Transcript of AE 1002 - Combating Ecosystem Collapse Down Under with Professor Euan Ritchie

G'day, you mob. How's it going? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. You guessed it. Today, I have my friend Euan Ritchie on the podcast. Now Euan is a professor of conservation biology and ecology at Deakin University here in Australia.

So, he's been on in the past, I'll bring up the episode on the screen here in episode 657, where we talked about the bushfire crisis. This was 2019 and the start of 2020. Today, we talk a little bit more about a recent study that he was involved in that looked at the collapse of ecosystems, 19 different ecosystems around Australia. So, we're going to learn a lot in this episode. Let's get into it.

G'day, Euan. How's it going?

I'm good, thank you.

Man, I think I have to say congrats, because last time you're on the podcast, which was episode 657, it was another time, you were an associate professor, I think, and now you're a full professor at Deakin. So, congrats, dude.

Thank you very much. I think that was even pre-COVID, wasn't it? So, it all feels like a bit of a blur.

I know. Well, could you- Can you explain to the listeners how the Australian- I don't know what the correct word is. Professorship sort of system at universities works? Because I get a lot of- Even just Americans get really confused. They'll be like, I work as a professor at a high school. And I'll be like, wait, what? No, you don't.

Yeah. So, there's, yeah, different terminology I think they use in different parts of the world, essentially. So, as an example, even I think in Germany, if you get a university lectureship per say, you're immediately called a professor.

Oh, wow.

And in the US, when you start, you're called an assistant professor and then you go to full professor, whereas in Australia you have different levels. So, typically you start at lecturer, then senior lecturer, then associate professor or sometimes called reader and then professor. So, there's sort of four steps.

So yeah, there's different kind of, I guess, expectations in terms of your teaching outputs in your research at those different levels, as well as service to the community and I guess your field in general. But yeah, there is a bit of confusion with the terminology in different countries.

It's like having a black belt in jujitsu, right? You fina- You've made it. It's like, that's the pinnacle effectively, once you get to professor.

Yeah, you've topped out, you've topped out...

It's all downhill.

Maybe that just means you're really old like me. I don't know.

Well, I mean, early 40s is pretty good, right? I mean, you're not going to get to become a professor much younger than that, I would imagine.

No, not unless you're some sort of child genius, which I'm definitely not. But yeah. So, no, you're right, it's typical, I guess, in your sort of 40s or 50s, probably to reach that level because it does take a long time. I think I worked out the other day that it took me 26 years of post-high school education to get to the point of professor because I was having a, let's say, a robust debate with someone online about science.

Someone said, You call yourself a scientist? And I said, yes, yes, I do.

I've earned this. Well, I feel bad, like I've got, you know, 11 years' worth of tertiary education and I feel bad referring to myself as a scientist because I'm not actively doing science anymore, so.

I think you can call yourself a scientist. I think once you've done formal training, I think that's, yeah, that qualifies.

Yeah, awesome. Anyway, so I got you on today because you came up with a study. Well, you and a group of people came out with a study earlier this year on the sort of ecosystem collapse in Australia. Before we get into that, can we sort of recap Australia's ecosystems and their state and also maybe why Australia's got such a poor reputation...?

Yeah, sure.

...Wildlife and ecosystem health?

Well, I think the first thing, obviously, to recognise that people who might not be as familiar with, you know, Australia as some is that Australia has a really diverse array of ecosystems and probably almost arguably no more- There's really nowhere else in the world when you think about it.

So, you know, we have tropical rainforests, we have alpine zones, we have, of course, the reef, we have deserts, we have, you know, mountainous areas with forests. So, it's incredibly diverse. And unfortunately, you know, as you were just talking about, many of our ecosystems are in trouble. And there's a whole range of reasons why our environments, and in fact, environments around the world-

And we've just obviously heard in the last week or so of the latest release of the IPCC report, which was fairly sobering news in terms of climate change. And climate change, of course, is a threat globally. But of course, it can also manifest at a local scale because it can compound things like droughts, so we can have more extreme weather events.

So, either really heavy increases in rainfall or decreases in rainfall, but also, of course, increasing temperatures, which can also compound other processes like fire. And of course, we saw in 2019 and '20 a really horrible manifestation of that, which was the fires that burnt more than 10 million hectares across Australia. And just absolutely massive in scale when you think about it.

So, you know, if you have sort of European listeners or even just people from other parts of the world, when they start looking at that area and start mapping out European countries, you realise the scale of those fires was just extraordinary.

I think I heard it was compared to the size of Belgium, right? At least at some point.

...Much bigger than that now. I think, one I heard was the entire all of South Korea, I think, was one that I saw.

Jeez.

You know, just huge in size. And so, you know, those fires have been linked to climate change because with increasing temperatures and also with drought, which preceded many of those fires in some parts of Australia, there's a much higher likelihood of fires occurring and those fires when they occur being more severe because of course, the vegetation is drier.

And we've seen this happening everywhere recently, right? It's going crazy in Greece, I think, at the moment.

Greece, California, of course, had their dose of it. Brazil had a huge fire in a, I think, what was supposed to be a wetland area.

Yeah.

