Yes, and well argued.
At one time Australia was covered coast to coast, in verdant forest.
Native hunters and their fire sticks, changed that and gave us the arid interior we have now.
A problem further compounded by western flowing rivers, completely changing their courses and flowing east.
Native Indians farmed their forests, with a sharpened stick.
Naturally clear areas, were preferred? The stick was simply shoved into the ground and a pea and corn grain inserted in the hole.
As the corn grew, it provided support for the climbing pea.
Interestingly, the combination of a grain and a legume, provided a complete protein.
Many Indigenous populations have been selectively logging their forests for millennia, without harm to either flora or fauna.
In fact, there's plenty of supporting evidence that shows, regular selective harvesting, and grazing of the under-story, does a lot more good than harm.
Whereas, leaving it alone or locked up, is a recipe for disastrous wild fires, that destroy absolutely everything.
Conversely, the Mayan, clear felled their forests, and created a localised climate change, that turned their previously fertile and well watered forested farms, into a veritable desert, regularly beset with disastrous droughts.
And doesn't that story have a familiar ring?
Rhrosty.

Fred, a very interesting article. I find nothing to disagree with.

But I don’t think it points to a need to significantly change conservation priorities in Australia.

We know that a very large part of this continent consists of highly anthropogenically-influenced ecosystems, extending back perhaps 60 000, due primarily to Aboriginal burning practices. It is good to try and maintain these rather than let them change to a much more woody and less grassy nature, both in the interests of preserving the ecosystems that had come into dynamic balance with this anthropogenic factor and for productivity reasons with respect to grazing.

It is also good to strive to prevent new alien species from arriving and to put a lot of effort into preventing those which we know are major ecological and economic pests on other continents from getting a foothold here.

We have let widespread established weed species go. We know that they are here to stay. Even if we can find a species-specific pathogen, it is only likely to reduce the vigour of such species to some extent. The Cactoblastis moth – prickly-pear story really was a rare exception.

We have also declared many national parks that were grazing properties for a hundred years or more and which had consequently experienced a large degree of ‘denaturalisation’.

We are rightly paying particular attention to threatened species and ecosystems.

But there is one way in which we need to change our conservation priorities. And it is a huge factor, which is about as big as everything else put together. We need to direct our society in this country, and help direct the whole planet, towards a sustainable future, which necessitates stopping population growth.

About 10,000 years ago the land in the middle east was well-watered with forest cover. However, human activity turned much of the land into desert. Humans like pork. It is delicious meat, but pigs need water and shade. So God sent down an environmental impact statement saying one shouldn't eat pork. The religions of the desert peoples, Arabs and Jews, still follow that prohibition even if their communicants live in well-watered area. However, the worshipers of Jesus who mainly live in well-watered areas have chosen not to follow Jesus' religion and formed a new religion which allows them to eat pork. And so it goes.

What a great article. Two in the one day, it's probably a record.

It does my heart good to know that there are researchers doing this "real" stuff, & even more importantly, getting it published. It may be the rapidly approaching death of the global warming scam, or the loosening hold of the greenies this false science has precipitated, but it is promising.

Unfortunately we still get rubbish like that of david f, talking as if it is all man, not time & orbits that change the planet. David when the middle east was forest, the Great Barrier Reef was a range of coastal hills. Captain Cook only left pigs in Oz after he ran into that reef, so I don't think you can blame man & pigs for everything.

The fact is we are very fortunate that our forbears turned the planet into a place more suitable for us to live. The most pristine places I have seen were not suitable habitat for us.

I spent some time, in the 70s looking for WW11 bases in the islands. In just over 30 years much had totally disappeared into that "fragile" jungle.

Luddy old mate, I have to disagree. Preserving this snapshot of evolution we call today is just arrogance to me. Why is this moment better than any other?

If you have some great love of some particular ecosystem you really admire, & wish to preserve, by all means go for it. BUY your own bit of it, & do your damnedest. But mate, leave me, my taxes, & most of all my property out of it.

I have my own priorities, & they don't include running a live museum.

Dear Hasbeen,

Of course it was not all man, but there is archaeological evidence that the desertification of the middle east was primarily due to man. I don't blame man and pigs for everything. It was the acts of man which made the middle east unfit for pigs. I blame pigs for very little although they do uproot vegetation.

Anaerobic bacteria were early inhabitants of the planet. Their waste product was primarily oxygen. The oxygen was poison to them so they have retreated to gangrenous tissue, tidal mud flat and other places where free oxygen is scarce. However, what was noxious garbage to them was the stuff of life to organisms such as us which breathe in oxygen.

Every organism is modified by and modifies the environment. Anaerobic bacteria has had much more effect than our species.

David f.,

"....However, human activity turned much of the land into desert..."

How so?

Probably more likely to be variations in climate - monsoonal shifts and solar variations.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/05/09/2240138.htm#.UZWaJGdad0c

<< Luddy old mate, I have to disagree. Preserving this snapshot of evolution we call today is just arrogance to me. Why is this moment better than any other? >>

Hazza, there are a few good reasons to try and preserve the anthropogenic ecosystems of this continent:

1. In the absence of Aboriginal burning practices or the modern approximation of them, large areas have become much less grassy and more woody. The species balance has changed. Very few if any threatened native species are helped by this but many are potentially further disadvantaged. So where this hasn’t happened yet or has happened to a reversible extent, we should be striving to keep it as it is or reverse it respectively.

