 18 rivers and waterholes from across the vast and arid Lake Eyre Basin, and from semi-arid regions of the Murray-Darling Basin. </p>
<p>We then compared the variation in the genomes of these fish with data from satellite images about the presence of surface water in central Australia. </p>
<p>We found that natural selection in rainbowfish is stronger in regions of the desert that have drier conditions. Fish from the very arid western region of central Australia adapt differently to dry conditions than those from the semi-arid eastern region. </p>
<p>We also found these gene variations are carried by the fish as they disperse during the floods. The fish that were pre-adapted to very harsh conditions retreated with the floodwaters to wait out the often extended drought periods in small, isolated waterholes.</p>
<p>This suggests genes adapted to the most arid conditions may help small populations to persist in harsh environments. These adaptations might also help the species persist in future climates, which are expected to become drier and with more extreme events. </p>
<p>The most intriguing adaptive difference involved a mutation in a gene coding which leads to some fish producing a slightly different guanine nucleotide-binding protein. Fish use these proteins for taste and smell, to detect salinity and water flow, and to control light sensitivity for vision.</p>
<p>Rainbowfish in Central Australia may survive the harsh conditions because of this difference in the protein and other adaptations. This would improve their ability to sense the environment and how it varies across seasons.</p>
<p>The variation can be compared to the recent Omicron COVID-19 variant. Research has found <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-021-00573-0">mutations in the spike protein</a> in some variants may aid its spread among humans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="shallow pool in desert landscape" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442181/original/file-20220124-19-qp55qh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442181/original/file-20220124-19-qp55qh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442181/original/file-20220124-19-qp55qh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442181/original/file-20220124-19-qp55qh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442181/original/file-20220124-19-qp55qh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442181/original/file-20220124-19-qp55qh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442181/original/file-20220124-19-qp55qh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Genes adapted to the most arid conditions may help small populations persist in harsh environments.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Brauer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Looking ahead</h2>
<p>Our research found the genetic variation can be maintained in small rainbowfish populations to allow the species to survive in the desert. </p>
<p>The findings suggest that the population size of desert rainbowfish, at least during very dry periods of the year, is less than that commonly thought necessary in nature for <a href="https://conservationbytes.com/2008/08/21/classics-minimum-viable-population-size/">species conservation</a> and for adaptation to future climate changes. This turns on its head traditional thinking that small populations are evolutionary dead ends. </p>
<p>As climate change worsens, our findings highlight the importance of conserving natural river flows to enable freshwater species to respond and adapt.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/2021-was-one-of-the-hottest-years-on-record-and-it-could-also-be-the-coldest-well-ever-see-again-175238">2021 was one of the hottest years on record – and it could also be the coldest we'll ever see again</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173590/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine R. M. Attard has received funding from the Australian Government and other organisations. She is affiliated with organisations other than Flinders University.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luciano Beheregaray receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Unmack receives funding from Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Brauer, Jonathan Sandoval Castillo, and Louis Bernatchez do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As climate change worsens, their findings highlight the importance of conserving natural river flows to enable freshwater species to respond and adapt.Catherine R. M. Attard, Lecturer in Molecular Ecology, Flinders UniversityChris Brauer, Postdoctoral Fellow Molecular Ecology Lab, Flinders UniversityJonathan Sandoval Castillo, Postdoctoral Fellow Molecular Ecology, Flinders UniversityLouis Bernatchez, Professeur en biologie, Université LavalLuciano Beheregaray, Professor of Biodiversity Genomics, Flinders UniversityPeter Unmack, Research Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1467542021-06-17T20:11:46Z2021-06-17T20:11:46ZFriday essay: how our new archaeological research investigates Dark Emu’s idea of Aboriginal ‘agriculture’ and villages<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406372/original/file-20210615-3808-15xljrp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=868%2C286%2C4177%2C2785&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An aerial view of an Aboriginal stone arrangement in the Channel Country of Central Australia. Such arrangements may be associated with initiation ceremonies and exchange of marriage partners, as well as trade. The main structure is around 30 metres long. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mithaka Aboriginal Corporation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu is in the news again, with the publication of <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-farmers-or-hunter-gatherers-the-dark-emu-debate-rigorously-critiques-bruce-pascoes-argument-161877">a new book</a> critiquing Pascoe’s arguments. Dark Emu builds on an earlier, less known work by archaeologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Gerritsen">Rupert Gerritsen</a>, who argued a number of regions across Australia should be considered centres of Aboriginal agriculture. </p>
<p>Historians <a href="http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n4634/pdf/article02.pdf">Billy Griffiths and Lynette Russell</a>, and now anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe, <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/farmers-or-hunter-gatherers-paperback-softback">have argued</a> Pascoe has fallen into a trap of privileging the language of agriculture above hunter-gatherer socioeconomic systems. </p>
<p>We have been working in a landscape that provides an important test of the Dark Emu hypothesis. In partnership with the Mithaka Aboriginal Corporation, who occupy the Channel Country in Central Australia, we have begun investigating Aboriginal settlement sites, pit dwelling huts (known as gunyahs) and quarries.</p>
<p>Our landscape study, <a href="https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2021.31">published in the journal Antiquity</a>, has found over 140 quarry sites, where rock was excavated to produce seed grinding stones. We have also developed a method to locate traces of long-lost village sites. </p>
<p>Were First Australians farmers or hunter-gatherers? Contemporary archaeological research suggests it’s not such a simple dichotomy. Understanding the Mithaka food production system may well tell us whether such terms are a good fit for defining socio-economic networks in Aboriginal Australia. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403756/original/file-20210601-19-z1aj0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403756/original/file-20210601-19-z1aj0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403756/original/file-20210601-19-z1aj0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=659&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403756/original/file-20210601-19-z1aj0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=659&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403756/original/file-20210601-19-z1aj0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=659&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403756/original/file-20210601-19-z1aj0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403756/original/file-20210601-19-z1aj0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403756/original/file-20210601-19-z1aj0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The location of Mithaka country within the trade network of Pituri. Pituri leaves (some of which are from the Mulligan river region) are a narcotic and highly valued. This map shows the direction of trade and market centres and also the location of other important items of exchange.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Illustration by Nathan Wright</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An extraordinary landscape</h2>
<p>The Channel Country spreads across the Lake Eyre Basin, found in parts of Queensland, Northern Territory and South Australia. It is the world’s last unregulated desert channel system (meaning there has been no intensive irrigation or damming) and one of Australia’s richest beef cattle areas. The meandering channels are fed infrequently by monsoonal rains from the north, which transform large sections of the desert into a lush, green landscape. </p>
<p>In 2017, Mithaka Elder George Gorringe led a small expedition to an ancient clay-pan (an old lake bed) where one of us had recorded a burial site some years before. But the plan dramatically changed when monsoonal rains in the tropics flooded the land, diverting the expedition from north to the south. </p>
