Mount Lofty Ranges Woodland Birds

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:51): I want to talk about the fate of woodland birds in the Mount Lofty Ranges. Before doing that, I put on the record my disappointment that the Premier chose not to attend the women's march on Monday. I heard his interview on 891 the next morning and accepted his argument that cabinet does not move.

I therefore assumed by that he meant that cabinet had precluded his attendance, although I think it might have been able to be suspended. Nonetheless, I accepted it. We then discovered yesterday that the Deputy Premier attended the March after cabinet, and therefore the Premier made an active choice for something else in his diary that was not cabinet ahead of that march. I just put on the record my disappointment in that decision.

There has been a very interesting piece of research done, a longitudinal piece of research that took over 20 years, to look at the fate of woodland birds in the Mount Lofty Ranges. The birds are a significant species in their own right as part of an ecosystem, but they are often regarded as a bellwether species, an indicator of the stress that an ecosystem might be in. They are often representative of underlying forces that are affecting the quality and the health of an ecosystem.

The Nature Conservation Society, in concert with a couple of universities, has spent 20 years studying the appearance of the numbers of woodland birds in the Mount Lofty Ranges, which is one of our biodiversity hotspots. What they have discovered is deeply concerning. Over that 20 years, the number of birds has gone down by about 45 per cent. Of the 65 species that were being tracked over those 20 years, 38 have seen a decline.

There has been a trend whereby species that are more generalist and more hardy, the kind of species that one might expect to see coping in an urbanised environment, have increased, whereas the species that have decreased most substantially are those specialist woodland birds. It is also disturbing to see that there are many bird species on this list that one might have regarded perhaps when I was growing up as being common species that are now drifting towards threatened species status as part of this general decline.

I commend the Nature Conservation Society for this work. It is extremely important and it ought to be extremely useful. It is of course representative not only of what is going on in the Mount Lofty Ranges but what one would expect is occurring across south-eastern Australia, with similar biodiversity and similar pressures.

To address that, there needs to be better management of that land. There needs to be better addressing of pests, including, I imagine, feral cats, and also overabundant species, such as kangaroos, and better management of the way in which clearance can and cannot take place. Of course, we had a system that is designed to assist with that: it is the natural resources management system, now known as Landscape SA.

I am concerned about and will be keeping a close eye on the change in the boundary to what was the natural resources management board that covered Adelaide and the Mount Lofty Ranges. Now that the government has decided to divide that so that the Mount Lofty Ranges now sit in with the Hills and Fleurieu board, we now have the very big money through levies of Adelaide being divided from the Hills and Fleurieu.

As an example, last year the natural resources management board of Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges had about $36 million to spend and the Hills and Fleurieu has about $10 million to spend. If we cannot adequately resource the kind of land management response that is required to recognise that these species are in decline and that they are a bellwether of further decline elsewhere, then we are going to risk losing the integrity of that very important biodiversity.

I also note with some concern that the Nature Conservation Society has requested a meeting with the minister to discuss this report and what can be done and that that meeting was declined. I think that is disappointing and I would ask and expect the minister to—

The Hon. D.J. Speirs interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The Minister for Environment will cease interjecting. The minister is called to order. Continue.

The Hon. D.J. Speirs interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The minister is warned.

The Hon. D.J. Speirs interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The minister will cease interjecting.

Dr CLOSE: And I would ask him to reconsider for the sake of the health of the environment in the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges.