Draft National Wildlife Corridors Plan
NPAQ Submission
19th April 2012
The National Parks Association of Queensland (NPAQ) is a non-profit, non-government
organisation established in 1930 to promote the preservation, expansion and wise
management of National Parks and protected areas in Queensland. As the peak
conservation group for protected areas in the state, NPAQ campaigns for more National
Parks and protected areas across Queensland by working with the Queensland Parks and
Wildlife Service, environmental scientists and other conservation groups.
This submission focuses on whether large landscape scale corridors can promote adaptive
responses from Australian flora and fauna to the impacts of climate change.
Wildlife corridors and climate change
Many private conservation groups and governments are promoting the establishment of
landscape scale corridors as mechanisms to conserve biodiversity and maintain ecosystem
function. NPAQ recognises that corridor projects such as the Great Eastern Ranges and
Gondwana Link are valuable when they promote collective conservation effort amongst land
managers, reduce fragmentation, increase habitat area or provide altitudinal pathways for
plants and animals (where this is possible).
However, many of these projects also make claims about the adaptation benefits they will
deliver:
 Great Eastern Ranges
The mountainous landscapes of the Great Eastern Ranges.....provide the best
opportunities for Australia’s richest assemblage of plants and animals to find refuges,
move, disperse and adapt as climate changes.
 Gondwana Link
As local conditions and environments change, particularly in the face of accelerated
climate change, plants and animals need to either move to conditions that suit them
or they need to be able to adapt to the new conditions.
 Habitat 141
Climate change is likely to produce dispersal movements for species that would not
otherwise be dispersing, thus it would be useful to consider climatic envelope
modelling in relation to habitat suitability for species likely to be particularly
susceptible to climate change.
In 2010, the author of this submission visited and spoke with over 35 leading researchers/
land managers in five countries about the role of landscape-scale corridors as an adaptive
management tool. There was certainly no broad scientific consensus on the merits of
connectivity conservation for this purpose, and many scientists, particularly in South Africa,
were heading away from this idea. This concern has been amplified by a growing number of
Australian ecologists that contend that Australian plants and animals may be responding in
less predictive ways to climate change than those served by the creation of migratory
pathways.
NPAQ believes that this growing pool of evidence suggests that corridors will not enable
most Australian plants and animals to adapt to changes in climate that are occurring now,
and that have been forecast for the future. While some contiguous connection between
remnant patches of vegetation will always be useful for wildlife, such as altitudinal corridors
that capture representative populations of species with habitat niches that vary with
elevation, this evidence is challenging the emphasis placed on large scale corridor
conservation projects in Australia.
We conclude that it is highly questionable whether landscape-scale corridors will
enable Australian species to adapt to changes in climate.
In this regard, this submission explores three related questions:
 Does the current range of a species indicate its climatic limit?
 What evidence exists of past migrations in response to past climatic oscillations?
 How will the Australian biota cope with the velocity of climate change?
1. Do range limits indicate climatic limits
This is the major preface for research examining the impact of a changing climate – will
species, especially those with small ranges and little migratory capacity, face extinction
under future climate scenarios. However, it is clear from a wealth of ecological studies that
there are many other constraints to species distributions including competition, food sources,
physical barriers, soil, fire, and historical events.
In his treatise on the impacts of climate change on Queensland species and ecosystems,
Low (2011) provides several lines of evidence that challenge the notion that range limits
indicate a species climatic limits.
Low sites many examples of climatically incoherent distributions - species with populations in
areas that appear to be in the wrong place or inconsistent with each other (suggesting that
their range influenced by other factors). Survey data indicates that this is very true for
reptiles and a large number of plants.
Examples given include:
Bertya sharpeana
A rare shrub found at Mt Coolum near Brisbane, but also Mackay
Agile wallaby
Found in the Wet Tropics and the Moreton Bay Islands near Brisbane
Yellow chat
A small bird found on Curtis Island near Rockhampton, but also in
western Queensland
There are many other examples, but each raises questions about whether these species are
truly vulnerable on the edge of their range.
Research on invasive species biology also indicates that there are great inconsistencies
between the native and invaded ranges. One has only to look at the invasive success of the
cane toad, fox or even deer populations on the east coast. Low (2011) notes that such
biological traits extend to Australian species as well - normally denizens of the rainforest,
Brush turkeys are surviving admirably on Kangaroo Island, while the Coastal tea tree
(Leptospermum laevigatum) is prospering at Cooloola near Noosa, 600km north of its native
range.
2. Evidence of past migrations
In the past 700,000 years, most species have stayed put.
That is, they have persisted through climatic changes in localised refugia spread
across their current range.
