A note to my Yarns from the Farm Readers—I’ve started another series for our local newspaper on biodiversity. This is the first instalment. Nan
Through no fault of its own, the term biodiversity has become either a mantra or a swear word, depending on which side of the divide between development (including agriculture) and conservation you inhabit.
Biodiversity conservation, especially with regard to protecting endangered species, has been used as a blunt instrument to block development, often in ways that appear arbitrary. Conservationists will say that laws protecting endangered species are the only legal tools available in many cases to protect critical habitat.
So, who’s right? Neither side, I say. When the debate becomes focused on a few over-simplified arguments, it’s generally on a hiding to nowhere.
In the next few Science Insights we’ll explore the meaning and importance of biodiversity—literally “life variety”. We’ll put it into context in Tasmania’s agricultural as well as world heritage environments, and examine ways to preserve and enhance it.
Why worry about biodiversity? In a word, resilience. The more different species (plant and animal) living in an earth system, the more likely any given set of environmental conditions will still favour some of them.
As conditions change, other species will thrive, and some will at least temporarily fade. A biodiverse system as a whole, though, will thrive.
Biodiversity emphatically does not just refer to native or endangered systems. It describes the life that makes up whatever system you want to consider.
My farm production system, for instance, is a mosaic of highly nutritious introduced forage (including grasses, perennial herbs and legumes—clover and lucerne) interspersed with native or semi-native ecosystems having much high numbers of species, but less nutritional density.
My introduced animals (sheep) benefit from the combination of native and non-native biodiversity—as do the native wildlife, who are perfectly happy munching pasture grass as well as native plants.
My primary management goal is to maximise the health of my sheep through maximising the overall biodiversity of my production landscape.
In the next article, I’ll look more deeply into the role of biodiversity in animal nutrition.
A brief note on my qualifications to write Science Insights: I have an academic background in engineering physics and ocean physics, spanning 10 years of undergraduate and graduate training, 2 years of post-doctoral “training wheels”, and 20 years of active research in ocean physics.
My sea-going research to me to most of the world’s oceans and several marginal seas, like the Gulf of California and the Mediterranean Sea. I specialised in coastal ocean dynamics, and, in the second half of my career, the role of the oceans in climate.
In contrast, I have no formal training in biological sciences, barring a couple of undergraduate courses. However, I’ve learned on the job as a farmer for the last 20 years, bringing my science background with me to help the process. I’ve conducted field experiments on my own farm, read widely and attended lots of field days and workshops.
The ideas I’ll be discussing in this column over the next few months derive from the trials and errors—and insights—I’ve experienced as a farmer and ‘lapsed physicist’—as my revered boss and mentor at CSIRO, Chief Executive Sir Malcom McIntosh, AC laughingly referred to himself.