<p>The extensive flood plains turned green as life-giving water irrigated native grasses and other plant species. George led the expedition to a series of sites he knew about from his father, Bill Gorringe, and from his previous work on numerous stations and as a council road works foreman. They included massive sandstone quarry sites, stone arrangements and the remains of Aboriginal pit dwelling huts (gunyahs): excavated structures with branches constructed over the top. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406013/original/file-20210613-27-13r0pts.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406013/original/file-20210613-27-13r0pts.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406013/original/file-20210613-27-13r0pts.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406013/original/file-20210613-27-13r0pts.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406013/original/file-20210613-27-13r0pts.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406013/original/file-20210613-27-13r0pts.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406013/original/file-20210613-27-13r0pts.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406013/original/file-20210613-27-13r0pts.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A gunyah, believed to be from the 19th century, on the floodplains.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nathan Wright</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This largely intact archaeological landscape has the largest seed grinding quarry sites in the country. Archaeologist Mike Smith <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/archaeology-of-australias-deserts/50C399077C1A0AA43922030129972436">has discussed the importance of seed grinding implements</a> for the economy of this region. Grinding stones were used to process native grasses and produce a form of bread. Axes scattered across the area also indicate trade with the Kalkadoon people from the Mount Isa quarries in the north.</p>
<p>It became clear from this first trip that this extraordinary landscape had enormous potential to investigate questions relating to Aboriginal trade and exchange, settlements systems and food production. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406042/original/file-20210613-77790-1rcnjbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406042/original/file-20210613-77790-1rcnjbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406042/original/file-20210613-77790-1rcnjbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406042/original/file-20210613-77790-1rcnjbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406042/original/file-20210613-77790-1rcnjbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406042/original/file-20210613-77790-1rcnjbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406042/original/file-20210613-77790-1rcnjbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406042/original/file-20210613-77790-1rcnjbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Excavating a quarry site known as the Ten Mile.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Westaway</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reconstructing the past</h2>
<p>When Europeans first stumbled across this landscape in the 1870s, as historian Ray Kerkhove discovered in the archives, they observed “civilised blacks” living in villages and maintaining intensive fishing industries. In 1871, for example, a sub inspector of the Queensland Native Police, James Gilmour, came across a “village” of 103 huts at the southern end of Thunderpurty lagoon while looking for evidence of the missing explorer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ludwig-Leichhardt">Ludwig Leichardt</a>.</p>
<p>History also records practices in the region including cultivation associated with ceremony, and fish trap and storage systems equating to aquaculture. </p>
<p>This landscape was very different to other areas in arid Australia well documented by historians and modern anthropologists. Unlike the more marginal desert environments in the centre, Channel Country could support large numbers of cattle. This indicated it was also able to support larger populations of Aboriginal people. </p>
<p>Higher population numbers and the economic value of Channel Country to European pastoralists resulted in significant conflict, devastating the traditional Mithaka economic system. Archaeology thus plays a prominent role in reconstructing the past here.</p>
<p>Some cultural stories from Mithaka country were documented from the early 1900s by amateur ethnographer Alice Duncan Kemp, who lived on Mooraberrie Station until the late 1920s. An innovative researcher, trusted and respected by senior Aboriginal informants, Alice provides an important account of the complexity of the Mithaka social system, tying it into the landscape.</p>
<p>We have started to document this through <a href="https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/c33fd50ffb8c4656855afe8231661c59">cultural mapping</a>, with the Duncan Kemp family. The Mithaka have designed a framework to help guide researchers in <a href="https://mithaka.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/mithaka-aboriginal-corporation_research-framework_web-version-72dpi1.pdf">ethically telling the story of their landscape</a>.</p>
<p>We are now using drones to record in 3D enormous quarries, which appear to be on an industrial scale. Archaeologist Doug William’s excavations, supported by the work of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/1-4020-2656-0_12">dating</a> expert Justine Kemp, show quarrying at one site may have begun more than 2,000 years ago.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406039/original/file-20210613-25-1fh5y3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406039/original/file-20210613-25-1fh5y3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406039/original/file-20210613-25-1fh5y3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406039/original/file-20210613-25-1fh5y3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406039/original/file-20210613-25-1fh5y3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406039/original/file-20210613-25-1fh5y3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406039/original/file-20210613-25-1fh5y3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406039/original/file-20210613-25-1fh5y3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Josh Gorringe, a trained helicopter pilot, operates a small quadcopter drone over quarry sites at Glengyle. A range of fixed wing and smaller drones have enabled documentation of the cultural landscape .</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Westaway</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If this is the case, the transcontinental trade system referred to by pioneering Australian archaeologist John Mulvaney as the “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Chain_of_Connection.html?id=6R89ngAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Chain of Connection</a>” (extending from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Flinders Ranges) may be at least twice as old as previously thought.</p>
<p>Could this trade system have played a role in the development of more intensified quarrying activity and more sedentary settlement systems? We are working on understanding the relationship between the archaeology and this remarkable social and economic network. </p>
<h2>Seasonal or permanent village sites?</h2>
<p>We have investigated eroding burial sites to see if the remains of the Mithaka ancestors themselves can provide clues to the past. </p>
<p>Limited analysis so far provides evidence of bio-mechanical stress to the upper limbs, likely a result of intense seed grinding. By studying geochemical signatures (isotopes) in human teeth we hope to establish if people maintained a large foraging range or were more sedentary, living in more restricted clan boundaries.</p>
<p>We have built a background <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-did-you-grow-up-how-strontium-in-your-teeth-can-help-answer-that-question-112705">isotopic map</a> to help us understand people’s mobility in the past. When people live in a landscape they ingest its isotope signature. Investigating the mobility of the Mithaka populations through isotopes will be an important test of whether documented village sites were seasonal or permanent. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/where-did-you-grow-up-how-strontium-in-your-teeth-can-help-answer-that-question-112705">Where did you grow up? How strontium in your teeth can help answer that question</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>One logical place to start an investigation of past food production systems is to look where people once lived. Early historic accounts record large village sites, so we have developed a methodology to find these places. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406375/original/file-20210615-3808-q8u28h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406375/original/file-20210615-3808-q8u28h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406375/original/file-20210615-3808-q8u28h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406375/original/file-20210615-3808-q8u28h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406375/original/file-20210615-3808-q8u28h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406375/original/file-20210615-3808-q8u28h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406375/original/file-20210615-3808-q8u28h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406375/original/file-20210615-3808-q8u28h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kelsey Lowe identifies a series of magnetic anomalies during her geophysical survey of the Ten Mile quarry site.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Westaway</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Geoarchaeologist Kelsey Lowe has used a magnetometer, designed to detect magnetic anomalies beneath the earth surface, to search for signs of ancient houses (gunyahs). By investigating standing gunyahs, dating back to the 19th century, we have detected distinct magnetic signatures for these dwellings. </p>
<h2>Fish and plants</h2>
