Researchers in action: a focus on Australia's north

This issue juxtaposes a number of articles and short notes touching on a question of enormous importance to all Australians — the degree to which we are prepared to see the relatively intact ecosystems of the northern half of the continent fall prey to the extinction pressures already in evidence in the southern half. The lead feature in this issue is an interview with Virginia Young, national campaign director of The Wilderness Society's WildCountry program. WildCounty is an outstandingly visionary program with the bold and unashamedly ambitious vision of protecting and/or restoring entire ecosystems across Australia; highlighting opportunities to reintegrate landscapes of the south and protect and better manage the ecosystems of northern Australia. Ecologists have a critical role to play if this aim of secure protection and improved management is to be realized. The WildCountry feature article therefore focuses on the role of the project's Science Council; a voluntary advisory body of ecologists dedicated to providing the best available advice to optimize the success of this vision. This is not entirely new. Ecologists have been highly active as voluntary advisers to NGO and governments for many decades, often unrecognized. However, those who attended the ESA 2003 conference (see report this issue) will be aware that the WildCountry Science Council is part of a new wave of active groups (other examples being the Wentworth Group and the group responsible for the Brigalow Declaration) who are playing a more conspicuous leadership role in ecosystem management planning and policy development. Not for a minute, however, do I think the ecologists involved in these groups think of themselves as having all the answers or wishing to take responsibility from governments or the citizenry. Any leadership role involves some degree of risk-taking, and those involved have no doubt that the risks (and stakes) are high for WildCountry and other such projects if things go awry. The risks of ‘inaction’, however, appear much higher. Barry Hart (in his comment piece this issue) calls for the application of systematic ecological risk assessment to the consideration of any future irrigation schemes in northern Australia. Hart calls for ‘scenario planning’, in conjunction with such risk-based approaches, to scope innovative and environmentally sustainable new developments in northern Australia. Similarly, Paul Ryan (in his guest editorial this issue) calls for anticipation of potential problems and opportunities, emphasizing that ‘cross scale’ effects can create unexpected surprises, particularly in linked social-ecological systems. Few would argue against this need to rigorously anticipate potential impacts, but counter pressures do exist in our society that can undermine our potential to carry out rigorous analysis of environmental risks; and these may well become the ‘surprises’ we did not anticipate. Too little examination, in my view, is given to the importance or rigour of the range of beliefs underpinning society's attitudes; beliefs which can lead to inappropriate action or inaction. The belief of many Australians, for example, that the north is already protected or is too hostile to be attractive to entrepreneurs (or that modern day entrepreneurs are somehow less predatory) can lead to apathy wtihin the Australian public. On the other hand, the belief (among entrepreneurs and others) that development of agricultural enterprises in the north is necessarily a benefit to society is bolstered by a seriously under-examined assumption throughout our society that individual freedom is sacrosanct and the ultimate in ‘public good’. Even the very idea that science can identify potential impacts and that beaurocratic processes can control our impacts can become a potential pitfall if our main focus shifts from the goals to the process. If we set up a process intended to control development, for example, but it turns out to not be watertight, the very process runs the risk of becoming a process of enablement, subverted to the existing beliefs and assumptions of our society and tying up agencies in administration of the letter of the law. Yes, put the planning tools and systems in place, but at the same time we must ruthlessly test our concepts against all possible scenarios, taking into account our human tendencies to turn entrepreneurship into destruction, ignorance into apathy, and inspiration into overconfidence. But we mustn't stop there. The greatest focus must go towards tapping into our other very human tendency to rise to the occasion as a community when the seriousness of a situation is clearly articulated. I suggest a significant proportion of the Australian community (not to mention many international travellers) is bonded strongly and emotionally with the vast, untamed expanses of the northern half of Australia. Were this community presented with a really clear picture of the true risks of current economic and agricultural models to our beloved north — alongside an alternative scenario of more sustainable economic and agricultural models (as Virginia Young points out is part of the vision of WildCountry) — it is very possible we will rise to the occasion and collectively arrive at the wise, if painful, decisions we intuit are possible.