And even in the Arctic of all places now is having fires, you know, so. And that again, is a symptom of the Arctic getting drier in some cases and warmer, which is a whole n'other issue in itself with melting permafrost, and let's not go there. So, of course, the biggest threat still, which I think, you know, many people need to realise is not climate change, that, in fact, is habitat loss and destruction.

And that's not to say that climate change is not an absolutely massive threat, it is, and it will become probably the biggest threat, you know, especially if we don't act, we, you know, keep temperature below 1.5 degrees or ideally much less than that.

But habitat destruction through things like land clearing for agriculture, which, you know, is related to all of us because we all eat, so we're all having an impact on that. But also, of course, urbanisation as well, so, you know, destroying areas for the housing, and again, we all need somewhere to live.

Those processes of habitat destruction are having a really big impact, and then of course, you add on top of that things like invasive species. And of course, in Australia, we have a terrible record for invasive species, for things like feral cats and red foxes, which have devastated much of our wildlife, particularly our mammals.

And, of course, pollution, you know, we know about the fact that, you know, there's plastic in the ocean, and there was a research article I think came out late last year that showed or might have been earlier this year that showed that there's now more man-made substances on Earth than there is living things.

Which I found truly staggering when you think about it, because if you think about the ocean in particular and you think about how much zooplankton and phytoplankton, so, you know, living plant material and small, microscopic animals, and you try to weigh all that, it's extraordinarily large. Then, of course, you add all the animals and the trees and everything else on the planet. And to think that man-made structures outweigh all that.

What is it going to be? Mostly plastic and concrete and steel, right?

Plastic and concrete. Yeah. And concrete is another really troubling one because concrete releases a lot of, you know, carbon in its manufacturing and just in general, so it's a huge polluter, concrete. So, it's, yeah, it's very sobering to sort of see all those things. And so, all of those things, of course, affect the environment at a global scale, but are affecting obviously many of the Australian ecosystems.

And I think the other thing, of course, that's worth remembering with Australia is that because it's been isolated as a continent for so long, and that's why we have all this wonderful, extraordinary fauna that's found and plants, as well, that are found largely nowhere else on Earth. So, we have what's called endemic species, so that's species found nowhere else. And in most cases, it's well above 80% or 90% for groups.

Those species, in many cases are susceptible to the introduction of whether it be new predators or new pathogens, because they haven't lived with those things, because they've been isolated, because we're on, you know, this massive island/continent. So...

What are some of the examples that we've- Of mammal species or other organisms that we've lost as a result of introduced species like the cane toad, the domestic cat and the Red Fox?

Yeah. So, I mean, the cane toad is an interesting one. The cane toad is no doubt had an impact on particular species like the northern quoll, although the cane toad, to my knowledge, hasn't actually been responsible for any extinctions yet.

Wow. Yet that we know of, right. Yeah.

...Local extinctions, yes, but not entire extinction. And it's worth remembering with the northern quoll that they were already declining in some parts of northern Australia, even before the cane toad turned up. And it's thought that part may be due to changed fire regimes and potentially livestock grazing as well, which may have contributed again to habitat loss and destruction and potentially also add on top of that feral cats.

But in terms of extinctions of mammals, you know, there's obviously been species of bilby that we no longer have, there's been, of course, the hopping mice species that have gone extinct...

This is my group. Yeah, that I was studying. I think there was a 10 species in that group and only 5 were extant. Yeah.

That's right, so. And hopping mice are these wonderful things that, you know, again, for listeners who might not know them, they look like mice, except that they hop like a kangaroo. So, if anyone's, you know, listening from North America, they would be sort of roughly equivalent to kangaroo rats in the US. Wonderful animals.

We've seen, of course, the desert rat kangaroo go extinct, which is this extraordinary animal, you know, probably no bigger than sort of your average house cat sized animal. But of course, it's a small wallaby looking animal. And they used to live on the gibber plains and gibber are these tiny little pebbles. And you have these huge areas that essentially, it's just rock, but, you know, tiny little pebbles and they get extraordinarily hot.

And the physiology of that animal must have been amazing to live out there. And there's incredible accounts, I think one of the last desert rat kangaroos that were seen by Hedley Finlayson, who was an early sort of, I guess, explorer, if you like, historian- natural historian. And they tell the story of trying to catch this animal on horseback.

I think I've read this.

Yeah, and the horses basically run to the point of exhaustion. So, you've got this tiny little wallaby hopping across this gibber field, you know, extraordinary heat and its athleticism basically nearly wore the horses down. So, you know, you just think of these animals we've lost, and we've lost the white-tailed rabbit rat from Victoria, the brushtail rabbit rat still exists in northern Australia.

So, there's a whole range of wonderful animals we've lost. There's a long-eared bat on Lord Howe Island. Of course, more recently we've had the Christmas Island pipistrelle and the Bramble Cay melomys. Bramble Cay melomys is a small rodent, probably the first mammal in the world to go extinct because of climate change. So, it...

Was that that the island actually sunk, right?

That's right, it got inundated. So, it had one island that it was living on, and it's thought that basically in, you know, a series of over serious time and pardon me, its island got inundated and of course, there was nowhere for that poor little rodent to go. So, you know, yeah, there's been an extraordinary number of mammals that are extinct, at least 34, we think, so far, post European colonisation.

We got one back recently, right? We got- I forgotten the species name. Shame on me, but the Shark Bay mouse.

