An Australian paper has trialled the use of ‘soundscape analysis’ as a low-cost way to indicate farm dam health, with its authors saying it could be an innovative way to track and reward biodiversity change in Australia’s nature repair market.

The paper, published in the Biological Conservation journal, used a dataset of 104,000 audio recordings from citizen scientists from across the country to identify and locate 107 species of frogs near 8,800 farm dams.

Frog species are among the most threatened animals on earth, with the paper’s authors asking what characteristics promote higher frog species richness at farm dams.

The study found that older dams of intermediate size, and around 20 years of age, with small or medium rainfall catchments, and situated near other freshwater systems or conservation sites had the highest value of frog species richness.

It said the relationships shown were highly generalisable and applicable at continental scale, and that patterns in frog species have the highest correlations with biodiversity patterns of all freshwater organisms, or taxa, which suggests that trends in frog species richness presented could be a guide for other taxa associated with farm dams.

Its findings also emphasised that it had demonstrated the value of large-scale citizen science datasets for identifying broadly generalisable relationships between habitat conditions and biodiversity.

“These datasets will become increasingly valuable for informing policy and management as they improve representativeness across disturbance gradients,” it said.

Identifying quantifiable features improving the ecological value of farm dams, would help identify “win-win” outcomes for agricultural productivity and conservation, the report said.

“In the future, ‘biodiversity credit’ policies could incentivise large-scale ecological restoration by rewarding individuals who invest in enhancing their farm dams to support and promote local biodiversity.”

The study noted that while no current biodiversity market initiative currently focuses on farm dams, establishing incentives to improve their management may be a cost-effective strategy for a large-scale conservation programme.

For example, increasing vegetation around farm dams improves farm productivity and benefits livestock health, while also increasing water quality, reducing GHG emissions, and offering breeding habitats for crustaceans, birds,  and amphibians, the paper said.

Study author and marine science professor at Deakin University, Peter Macreadie, wrote in a LinkedIn post that Australia’s nature repair market would need innovative, low-cost methods for measuring and tracking change in biodiversity.

“The goal was to enable landholders to receive biodiversity credits for improving the health of their farm dams to promote biodiversity. Spoiler alert: it worked well!” he wrote.

LOST IN LIMBO

The legislation designed to establish the legal and regulatory framework for Australia’s nature repair market (NRM) is currently in parliamentary limbo.

A senate committee scrutinising the bill last week held a public hearing, after it was given extra time to consult by the government after broad and wide-ranging concerns were raised by some scientists and environmental groups.

Chief among those concerns was that the legislation was being pushed through parliament before reforms to the broader Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act were made.

Several stakeholders highlighted that the many of the EPBC reforms would directly pertain to the nature repair market, arguing that the government was putting the cart before the horse.

Last week in Parliament, the Coalition put forward a motion to postpone the NRM legislation until after the reforms to the EPBC Act were considered.

However, the Greens sided with Labor in the Senate, 31 votes to 28,  to reject the motion.

“The Greens’ hypocrisy was again on show … as they failed to back a Coalition motion to postpone consideration of Labor’s flawed nature repair market legislation – despite saying they oppose it,” a statement from the Liberal party’s environment, fisheries, and forestry spokesperson, Senator Jonathon Duniam, said.

“There has been overwhelming stakeholder advocacy throughout 2023 that [Environment Minister] Tanya Plibersek’s nature repair market bills should be deferred until after parliamentary consideration of her wider EPBC Act overhaul.”

A senior advisor for Greens environment spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young on Thursday did not answer questions put to it by Carbon Pulse as to why the party chose to block the Coalition’s motion, instead referring to a previous statement saying the NRM should be withdrawn to make way for “credible environment policy”.

“Allowing corporations to pay to destroy nature is not nature positive,” Hanson-Young said. 

“The Greens are willing to work with the government to put in place laws that protect the environment, but we won’t support bogus laws that do nothing but allow polluters to greenwash.”

According to the Australian newspaper, the government has been actively negotiating with the Coalition in the Senate to win back its support of the NRM legislation.

The government believes it has a better chance of convincing the Coalition to support the bill, compared to the Greens, due to its similarity to a previous scheme put forward, and then abandoned when it was last in power.

The government is aiming for the legislation to be passed before Christmas.

By Mark Tilly – mark@carbon-pulse.com

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