<p>Archaeobotanists Nathan Wright and Andrew Fairbairn are carefully sifting through deposits to identify wood charcoal and evidence of plant use. Expertise in recovering not only ancient seeds and plant remains, but importantly, burnt plant remains in ancient fireplaces will play a key role in telling the past economic story. </p>
<p>Zooarchaeologist Tiina Manne has begun a study of recovered animal bones, which also include the inner ears (otoliths) of fish (yellowbelly). These may provide insights into past aquaculture systems hinted at in the historical record. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406014/original/file-20210613-64042-1p707h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406014/original/file-20210613-64042-1p707h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406014/original/file-20210613-64042-1p707h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406014/original/file-20210613-64042-1p707h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406014/original/file-20210613-64042-1p707h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406014/original/file-20210613-64042-1p707h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406014/original/file-20210613-64042-1p707h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406014/original/file-20210613-64042-1p707h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Archaeologist Jason Kariwiga and archaeobotanist Nathan Wright discuss the excavation of the gunyah site.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cemre Ustunkaya</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We have started to document fish traps in the landscape. And geoarchaeologist Mike Morley has taken molds of excavation pits to analyse microscopic evidence of hut floors and the areas in front of the gunyahs. </p>
<p>Botanist Jen Silcock is working with Mithaka Elders to understand more about plant use. Important food and medicinal plants such as native millet, sorghum and different species of desert shrubs will be investigated by plant geneticist Robert Henry. He will see if we can find evidence of people deliberately moving plants and identify traits of domestication within the genomes of important species. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/palynology">Palynologist</a> Patrick Moss has taken cores from lake sediments to recover ancient pollen sequences associated with known village site locations. He will examine how the environment changes over time and whether he can detect any shifts in pollen, which may represent more intensified use of plants.</p>
<p>Historian Tom Griffiths, meanwhile, has begun to <a href="https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/c33fd50ffb8c4656855afe8231661c59">investigate the history of conflict in the landscape</a>, as Europeans and Native Police raged a war with the traditional owners of Mithaka country in the late 1800s. </p>
<p>This is important to understand because elsewhere in the country, archaeologists have suggested the development of village settlements may have been a response to colonial violence, rather than representing a traditional settlement system. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-unearthing-queenslands-native-police-camps-gives-us-a-window-onto-colonial-violence-100814">How unearthing Queensland's 'native police' camps gives us a window onto colonial violence</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>New, important stories</h2>
<p>For one of us (Michael), the ideas generated through Gerritsen’s research and Pascoe’s popularised account have inspired and stimulated a different way of thinking about Aboriginal food production systems, and how we might investigate an archaeological record for Aboriginal village settlements.</p>
<p>And for the other (Josh), Dark Emu provides a different account of the Aboriginal past, written by an Aboriginal person outside of the academy, which challenges us to think differently about how we might define Aboriginal people. Josh believes it is up to archaeologists now to test Pascoe’s hypothesis.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406022/original/file-20210613-73723-hudv6f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406022/original/file-20210613-73723-hudv6f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406022/original/file-20210613-73723-hudv6f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406022/original/file-20210613-73723-hudv6f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406022/original/file-20210613-73723-hudv6f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406022/original/file-20210613-73723-hudv6f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406022/original/file-20210613-73723-hudv6f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406022/original/file-20210613-73723-hudv6f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elder Betty Gorringe and archaeobotanist Andy Fairbairn survey a complex of eight mound sites and numerous earth ovens in a landscape rich with artefacts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Westaway</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hidden in the Mithaka landscape is a cultural narrative with great power to tell new and important stories. Multidisciplinary research involving traditional owner knowledge, even when fragmented by the ravages of past conflict and displacement, can re-energise landscapes.</p>
<p>It can provide a context for a richer, more nuanced and more comprehensive understanding of ancient Australia, creating a space for cultural learning, education and respect. </p>
<p><em>Participants in the Mithaka field research project include: Doug Williams (Austral Archaeology and Griffith University), Kelsey Lowe (University of Queensland), Nathan Wright (University of New England), Ray Kerkhove (University of Queensland), Andrew Fairbairn (University of Queensland), Tiina Manne (University of Queensland), Mike Morley (Flinders University), Tom Griffiths (Australian National University), Justyna Miszkiewicz (Queensland University of Technology), Justine Kemp (Griffith University), Patrick Moss (University of Queensland) and Robert Henry (University of Queensland).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146754/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Westaway receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Gorringe works for Mithaka Aboriginal Corporation (MAC) a registered native title body corporate. MAC has received funding from the QLD state government through the Looking after Country grant scheme to fund field research and conservation. </span></em></p>We have found 140 quarry sites, where rock was excavated to make seed grinding stones, in the Channel Country of Central Australia. It’s part of a major project testing Bruce Pascoe’s hypothesis.Michael Westaway, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Archaeology, School of Social Science, The University of QueenslandJoshua Gorringe, General Manager Mithaka Aboriginal Corporation, Indigenous KnowledgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/661352016-09-28T04:46:33Z2016-09-28T04:46:33ZBlack Mist Burnt Country asks: what remains after the mushroom cloud?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139515/original/image-20160928-30441-1zrc12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fifty years after the Maralinga atomic tests, an exhibition grapples with the pain and devastation left behind. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Karen Standke, Road to Maralinga II (detail). Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Two drawings by Judy Watson make sense of it all. Bomb Drawing 1 and Bomb Drawing 5 are small shadows of light ash on the pages of a sketchbook. They seem so fragile, so small, so empty. Yet their very stillness in what is an often crowded and confused display gives them a sense of authority.</p>
<p><a href="http://blackmistburntcountry.com.au/">Black Mist Burnt Country</a> is a national touring exhibition devised to commemorate one of the great crimes against this country – the <a href="https://theconversation.com/sixty-years-on-the-maralinga-bomb-tests-remind-us-not-to-put-security-over-safety-62441">wilful poisoning of the land and its people</a> by the British Government with the active collusion of the Australian Government. The full extent of the British experiments with atomic weapons on Australian soil took decades to be fully exposed. </p>
<p>The nuclear tests took place over a number of years – starting at Monte Bello in 1952, rolling on to Emu Field and then Maralinga 60 years ago – yet it was not until the 1980s that a Royal Commission headed by James McClelland finally revealed the <a href="http://www.industry.gov.au/resource/Documents/radioactive_waste/RoyalCommissioninToBritishNucleartestsinAustraliaVol%201.pdf">full extent</a> of the poisoning of both land and people.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139510/original/image-20160928-30448-9argid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139510/original/image-20160928-30448-9argid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139510/original/image-20160928-30448-9argid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139510/original/image-20160928-30448-9argid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139510/original/image-20160928-30448-9argid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139510/original/image-20160928-30448-9argid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139510/original/image-20160928-30448-9argid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139510/original/image-20160928-30448-9argid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Ogier, One Tree.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite the aggressive censorship of the media enough was known to trigger public unease at the time they took place. Many artists were among the protesters, some made work in response to the destruction of the land through nuclear explosions. One of the great surprises in Black Mist Burnt Country is a little known painting by Sidney Nolan, painted some time in the 1950s in response to the news of the nuclear tests. </p>