Yeah, the Shark Bay mouse. That's right. Yeah.

Actually, Gould. Gould was the other species that we thought was a separate species that had gone extinct. That was in, I think, Victoria in New South Wales, except they found out genetically that it's the same as the Shark Bay mouse, which is all the way over in WA, but it was once spread across the entire continent.

Yeah. So, you can tell you're a scientist and a rodent expert, look at you.

Yeah. Well, I get sent these papers from friends who are just like, ha ha, it's not another species...

That was a good news story, and that was partly due to genetic work done by a fantastic group of researchers. So, yeah, it's always welcome when we get one back.

Well, the sad thing with that one, I guess, is though, that it's stuck in Shark Bay only on a small island off the mainland where it couldn't have been driven further to extinction.

And it also shows, I guess, the value of those islands in that they have managed to have species hold on, so that's important. But we're actually adding to that extinction list through revision as well because we're finding out more and more that there's more species when we look at museum records than we first appreciated.

So, I think there's some bandicoots as an example that will very soon be declared extinct that we didn't even recognise as species until work's been done in museums, so.

Wow.

I don't have the full details about that yet, but I know from colleagues that there will be additional species added to our extinction list.

Guys, stop looking. Stop looking at the already extinct species. Don't find more of them.

Yeah.

How do you feel-? How do you feel about, I think there was a story that came out recently about Tasmanian devils that were put on, is it Maria Island in Tasmania, obviously as a sort of safeguard population, and they drove the local fairy penguin or little penguin population to extinction? That seems like such a difficult ethical, moral kind of situation to be in, right?

Yeah. Look, I don't know the full details of the risk assessment that was done for that introduction, and it is from what I understand an introduction. So, the implication is that Tasmanian devils were actually never on Maria Island and that therefore poses, I guess, some, you know, controversial questions about whether that was an okay thing to do or not.

Because if you have fauna that is naive to a predator, then they potentially can go extinct, and particularly, of course, on a small island, you know, where you might not have a large population that can sustain a high predation rate.

There is, of course, challenges when you're faced, you know, with, I guess, you know, the Tasmanian devil potentially going extinct and people are probably scrambling to some extent to try and find safe havens, if you like to put them into, and particularly wild populations.

And that's important because although we have lots of Tasmanian devils in, you know, sanctuaries and zoos and so forth, it's well known that captive animals over time and in some cases quite rapidly over generations will lose wild behaviours.

Yeah.

Potentially can even lose "intelligence". So, it's been shown that as an example, over successive generations, the braincase of some captive animals gets smaller.

Wow.

Which makes sense when you think about it. If you're not having to spend all your life running away from predators and doing the sort of normal things that an animal in the wild would do. And you basically, you know, you've got your food on tap whenever you want it...

You don't have to think.

...Everything's there. You don't have to do all this thinking and behaving, right. So...

Is that a developmental environmental thing that where if you were to take those same animals that had a shrunken brain case and put them back in the wild, their offspring would develop a larger brain? Or is it a genetic thing where it's...?

I don't know how plastic it is. I presume there's a genetic component, but it also makes sense when you think about it from, I guess, a physiological perspective because as you probably would know, the brain is one of the hungriest organs, in fact, I think it's the hungriest organ in the body. It demands a huge amount of energy.

So, if you're not having to dedicate all this energy to that organ because you don't need to use it as much, then it makes sense to downsize it, right. And, you know, nature is pretty good at being efficient, so.

Crocodiles, right, their largest tooth is the size of their brain. They don't need much.

What they do, they do very well, and they've been doing it for a long time.

Man, they are so sneaky. I saw a few videos recently on YouTube, and there's one where this, I think he must be Texan. He's a Texan guy in the Northern Territory, and he's there and he's like, all right, today we're going to find out why you shouldn't go swimming or how you should know not to go swimming. And their holding a buffalo head near the water, and it's like really beautiful, pristine.

And he's like, okay, go, Johnny and Johnny just throws the buffalo head in the water. And just instantly this four-metre crocodile just comes straight up from the turbines of the water. And you're just like, holy crap, they're that sneaky and smart that they're just hanging out and you have no idea. And then you just slightly touch the water and there, boom, you're a gonna.

Yeah, no, they're amazing animals. I mean, seeing them in the wild, I think, is a really special experience. But it's also, I think it's quite a visceral experience. So, I've seen them in the wild and it's almost like, they look through you. And I guess it's because you know that it's an animal that genuinely sees you as food, so.

And there's very few animals actually in Australia that are like that because, you know, Australia has this reputation as being sort of the land of deadly things. But I would argue Australia's actually very safe. You know, you can walk around on land in Australia, you don't have to worry about lions or grizzly bears or some other large predator, you know, finding you and devouring or mauling you.

But if you go near the water, yes.

I'm always saying to people on the podcast, I'm like, if you go above, I think- What is it about? Rockhampton?

Rockhampton.

Stay out of the water, guys.

Yeah. Rockhampton has crocodiles, so don't swim in Rockhampton in the Fitzroy River. Don't do that.

That's it. It may look lovely, but just don't. And there was- Wasn't there a guy on the news who was trying to impress a backpacker and he just jumped in the water?

That was in Innisfail. Yep.

