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New fauna permit guidelines
Kevin Bonham (k_bonham@utas.edu.au)

Elephant seal branding has been big news in Tasmania. The revelation in 2000 that a substantial proportion of elephant seals branded during ecological studies on Macquarie Island were suffering severe open wounds, resulted in a major shakeup of the State Government's approach to scientific research permits. This was not an isolated case, with the scientific benefits of other research programmes including those concerning Tasmanian devils also being publicly questioned. So, mammal research ethics is clearly an issue in Tasmania, but the shake-up this has produced could impact on the research of those who have never molested an elephant seal in their lives and whose research interests (invertebrates) lie outside the "vertebrate ethics" debate.

In January 2002 the Nature Conservation Branch issued its Guidelines for the issuing of scientific research permits involving protected wildlife and threatened fauna in Tasmania. The most significant features of these guidelines for invertebrate specialists are as follows:

Applications must be made on a research proforma which includes a summary of research aims and methods and a 300-word public comment for placement at http://www.dpiwe.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/SJON-55E3X3?open for public comment. After two weeks the Director considers any public comment received in advising whether to obtain a permit.

"Scientific permits will only be issued to researchers associated with recognised institutions such as Tasmanian or mainland Universities, Colleges, Museums or other equivalent research bodies"

Research in reserves that involves removal of wildlife is "discouraged and will be approved only where there is substantial justification ... The collection of some groups of invertebrates may be given special consideration in recognition of the existing knowledge gaps".

Permits for Endangered fauna may be issued only if the proposed research contributes to an approved recovery plan or "makes a substantial contribution to conservation management of the species or its related ecosystem".

Upon objecting to some aspects of the new system I was informed that the Tasmanian Conservation Trust had also lobbied for a mechanism under which "the public" (i.e. themselves) could appeal against the granting of a permit. This was (in my view extremely wisely) rejected. Nonetheless a number of issues remained. The new system is certainly more "red tape" for researchers, especially as the application turnaround is now 4-6 weeks. While it is encouraging that the NCB recognised the need for invertebrate research in reserves at all, hopefully the use of qualifying words like "some" and "may" is just non-committal language rather than a lack of recognition that nearly all reserves are data gaps for nearly all invertebrates to some degree.

The public comment placement section raises several concerns as well. Although researchers are anonymous, they are identified by institution and this, plus Tasmania being a small place, makes it easy to tell who is doing what. Being forced to disclose research methods is a potential issue affecting research confidentiality, especially in cases involving commercially sensitive surveys of sites for threatened species.

Restriction of the range of researchers who can be offered permits has the potential to prevent private ecological research consultants and field naturalist groups from researching, or to force private researchers to affiliate with institutions and therefore be counted as part of those institutions' research programmes (including for funding assessment) even though their affiliation was token only. Finally, the requirement that permit seekers be involved in projects with specified aims may make life difficult for those whose research is essentially unstructured (quite common in invertebrate research) or who are involved in a number of small and diverse projects.

I put a number of these concerns to NCB Manager Alastair Scott and Environment Minister David Llewellyn. I was able to obtain enough concessions that I feel that there is a reasonable chance of the new system being workable if applied with goodwill by those in charge of it. Specifically it was agreed that the guidelines were merely indicative, and the Director has discretion to not follow them in specific cases. DPIWE has agreed to change the guidelines so that appropriately qualified private researchers will be "clearly able to do so". No progress was achieved on the issue of public summaries, and I notice that while these are supposed to be posted for two weeks only, many are still on display months later.

It may be asked why such an obvious issue as the potential disadvantage to private researchers was not covered in the original guidelines. This appears to have been a classic case of the outcome of the consultation process reflecting the process's limitations. Recognised institutions and major scientific bodies were consulted but individual permit holders were not necessarily, and hence the concerns of those outside recognised institutions (eg invertebrate contractors) were not registered.

A degree of regulation is helpful in encouraging researchers to collect responsibly and make their results available, but too much regulation can have the opposite effect, encouraging researchers to either abandon projects or conceal or falsify their data to avoid prosecution. Hopefully a correct balance can be found, but it seems to me that instead of worrying about beetle-aficionados helping themselves to the odd Hoplogonus simsoni (a species which numbers in the tens of millions, of which thousands die during logging operations every year), far more attention should be paid to the massive quantities of unsorted invertebrate material (much of it bycatch) held by recognised institutions from their various research projects. Encouraging institutions to sort and label all such material and make it available to specialists promptly, could alone have greater invertebrate conservation benefits than the entire system of permit regulation.

