A Walk up Carnarvon Gorge

Situated in pristine country, some 750km northwest of Brisbane is the Carnarvon National Park. The highlight is the astonishingly beautiful Carnarvon Gorge and I did the 240km drive north from Roma today to do some of its walks.





The full walk is over 10kms one way following the Carnarvon Creek with several detours along the way to interesting geology and human formations. I left Roma at 6am and got there at 8.30am. The rangers there recommended against the full walk with a very hot day (> 35 degrees C) expected. I still plumped for a tough 14km walk that took in four of the Gorge's intriguing diversions.




The geology of the area is complex. The white cliffs are sandstone and volcanic eruptions formed basalt caps.








The trail crisscrosses the creek on numerous occasions and it is important to keep an eye on the stones below as you hop across for fear of ending up in the drink.









I decided to go to the furtherest detour first and work my way back. And after 7km of walking I got to the Art Gallery, home to the Aboriginal rock art. Here Indigenous painters used stencils, quartzile tools, hand designs and free painting all the aspects of their lives. The life-size boomerangs, pottery, kangaroos and emu eggs are matched with a collection of vulvas unknown elsewhere in Aboriginal art. The thousand-year old stencils mix with more recent European etchings as people still want to leave their mark.




Next stop back is Ward's Canyon. The canyon is named for two brothers who camped here while trapping possums in the 1910s. The canyon is known for its tree ferns and king ferns. The king ferns are particularly impressive and this is only place away from the Australian coast you can find the threatened species. The two metre-long fronds rely totally on the water supply to keep them erect.





As the time crept towards midday, the sun was almost directly overhead making shade difficult to find and walking a hot and sweaty exercise. Plenty of water was required though the rangers don't recommend you drink the creek water.

















The third stop is the amphitheatre. The shape of the entrance (reached by 50 steps) is a clue perhaps as to why the Aboriginal graffiti was full of vulvas in this area.




















The amphitheatre is a magical spot. Like the Gorge, the amphitheatre was formed out of the erosion soft sandstone by the relentless forces of water. It is not hard to be awed by the spot and its cool shade was greatly appreciated today.














The last stop was the Moss Garden. The sandstone soaks up rainwater like a giant sponge. When the water meets an impenetrable layer of shale, the water moves sideways and trickles out from the wall. The constant moisture sustains a green oasis of mosses, ferns and liverworts. After 4 hours and 15km of walking in the hot sun, it was a relief to get back to base. The Carnarvons are a walker's paradise - but there is a reason it was quiet today. The tourist season is from April to October, when the temperatures are at least 15 degrees cooler.

Pakistan enduring worst ever floods

The still rising floods that struck Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces and that now threaten Sindh are becoming the worst in Pakistan’s history. The official death toll is around 1,600 people but with the Pakistani government estimating over 13 million people are affected it is difficult to believe the true death toll is not much higher. The floods have laid waste a 1,000kms swathe of Pakistani territory along the Indus River. After two weeks of pounding, heavy rain is still falling adding to the floodwaters and hindering relief efforts and grounding helicopters needed to deliver food to victims. Even boat rescues are proving difficult in the deep waters.

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said they were are particularly concerned about the needs of 600,000 people, who remain completely cut off in the north of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They also said the floods have now reached the southern province of Sindh flooding hundreds of villages there. Rain is forecast there for the next three days. OCHA said they expected the amount required for the relief effort over the coming months will be several hundreds of millions of dollars.

The floods began last month after record monsoon rains, which were the highest in 80 years. The Upper Indus Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkwha began to fill out inundating the flood plain downstream. In some areas the water had reached as high as 5.5 metres. By 1 August, the Dawn newspaper was reporting at least 800 dead, as well as 45 bridges and 3,700 houses swept away in the floods. The Karakoram Highway, connecting Pakistan and China, was closed after a bridge was destroyed. The Afghan border city of Peshawar was also cut off with road and rail links under water.

As rescue teams attempt to get to the worst affected areas by boat, they soon realised things were even worse than they feared. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti said thousands of people in the inaccessible valleys of Malakand were in danger and rescue teams were facing problems in reaching there. “We are facing the worst-ever natural disaster in our history that has pushed the province almost 50 years back,” he said. “The destruction caused by heavy rains and flash floods, particularly in Malakand, is beyond our imagination.”

