Volunteering for victory: can people power make New Zealand pest-free?

I've often discussed citizen science and how it varies from pie-in-the-sky research to projects with practical goals that may be achievable within a lifetime. When it comes to conserving native species New Zealand has a plethora of public engagements, including the Garden Bird Survey and Great Kererū Count (the latter being the country's largest citizen science project.) In a nation that is slowly waking to the realisation that it is far from '100% Pure', concerted efforts are finally be made to secure a future for beleaguered native fauna (and to a lesser extent flora, although few are seemingly aware of the interdependencies).

In late 2016 I wrote a post about the Predator Free 2050 scheme, focusing on how impractical it seemed. There was good reason for this: the University of Auckland estimated that it would require an astonishing NZ$9 billion to implement, a figure approaching 4% of the national GDP. Five years on and it appears this negativity was well deserved, as the project appears woefully underfunded; according to their website so far only NZ$178 million has been spent on the scheme. By comparison the annual budget for controlling possums, rats and stoats is NZ$114m, so it could hardly be deemed a flying start. There are an estimated 30 million possums in New Zealand, never mind the mustelids, rodents and other lesser pest species; the obvious implication is that numbers this large will require equally immense resources to eradicate them.

So what's to prevent this from being just another example of  'doomscrolling', of which have plentiful examples at the moment? After all, with billionaires now spending precious resources on racing to become astronauts - presumably superyachts are so last decade - it could be argued that those with the funds for the task just aren't interested in anything as mundane as conservation. It's often said that it is the people who make a place and in the case of New Zealand, it could just be the citizens - both with and without science - that make the difference. Kiwi ingenuity (that's the people, not the bird) and the 'number eight wire' mentality have enabled a young nation to punch well above its weight in so many fields. Can they do likewise in conservation?

Let's start with the science. New Zealand's rugged landscape requires a smart approach to predator control; there are so many reasons why flying thousands of bait-dropping helicopter missions would not be a good idea, not least due to the impossibility of funding them. Various projects are therefore now looking to lower the cost of poisoning and trapping, seeking robust maintenance-free solutions that can survive in the wilderness with minimal human intervention. From new thermal imaging cameras to auto-reset bait stations containing long-lasting toxins, research projects are showing that small-scale developments can make enormous differences to pest eradication. Hopefully, some of these devices will be out in the field in useful numbers within the next few years.

Often unsung heroes, there are also thousands of New Zealand citizens doing unpaid conservation work. I've met various volunteers for the Department of Conservation who spend their weekends climbing up and down knotted ropes and wading through icy streams in order to replenish bait boxes and reset traps. Many are retirees and some are ex-military - it's physically demanding and not at all glamorous, but can very satisfying work. The nation has a long history of such volunteering, something which has escalated in the past forty years with the setting up of predator-free fenced mainland sanctuaries and small sanctuary islands. To date, there are approximately 120 such refuges for native wildlife, many having been initiated by their local community and now being sustained by volunteers.

Even businesses are belatedly getting in on the act, giving their staff paid workdays to undertake volunteering such as planting and weeding within sanctuaries and coastal rubbish clean-ups. Earlier this year (between lockdowns of course) I was lucky enough to spend a day on Motuihe Island in the Hauraki Gulf, one of a group of thirty or so volunteers removing the noxious invasive plant woolly nightshade. What was amazing was seeing small flocks of native birds such as saddleback/tīeke, New Zealand parakeet/kākāriki and whitehead/pōpokotea, as opposed to the usual one or two you might see elsewhere (such as in zoo enclosures). Clearly, the planting of native species and foreign pest eradication - including abseiling to reach some of the weeds - has paid off beautifully.

Small islands are one thing, but what about the mainland? The nation's capital, Wellington, might be claimed by its inhabitants to be leading the way. Predator Free Wellington is the umbrella organisation for a range of projects that are aiming to eradicate pests from 30,000 hectares in and around the city. Already being possum free, the Miramar peninsula has been the starting point of rodent eradication, with almost 10,000 bait stations and traps placed at regularly intervals, mostly in residential gardens. The project is labour-intensive but still costs millions, so the hope is that by setting an example of what can be achieved, other regions in the country will follow suit. Whether their local councils will prove as farsighted as the capital's remains to be seen.

Like climate change mitigation, it seems that engaging and motivating the general public will be the only way to achieve a predator-free New Zealand, whether in 2050 or most likely at some point later. If this seems a bit naive - and overly optimistic, especially when compared to my initial assessment in 2016 - then last year's incredible work by the population to contain COVID-19 made New Zealand a frequent feature on international headlines, something that was previously a rare event. The 'team of five million' showed the naysayers (most of these, in my experience, being middle-aged white men) that even a relatively small group of people, globally speaking, could provide inspiration and be a role model to kick-start action elsewhere. If a lot of people take a little action, surely it can combine into an enormous amount of change? Much depends on the success - and cost - of Predator Free Wellington; if the nation's capital can achieve it the snowball effect might just take off, with local groups of volunteers making up for the lack of support from government and big business. 