2. We would end up with more uniformity and less biodiversity. The Aboriginal mosaic burning practices of low intensity, which left a pattern of burnt and unburnt and different seral-staged areas, allow species impacted by fire to regroup and build up their populations, whereas hot wildfires could wipe them out of large areas, especially in environmental reserves that are surrounded by cleared land.

3. We would get hotter fires that are out of control, with devastating consequences for the natural environment and human activities alike. In fact, prescribed burning programs undertaken for the purposes of protecting human life and property are much the same as for maintaining natural ecosystems as they have been for thousands of years.

4. Without controlled burning, we would get declining productivity from our enormous rangelands, savannah country and grasslands, which are predominantly used for cattle grazing.

Dear Poirot,

We know of at least two actions in the middle east causing desertification. Deforestation to turn forest into agricultural land was the biggie. Top soil blew away as it is doing in Australia. More localised was the Roman action after the Jewish revolts when they poured salt water over the land to destroy it as punishment for the revolt. The government of Israel is still trying to reverse the effects of that.

Actually Luddy I agree with you, with my heart, but my head says all you really want to do is turn the clock back a couple of hundred years to a different snapshot, call that perfect, & preserve that as our museum piece.

Sounds like the beautiful countryside of my youth, from the blue mountains westward, except for the dreadful gully erosion the sheep tracks generated.

Yes woody thickets are a greenie thing. They are useless to man & beast, native of introduced. They even seen devoid of bird & reptile life, no wonder the aboriginals put the fire stick to them.

Actually if we left landholders alone they would do this for us. It is damn fool green activists that have made regular burning of paddocks to keep woody weeds down, a thing of the past. That & requiring a clearing permit to get rid of regrowth, in previously developed pasture.

We make farming so expensive that it is not worth doing. I learnt years ago that you must not do anything useful. Grow food, & the greenies are out to get you.

That is why I grew advanced pretty shrubs, for the Gold Coast developers to make their developments look like something than a bulldozer scar. Much more profitable, & the greenies somehow can't see you.

The idea of human encraochment of pristine nature is discussed here in the context of Gammage's thesis about aboriginal land management:

http://jennifermarohasy.com/2011/11/how-aborigines-made-australia-bill-gammage/?cp=all

What an interesting article - this certainly made my Friday!

In a way, it's quite affirming. While it doesn't quite argue for apathy, it does indicate that the changes we see - and the changes we cause - may not all be devastating. As demonstrated by Hasbeen's post (regarding the WWII sites absorbed by the jungle), ecosystems are resilient things. Perhaps we have focused for too long on preserving things as they are and, in fact, hindering natural processes of change and possibly improvement.

I see where Ludwig is coming from as well, though - and perhaps what we can do with this article and the studies cited by it is use them as sources of information to inform future policy. Regardless of direction, it offers some further insight into the workings of our planet. And further insight is usually a good thing.

That reminds me of a scene at Ravenshoe Nth Qld many years ago. Whilst on a Labor election campaign Senator Graham Richardson stood on a flat top truck with his arms out like an overweighted, spectacled Jesus. "this is what we have to protect" he told the curious locals. He was standing in front of a re-planted forest !

You poor fellow, Hazza – your heart and your head are in serious conflict!!

Ouch!!

Methinks you have a developed a terribly unfortunate impression of ‘greenies’!

individual - He (Richardson) was standing in front of a re-planted forest !

Intelligence is unfortunately an optional extra that politicians rarely if ever select. We aren't alone in having brain-dead politicians, I recall a certain George Bush peering through binoculars and uttering all the expected 'oohs' and 'aahs' on que, until someone noticed the protective lens caps were still on the binoculars the idiot was peering through !!

Luddy old mate, I take people as I find them.

In my experience, every rock you turn over will be concealing a greenie with yet another cunning plan, that looks OK on the surface, but, but has a nasty scorpion like sting in it's tail, designed to consign the legitimate rights of property owners, to them.

I was on the Logan & Albert water management committee some time back, during the drought, when Beattie wanted to pinch everyone's water to pump into Brisbane. Beattie, you may recall, had poor vision & could never see past the votes in Brisbane & suburbs. We found an unholy alliance between the greens & the public servants to rip off the country bumpkins.

For example many primary producers on the upper reaches of our coastal rivers have water harvesting rights, on their little creeks. A thunder storm will have a 20 meter deep, 100 meter wide torrent run past their property for a couple of hours. Within a few hours the creek is back to a trickle. They have very large pumps to harvest a little of it as it rushes past.

The greenies, some of them public servants, had snuck in a clause that had a trigger for the commencement of harvesting. The Luscombe weir way down near the salt water, had to be full before harvesting could commence.

Sounds fair, except that it takes 2 days for a fresh to get there, by which time harvestable levels of water is long gone from the head waters.

Fortunately one country bumpkin had heard of this trick, used elsewhere, & when confronted with it, the bureaucrats went to water & dropped it.

Just one example of many they tried at those conferences, & why I find that when it comes to sticking a knife in someone's back, greenies make Gillard look like a total amateur.

That is why I say, if you are productive, better wear armor on your back. There is sure to be a greenie behind you with a long sharp knife

Lots of things change the environment, gums burn things, ruminants cause grass, blue / green algae cause oxygen, greens waste money and southern temperate rainforests are dominated by as few as 4 species. Pristine implies some Theocratic inspired "perfect" (static?) state which is crazy in a dynamic world still exiting the last ice age. A better definition of goals is really needed.