The floods affected the delivery of aid and the International Committee for the Red Cross said floodwaters also destroyed much of the health infrastructure in the worst affected areas, leaving inhabitants vulnerable to water-borne disease. Bernadette Gleeson, an ICRC health delegate in Islamabad, said they were restoring water systems to working order and distributing such items as soap and wash basins. “We hope to ward off many of the health problems that could arise if large numbers of people had to use contaminated water supplies,” she said.

Meanwhile Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari is fending off criticism he should return from an extended foreign trip. Zardari said the cabinet was responsible for directing relief efforts, and he was getting regular updates. It's the prime minister's responsibility, and he's fulfilling his responsibility,” he said. Zardari said he had secured promises of assistance from the countries he had visited - the UAE, France and the UK. But these promises did not cool down anger back home. "Our president prefers to go abroad rather than supervising the whole relief operation in such a crisis," said a resident of the flood-threatened Sindh city of Sukkur. "They don't care about us. They have their own agendas and interests."

Of most interest to the city is the Sukkur Barrage across the Indus built during the Raj to feed one of the world’s largest irrigation systems. Water has already exceeded the danger level at the barrage. By this morning, the water flow coming down the Barrage was recorded at up to 1.4m cusecs (cubic feet per second). It is only designed to withstand 900,000 cusecs. Operators have opened the Barrage doors, but the water pressure there remains heavy. With incessant monsoonal rain and a lot of water still to come down the valley, matters will get worse before there is any improvement.

New test to help crack down on illegal ivory trade

A new test to distinguish antique from modern ivory may help defeat the illegal trade in ivory. The EU allows the sale of antique ivory from before 1947, but once a tusk is carved there is no accurate way of distinguishing it from modern ivory. Until now, the only option has been to send samples to museums where experts tried to work out its age from signs such as how yellow it appeared. However this evidence would not stand up in court. A new method by an Edinburgh Zoo scientist can determine the age of ivory by looking at its level of carbon isotope. Because of nuclear testing which started in the 1950s, modern ivory has double the amount of carbon 14 than those of elephants that lived before the nuclear age. The test will now be rolled out to all European countries. (picture by wwarby)

While Europeans have killed elephants for trade since colonial times, the large-scale exploitation of elephant herds began in the 1970s. Organized gangs of poachers used automatic weapons while corrupt governments turned a blind eye. They laundered tons of elephant tusks through several African countries to destinations in the East and West. At its height, the ivory trade was driving the poaching of an estimated 100,000 African elephants a year for their tusks, as species numbers dropped from 1.3 million to 600,000.

Things improved after the African elephant was listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1989. This banned the ivory trade though it carried on illegally. And only 16 out of 35 African countries complied with the CITES system. The Born Free Foundation says thousands of elephants are still killed every year for their ivory. The British animal welfare group describes the slaughter as “horrifying”, with poachers shooting elephants with automatic weapons and hacking off their tusks with axes and chainsaws.

In November 2009 Tanzania and Zambia submitted a proposal for the relaxation of the ban to allow for the sale of 100 tonnes of stock-piled ivory to China and Japan. The proposal will be examined at an international meeting on wildlife conservation scheduled for March. There is a precedent for this. In 1997 regulations were relaxed for a one-off sale of 60 tonnes of stock-piled ivory. There was a similar sale in 2002. But Kenya has opposed the latest request for a relaxation saying it could lead to increased poaching in the region. It also wants the ban to include rhinos. Kenya’s elephant population dropped from 168,000 in 1969 to only 16,000 in 1989 when the ban was enforced. The population has now risen to 35,000 since the ban but the rhino population has decreased by a third in the same timeframe.