What's in it for the volunteers, you might ask? The health benefits, from physical exercise to reducing stress and anxiety, are now well established. In addition, those who dedicate their spare time to unpaid conservation work can learn new practical skills, meet like-minded people, engage in teamwork and gain enjoyment from the sheer empowerment - knowing that you are actually achieving something useful. According to the Department of Conservation, it is estimated there are currently 200,000 active volunteers in this sector, which might not sound like a large number until you realise that it accounts for almost four percent of the New Zealand population!

Considering the history of the fenced reserves and sanctuary islands, it seems clear that motivating local communities can achieve wonders. If the Predator Free project is to succeed, we need a widespread engagement of the general population. New Zealand is far from alone, but having lost over fifty birds (more if you include the Chatham Islands), three lizards, three frogs, a bat, a freshwater fish, four plant species and numerous invertebrates, now is the time to act. Despite the negative effects of pollution and habitat loss due to development, it is a sobering thought that invasive fauna are equally capable of inflecting immense damage on a previously isolated ecosystem. As this plaque shows, many species were lost prior to the landing of the first Europeans: the original human inhabitants of New Zealand arrived less than a thousand years ago, but a combination of the introduced Polynesian rat and Polynesian dog, and their own hunting prowess, rapidly kick-started the eradication process.

Well, this is my last post, as least for a while. After twelve years I've learnt an enormous amount, but my sustainability champion voluntary work - engaging with over 5,000 work colleague on climate change mitigation and wider environmental issues - is taking up my spare time. If there is a moral to this story, it's a simple one: let's act - now!

Dangerous cargo: the accidental spread of alien organisms via commercial shipping

It's often said that whichever culture and environment we grow up in is the one we consider as the norm. Whilst my great-grandparents were born before the invention of heavier-than-air flying machines, I've booked numerous long-haul flights without considering much beyond their monetary and environmental cost. Yet this familiarity with our fast and efficient global transportation network masks an unpleasant side effect: it is second only to habitat loss when it comes to endangering biodiversity.

Although many environmental campaigns focus on fossil fuels, deforestation and unsustainable agricultural practices, the (mostly inadvertent) transportation of alien plants, animals and fungi from one region to another has quietly but catastrophically reduced biodiversity in many areas of the planet.

The earliest example I recall learning about was Stephen Jay Gould's heart-felt description of the extinction of French Polynesia's partulid tree snails at the hands of introduced carnivorous snails intended to control edible snail species (which were also deliberately introduced). While the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw large numbers of species intentionally established in areas far from their natural territories, the past half century has seen an acceleration in equally disastrous accidental introductions as a by-product of international trade.

A potential starting point for invasion ecology as a discipline in its own right was Oxford professor Charles Elton's 1958 publication The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants. The International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species followed six years later. Clearly, the negative effects of our activities were starting to become known. But has enough been done to publicise it in the intervening decades?

The Red list is the most accurate data source for regional biodiversity and the population health of all organisms known to science; yet few non-specialists seem even aware of its existence. Indeed, several decades passed after the list's creation before invasive biology became an important subject in professional ecology. Over the past thirty years the topic has seen a ten-fold increase in publications and citations - a sign of recognition if ever there was one - although mainstream media appears barely aware of its existence.

The IUCN's Invasive Species Specialist Group aids governments and organisations in planning the monitoring, containment, and where possible, destruction of invasive species. It runs the publicly-available Global Invasive Species Database, but its online presence appears to be poorly funded, or at least coordinated. Rather than a central hub there is a plethora of websites featuring varying degrees of professionalism and some distinctly out-of-date content. Perhaps clients are given direct instructions, but as a member of the public I found the ISSG sites bewildering in their variety.

Needless to say, when it does come to taking action, it can be assumed that economic imperatives such as agricultural pests take precedence over preservation of other endangered species. The only country I know of that is attempting a nation-wide eradication of most invasive animals (note: not plants and fungi) is New Zealand, with our Predator Free 2050 project. However, I'm uncertain how realistic it is. Even pre-Covid it appears to have lacked a solid funding source and now - with thirty years and counting until the deadline - there's even less chance of a comprehensive removal of numerous pest species.