Yeah. And landed on a crocodile that bit his arm and broke his arm, but he survived. And you're just like...

...Don't know whether he and his partner are still together or not. It doesn't seem like the smartest way to impress, you know, potential partner to me.

I think she was on the news, and she was like, This guy is a moron, dude. Like...

I'm out, I'm out. Yeah.

Far out. So, getting back to the topic of today's podcast, you were on this large study that was looking at this ecosystem collapse and you found all 19 ecosystems across Australia were in a state of collapse. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Yeah. So, that spanned a really large area. So, it went right from the tropics of northern Australia, right down, in fact, to Antarctica. So, moss beds in Antarctica. And so, the work was led by, you know, a colleague of mine, Dana Bergstrom, and she is an expert in Antarctic ecosystems. But as you just said, it really showed that all systems had signatures of collapse.

And what we mean by collapse is when the ecosystem goes from a point of being so changed that it becomes, it appears, really, really different to its original state and also has a very high likelihood that it won't revert back to what it once was. So, you know, of course, the Great Barrier Reef would be a classic example of that. So, you have severe bleaching events, the coral eventually dies and then it's typically replaced with algae.

And so, you go from a situation having a really complex architecture of coral and fish and so forth that are all living in that coral reef. And then that old dies, the coral, and coral dependent fish also move on, and they are typically replaced with algal eating fish and like things like parrot fish and a pretty different assemblage of fish. And that's been happening in parts of the reef already.

So, unfortunately, yeah, we've seen, you know, whether it's, you know, the wet tropics. So, the wet tropics is an interesting case in point, and I remember quite vividly during my undergraduate years in James Cook University in Townsville, I remember being lectured by Professor Steve Williams and others about, you know, climate change. So, this is back in the mid-90s, mind you, which is not that long ago.

And warning of climate change and how it was going to cause the extinction of many of these mammals that are found, you know, and birds, and frogs, etc, that are found nowhere else. And essentially, if you imagine you're living on a mountain and you have a particular range on that mountain, elevation wise, that is your preferred place to live because there's a certain temperature and so forth.

As it gets hotter, you have to move up the mountain because your temperature range obviously moves up the mountain. But of course, if it gets too hot, you eventually run out of mountaintop and...

You have to get wings, right?

Yeah. And that's not really easy for a frog. And so, he predicted what would happen is that, yeah, birds and mammals would move up the mountain range. And in fact, Steve William's transacts, which he's been doing for many years in the same place, same location across multiple locations in the wet tropics, it is shown exactly that.

So, birds have moved up the mountain and in some place's mammal populations like the lemur or a ring-tailed possum has crashed and basically disappeared. So, to me, it was really sobering because I sort of thought, you know, as a, I guess, a somewhat naive undergraduate look, this is really concerning, but surely it won't be that bad. Like, surely this is a bit of an exaggeration, and here it is.

And the same thing with the reef, you know, I was lectured by Terry Hughes, who's probably one of Austral- Well, not probably, is one of Australia's foremost coral experts. And he was saying the same thing about the reef that the reef was going to be bleached and- And now we're seeing it in real life and the kelp forest, if you want to set up an example.

So, kelp, you know, which is this large algae that grows, has one of the fastest growth rates of any organism on the planet, as well. It's really a fascinating species.

Is it like what the bamboo of the ocean?

Yeah, it grows extraordinarily fast. And again, it's really important because it provides lots of habitat for other species. So, people love going diving in kelp forests in southern Australia, in fact, in many temperate regions in the world, because you see all this amazing, you know, fish and invertebrate life.

And the sharks stay away.

And the sharks stay away more or less because it's thick and it's complex. And- But a lot of that kelp is disappearing because the water is getting too warm. And of course, you know, we know about the alpine zone as well, so, you know, we're seeing, you know, snow melt and so forth. And snow is an interesting one because- And this is where we can talk about the mountain pygmy possum.

So, the mountain pygmy possum is this threatened species of possum, a tiny little, you know, furry ball of cuteness. And they're really struggling for a couple of reasons, obviously, you know, temperatures increasing in the alpine zone, which leads to melting of snow, and it also leads to more frequent fires, which can have a devastating impact on the alpine zone as well.

And snow has a really important purpose that many people don't appreciate, is that during winter the snow keeps the mountain pygmy possums alive. Because what happens is the mountain pygmy possums basically hibernate underneath the snow, but that snow is like a blanket, it's like an insulator. So, it stops it from getting super, super, super, super cold.

So, if you take that snow away, it's going to be even colder than it would otherwise be. So...

It's a weird thing to think, right.

It is.

...If you actually remove something. If you make it warmer, it's actually going to be colder for the animal.

Exactly. Because you suffer, you know, things like severe frost and just much lower temperatures. And so, yeah, it does seem perverse to say that losing snow is bad for something that's hibernating, but it is. And the other thing, of course, is these Bogong moths, which the mountain pygmy possums, and in fact, many other animals in that same system depend upon for their food have also declined.

And there's a whole range of hypotheses about why that might be, and that includes just some dry years that have led to a decline in Bogong numbers, but also pesticide use has been put forward as an impact in agricultural areas.

And they're a really large moth that have a lot of fat content that indigenous people use to gorge themselves onto. And they migrate, right? They migrate up to these mountains to reproduce.