<p>Central Desert: Atomic Test takes as its base a classic Sidney Nolan desert landscape, rocky red mountains against a clear blue sky – but the land at the centre has been blighted and bleached while a mushroom cloud hovers in the sky. At the time he painted it Nolan was living in London, remembering how he had flown over the red land of the outback, imagining how it was being scarred by government intervention.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139525/original/image-20160928-727-kn8nkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139525/original/image-20160928-727-kn8nkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139525/original/image-20160928-727-kn8nkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139525/original/image-20160928-727-kn8nkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139525/original/image-20160928-727-kn8nkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139525/original/image-20160928-727-kn8nkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139525/original/image-20160928-727-kn8nkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139525/original/image-20160928-727-kn8nkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Left: Aktion hit Fässern, Happening with Barrels, 1992 (detail), Roman Signer. Right: Central Australia: Atomic Bomb, 1952–57, Sidney Nolan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museum of Old and New Art, photo not from Black Mist Burnt Country.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There were two groups who suffered most from the British nuclear tests. The British government seems to have regarded those involved in monitoring the tests as disposable as few precautions were taken for their safety. Not only did many of the military personnel involved suffer ill health and die young, but often their children were born with deformities, except for the ones who were stillborn.</p>
<p>The greatest number of victims however were the Anangu people. First they were driven from their land when it was handed over to the British, then they were poisoned by the black mist as it blew back onto them. </p>
<p>Jessie Boylan’s photographs show both sides to the consequences of this crime. In one, Avon Hudson, the former RAAF officer who publicly exposed the extent of British culpability and Australian complicity, sits in his study, surrounded by cardboard boxes. In the other Yami Lester, who as a child was blinded by the mist, stands staring into the sun with his sightless eyes. Lester also appears in Belinda Mason’s Maralinga, an alarming 3D lenticular holographic photograph, that focuses on Lester’s open unseeing eye.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139512/original/image-20160928-30438-1uny530.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139512/original/image-20160928-30438-1uny530.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139512/original/image-20160928-30438-1uny530.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139512/original/image-20160928-30438-1uny530.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139512/original/image-20160928-30438-1uny530.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139512/original/image-20160928-30438-1uny530.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139512/original/image-20160928-30438-1uny530.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139512/original/image-20160928-30438-1uny530.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jonathan Kumintjarra Brown, Maralinga Atomic Test Dust Storm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trevor Nickolls’ painting Revenge of the Stormboy shows the little children caught in the wild chaos of nuclear devastation, and the sense of anger the wider Aboriginal community feels about what happened to the Anangu people, whose land was so lightly taken away from them.</p>
<p>Some of the most moving paintings are by <a href="http://blackmistburntcountry.com.au/index.php/2014/09/27/jonathans-story/">Jonathan Kumintjarra Brown</a>, who was born at the <a href="https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/sa/SE00146">Ooldea Mission</a> but stolen and raised in Melbourne and Sydney. When he was an adult he found his family at Yalata, where the Anangu people had been moved because of the tests. His painting Maralinga has the truth of the land partly obliterated by the bombs while a lizard’s skeleton represents the loss of life. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139513/original/image-20160928-30441-110ws3n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139513/original/image-20160928-30441-110ws3n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139513/original/image-20160928-30441-110ws3n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139513/original/image-20160928-30441-110ws3n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139513/original/image-20160928-30441-110ws3n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139513/original/image-20160928-30441-110ws3n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139513/original/image-20160928-30441-110ws3n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139513/original/image-20160928-30441-110ws3n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adam Norton, Prohibited Area. CLICK TO ENLARGE.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rosemary Laing’s One Dozen Considerations: Totem 1 – Emu shows the landscape of Maralinga, with its weathered stone marker indicating how long this land has been (and will be) poisoned. If there was any logic to the installation, or selection, it would hang near Adam Norton’s Prohibited Area, as Laing’s Totem 2 is a photograph of the original sign Norton mocked-up. </p>
<p>The failure to make this connection highlights the central problem of Black Mist Burnt Country. So many artists have made memorable pieces about this great crime, yet the curators have forgotten that a good exhibition is not simply a gathering of objects. An exhibition is a visual conversation between objects and images, but this has not happened here.</p>
<p>While I really enjoyed seeing once again Ian Howard’s Enola Gay, his 1975 rubbing of the plane that bombed Hiroshima, it does not fit either visually or conceptually in an exhibition about the nuclear tests of the Cold War. Overall the hang of the exhibition makes no sense, which is a shame as both the artists and the idea deserve better.</p>
<p><br></p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="http://blackmistburntcountry.com.au/">Black Mist Burnt Country</a> is on display at the SH Ervin Gallery until October 30. It will then <a href="http://blackmistburntcountry.com.au/index.php/venues/">tour around Australia</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66135/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn has received funding from the ARC through a Linkage Project on the History of Exhibitions of Australian Art and has been a recipient of an ARC LIEF grant for Design and Art of Australia Online.</span></em></p>The Maralinga atomic tests were devastating to life and land in Central Australia. Black Mist Burnt Country brings together dozens of artistic responses in a powerful, but somewhat incoherent memorial.Joanna Mendelssohn, Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/445972015-07-16T19:29:14Z2015-07-16T19:29:14ZNorthern Australia syphilis outbreak is about government neglect, not child abuse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88624/original/image-20150716-5089-6swco6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Syphilis outbreaks tend to occur in marginalised populations where there is a lack of affordable, appropriate and culturally acceptable health care.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/barkochre/251902177/in/photolist-og4JZ-8vqDsw-2fNt7j-8vqBMG-4WSQh7-48CoBM-89pxEr-8vnzLt-4vaApc-7ftPxg-8txe3a-2e8zVU-9kkH4p-fcgQvz-4Hj3nA-DgDTk-7eJZ2v-fySHVY-g8iTu3-2h3bX5-7WbEhf-4rL3MY-4rSvo4-ama5St-ah434f-5jgr9p-4SMCTZ-qLKpf">yaruman5/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-12/syphilis-outbreak-nt-indigenous-youth-prompts-fears-for-unborn/6613514">recent syphilis outbreak</a> in Central Australia highlights the urgent need for investment in sexual health services for young Aboriginal Australians living in remote regions.</p>
<p>Since July last year, 134 cases of the sexually transmitted disease have been reported in the Barkly and Katherine regions. This is up from 15 reported cases in the 2013-14 financial year. </p>
<p>There’s a serious risk the outbreak will extend into other parts of remote Australia. But suggestions that the recent rise in syphilis cases has something to do with child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities are an irresponsible distraction from the issue at hand. </p>
<p>What both the territory and federal governments need to do is acknowledge that investment in primary health-care delivery in remote Aboriginal communities is inadequate. That’s why outbreaks of sexually transmitted diseases are confined to these regions, while being a rarity in mainstream Australia.</p>
<p>Globally, syphilis outbreaks have been reported in many <a href="http://khn.org/morning-breakout/dr00002167/">marginalised populations</a>, including <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5906a2.htm">Native Americans,</a> <a href="http://gov.nu.ca/health/information/syphilis-outbreak-nunavut">First Nations</a> peoples and African Americans. All these groups share a common problem: lack of access to affordable, appropriate and culturally acceptable health care.</p>
<h2>Outbreaks of syphilis</h2>
<p>Syphilis is a sexually transmitted bacterial infection. In Australia, it mainly affects urban gay men and heterosexual people in remote Aboriginal communities. It’s extremely uncommon in the general population. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.sti.guidelines.org.au/sexually-transmissible-infections/syphilis#clinical-presentation">symptoms are often mild and transient</a>, making it easy for infectious people to unknowingly transmit the infection to their sexual partners. But if left untreated, syphilis can affect multiple organs, including the heart, brain, bones and joints.</p>