What the Predator Free 2050 plan doesn't include is the multitude of plants and animals that slip through the net, so to speak: the legion of species currently invading our offshore environment. It's one thing to actually see land-based plants and animals, but the ocean is largely unknown territory to most people. With over forty thousand cargo vessels moving around the globe every year there is plenty of opportunity for organisms, especially their larval forms, to be inadvertently spread to new territories via both hulls and ballast water. Whilst Killer Algae (a slight hint there in the common name for Caulerpa taxifolia) and the Chinese mitten crab aren't as well-known as Japanese knotweed and Common myna bird they are just two of the many dangerous invaders spreading ever further from their original territories.

It isn't just marine vessels that can carry such dangerous cargo: the immense amount of plastic waste in our oceans can serve as life rafts for the propagation of alien species, albeit at the whim of currents moving rather slower than diesel power. The problem of course is that the oceans are enormous and so the only time the issue becomes known about is when an invasive organism is spotted encroaching in coastal waters. Unfortunately, marine lifeforms can't be easily dealt with using the traps and poison that work on land-based entities; indeed, international regulations seem as much concerned with the dangers of anti-fouling systems as with the issues they prevent.

In 2011 the International Maritime Organization implemented guidelines to minimise vessel biofouling as it relates to the accidental incursions of invasive marine organisms. New Zealand was the first of several nations to execute their own national strategy that turned these guidelines into mandatory practice - and take them further. In addition, New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) runs annual surveys, particularly around ports, but otherwise their funding appears inadequate to the immensity of the task. 

It's all very well keeping track of the ever-increasing list of resident invasive species around the nation's coastline, but little has been done to remove them. With about 150 types of alien organism now in residence around New Zealand's coast and the same again in occasional visitors, NIWA has been a partner in international competitions aimed at finding pest management solutions, at least for coastal ecosystems if not the deep ocean. Obvious solutions such as scrubbing hulls would just lead to direct contamination of ports, so some new thinking is clearly required.

Of course, the use of cargo ships is unlikely to reduce any time soon. Our global marine transport network is far from in decline and many nations lack the stringent precautions that New Zealand and Australia are now implementing. It has been estimated that cleaning hulls to prevent biofouling could reduce global marine fuel consumption by 10%, so perhaps this commercial benefit may win over those reluctant to spend heavily on prevention measures. But just as fishing vessels are still getting away with immense amounts of by-kill, merchant shipping in many areas of the world appears to be a law unto self.

Preserving regional marine biota is just as critical as land-based environmental protection. Allowing species to proliferate outside their normal range can only lead to deleterious changes - and when combined with our warming, increasingly acidic oceans, this does not bode well for all life on Earth, especially a hungry Homo sapiens. Just because we humans spend most of our time on land, we cannot afford to ignore the far larger ecosystems of the seas.

Wildfires and woeful thinking: why have Australians ignored global warming?

In a curious example of serendipity, I was thinking about a quote from the end of Carl Sagan's novel Contact ("For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love") just a few minutes before discovering his daughter Sasha Sagan's book For Small Creatures Such as We. Okay, so I didn't buy the book - due to the usual post-Christmas funds shortage - and cannot provide a review, but this indication of our place in the scale of creation is something that resonates deep within me.

I've often discussed how biased we are due to our physical size, especially when compared to other species we share the planet with. However, I've never really considered that other fundamental dimension, time. Another Carl Sagan quote echoes many a poet's rumination on our comparatively brief lifespan: "We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever."

There's more to this than just fairly familiar poetic conceit. Earlier this month I was given a brief taste of what it might be like to live on Mars, thanks to high-altitude dust and ash transported across the Tasman Sea from the Australian bush fires. By three o'clock in the afternoon a New Zealand summer's day was turned into an eerie orange twilight, with birds and nocturnal insects starting their evening routine some five hours early. There was even a faint powdery, acrid taste in the air, adding to the sense of other-worldliness.

Apart from the obvious fact that this an example of how climate change in one nation can affect another, there is a more disturbing element to all this. Why is it that despite the reports and general consensus of the global climate science community Australians have shown a woeful lack of interest, or indeed, negativity, towards climate change?

Could it be that our society is now centred upon such short increments of time (competing businesses trying to out-do each other, which comes down to working at the ever-increasing speed our technology dictates) that we have replaced analysis with unthinking acceptance of the simplest and most aggressive opinions? Research shows that compared to even twenty years' ago, children read far less non-school literature and rely on the almost useless 'celebrity' shouters of social media for much of their information; there's not much chance of learning about informed, considered arguments via these sources!

After all, it's difficult for most of us to remember exact details of the weather a year ago, but understanding climate change relies on acceptance of directional trends over at least decades. How much easier is it to accept the opinions of those who preserve the status quo and claim we can maintain our current lifestyle with impunity? When combined with the Western capitalist notion of continuous growth and self-regulation, we see a not-so-subtle indoctrination that describes action to prevent climate change as disruptive to the fundamental aspects of the society that has arisen since the Industrial Revolution.