Yeah, so they have really high fat and protein content. So, they're super nutritious. And as you just said, you know, Aboriginal people have had a long history of harvesting them for that reason as anyone would. They're just- It's a sensational food source...

Billions of them come together, right?

Literally billions. And there's reports, you know, going back a long time of parliament being overwhelmed by Bogong moths when the Bogong moth migration was occurring. They were literally flying all through parliament in Canberra, so. That's really ground to a halt in many places, and that's been a big problem.

And there was an intervention for those, so zoos Victoria, you know, really concerned about that, developed, was called Bogong Bikkies. And that's a, you know, specially formulated biscuit, basically, that they put out for these possums to try and get them through these lean periods.

But, you know, there is just these kind of science, and I guess another ecosystem that I'm very familiar with that's also suffered is the tropical savannas of northern Australia. So, I did my PhD in the savannas of northern Australia, and it's pretty close to my heart and I'm very familiar with them.

And there's a whole range of threats that are impacting the savannas, that includes the invasion of introduced grasses, particularly Gamba grass, which is this really, really tall grass that was introduced originally for pasture, for the cattle industry. And it can grow several metres high, and it likes fire.

And so, what happens is you get these stands of Gamba grass that become highly flammable, of course, and then that fire gets into the canopy of the savannas...

So, it sort of acts like a ladder.

Acts like a ladder, and you end up with more severe and more regular fires, which can kill trees. And so, then you end up with this sort of grassland monoculture of Gamba grass. And then, I guess if you add to that again, you know, intensification for cattle grazing, feral cats and climate change as well, in terms of extreme weather events, you know that those are causing big problems.

And we've seen, unfortunately, you know, going back to mammal declines for a second, the mammal lines are not- They're not just a historical thing, they're still happening.

So, we're seeing declines of, you know, large numbers of mammal species in northern Australia, still, whether it be the northern quoll, whether it be the brush-tailed rabbit rat, whether it be, you know, black footed tree rats, golden back tree rats, you know, spectacled hare-wallabies. There's a whole range of wonderful species in northern Australia that are still declining because of some of these factors.

Why should the average person worry about this, I mean, it's that sort of devil's advocate question, why should I care, right? Like I live in Melbourne or near Melbourne, I don't live in these savannas, it's a tiny little rabbit rat. Who cares if it disappears? What are the sort of broader implications of losing species like that?

Yeah. Well, there's a whole range of getting justification for why we should care about, you know, losing these species and one of them is that, I would argue, is that aside from what we care about, species have a right to exist, you know, they were here. I can't think of a single species that wasn't here before us because we as a species are pretty new. So, there's that.

There's also the cultural aspect of this that these species have cultural meaning and value to a whole range of different people, including, of course, Australia's First Nations people. So, there's that value. There's also the economic argument, you know, that many of these species and ecosystems have immense value economically.

You know, of course, the Great Barrier Reef, the wet tropics and so forth with tourism is worth billions of dollars to the economy. But also, if you want to look at just, you know, pure survival of us, you know, we're dependent on these ecosystems for our health and increase food productions.

So, the Murray-Darling Basin, which is also one of the ecosystems that we covered, which makes about 14% of Australia's landmass, but produces over 30% of our food, that's collapsing. So, you know, these ecosystems keep us alive, quite literally, and if they're not healthy and they're not functioning properly, then of course, that's really alarm- Alarm bells for us.

And I think the other thing, of course, that we need to be aware of is that when ecosystems, you know, break down and are not as healthy as we might sort of think, you know, we can see, other threats, of course, you know, start to be a problem and that includes disease. And so, you know, we know from the examples around the world where we interfered with ecosystems and there's been crossover of diseases from other species to humans.

And we also know that with, you know, as an example, land clearing and things like that where we've cleared forests, there's been more severe floods.

Well, to pause you there, this was something that really hit home for me when I went to Indonesia in 2012. So, we were doing research out there in the jungle, and it was really interesting to see driving through these mountains on Sulawesi, to get to from Makassar to Mamasa where we were going, it was like a 12-hour drive. But you would see outside the cities, they would kind of just clear all the forest off the mountains. Excuse me.

And then you would just see massive erosion and you're like, the place is fucked now. Like, there's no getting the forest back now for these mountains. But then the further into the countryside you would go, you would see farmers that had these farms set up, these rice paddies and stuff on these mountainsides and that they were so switched on that they'd left forest above the rice paddies on the mountains.

So, that one, it stopped erosion coming down, but also all the nutrients and everything would wash down out of the jungle, up on the top of the hill into their rice paddies. And so, they had obviously learnt over, however long, thousands of years.

Millenia. Yeah.

Exactly. To work in conjunction with the Forest. So, it does show why, the forest is actually going to help you as a result, right, and lead to less- Will lead to making more money and better survival.

Absolutely. Yeah. And in fact, that type of farming is often what we refer to as sort of the land sparing versus land sharing argument. So, you know, you can sort of have areas that you intensively, you know, farm or produce food from, but then within a matrix if you like, the surrounding landscape that still has, you know, remnants and patches of, you know, essentially more or less natural vegetation and so forth.

So, yeah, there's obvious benefits that flow from that.

