Riley, S, Li, G & Parker, NJ 2011, 'Student Diversity: Widening Participation by Engaging Culturally Diverse Non-Law Students in Law' in Kift, S, Sanson, M, Cowley, J & Watson, P (eds), Excellence and Innovation in Legal Education, LexisNexis Butterworths, Sydney, Australia, pp. 337-362.
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Brandis, KJ, Kingsford, RT, Ren, S & Ramp, D 2011, 'Crisis Water Management and Ibis Breeding at Narran Lakes in Arid Australia', ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 489-498.
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Narran Lakes is a Ramsar site recognised for its importance for colonial waterbird breeding, which only occurs after large highly variable flooding events. In 2008, 74,095 pairs of ibis bred for the first time in seven years, establishing two contiguous colonies, a month apart. Most (97%) of the colony consisted of the straw-necked ibis (Threskiornis spinicollis) with the remainder consisting of glossy ibis (2%, Plegadis falcinellus) and Australian white ibis (1%, T. molucca). Following cessation of river flows, water levels fell rapidly in the colony site, resulting in a crisis management decision by governments to purchase and deliver water (10,423 Ml) to avert mass desertion of the colonies. There were significant differences in the reproductive success of each colony. In colony 1 60% of eggs hatched and 94% of chicks fledged, while in colony 2 40% of eggs hatched with only 17% of chicks fledging. Statistical analyses found that water depth was a significant variable in determining reproductive success. Rapid falls in water level during the chick stage in colony 2 resulted in decreased chick and overall offspring success. The results of this study identify the impact of upstream water resource development on colonial waterbird breeding and have implications for water management policies. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011.
Chapple, RS, Ramp, D, Bradstock, RA, Kingsford, RT, Merson, JA, Auld, TD, Fleming, PJS & Mulley, RC 2011, 'Integrating Science into Management of Ecosystems in the Greater Blue Mountains', ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 659-674.
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Effective management of large protected conservation areas is challenged by political, institutional and environmental complexity and inconsistency. Knowledge generation and its uptake into management are crucial to address these challenges. We reflect on practice at the interface between science and management of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area (GBMWHA), which covers approximately 1 million hectares west of Sydney, Australia. Multiple government agencies and other stakeholders are involved in its management, and decision-making is confounded by numerous plans of management and competing values and goals, reflecting the different objectives and responsibilities of stakeholders. To highlight the complexities of the decision-making process for this large area, we draw on the outcomes of a recent collaborative research project and focus on fire regimes and wild-dog control as examples of how existing knowledge is integrated into management. The collaborative research project achieved the objectives of collating and synthesizing biological data for the region; however, transfer of the project's outcomes to management has proved problematic. Reasons attributed to this include lack of clearly defined management objectives to guide research directions and uptake, and scientific information not being made more understandable and accessible. A key role of a local bridging organisation (e.g., the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute) in linking science and management is ensuring that research results with management significance can be effectively transmitted to agencies and that outcomes are explained for nonspecialists as well as more widely distributed. We conclude that improved links between science, policy, and management within an adaptive learning-by-doing framework for the GBMWHA would assist the usefulness and uptake of future research. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
Gold, A, Ramp, D & Laffan, SW 2011, 'Potential lantana invasion of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area under climate change.', Pacific Conservation Biology, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 54-54.
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Invasive weeds represent one of the greatest threats to ecosystem integrity worldwide, with climate change predictedto allow expansion of weed ranges in coming decades. One of Australia’s worst weeds is lantana (Lantana camara)which, given the potential for climatic change, is of increasing concern to those managing the mountainous regions inthe country’s southeast.In order to identify potential additional threats lantana may pose for Australia’s valued biodiversity, this researchdevelops a habitat suitability model for lantana in a portion of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area undercurrent and simulated warmer conditions. Minimum temperature was found to be the most important predictor correlatedwith potential lantana establishment, explaining over 88% of the variation in lantana presence predicted by the model.Currently, 8% of the study area was found to be suitable for lantana, with this figure reaching 94% after a simulated2°C rise in temperature anticipated by 2050.The sharp increase in suitable habitat highlights the importance of keeping the weed’s range restricted in the studyarea. The strong link between temperature and predicted lantana establishment confirms prior research and furtherstresses the threat this weed poses to the area’s biodiversity values as the climate warms. In addition, the modelidentified low-lying riparian areas as potential incursion pathways for the weed to travel further inland. Given the weed’sinvasiveness, potential for adverse impacts, and high capacity for dispersal, these pathways should not be overlookedwhen monitoring potential invasion of mountainous regions by lantana and other tropical weeds.
Roger, E, Laffan, SW & Ramp, D 2011, 'Road impacts a tipping point for wildlife populations in threatened landscapes', POPULATION ECOLOGY, vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 215-227.
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The conservation of wildlife populations living adjacent to roads is gaining international recognition as a worldwide concern. Populations living in road-impacted environments are influenced by spatial parameters including the amount and arrangement of suitable habitat. Similarly, heterogeneity in threatening processes can act at a variety of spatial scales and be crucial in affecting population persistence. Common wombats (Vombatus ursinus) are considered both widespread and abundant throughout their eastern Australian continental distribution. They nevertheless face many threats, primarily human induced. As well as impacts from disease and predation by introduced species, high roadside fatality rates on many rural roads are frequently reported. We parameterized a model for common wombat population viability analysis within a 750-km2 area of the northwestern corner of Kosciuszko National Park in New South Wales, Australia, and tested its sensitivity to changes in the values of basic parameters. We then assessed the relative efficiency of various mitigation measures by examining the combined impact from roads, disease and predation on wombat subpopulation persistence in the area. We constructed a stage-structured and spatially explicit model incorporating estimates of survival and fecundity parameters for each of the identified subpopulations using RAMAS GIS. Estimates of current threatening processes suggest mitigating road-kill is the most effective management solution. Results highlight the importance of recognizing the interplay between various threats and how their combination has the capacity to drive local depletion events. © 2010 The Society of Population Ecology and Springer.
