I relax by taking a walk behind Red Hill onto the ridge that overlooks the city; the lights of our nation’s capital lay below with all their troubles resting before the next day’s frenetic activity. As you fly in, the Brindabella’s are sometimes dusted with winter snow that can be seen amongst the snow gums, ribbon gums, stringy barks, acacias, banksias and callistemon. If you are interested in botany or even if you are not, there are interesting walks around Parliament.
A local builder, Joel, took me for a walk out near Mt Stromlo to the top of Camel’s Hump. I could have been a million miles from work as we sat and had a couple of beers on what was a pretty cold afternoon, but a spectacular view.
It is very hard to go bushwalking in Canberra, or in Australia for that matter, and not be near a member of the Myrtaceae family. The ubiquitous eucalypt, angophora with its masses of white honey scented blossoms, the massive tallow woods which form part of the Corymbias, paper barked Melaleucas on your creeks, rivers and coasts, for the more inquiring, the leptospermums and for the smarty pants, the metrosideros.
An introduced fungus has now placed our arboreal heritage at risk. The carbon sequestered by these plants will be severely hampered by what appears as a yellow fungus, yet this issue does not rate a mention in the carbon debate.
Uredo Rangelii is spreading from the initial sighting at Gosford in last year across the Myrtle (Myrtaceae) family of Eastern Australia. Myrtle rust as it is commonly known is part of the Guava Rust (Puccinia psidii) complex and both are similar in their DNA.
Guava rust was discovered in Brazil in 1884 and causes severe damage to Australian plants of the Myrtle family. The introduction of this fungus was not planned but that amounts for nought now that it is here.
The Federal Government’s concern for what could be a devastating environmental problem amounts to $1.4 million. I am sure they have stopped work at ANU to line up for that!
Do we have to hope and pray for a Dr Jean Macnamara coincidence, who while researching poliomyelitis in the US bumped into Dr Richard Shope researching Myxomatosis on rabbits?
Obviously we are hoping that a fluke of associated research like this by somebody else will bring a solution. While living carbon in trees dies the government says it is essential to sequestrate carbon.
The Government’s attention thus far is culpable. Whether you are a bush walker or a logger, a gardener or just conscientious this is an issue for you.
If we were clever we would be inspiring the acumen of diligent minds and motivated researchers to deal with a problem that is within our capabilities to fix. If our Government had started earlier we could have isolated this disease.
On a similar environmental front we now could isolate the great threat to apiarists and native honey bees from the Asian honey bee, another introduced pest marauding its way across our nation.
The Government is outraged by 400 head of cattle in the Alpine National Park but does nothing about the hundreds of thousands of deer, tens of thousands of pigs or thousands of brumbies.
Multiple billions of dollars are to be spent on something we cannot possibly affect, the temperature of the planet, while these other afflictions that we could deal with are running rampant. If we cannot stop a fungus in Australia it is highly unlikely that we have the acumen to change the temperature of planet earth. If a bee is beyond our control, is it then rather a large step to convince the globe that atmospheric recalibration is within Australia’s grasp. What is bad about a cow that is good about a feral pig?
If we see one day great swathes of our local environment effected by Myrtle Rust, then concerns about insolvable problems and the money expended chasing rainbows whilst a raging fire was burning at our back door will leave us all negligent.
We should target our research to tackling solvable problems at home, such as Myrtle Rust, rather than be lured into an absurd Wizard of Oz type multiple billion dollar carbon frolic.