Dragonfly conference

The 3rd WDA International Symposium of Odonatology will be held in the historic town of Beechworth, Australia, 8-13 January 2003. The organiser wishes to welcome all people with an interest in dragonflies, whether professionals or amateurs, collectors, photographers, or anyone with a general interest in nature and conservation. The Symposium will be hosted by John Hawking of the Murray Darling Freshwater Research Centre, Cooperative Research Centre for Freshwater Ecology and CSIRO Land and Water. All the symposium details can be found on the WDA's Web site at http://powell.colgate.edu/wda/Australia/home_page.htm

Cherax destructor information

The Queen Victoria Museum has recently had requests for identification of "unusual" freshwater crayfish: large-clawed blue yabbies which unexpectedly appear in farm dams and drainage ditches. The species concerned is the introduced Cherax destructor, which is being deliberately spread around Tasmania by people who want to use Cherax as bait (to catch another introduced freshwater species, brown trout).

Cherax spreading is NOT a good idea. This aggressive invader can out-compete native crayfish, weaken dam walls and potentially act as a reservoir for parasites and diseases which could threaten native crustaceans. Cherax spreading is also against the law. Under the Tasmanian Inland Fisheries Act 1995, it is illegal to import, release, transfer or have possession of introduced yabbies in Tasmania. Spreaders can be fined up to $25 000.

Tasmania's Inland Fisheries Service has two excellent websites with more information. The first, www.ifc.tas.gov.au/exoticman.html, provides an overview of freshwater introductions and the laws and issues concerning each. The second, www.ifc.tas.gov.au/fact_sheets/freshwater_crayfish.htm, is an illustrated guide to identifying Tasmanian crayfish, including Cherax.

Invasion of the train-stoppers
Bob Mesibov (mesibov@southcom.com.au)

The introduced Portugese Millipede Ommatoiulus moreleti (Lucas, 1860) was first recorded in South Australia in 1953. Over the next 20 years it boomed and became a major pest species in the Adelaide area, where it was regarded as a nuisance because it invaded homes. Eventually the boom collapsed (Bailey 1997). There is no evidence, interestingly, that O. moreleti competes with native millipede species (Griffin & Bull 1995).

In 1985 the Portugese Millipede was described as "established" in Victoria. Victorian populations are now very large, and millipede swarms have stopped trains this autumn along the line running northwest from Melbourne.

Here's the story as it appeared in The Age newspaper on 30 March 2002 (p. 3):

CREEPY CRAWLIES REDUCE TRAIN TO A SNAIL'S PACE
Fergus Shiel

Millipedes stopped the Melbourne to Ballarat train dead in its tracks in the early hours of Good Friday morning.

The sprinter service carrying football fans was unable to continue on its journey because the plant-eating insects had coated the tracks.

Once a year, millipedes are said to invade kilometres of train line between Deer Park and Ballan.

For more than an hour, the driver attempted to nudge the train at crawling pace.

"Would it help if we all got out and pushed," one passenger wondered. Another asked, "This might sound like a stupid question but do you have any brooms?"

The driver's best efforts proved futile, and the train returned to Bacchus Marsh at 1.35 am.

The 42 passengers, most of them Tigers and Magpies supporters, competed their journey by bus.

Several teenage girls called home on mobile phones to tell their parents that millipedes were keeping them out late.

Having left Melbourne at 11.18 pm the passengers finally arrived in Ballarat at 3.15 am after their millipede-impeded marathon.

Other Ballarat-bound trains, including a freight train on Wednesday night, were delayed by the millipedes this week.

I learned more about the train-stopping in Victoria from the National Express Group, which publishes a weekly newsletter for V/Line employees. The Weekly Update for 5 April reports that "Long-serving V/Line staff say this year's millipede stampede is the worst they can remember." Areas around Rockbank, Melton and Bacchus Marsh were particularly hard hit.

Although National Express Group runs the trains, the rail infrastructure is the responsibility of a different enterprise, Freight Australia. FA is said to be trying poison in an attempt to stop millipedes from "greasing" the rails and interfering with signal equipment.

The earliest collections of O. moreleti in Tasmania seem to be from the mid-1980s. The species is now well-established in Hobart, Launceston, Devonport and Burnie, but is almost never found in the bush. We may yet see a Portugese Millipede explosion in the "Europeanised" areas of Tasmania. Railway managers take heed...

More information:

Bailey, P.T. 1997. Decline of an invading millipede, Ommatoiulus moreleti in South Australia: the need for a better understanding of the mechanism (Diplopoda, Julida: Julidae). Entomologica Scandinavica, Supplement 51: 241-244.

Griffin, T.T. and Bull, C.M. 1995. Interactions between introduced and native millipede species in South Australia. Australian Journal of Zoology 43: 129-140.

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