<p>Most concerning is that the infection <a href="http://www.health.vic.gov.au/neonatalhandbook/infections/syphilis.htm">crosses the placenta</a>, which accounts for high rates of stillbirth or permanent disabilities in children, including blindness and even perinatal death.</p>
<p>Exactly why syphilis outbreaks occur is not fully understood. Until recently <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/links/050127/050127-1.html">the prevailing theory</a> was that due to acquired partial immunity in the population, syphilis rates fluctuate naturally in cycles of about ten years. But more recent evidence has discounted this theory and suggested changes in sexual behaviour and the vigour of <a href="http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1373/version/1">public health control programs</a> are the main factors driving syphilis rates at the population level.</p>
<p>Another factor - and one that plays into the current outbreak - is the recent realisation that <a href="http://aac.asm.org/content/54/2/583.full">syphilis is becoming resistant to common antibiotics</a> such as azithromycin, which is used widely to treat other infections. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88641/original/image-20150716-5108-1esrz9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88641/original/image-20150716-5108-1esrz9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88641/original/image-20150716-5108-1esrz9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88641/original/image-20150716-5108-1esrz9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88641/original/image-20150716-5108-1esrz9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88641/original/image-20150716-5108-1esrz9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88641/original/image-20150716-5108-1esrz9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sexual behaviours of Aboriginal young people are broadly the same as those of other young Australians.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/211626852/in/photolist-7nh9ar-nRLt3t-9nf73B-5rCNrP-avg5ks-7nhQbV-8KDJvT-gQbdwt-pvnJb7-8CY6xV-8AJXMC-8PHh2Z-f6hTM5-edcjfR-8xnMuU-gxA95-aEiAVv-3N1wYY-8wRTrV-8ByV3k-gLpBpo-jGDhQ-9hvFDL-7EGLC-acUNrr-e2rqeM-8Sod4U-7nmnYy-4MCW82-3i22L-mJXr9j-qKy8Wh-4PgEvk-qrwYuv-gxzyn-ehW3ha-gvRRsj-aAua5C-oXk9pc-4UJqk8-7DHPQT-dHMKrW-jVW2AF-kaU8m7-72DcVz-y8n2D-6JegTp-78P1zb-78P2Lo-5dW9i">Thomas Hawk/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Syphilis in children</h2>
<p>Syphilis is a notifiable disease, which means that doctors who make a diagnosis have a legal obligation to report the case to their jurisdictional health department. The majority of the current outbreak’s notified syphilis cases have been among Indigenous people aged 15 to 19. But the disease has affected children as young as 12. </p>
<p>The legal age of sexual consent in the Territory, and many other jurisdictions, is 16. But the median age of sexual debut in Australia is 15. This is the same everywhere - in mainstream Australia and among Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory.</p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="https://www.sahmri.com/our-research/themes/infection-immunity/research/list/sexual-health-and-relationships-survey-2">survey data has shown</a> that the sexual behaviours of Aboriginal young people in the Northern Territory and other remote areas are broadly the same as those of other young Australians. There are similar numbers of sexual partners, for instance, and similar rates of condom use, as well as same-aged sexual partners. </p>
<p>Of course, sexually transmitted infections in children are a major concern. But it’s important to remember that most sexually transmitted infections in the Northern Territory in adolescents below the age of 16 (that is, below the age of consent) occur among 14 and 15-year-olds. And these rates are <a href="http://kirby.unsw.edu.au/surveillance/2014-aboriginal-surveillance-report-hiv-viral-hepatitis-stis">similar to non-Indigenous young Australians</a>. These notifications – both in mainstream and Aboriginal Australia - predominantly arise because of early sexual debut.</p>
<p>In recent days, the Northern Territory’s health minister, John Elferink, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-12/syphilis-outbreak-nt-indigenous-youth-prompts-fears-for-unborn/6613514">has alluded</a> to the increasing rates of syphilis being caused by sexual abuse in Territory communities. However well-intentioned, comments linking high rates of sexually transmissible infections among children to child sexual abuse carries a risk of further pushing young people away from services we so desperately need them to engage with.</p>
<h2>Successful programs</h2>
<p>Outbreaks of sexually transmitted infections like this one are related to the inappropriately low level of investment in sexual health in remote areas. They highlight the lack of high-quality education, primary health care and specialist outreach programs, all of which could stop these high rates of infections. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22697136">Several programs</a> have been successful in bringing rates under control through consistent delivery of primary care, appropriate sexual health education and specific testing and treatment programs. But not all Aboriginal people living in remote areas have access to these programs. </p>
<p>To deal appropriately with the current outbreak, we are using what we have learnt from <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870166/">past syphilis outbreaks</a> and have instigated an intense and sustained public health response. More specifically, we are <a href="http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/cdna-song-syphilis.htm">focusing on raising awareness</a> of the issue among people at risk, increasing the rate of condom use, and ensuring both early detection and treatment of people infected, as well as their sexual partners, occurs in a timely manner. </p>
<p>What’s urgently required in remote Australia is a significant investment in sexual health to be integrated into existing primary health care services, alongside education.</p>
<p>We need to ensure that young Aboriginal Australians’ sexual debut is a positive and pleasurable experience - not an embarrassing, shameful one because it went hand-in-hand with a sexually transmitted infection.</p>
<p><em>Ms Amanda Sibosado, Sexual Health Coordinator at Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Services, co-authored this article.</em></p>
<p><em>This article was originally published with the headline “Northern Territory syphilis outbreak is about medical neglect, not child abuse”. It has been amended at the authors’ request.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44597/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The syphilis outbreak in Central Australia is not about child abuse. But it highlights the urgent need for investment in sexual health services for Aboriginal Australians living in remote areas.James Ward, Associate Professor, Infectious Diseases Research Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health, South Australian Health & Medical Research InstituteDonna B Mak, Professor, Head of Population and Preventive Health, University of Notre Dame AustraliaJohanna Dups, Masters of Applied Epidemiology (MAE) Scholar, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National Univeristy (ANU), Australian National UniversityNathan Ryder, Conjoint Senior Lecturer, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/330142014-10-16T19:33:04Z2014-10-16T19:33:04ZTo eradicate feral cats, we need to know how many are out there<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61801/original/yws793wf-1413352239.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A feral cat in the bush.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tim Doherty</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>During a <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F1996-10-17%2F0012%22">speech in Parliament</a> on October 17 1996 — 18 years ago today — then Liberal MP Richard Evans called for the “total eradication of domestic and feral cats from the Australian mainland and offshore islands by the year 2020”. </p>
<p>Similarly, Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt last week <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/feral-cats-re-write-the-australian-story/5802204">announced</a> a 10-year plan to eradicate “all of the significant populations of feral cats around Australia”. </p>
<p>There has also been a lot of media recently about feral cats in Australia, including: <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/feral-cats-re-write-the-australian-story/5802204">Radio National’s Background Briefing</a>, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2014/10/15/4106891.htm">ABC Online</a>, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/gone-feral-the-cats-devouring-our-wildlife-20140911-10fbs1.html">the Sydney Morning Herald</a>, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bushtelegraph/christmas-island-cats/5775944">Radio National’s Bush Telegraph</a> and <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/greg-hunt-calls-for-eradication-of-feral-cats-that-kill-75m-animals-a-night/story-fn59niix-1226939644027">The Australian</a></p>
<p>It’s great that the national conversation is gaining momentum on this issue. Australia has lost 30 mammal species to extinction in just over 200 years, which is the worst mammal extinction record anywhere in the world. According to Professor <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/john-woinarski-16660">John Woinarski</a> at Charles Darwin University, at least 20 of these <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2014/10/13/4104768.htm">can be attributed to cats</a>. </p>
<p>A recent wave of <a href="https://theconversation.com/scientists-and-national-park-managers-are-failing-northern-australias-vanishing-mammals-10089">mammal declines</a> in parts of northern Australia, such as Kakadu National Park, has sparked a renewed call for action on feral cats.</p>