Walker, J & Cooper, M 2011, 'Genealogies of resilience', Security Dialogue, vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 143-160.
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The concept of ‘resilience’ was first adopted within systems ecology in the 1970s, where it marked a move away from the homeostasis of Cold War resource management toward the far-from-equilibrium models of second-order cybernetics or complex systems theory. Resilience as an operational strategy of risk management has more recently been taken up in financial, urban and environmental security discourses, where it reflects a general consensus about the necessity of adaptation through endogenous crisis. The generalization of complex systems theory as a methodology of power has ambivalent sources. While the redefinition of the concept can be directly traced to the work of the ecologist Crawford S. Holling, the deployment of complex systems theory is perfectly in accord with the later philosophy of the Austrian neoliberal Friedrich Hayek. This ambivalence is reflected in the trajectory of complex systems theory itself, from critique to methodology of power.
Zhang, K, Laffan, SW, Ramp, D & Webster, E 2011, 'Incorporating a distance cost in systematic reserve design', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SCIENCE, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 393-404.
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The selection of parcels of land to incorporate into reserve systems necessitates trade-offs among biodiversity targets, costs such as land area and spatial compactness. There are well-established systematic reserve design algorithms that incorporate these trade-offs to assist decision-makers in this process. One cost that has received little attention is the proximity of new land parcels to the existing reserve network: the ability of environmental managers to effectively maintain and protect additional land units is often constrained by their proximity to existing reserve networks. The selection of parcels of land close to existing reserves makes them logistically easier to deploy infrastructure to and can also improve the spatial contiguity of the existing reserve network. Previous research has been limited to using distance from the centroids of existing reserves, which significantly biases algorithms when reserves are irregularly shaped. Here we describe a new approach that overcomes this limitation by using the existing reserve boundary to determine proximity. We provide an example of this approach by implementing it as an additional constraint in an analysis of biodiversity targets within the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, Australia, via the Marxan reserve design software. The incorporation of the distance cost in the analysis was effective in selecting parcels near to the existing reserve system and can be combined with other variables in the algorithm to improve spatial compactness while meeting biodiversity and other targets. It provides alternative solutions for use by reserve planners when extending reserve systems. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.
Bartel, R & Riley, S 1970, 'HOW DO WE RADICALLY IMPROVE WEEDS LAW? Critical action for wicked problems', HOW DO WE RADICALLY IMPROVE WEEDS LAW?, 16th NSW Weeds Conference, Coffs Harbour, New South Wales.
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This paper discusses the weed dilemma arguing that weed regulation in Australia needs a radical overhaul, primarily with respect to capacity and commitment in order to align interests and improve interaction amongst stakeholders. The analysis commences with an overview of the problem before moving to a discussion of four areas of regulation that demand critical action: disunity, proactivity, complexity and laxity. Law reform needs to take into account community heterogeneity (disunity), the difficulties in mandating action (proactivity), the needless confusion of laws and legal instruments between jurisdictions (complexity) and the history of slow and inadequate response and poor monitoring and enforcement (laxity). Radical improvements are required in three main areas. First, commitment generation is required to generate moral and norm agreement around weeds as undesirable. Second, radical improvement is required in the area of capacity generation, and of capacity facilitation through harmonisation of regulation. Third, radical improvement is required in the area of compliance generation, of those who are non-compliant and unlikely to respond to softer mechanisms such as education. A combination of market incentives could be used here; although moral hazards must also be avoided. Where enforcement action is adopted, care must also be taken that the regulated are not discouraged and commitment undermined as a result.
Gothe, J, Leung, T, Lim, RP, Phyu, YL, Plant, R & Walker, JR 1970, 'Advocating for Biodiversity in the Hawkesbury Nepean River: critical research practices of visual communication design', Geography on the Edge, Institute of Australian Geographers, University of Wollongong, pp. 1-47.
Plant, R, Walker, JR, Rayburg, SC, Gothe, J, Leung, TM, Phyu, YL & Lim, RP 1970, 'The 'Social Life of Pesticides': How organised irresponsibility in the Greater Sydney Basin threatens the biodiversity of the Hawkesbury-Nepean River', Institute of Australian Geographers (IAG) Conference Wollongong 2011, Wollongong, NSW.
Riley, S 1970, 'Finding Nemo: Using 'Key Threatening Processes' to Regulate Invasive Alien Species in Australian Freshwater Ecosystems', Water and the Law: Towards Sustainability, Water and the Law: Towards Sustainability - IUCN Academy of Environmental Law 2011 Colloquium, IUCN Academy of Environmental Law, South Africa.
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The use of Key Threatening Processes (KTPs) is increasingly seen as a way of incorporating regulation of invasive alien species into land and water management regimes. This paper evaluates the use of KTPs in Australian jurisdictions, with emphasis on freshwater ecosystems. Although the use of KTPs provides a number of positive features the regime also manifests a number of gaps and inconsistencies. These include the fact that KTPs are not necessarily preventative in nature, their use largely being triggered once environmental damage has already occurred. Furthermore, KTPs tend to operate in a fragmented and inconsistent manner across the range of Australian jurisdictions. Consequently, while the use of KTPs represents an important regulatory tool, it is not a panacea for the problem of invasive alien species.
Ben-Ami, D, Boom, K, Boronyak, LJ, Croft, DB, Ramp, D & Townend, C THINKK, the kangaroo Think Tank, UTS 2011, Welfare implications of commercial kangaroo harvesting: Do the ends justify the means?, pp. 1-49, Sydney, Australia.