The Chinese market is now driving the demand for ivory. The problem has escalated in recent years as China forges more links with Africa. Chinese entrepreneurs, miners and tourists are coming to the continent in increasing numbers fuelling the illicit trade. Over 35 million tonnes of ivory has been illegally imported into China from Africa in the last 10 years and British-based wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC is working with China to educate travellers about ivory smuggling. But there are concerns the Chinese government is reacting defensively to reports of Chinese people caught in the act. After an Interpol operation seized several tonnes of ivory in November and arrested three Chinese and 62 Africans, China Daily refuted the director of a Kenyan wildlife NGO, who blamed the growing number of Chinese workers in Africa for the rise in elephant poaching in Kenya.

Ominously, ivory trade has been on the rise across the continent since 2004 but increased sharply last year according to TRAFFIC. Their latest report said the surge in 2009 suggest an increased involvement of organized crime syndicates in the trade, connecting African source countries with Asian end markets. According to its analysis of 14,364 ivory seizure records from 85 countries between January 1989 and August 2009, the adjusted trend for illicit ivory trade has risen to over 25 tonnes, the second largest after a peak of 32 tonnes in 1998. CITES will submit the report to the upcoming meeting of member countries.

Hopes for Tasmanian Devil Deadly Facial Tumour Disease cure

Hopes for a cure of the deadly facial tumour disease (DFTD) in Tasmanian Devils have grown with the breakthrough that scientists have discovered its genetic code. DFTD is a highly contagious mouth cancer unique to Tasmanian devils passed on during sex and fights. The tumour quickly spreads on the face and down to internal organs, killing the devil within nine weeks. The mysterious disease has threatened the species with extinction within 35 years. However the new discovery of the genetic composition allows scientists to develop a diagnostic test for it. The Australian and overseas-based research team hopes to be able to develop not just vaccines, but therapies as well.

University of Tasmania researchers earlier last year developed a pre-diagnostic test similar to a Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test in the detection of human prostate cancer but has not yet been scientifically validated. A diagnostic test builds on the earlier work and will be more conclusive. Scientist Greg Woods from the Hobart-based Menzies Research Institute said the identification of the nerve-protection called Schwann cells as the likely origin of DFTD was a significant step. "We are now much more confident in understanding what the tumour cell is and this will help in the development of treatments and strategies to combat this disease," he told The Australian.

DFTD is a new disease. Not a single case was found in any animal captured by wildlife biologists up to 1995. It was first diagnosed in 1996 when devils with large facial tumours started appearing. Small lumps around the mouth quickly develop into large tumours on the face and neck making it difficult for the animal to eat. If they don’t die first of starvation, the cancer kills the infected animal within nine weeks. By the end of 2009 DFTD had laid waste to 60 percent of the total devil population. In the north-east region, where signs of the disease were first reported, there has been a 95 percent decline of sightings of the animal in the decade from 1995 to 2005.

Scientists initially thought DFTD was a virus but realised it was a cancer after they compared the DNA from sick and healthy devils. They discovered that a single nerve cell gene from one devil created the disease cells and then spread to many other animals. Analyses of these cell genes and gene activity patterns indicated that the tumor cells most closely matched Schwann cells, a type of cell that forms a waxy sheath called myelin around nerve fibres.

The researchers say a protein called periaxin normally found only in Schwann cells is also present in devil facial tumor cells and might be a good diagnostic marker for the disease, the researchers report. They still don’t know how the cancerous Schwann cells became contagious in the first place. Katherine Belov, a geneticist at the University of Sydney, believes it may simply be a “freak of nature” that allowed the cancer to be stable and transmitted.

Whatever it was, its effects have been catastrophic among devil populations. In May 2009, the Australian Government raised the Tasmanian devil from “Vulnerable” to “Endangered” under national environmental law. Tasmania’s Threatened Species Act 1995 has also listed the devil as “Endangered” since May 2008. By the end of 2008, the disease had been confirmed at 64 locations, covering more than 60 percent of Tasmania. The Tasmanian government has launched a Save the Tasmanian Devil Program aimed at maintaining genetic diversity, maintaining healthy populations in the wild and managing the ecological impacts of reduced populations.

It is usually uncommon for wildlife diseases to lead directly to population extinction in the absence of other severe threats. But ominously, there had not been any evidence of a single recovery from the disease. There are fears that niches left vacant by the large carnivorous marsupial will be taken up by introduced species such as feral cats and foxes. If this occurs there could be a wider impact on Tasmania's unique wildlife. The new scientific findings represent the best hope to save the devil. It may take ten years to produce a vaccine against the disease but that will probably be enough time not only to save the animal from extinction but also avoid tipping the island into a major ecological collapse.