<p>But how many cats are out there? If we look at the evidence, we really don’t know. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62058/original/tckrbqzr-1413514057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62058/original/tckrbqzr-1413514057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62058/original/tckrbqzr-1413514057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62058/original/tckrbqzr-1413514057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62058/original/tckrbqzr-1413514057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62058/original/tckrbqzr-1413514057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62058/original/tckrbqzr-1413514057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62058/original/tckrbqzr-1413514057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Feral cats are found right across Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Invasive animals CRC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Twisted tales</h2>
<p>The media around this topic often quotes a feral cat population estimate that their followers can grab onto. I’m even guilty of it <a href="https://theconversation.com/ferals-strays-pets-how-to-control-the-cats-that-are-eating-our-wildlife-31182">myself</a>.</p>
<p>The SMH article above quotes the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) in saying there are an estimated 15 million feral cats in Australia and the Background Briefing report says there are an estimated 15 to 23 million cats. </p>
<p>AWC says that cats eat between <a href="http://www.australianwildlife.org/field-programs/feral-cat-research.aspx">five and 30 native animals a night</a> and then they multiply this figure of five by 15 million cats to estimate that feral cats eat 75 million native animals each night. </p>
<p>Similarly, in a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/the-dead-cat-shot/5803918">follow up</a> to the Background Briefing report, the ABC’s Gregg Borschmann is quoted as saying “Did you know there’s 20 million of them out there, and every one of them eats five critters a night. That’s 20 billion native animals a year” (although my calculations make this closer to 40 billion).</p>
<p>The assumption that cats eat five native animals each night may hold true in northern Australia where European rabbits are largely absent, but it won’t always stand up in the southern half of the continent where rabbits form a staple part of cats’ diets in many areas. These are only estimates of course and they’re useful for engaging the wider community in the feral cat discussion.</p>
<p>A number of news reports also state that the recent <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/7010.htm">Action Plan for Australian Mammals</a> estimated that there are 15 million feral cats in Australia. I’ve read the main sections of this 1,000 page book, and I don’t believe this to be the case. It appears that these numbers are becoming conflated as they filter through various media reports.</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/171418561&color=1a9916"></iframe>
<p><br>
Nevertheless, these massive numbers are great for capturing the attention of the general public and raising awareness about feral cat impacts. But from a scientific point of view, it’s important to ask how reliable these estimates are.</p>
<h2>What do scientists say?</h2>
<p>Professor David Pimentel and colleagues at Cornell University in <a href="http://www.forestpests.org/new/pdf/Economic%20and%20environmental%20threats%20of%20alien%20plant,%20animal,%20and%20microbe%20invasions.pdf">2001</a> quoted a figure of 18 million feral cats in Australia, with the reference being an anonymous 1996 New Zealand newspaper article. </p>
<p>Then in 2004 a <a href="http://www.feral.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/CountingTheCost.pdf">Pest Animal Control CRC report</a> cited Pimentel for the figure of 18 million cats and in 2008 the Commonwealth <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/91832626-98e3-420a-b145-3a3199912379/files/tap-cat-report.pdf">Threat Abatement Plan</a> for predation by feral cats cited the 2004 report also for the figure of 18 million. </p>
<p>In their <a href="http://www.feral.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/CatReport_web.pdf">2010 report</a>, Dr Elizabeth Denny and Professor Chris Dickman stated the following: "Pimentel et al (2001) estimated that there are approximately 18 million feral cats in Australia, although the accuracy of this estimation is unknown". </p>
<p>The series of reports detailed above are all relying on a single citation of an anonymous 1996 New Zealand newspaper article. </p>
<p>The newspaper article in question takes its figure of 18 million from the same Parliament speech by MP Richard Evans on October 17 1996 that called for the eradication of feral cats. Evans also quoted figures of 5 and 12 million, but took the figure of 18 million from a <a href="https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Prod/Parlment/hansart.nsf/0/CA256D11000BD3AA4A2564590082CB5F">1993 NSW Parliament speech</a> by then state Labor MP Bob Martin where he stated “Wildlife experts state that between 5.6 million and 18.4 million of these animals are roaming Australia”. </p>
<p>A number of sources incorrectly cite <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/23169620">a 1991 report</a> for those figures, which seem to have come from <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/159766353">this 1993 pamphlet</a>. In turn, the pamphlet doesn’t say where it took its numbers from. Wherever they came from, these figures seem to be the best estimate we have.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61795/original/5wvxd243-1413349986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61795/original/5wvxd243-1413349986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61795/original/5wvxd243-1413349986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61795/original/5wvxd243-1413349986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61795/original/5wvxd243-1413349986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61795/original/5wvxd243-1413349986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61795/original/5wvxd243-1413349986.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One feral cat out of millions in the Australian bush.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tim Doherty/ECU</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Where to from here?</h2>
<p>Calculating an absolute number of feral cats in Australia is a very difficult exercise. Australia is a vast and diverse continent, both spatially and temporally. </p>
<p>Estimates of cat population densities range from 0.03 to 4.7 cats per square kilometre in relatively unmodified and pastoral landscapes, and from 0.7 to 800 cats per square kilometre in highly modified landscapes, such as rubbish dumps.</p>
<p>Extrapolating these figures across the entire continent would yield some fairly wide confidence intervals. Taking a conservative estimate of 1 cat per square kilometre across the entire continent would amount to nearly 8 million cats.</p>
<p>But calculating a more reliable estimate would involve using different density estimates for different climatic regions and would also need to consider inter-annual variation caused by rainfall. </p>
<p>I haven’t attempted to do this, nor do I seek to put forward a better estimate here. However, I think it’s important that we think about this more closely, especially given Greg Hunt’s decade-long feral cat eradication plan. How can we eradicate feral cats if we don’t know how many there are?</p>
<p><em>This article was updated October 17 to replace the map with a more accurate version.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33014/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Doherty receives funding from Earthwatch Institute Australia and the Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment.</span></em></p>During a speech in Parliament on October 17 1996 — 18 years ago today — then Liberal MP Richard Evans called for the “total eradication of domestic and feral cats from the Australian mainland and offshore…Tim Doherty, PhD Candidate, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/329382014-10-14T19:30:13Z2014-10-14T19:30:13ZWhy Australia’s outback is globally important<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61627/original/pdztvn6c-1413262000.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indigenous rangers at the Fish River Station in the Northern Territory. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Indigenous Land Corporation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are places in Australia that are awe-inspiring, spectacular, mysterious; they touch our spirit and help define our nation. </p>
<p>Kakadu is one, Uluru another, the magnificent red sandy deserts, the Kimberley. These are part of our country’s essence, and they provide a rare lens into the wonder of nature and the timelessness and value of our land. </p>
<p>But these places are embedded in a wider landscape and are dependent upon that landscape for their future. </p>
<p>We haven’t really had a name for it, but the Australian outback fits. It’s both the wonderful sense of space in remote Australia, or the humdrum monotony of the Australian bush. </p>
<p>This place faces numerous challenges — one of the worst extinction records in the world, ongoing biodiversity declines, and neglect. But there are also opportunities — global recognition, and the rapid expansion of land managed and protected by Indigenous Australians. </p>
<p>This place, and its coherence is important to us, but it is also internationally significant, as one of the world’s last remaining large natural areas.</p>