So, what can the average person sort of do? Because I get hit with these stories all the time on the news, you know, the Great Barrier Reef screwed, we're done. And I- The pessimist in me, wants to say, oh, it's too late, it's gone. Like, what can I do about climate change globally that's going to be able to stop the seas warming up, right? But obviously, we need to act, you know, globally and as a group.

Is there sort of a silver lining to all of this where we can- The average person can make a difference and get out of apathy?

Yeah. Look, I think we can, and I think that's really important message is that it's not too late. And even if things are bad, if we act and ideally act substantially, they'll end up being far less worse than they would otherwise be, and I think that's a good outcome as well.

But I think, you know, we need to act obviously at the individual level, and that comes back to really simple things, you know, about choices that we all make, about, you know, what you eat. And we know that there's obviously different impacts of, you know, whether you have a high meat diet versus a moderate to no-meat diet.

That's just a well-established fact that that's going to have a different effect on the environment in terms of carbon emissions. You know, what we wear is really interesting, so, many people probably might not be aware that fashion is actually one of the biggest polluters in the world.

Man, I saw that doco recently was a "dead white man's clothes" over in Ghana and all of the export clothes that they get. And they just, I think it was like a huge percentage just gets thrown out into the ocean, and your just like...

Fast fashion produces an extraordinary amount of toxic chemicals, waste, as well as emissions. So, thinking about do I need that new T-shirt, or can I just wear the T-shirt that I've had for the last 15, 20 years like I do?

I keep thinking about that with my closet, too, I'm like I'm going to wear all this stuff until it just falls apart.

Yeah, luckily, no one in my family is particularly fashion savvy or conscious, so I can get away with that, but.

I think they said in the doco, the average person throws away 23 kilos of fashion or of, you know, clothing material, and I'm like, who the hell are these people?

Yeah, they're not my friends.

Well, and there must be a few really heavy players, cos the average person surely doesn't throw that much clothing away.

Yeah. Yeah, so there's, you know, there's tangible things like, you know, what do we eat? What do we wear? Obviously, you know, how we get around to work. Do you drive to work? Do you walk to work? All those things make a difference because of course, you know, at an individual level, like you say, it might not feel like very much. But of course, the more of us that do it, that scales up.

And then I think there's also- It's really important for us to understand the natural world and share that information with others, both within our family, but also just the general community.

Because of course, I think more people being aware of their nature that lives with us and among us, how it benefits us, you know, and we know from research that as an example, that, you know, having green space around you and nature can reduce mental health issues, can reduce crime rates.

I was going to ask you about that. Sorry to interrupt you, but...

That's alright.

...It blows my mind how the average person thinks, you know, nature is- It sort of otherizes nature, and it's like, yeah, who cares, you know, climate change, whatever we'll survive. But at the same time, that person will go camping on the weekend in the bush and be like, ah, nature, the serenity, you know, oh man, I just love cockatoos.

And your just like, how do you not see that you still find nature incredibly important even if you live in suburbia, right? Like, I have black cockatoos flying around here and it still blows my mind every day when I see them and I'm like, I'm so glad that the place is set up where they are still here.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I live in the burbs of Melbourne, and I have gang-gang cockatoos and yellow tail black cockatoos and all sorts of parrots. And, you know, I live fully in the burbs and we're just lucky that we have some areas of sort of, you know, pretty nice parkland and creek land where all these birds can still exist, so.

And I think to be honest, there's maybe a bit of fault lies, maybe with scientists themselves going back many decades where there was a bit of a separation, I think, between humans and nature, as if somehow humans were separate from that. And clearly, we're not, we're just, we're another animal living in the ecosystem and we're affected by it, and we affect the ecosystem. So, there's that interdependence.

And so, I think, you know, people being more aware of what's around them and how they can benefit from it and how they can care for it would be a good thing. And then, of course, you know, there's other more, I guess, things we can do, which is, you know, if you care about the environment and nature, we'll vote for political parties that care about them. And- Cos that's...

Exactly.

...That's the end game, right? Because, you know, if someone's policies and so forth don't align with your value system, then don't vote for them. And that's about being aware of, you know, what particular political parties are saying and what their policies are, whether it be the environment, whether it be education, whether it be, you know, human rights, whatever it is, whatever your values are, be aware of those and be active.

And so, I think there's a whole range of things that we need to be doing as individuals, which can then scale up. Because of course, if enough people say, well, why aren't you doing more about conserving the environment and why aren't you investing more money in the environment, then political parties will respond to that because they want to be in government.

Yeah, that's it, right. They honestly don't care about anything besides being elected. Right. So, if they find out that it's important to the average person to take care of the environment and that's how they're going to get elected, boom, they will do it, so.

Yeah, and I think that's a frustrating thing at the moment. I think, you know, with politics and environment, you know, is that in Australia, we have this extraordinary environment, you know, in so many facets, it's just it is truly extraordinary.

And yet it's also doing so badly in terms of its conservation. But there's this huge opportunity there. So, you know, we've had the horrible bushfires of 2019 and '20, we've had COVID and that's had- And we still have COVID, obviously. And, you know, that's having a huge impact on individuals and communities and economies.

And there's this massive opportunity that presents itself where you can say, okay, well, let's actually invest money in the environment to start repairing some of the damage. So, that might be pest animal control, that might be re-vegetation and so on and so forth, which requires jobs.