(Byrne 2009)
Australia is a flat continent. During past oscillations in climate, plants and animals would
have had to move large distances to stay within their climatic envelopes. This is especially
true for plants and non-flying fauna, although Byrne (2009) does note some exceptions,
including birds and some reptiles.
Other researchers have examined the fossil evidence for past migrations. They note some
clear differences between Northern and Southern hemisphere species in their response to
major climate events and contend that there is .....no good evidence for range migration as a
major response to climate change in the southern continents (Markgraf et al 2005). Other
researchers examining vegetation responses to fluctuations in climate during the last glacial,
noted much more pronounced shifts in vegetation in the Northern Hemisphere than in
Australia (Harrison and Goni 2010).
Low (2011) cites research on some mammals and reptiles that provide some evidence of
species migration from arid zones to the coast, but it is debatable whether this constitutes
sufficient evidence for investment in large longitudinal corridors.
3. The velocity of climate change
In recent years, researchers at Stanford/Berkeley have used temperature isoclines to
measure the horizontal velocity of climate change (Ackerly 2010).
They found that this was:
80m/yr
Mountainous biomes
1.26km/yr
Flooded grasslands
Up to 5km/yr California's Central Valley
For Australian biomes, the speed of change was thought to be more modest:
700m/yr
Desert and xeric shrub lands
670m/yr
Little less in tropical and subtropical grasslands and
savannas
350m/yr
Temperate forests
However, if we consider this change at a decadal level, what percentage of our arid biota will
move seven kilometres every ten years? Or half that rate in temperate forests?
The same scientists also project that only 8% of protected areas globally will retain their
current climate in 100 years time.
Add to this the influence of topography, that Australian landscapes are already heavily
fragmented, and that our biota may have a history of resilience not migration, and there is a
strong argument that the sheer speed of changes in climate that are now occurring may
prohibit adaptation to climate impacts.
Conclusion
NPAQ believe that because there is:
 Little evidence to support widespread species migration in response to past climate
oscillations
 That Australia is a relatively flat continent and any latitudinal migration would had to
have occurred over vast distances
 And that Australia does not have large iconic migratory fauna like North America or
Europe
It is imperative that Australia avoid northern hemisphere solutions to climate impacts,
many of which revolve around landscape corridors.
Secondly, and this has been done to some degree, governments and environmental
organisations should prioritise the protection of refugia. Many refugia are already in
protected areas, but those found near/between larger existing protected areas should also be
conserved.
Thirdly, there is no substitute for protecting existing habitat. This is particularly true for
northern Australia, where large tracts of intact or relatively intact habitat remain. If we place
all our meagre acquisition dollars into one/two funding programs, it becomes increasingly
difficult to acquire the large tracts of habitat that are still available. If indeed arid, semi-arid
and savannah biomes are at greater risk from the velocity of climate change in Australia,
then we should consider prioritising acquisitions in these areas.
There is no doubt that corridors are a politically attractive means of garnering and directing
conservation investment. However, as an adaptive management tool, there are serious
questions about the role and effectiveness of landscape scale corridors in Australia. There is
also the very real danger of using northern hemisphere paradigms to try to solve southern
hemisphere issues.
The pool of funding for new National Park acquisitions is small. It’s also a public investment,
and justifiably the public expect that decisions made in regard to new protected area
acquisitions are based on the best available science.
Paul Donatiu
NPAQ Executive Coordinator
References
Ackerly DD, Loarie SR, Cornwell WK, Weiss SB, Hamilton H, Branciforte R and Kraft NJB 2010. The geography
of climate change: Implications for conservation biology. Diversity and Distributions 16, 476-487.
Byrne M 2009. Did Australian species stay or move when climate changed in the past? In Australia's Biodiversity
and Climate Change. Eds W Steffen et al. Melbourne, CSIRO.
Harrison SP and Goni MFS 2010. Global patterns of vegetation response to millennial-scale variability and rapid
climate change during the last glacial period. Quaternary Science Reviews 29, 2957-2980.
Low T 2011. Climate Change and Terrestrial Biodiversity in Queensland. Department of Environment and
Resource Management, Queensland Government, Brisbane.
Markgraf V and McGlone M 2005. Southern temperate ecosystem responses. In Climate Change and
Biodiversity. Eds T Lovejoy and L Hannah. New Haven, Yale University.
Taylor MFJ, Sattler PS, Fitzsimons J, Curnow C, Beaver D, Gibson L and Llewellyn G 2011. Building Nature's
Safety Net. The state of protected areas for Australia's ecosystems and wildlife. WWF-Australia, Sydney.