Latham's Snipe

A recent bird survey at the Drouin Waste Water Treatment Plant in Settlement Rd, conducted by members of the Friends of Drouin’s Trees, resulted in the sighting of a pair of Latham’s Snipe, Gallinago hardwickii.

John Latham was an early English ornithologist whose work coincided with the explorations of James Cook. ‘Gallinago’ is from the Latin for ‘resembling a hen-like bird’. Charles Browne Hardwicke was an English naval lieutenant who settled in Tasmania. He was a horse-racing enthusiast and farmer whose connection with the bird is tenuous – its thought that he probably shot it frequently.

Record of Victorian sightings. Credit: Birdata

Latham’s Snipe is a cryptic migrant from Japan. It breeds in Japan and Eastern Russia during our winter and migrates to Australia via the East Asian–Australasian Flyway, arriving here in our spring. This migratory flight only takes a few days. Some researchers suggest that some birds do the journey in one non-stop flight. The birds depart Australia in late summer to return to their breeding grounds in the northern hemisphere.

Latham’s Snipe usually inhabit open freshwater wetlands with low, dense vegetation – swamps, bogs, dams, even roadside drains at times. It is an omnivorous species that uses its long bill to probe for seeds and invertebrates in the mud and shallow water.

Although not listed threatened in Victoria, in January this year, the Commonwealth’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act listed the Latham’s Snipe as Vulnerable. The main threat to the species is the loss of habitat, especially the modification of wetland areas by drainage and clearance for agricultural, residential and industrial development. The bushfires and droughts in Australia early this century contributed significantly to a dramatic decline in global numbers of Latham’s Snipe.

The bird has a reputation for being very shy and wary providing a challenge for early sporting shooters - and today’s photographers. Before bans on shooting were introduced in Victoria in 1984, the last state to do so, it is estimated that up to 6000 birds were shot annually in this state alone. In Russia, hunting for Latham’s Snipe still occurs today.

The bird’s recorded at Drouin recently inhabit some wet, tussocky pasture beside the Drouin Waste Water Treatment Plant in Settlement Rd. These paddocks have recently undergone some drainage works in preparation for residential development. Future sightings of Latham’s Snipe in this location are probably questionable.

100 Buln Buln Rd in Drouin is earmarked for a development of 400+ houses. The southern section is ideal Latham’s Snipe habitat!

 

Why value nature?

The argument goes …

Our economy is built on persistent growth. We continue to measure the health of our society by whether our GDP is growing. (GDP stands for gross domestic product. It is the monetary value of the final goods and services — that is, those that are bought by the final user — produced in a country in a given period of time - say a quarter or a year). Economists and most politicians measure the wellbeing of our society by tracking the growth of our GDP.

Some are now suggesting that measuring the health of our economy by focussing on GDP is leading to an environmental and human disaster. In fact, this is bleeding obvious.

An ever-growing economy requires an ever-growing supply of raw materials – natural resources. Dear old Earth however, only has a finite amount of these. Mother Nature is being abused and is struggling. In the constant pursuit of increasing profits and economic growth, corporations, developers and governments are exploiting our natural resources at the expense of biodiversity.

"Victorians could see an increased risk of fire this spring" - AFAC 

The result of this is we now have elevated global temperatures, monster storms and floods, out of control bushfires and an avalanche of species on the brink of extinction.

Once the habitat of the Australian Pipit and the Trim Sun-orchid

We need our leaders to stand up for the environment NOW. Nature, humanity, the planet  depends on it!

… just saying.

Further reading:

MSN News - We’re in debt to the Earth. How can we repay it?

Global Footprint Network.

UN - World Population Prospects 2024.

Trust for Nature - When we harm biodiversity, we’re harming ourselves. 

 

 

Ecocide

Most of us are probably familiar with terms such as suicide, homicide, infanticide, patricide, genocide and other similar terms for acts of atrocity, all of which have legal definitions that are recognised around the world.

In the 1970s, an American biologist, Arthur Galston, coined the term ‘ecocide’ in his campaign to stop the use of Agent Orange to defoliate large tracts of land during the Vietnam war.

More than twenty years later, Pauline ‘Polly’ Higgins, a Scottish barrister asked herself, “What would it take to create a legal duty of care for the Earth?” She saw the need to hold perpetrators to account for the long-term damage to the environment.

Over the years, various legal bodies in a wide number of countries have attempted to introduce laws to protect the natural environment from wilful destruction.

In June 2021, an independent panel of top international lawyers drafted a definition of ecocide: unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts. (This definition came 75 years after the terms ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘genocide’ were coined at Nuremberg)

The definition is part of an ongoing effort by Stop Ecocide International to have the crime of ecocide recognized as the fifth core crime of the International Criminal Court.

It cannot be denied that our natural environment is being slowly devastated by the actions of developers, corporations AND governments (at all levels) with weak, compromised or unheeded rules or regulations.

Lane Cove Council's solution to an act of ecocide (Credit: The Guardian)

Australia is number 5 on the list of the world’s worst deforestation countries (the only western nation in the top 10) and we also have one of the highest rates of animal extinctions. In the meantime, our environment minister is struggling to produce legislation to establish an Environment Protection Agency.

Let’s hope our planet is resilient enough to survive.