And so, you put that money in and then you get all these benefits of, of course, repairing the environment but creating employment for regional communities, particularly. There's been tremendous success of the indigenous ranger programmes, which is just fabulous.

So, that, you know, happened in central Australia and northern Australia and so forth where, you know, First Nations people are out there taking care of their own country, doing science, doing research, and of course, it provides employment opportunities. So...

It seemed like a no-brainer for so long, right? You're like, okay, so these indigenous people have much worse mental health, physical health, all these outcomes. And yet, you know, how did we not realise maybe we should pay them to take care of the environment that is effectively what they do, right?

So, we could invest this money, essentially an environmental repair, but at the same time, get all these benefits of, you know, actually helping regional communities recover from the impact of both bushfires because obviously that's also affected tourism as well...

Yeah.

...And COVID. And so, there's this massive opportunity there. And it's been shown time and time again that if you took that approach for every dollar that you put in, you get several dollars back, you know, from the economy. So, it's it's not a cost, it's actually an investment. So, it is a bit frustrating that, yeah, we're not seeing more of that, but hopefully that might change.

Do you think that these- The bushfires that we had as well as COVID is going to be a turning point for the average person? Because I feel like, especially after the bushfires, even I, my family, everyone all of a sudden wanted to go to these towns that they never wanted to in the past to do their bit, to try and get money into the economies there.

And the same with COVID, I think people have realised with these lockdowns like, holy shit, I want to go camping, I want to go out, I want to travel, like I'm not allowed to go out like I used to be. And so, do you think that they're going to appreciate the environment more, and there's going to be this turning point of, okay, we need to now do something?

Yeah, look, I hope so. I mean, I think with Australia in particular that we basically can't go overseas, we can't travel overseas, so you don't have, you know, hordes of Aussies going to Bali anymore.

Well, they're trying to get back, right?

Exactly. People are travelling more within Australia, which is great in one sense, in that, again, those regional communities are getting probably more money than they would otherwise get. But it also puts pressure on local areas because some of the infrastructure is just not set up for having really huge numbers of people because it was never as popular as it would be.

So, there's, I guess, pros and cons about having more people travelling to particular areas. But certainly, from an awareness perspective, I think that's great that more people are seeing Australia, because it is so diverse and there's so much of it to see. I mean, you literally could spend your entire life driving around Australia, trying to see it all and you wouldn't get close.

We have that sort of thing of grey nomads, right, in Australia they buy a caravan, and they just disappear for a decade.

I'm so ready for that. I'm so ready for that.

Well, you're a professor now, man. You just get to tap out whenever you want. I've got the grey beard already happening on the beard, so maybe I just need the caravan, but.

What's going to be the sticker on the back? Don't touch my dingo or...?

I like it. I like it. It's got potential. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's an interesting point about whether we will learn because, you know, those fires in Australia, I mean, obviously, they got global attention because they were so big and it did feel like one of the most epic wake up calls for the whole world, right.

Because it's like, okay, so this is happening to Australia, but this could happen to large areas and in fact it now has, right. So, it's happened to California as an example with them...

And the Amazon, right? They're having a whole bunch.

Amazon, Greece, you know, Siberia, you know, the Arctic. So, that- We have seen this playing out. But then, you know, obviously there was a decrease in human movement and impacts because of COVID and COVID lockdowns. But I'm sure you've seen it; I've certainly observed it.

That when some of those things were relaxed, both within Australia but also in other parts of the world, it just seems like a lot of people have snapped straight back into business-as-usual pre-COVID. And so, I don't know how sustained that, I guess, increased awareness and maybe trying to live a life that's somewhat different in terms of your impact, you know, how common that will be. I'd like to think it would be, but I'm not sure.

I think there's, you know, a lot of people that are desperate to just go back to how their lives were pre-COVID. And part of me can understand that, because COVID has just been extraordinarily stressful and taken a massive toll on so many people for so many different reasons.

And I can see why people are sort of wanting to just go back to a life pre-COVID because the current one is not much fun. But yeah, I think it will be interesting to see whether there's a big shift in our awareness. But I do think that as-

I guess as things get worse and worse, and it's kind of hard to imagine them being worse than they already are, but they will get worse, that maybe more people who are sort of still undecided or are not being, they think, directly affected by it, and all of a sudden will be...

This seems to be...

...Tipping point.

That seems to be the saddest thing about human nature, right. It's almost like you want to hold out as long as possible on spending your own resources until it's way too late, and then you kind of- The good side is that like with the vaccines for COVID and everything, people suddenly put this huge amount of effort into it, and that seems to be the sad thing with climate change.

I wonder if, you know, we're going to come up with all these technologies to suck these gases out of the atmosphere or to clean the oceans of plastics. All of a sudden, we're going to do that, you know, in 2050 or something, but we will have lost all these species and degraded the environment to such a point that it's kind of like, well, dead.

Yeah. And I think that's the tragedy of it because, yeah, I think people who have a, you know, reasonable knowledge of the environment know that, yeah, we may end up saving humanity overall, but there's going to be heavy losses in the meantime, and there already has been heavy losses.

When it's like the lockdown in Sydney, right, at the moment, I think I saw an article saying if she- If Gladys Berejiklian had just done a sharp lockdown, it would have cost $3 billion.