<h2>Outback defined</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61619/original/zjnywrgv-1413260375.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61619/original/zjnywrgv-1413260375.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61619/original/zjnywrgv-1413260375.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61619/original/zjnywrgv-1413260375.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61619/original/zjnywrgv-1413260375.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61619/original/zjnywrgv-1413260375.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61619/original/zjnywrgv-1413260375.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61619/original/zjnywrgv-1413260375.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australia’s outback has been defined.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pew Charitable Trusts</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The “outback” is a quixotic term that has sometimes more shifting myth than reality. In a <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/projects/outback-australia">new study</a> funded by Pew Charitable Trusts assessing remote Australia, we mapped and defined the outback on the basis of explicit criteria: distance from major population centres, relatively intact natural environments, low human population density, relatively infertile soils and low productivity. </p>
<p>So defined, the Australian Outback comprises 5.6 million square kilometres, or 73% of the Australian land mass. It is of course the Red Centre, but also the monsoonal north and the semi-arid fringes. </p>
<p>It includes less than 5% of the Australian population, but a relatively high proportion (more than a quarter) of that population is Indigenous. Many of these geographical, climatic, demographic and environmental factors are richly interconnected.</p>
<h2>Conservation on an outback scale</h2>
<p>So, why define such a concept? It is because we are being forced to re-imagine how conservation works, and how we live in this land. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61620/original/dq99f8jc-1413261037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61620/original/dq99f8jc-1413261037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61620/original/dq99f8jc-1413261037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61620/original/dq99f8jc-1413261037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61620/original/dq99f8jc-1413261037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61620/original/dq99f8jc-1413261037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61620/original/dq99f8jc-1413261037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61620/original/dq99f8jc-1413261037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leichardt’s grasshopper, found in the monsoon tropics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Craig Nieminski</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Regrettably, it is now clear that even large national parks — established to protect and provide access to tourist icons, to conserve threatened species and to represent the diversity of vegetation types — are losing components of their <a href="http://theconversation.com/scientists-and-national-park-managers-are-failing-northern-australias-vanishing-mammals-10089">biodiversity</a>. Such parks are necessary and good, but insufficient. </p>
<p>They weren’t designed to look after the ecological processes that underpin biodiversity — the continental-scale ebb and flow of species dispersing to track shifting resources, the interplay of drought and flood, the large-scale workings of fire regimes, the metastatic spread of weeds and pests throughout our land. </p>
<p>If we want to retain our extraordinary and distinctive wildlife, we need to break conservation out from beyond the bounds of National Parks to think and manage far larger landscapes. The outback works at such a scale.</p>
<h2>Learning from the past</h2>
<p>In the little over 200 years since European settlement, our nation has lost 30 of its endemic mammal species, more than 10% of the wonderful legacy we had inherited, and that rate of <a href="http://theconversation.com/to-save-australias-mammals-we-need-a-change-of-heart-27423">loss is continuing</a>. </p>
<p>This is an extreme outcome, not simply a normal consequence of societal change. For example, European settlement of north America wrought far more substantial environmental change, and far more systematic and intensive hunting pressure, but resulted in the extinction of only one land mammal. </p>
<p>Our rate of biodiversity loss is clear evidence that we have not yet learnt to fit into our land. We are living unsustainably. The way that we have been managing our land, water and wildlife resources is not working. We need to think differently about our land, our environment, our society and our future.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61623/original/zxy692vm-1413261481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61623/original/zxy692vm-1413261481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61623/original/zxy692vm-1413261481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61623/original/zxy692vm-1413261481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61623/original/zxy692vm-1413261481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61623/original/zxy692vm-1413261481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61623/original/zxy692vm-1413261481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61623/original/zxy692vm-1413261481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bilbies are just one of the threatened mammal species that live in the outback.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kathie Atkinson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Globally important</h2>
<p>We still have an extraordinary opportunity. <a href="http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/wildareas-v2-human-footprint-geographic">Research</a> by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network has shown that the Australian outback is one of a handful of very large natural areas remaining on Earth, along with the boreal forests and tundra, the Amazon Basin and the Sahara.</p>
<p>These are the places that are most likely to maintain biodiversity over long time periods; that will allow ecological processes to operate over large scales; that allow us to see our fit to nature; and that bring health to our planet. </p>
<p>In this context, the extent and condition of the Australian Outback is of international significance, far above that of simply the sum of its iconic tourist attractions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61614/original/bq845jcg-1413257061.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61614/original/bq845jcg-1413257061.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61614/original/bq845jcg-1413257061.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61614/original/bq845jcg-1413257061.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61614/original/bq845jcg-1413257061.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61614/original/bq845jcg-1413257061.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61614/original/bq845jcg-1413257061.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61614/original/bq845jcg-1413257061.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indigenous land-owners living comfortably in a land of fire in Arnhem Land.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Woinarski</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Backyard neglect</h2>
<p>But the outback has profound and pervasive problems that are currently eroding that value, and that will extinguish such opportunity. Threats to biodiversity, and consequential biodiversity loss, are pervasive. </p>
<p>There are also social, institutional and economic problems, and these factors are linked and chronic. For much of the history of our country since European settlement, the outback has been treated as a neglected backyard. Indeed, recent analyses of health, employment, education and other indices conclude that it has the hallmarks of a “failed state”. </p>
<p>Intermittently, when troubled by outback problems, or dreaming of its potential riches, governments have sought to impose large-scale transformative developments upon this landscape. Most have failed, leaving a legacy of environmental loss. </p>
<p>Even the apparent cases of successful development have fitted poorly, as many major mining ventures treat the outback as a moon-base, with artificial domiciles for fly in-fly out workers and little organic regional benefits enduring beyond the mine life.</p>
<h2>Hope and opportunity</h2>
<p>For Indigenous Australians, the outback is a very different place. It is home and the wellspring of culture. Its lands define its people, and its people know and nurture the lands. Caring for this country is a profound responsibility.</p>
<p>And, rather than being a monotonous wasteland, it is a country full of meaning and value, with a delicate and intricate web of interconnections between places (most stunningly evident in dot pointings), and formative links between people and places. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61611/original/np3djjx8-1413256846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61611/original/np3djjx8-1413256846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61611/original/np3djjx8-1413256846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61611/original/np3djjx8-1413256846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61611/original/np3djjx8-1413256846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61611/original/np3djjx8-1413256846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61611/original/np3djjx8-1413256846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61611/original/np3djjx8-1413256846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Map of Australia’s Indigenous Protected Areas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian Government</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61613/original/yshttcn3-1413256957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61613/original/yshttcn3-1413256957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61613/original/yshttcn3-1413256957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61613/original/yshttcn3-1413256957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61613/original/yshttcn3-1413256957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61613/original/yshttcn3-1413256957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61613/original/yshttcn3-1413256957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61613/original/yshttcn3-1413256957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The area of Indigenous Protected Areas has grown dramatically over the past 16 years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Woinarski</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This appreciation of country and of responsibility to it is the foundation for perhaps the largest and likely most enduring transformation we have seen for the outback, the extraordinary increase in the number and area of Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs). </p>