Bats: A secret success story

Californian authorities say that eight people have died in five years in accidents in the state’s 47,000 abandoned mines. Now state authorities are determined to make them some of them safer while providing a novel ecological niche for bats. Sited due east of San Francisco, the small town of Tracy is the home of several long-abandoned coal mining caves. Vandals recently made one of them unsafe by burning the beams supporting the entrance. Now authorities have barred off with a gate. It is the first step in a program to keep prying humans out and provide an ideal habitat for bats. The slates are wide enough for Townsend's big-eared bats and pallid bats to fly through. Both species hibernate and roost in the dank humidity of the Californian caves.

Cave colonies can become very large with many bats loving the stable microclimate. It is not unknown for colonies of hundreds of thousands of different species to share a cave site. Young bats congregate to in thick clusters to form crèches of 3,000 square meters. In Winter time hibernating bats reduce their body temperature to within a couple of degrees of the site temperature and live on their accumulated body fat. They cannot stand on their legs and so hang upside down, held in place with no effort by the clinging shape of the tendons of the foot.

The reason they cannot stand on their legs is that they have evolved into wings. The scientific name for bats is Chiroptera. The word is Latin for “hand wing” and describes the bats’ fingers which are connected by a stretchy membrane which make up the wings. The fragile nature of bats has not left much data in the fossil record so science does not give a good accounting of how the only flying mammals evolved. The likeliest explanation is that they were originally insect-eating tree creatures who scurried around on all fours until they became airborne. However the theory does not explain how partially successful fliers could survive well enough to produce another generation yet incredible this unlikely event happened twice.

The fact remains that the two types of bats evolved separately. The majority are the mostly insectivorous microbats and the rest are mostly fruit-eating megabats (or fruit bats). Megabats range in size from the Indian giant flying fox with a human-sized wingspan of 1.8 metres to the petite Malaysian flower bat with its 21cm wingspan. The splendidly named false vampire of American tropics (so called because they prefer to bite the prey's head and crush its skull rather than suck its blood) is the largest of the microbats with a 1 metre span which dwarfs the rare and tiny 1.5 gram Thai bumblebee bat, possibly the world’s smallest mammal. The microbats evolved from shrews possibly in a period of global warming 50 million years ago and the megabats evolved later either from microbats, or, more controversially, from early primates.

One of the shrew’s lesser known characteristics is echolocation which they passed on to the microbats. When Britain successfully developed radar in World War II, some scientists were scathing when it was suggested that nature had already beaten them to it. But by 1944, Donald Griffin at Harvard proved bat echolocation existed. Bats send bursts of high-pitched sounds as they fly. These sounds emerge from the larynx and are mostly emitted by mouth. The Egyptian rousette bat clicks its tongue whereas others such as horseshoe bats emit the noise through a complex noseleaf around the nostril that focuses the beam of sound.

Whatever way they are emitted, the sounds travel as air waves until they strike an object. Some of the energy in the sound wave is returned as an echo and the amount returned depends on such factors as distance, durability of the object and whether the object is moving or not. Bats quickly analyse the returned data and identify the object. In order to catch prey they need to locate the target precisely in three dimensions and they do this by measuring the time delay between signal emission and echo reception As it closes in, the bat increases the pulse rate of sound to track it down using the Doppler shift. At the point of contact, the calls are so fast they are known as a “feeding buzz”. Some bats can make an incredible 200 calls per second at the feeding buzz.

Megabats don’t use echolocation but contrary to the ‘blind as a bat’ myth, they have large well developed eyes for night vision and can see as well as owls or cats. In Australia, flying fox colonies are enormous and the animals are highly sociable. Bats can also claim to be the most successful mammals, representing a fifth of all mammalian species. As Sue Churchill says about them in “Australian Bats” they live in a dimension so different from human experience that “we cannot escape a sense of wonder of the precision of even the simplest aspect of their biology”.