That's right.

But because she'd stretched it out so long, it's like 17 billion and counting.

That's right.

And you're just like, it's like, you're not- It's almost like you're not dying fast enough to do something about, you know, go to the hospital and get that thing sorted out, right?

Yeah, it's, you know, we often talk in the environmental realm about the precautionary principle. And so, if you have a, you know, a big threat that, if it's true, is really problematic. The sensible thing to do is intervene, even in the absence of perfect information the sensible thing is to intervene, because if you don't intervene, you don't get a second chance and things go really poorly.

And if you do intervene and it turns out it wasn't that bad, well, you haven't really lost all that much. You've just spent a bit of money and you probably in the meantime, of course, develop technology and done good things anyway, that was to their benefit. So, the precautionary principle certainly has a lot of merit, which would be nice to see being used a bit more regularly.

So, to finish up, are there any- Can we finish up on a positive note? Are there any good stories that have happened with the Australian ecosystems or with species, you know? I think I sent you some information about different ones being reintroduced. I may not have, but I know I saw recently there were two large mammal species that were reintroduced, right.

Well, large mammals. Small mammals like bandicoots and- Forgotten the other one. A bettong that have been reintroduced to a certain location in northern Australia.

Yeah, yeah. So, there's been, I think brush-tail bettongs have been reintroduced and so forth. So, I think there's definitely been good stories and there continues to be good stories. So, even in the fires, you know, there was lots of predictions of really devastating impacts on wildlife and plants. And there has been, there's no question about that.

So, you know, billions of animals have certainly died, and some species are probably being pushed to the brink of extinction. But there's also been extraordinary examples of survival. So, greater gliders, which are these wonderful animals that live in trees, you know, they really almost don't look real because they're incredibly fluffy with these ginormously massive ears relative to their head and this extraordinary long tail.

And they just look like they should be absolutely not able to cope with severe fires, particularly because they live in trees that, you know, combust. And they found in New South Wales even really, really severely burnt areas, populations of greater gliders that, you know, have survived, and no one actually knows exactly how they've done it.

So, they suspect, obviously, that they probably crawled down in the middle of a probably, really, really, really big tree that might have been insulated from the fire, you know, because of its size.

Yeah.

But even then, you say, well, what do they eat when they come out? Because all the leaves are all burnt and so forth. So- And potoroos, which again, are these sort of, you know, diminutive marsupials, you know, much smaller than a wallaby, and in Victoria, you know, a large area of the long-footed potoroo and the long-nosed potoroo, both of those species was burnt around East Victoria.

But lots of those potoroos are popping up on camera traps that were put out immediately after the fires. And again, it just shows, I think that, yes, there's been devastation, but our Australian wildlife, of course, has seen fire before, and obviously natural selection means that, you know, they've got behaviours that allow them to survive.

And, you know, there's obviously some really fantastic examples of animals running down or hopping down whatever, wombat burrows as an example to escape fire. That's...

That must be funny to be a wombat at the time of a fire, you'd just be like, guys.

Yeah, I wonder if a wombat started sitting at the front just saying, you know, get your ticket like, you know, make sure you take a ticket. But, you know, so there's been examples and I think, you know, scientists are doing wonderful things as well. So, you know, colleagues of mine in Tasmania, they've been trying to find really ingenious way to save threatened bird species, including the swift parrot and the forty-spotted pardalote.

So, as an example, the swift parrot, you know, it's declining to extinction because of, again, habitat destruction through forestry, but also the invasive sugar glider of all things, which goes into the nests of these swift parrots and kills the nestlings and in some cases, even the adults.

And as an example, they invented this nest box that automatically closes around dusk, so that the parrots are sitting in there snugly during the night and the possum can't get in. And then in the daytime, it opens again so the parrots can go out. And that same group did a really neat other intervention for the pardalote, which it was having this problem with this parasitic fly of the nestlings.

And they took, I think it was commercial feathers, it might have been chicken feathers, and they hung them up in the environment, but they doused them in an insecticide. And what happened was the pardalotes actually take these feathers and line their nests with them.

Wow.

And so, of course, when this fly comes along to try and of course, you know, parasitise these nestlings, they can't because it's got these insecticide and it dies. So, I just think, you know, scientists are finding all these incredibly inventive ways to help our native animals. So, absolutely hope is not lost, and of course, the earlier we intervene, the better.

So, you know, I think never give up hope, because if you- Once you give up hope, well, what's the alternative, right? It's just like, you're guaranteeing it's going to be bad, so. And I do take, I guess, solace and, you know, inspiration and energy from the fact that, you know, not just my group, but my colleagues and many others are doing really wonderful things and are passionate about trying to make things better.

So, definitely not all is lost at all.

Awesome. Well, Professor Euan Ritchie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, mate. How can people find out more about you and your work?

Look, probably the easiest couple of ways is I've got a website, which is just EuanRitchie.org. You can just type in Euan Ritchie Deakin, as well, you'll find me there, and probably on the conversation, as well. I've written 60+ articles on The Conversation, now...

You're an animal. Are they paying you?

No, it's from the goodness of my heart. But they are doing a wonderful thing, too, getting the word out. So yeah.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, mate. I'm looking forward to round three.

Thanks, Pete, was great chatting, as always.