<p>These are voluntary agreements by Aboriginal land-owners to manage their lands for environmental and cultural objectives. Funding for these activities and for the establishment of Indigenous ranger groups is provided by government, NGOs, and some businesses, with income derived from a range of services. </p>
<p>The first protected area was established in 1998, and there are now more than 35 IPAs in the outback, covering an area of over 500,000 square kilometres, and these areas are managed by more than 700 Indigenous rangers. By comparison, Kakadu, one of the largest National Parks in Australia, is 20,000 square kilometres.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61622/original/6t9q7h7q-1413261085.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61622/original/6t9q7h7q-1413261085.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61622/original/6t9q7h7q-1413261085.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61622/original/6t9q7h7q-1413261085.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61622/original/6t9q7h7q-1413261085.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61622/original/6t9q7h7q-1413261085.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61622/original/6t9q7h7q-1413261085.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61622/original/6t9q7h7q-1413261085.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Indigenous ranger holds a Chestnut Mouse in the Kimberley.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wunggurr Rangers</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.460/full">Research</a> and <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8500.2008.00609.x/abstract">monitoring</a> has shown that IPAs produce impressive environmental outcomes, largely because there provide an organised group of people resourced to manage pests, weeds and fire over large areas in a strategic manner, using a combination of traditional and modern approaches and knowledge. </p>
<p>But that research has also shown that the IPA program has consistently produced very substantial benefits for remote communities’ health, employment, economy, education and governance. The IPA program offers hope and a foundation for a better future for the Australian outback.</p>
<p>The outback offers a meeting place, where Australians of European descent can learn from and respect this way of seeing, and caring for, our country. It offers our society a rare opportunity to take stock of its present and to re-imagine its future, for us to choose to learn more about our land, and care for it more deeply, over long timeframes and large spatial scales.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32938/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Woinarski was employed as a consultant by Pew Charitable Trusts to report on the ecology, condition and future of the Australian Outback.</span></em></p>There are places in Australia that are awe-inspiring, spectacular, mysterious; they touch our spirit and help define our nation. Kakadu is one, Uluru another, the magnificent red sandy deserts, the Kimberley…John Woinarski, Professor (conservation biology), Charles Darwin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/158022013-07-11T04:30:42Z2013-07-11T04:30:42ZAustralian endangered species: Central Rock-rat<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26863/original/v43nskbn-1372905628.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Central Rock-rat appears to have disappeared. Why?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">DLRM, NT Government</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia’s small arid zone mammals have greatly suffered since European settlement. Some 11 species are extinct, and a further eight are listed as endangered or critically endangered. Their loss has been attributed to both the change in land management, and the introduction of pest species.</p>
<p>The Central Rock-rat (<em>Zyzomys pendunculatus</em>) is one of five species of rock rats, and the only one that lives in the arid zone. It, together with the Carpentarian Rock-rat (<em>Zyzomys palatalis</em>), is listed as critically endangered on the <a href="http://www.iucnredlist.org/">IUCN Red List</a>. </p>
<p>It is physically very similar to the other species of rock-rat, but differs in its more heavily furred tail and relatively longer ears. Like its relatives, it has been recorded in a range of rocky habitats including granite boulder fields, quartzite ridges and eroded sandstone cliff-lines.</p>
<h2>Status</h2>
<p>The Central Rock-rat has been a rare species for a long time. Most museum specimens were collected during the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_Expedition">1894 Horn Expedition</a> to central Australia, or in the flowing year. Two specimens were collected in 1952 in the northern Tanami Desert. </p>
<p>A lone individual was caught by a stockman in 1960 as it raided his tucker box near Mount Liebeg, 300km west of Alice Springs. It wasn’t seen again until 1996, when a population was discovered in West MacDonnell National Park.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/AM12031.htm">A peak in numbers occurred in 2000</a> following high rainfall, however the population crashed after dry conditions and massive wildfires in 2002. </p>
<p><a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8894011">In a massive trapping effort from 2009 to 2011</a>, only four individuals were caught in one of 42 sites surveyed. The same number were captured from 2011 to 2012. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26864/original/8ypp55p9-1372905762.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26864/original/8ypp55p9-1372905762.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26864/original/8ypp55p9-1372905762.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26864/original/8ypp55p9-1372905762.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26864/original/8ypp55p9-1372905762.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26864/original/8ypp55p9-1372905762.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26864/original/8ypp55p9-1372905762.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26864/original/8ypp55p9-1372905762.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Searching for the Central Rock-rat in the Macdonnell Ranges.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">DLRM, NT Government</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Threats</h2>
<p>The disappearance of the Central Rock-rat from much of its former range remains a mystery. Even though the 2002 wildfire burnt 60% of the West MacDonnell National Park, most of the previous monitoring sites were unburnt. </p>
<p>Foxes, which have been attributed to decline of many arid zone mammal species, are rare in the National Park. Feral cats are common in the area, and perhaps contributed to the decline when food and shelter were sparse. </p>
<p>It is likely that the combination of predators, fire and climate all play a role reducing the rock-rat numbers. The slow regeneration rate of the local vegetation after the 2002 wildfire could explain why the rock-rats did not recover in number after the high rainfall in 2010 to 2011.</p>
<h2>Strategy</h2>
<p>Due to the uncertainty in what drives the population dynamics and distribution of this species, further targeted research is required. </p>
<p>There is an existing prescribed burning program in the National Park which aims to reduce the threats of wildfire. </p>
<p>Controlling cats at the scale required to be effective has proven to be difficult. But some strategic baiting at appropriate times may be effective. Baiting, however, should not impact on local dingo populations, which have been demonstrated <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-1795.2009.00250.x/abstract">to assist small mammals by controlling foxes</a> and cats.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>While it is encouraging that the Central Rock-rat still persists in parts of its range, it is also of extreme concern that the populations appear very small. It is also disconcerting that the reasons for its decline are still uncertain. Without continual monitoring and targeted research, another of Australia’s unique arid-zone mammals may become extinct.</p>
<p>_<em>This article was written with help from Peter McDonald, who is a Senior Technical Officer for the Flora and Fauna Division of the NT Department of Land Resource Management</em>._</p>
<p><em>The Conversation is running a series on Australian endangered species. See it <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/australian-endangered-species">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15802/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mathew Crowther receives funding from the Australia Pacific Science Foundation.</span></em></p>Australia’s small arid zone mammals have greatly suffered since European settlement. Some 11 species are extinct, and a further eight are listed as endangered or critically endangered. Their loss has been…Mathew Crowther, Senior Lecturer in Wildlife Management, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.