There is an old French saying that we get the government we deserve, which in Australia's case, implies a widespread desire to ignore or even deny global warming. Yet the irony is that of all developed nations, Australia has been at the receiving end of some of its worst effects, thanks to an average increase in daily temperature of several degrees over past century. It takes little cognition to understand how this can lead to the drier conditions that have caused the horrific bush fires; even though some have been deliberately started, their scale has been exacerbated by the change of climate. So what until now has prevented Australians from tying the cause to the effects?

It's not as if there isn't plenty of real-world evidence. However, with computer technology able to generate 'deep fakes', which implies a level of sophistication that only experts can detect, is the public becoming mistrustful of the multitude of videos and photographs of melting polar caps and shrinking glaciers? When combined with the decreased trust in authority figures, scientists and their technical graphs and diagrams don't stand much of a chance of acceptance without a fair amount of suspicion. As mentioned, it's difficult to understand the subtleties inherent in much of science when you are running at breakneck speed just to stand still; slogans and comforting platitudes are much more acceptable - unless of course people become caught up in the outcome themselves.

However, this doesn't explain why it is the key phrases such as 'climate change' and 'global warming' generate such negative sentiment, even from those Australian farmers who admit to hotter, drier conditions than those experienced by their parents' and grandparents' generations. Somehow, these sober terms have become tainted as political slogans rather than scientifically-derived representations of reality. That this negativity has been achieved by deniers seems incredible, when you consider that not only does it run counter to the vast majority of report data but that it comes from many with vested interests in maintaining current industrial practices and levels of fossil fuel usage.

Could it simply be a question of semantics, with much-used labels deemed unacceptable at the same time as the causes of directly-experienced effects accepted as valid? If so, it would suggest that our contemporary technological society differs little from the mindset of pre-industrial civilisation, in which leaders were believed to have at very least a divine right to rule, or even a divine bloodline. In which case, is it appalling to suggest that the terrible bush fires have occurred not a minute too soon?

If it is only by becoming victims at the tip of the impending (melted) iceberg that global warming is deemed genuine, then so be it. When scientists are mistrusted and activists labelled as everything from misguided to corrupt and scheming manipulators, this might only leaves a taste of what lies ahead to convince a majority who would otherwise rather keep doing as they always have done and trust politicians to do the thinking for them. I can think of nothing more apt to end on than another Carl Sagan quote: "For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

Ocean acidification: climate change at the sour end

A few weeks ago, I overheard a 58 year old man telling a 12 year old boy that the most dire of scientists' warnings concerning global warming over the past 30 years had failed to materialise - and that what the boy needed to learn was to be able to separate facts from propaganda.

Although it is no doubt next to impossible to be able to change such entrenched mindsets as those of this particular baby boomer, there is still extremely limited public understanding of the insidious changes currently taking place in our oceans. In addition to the rise in both sea temperature and sea level (approaching a centimetre every two-to-three years) a rapid increase in ocean acidity is now on course to profoundly disrupt marine life.

With the USA pulling out of the Paris Agreement, will the rest of world manage to pull together in order to prevent another tipping point? After all, increasing ocean acidification isn't something us non-marine scientists can directly observe. One key point that is immediately obvious is that it isn't a localised issue: as a third of atmospheric carbon dioxide is absorbed into the oceans, all the planet's seas will be affected. The decrease of 0.1pH unit in the past few centuries equates to an astonishing 26-29% increase in acidity. What's more, this change is predicted to have doubled by the end of this century. Clearly, the effect on marine life is set to be substantial.

So what is being done to assess the probable issues? Various projects around the world are using mesocosms - transparent cylinders up to ten metres long - to understand the effects of current and predicted near-future acidity levels on marine life. Coral bleaching is possibly the one condition people will have heard of (although there appear to be an astonishing number of people who think that coral is a plant rather than invertebrate animal) but sea temperature changes are as much a cause as increased acidity. Apart from causing stress to some marine organisms, leading to such conditions as lowered immune systems and so the spread of disease, acidification reduces the material available for shell and carapace formation, especially for juveniles and nauplii.

The problem isn't so much the change itself as the rate of change, which is far faster than normal geophysical processes. Indeed, one report states that over the past 20 million years, changes in oceanic acidification have been barely one percent of the current rate. Obviously, there is minimal chance of the non-directed mechanism of natural selection keeping pace with adaptations to the new conditions.

While many organisms will suffer, some such as jellyfish and toxic algae may benefit, with the latter leading to the poisoning of key fishing industry species. This in turn could lead to toxins entering the human food chain, on top of the economic issues from the decline in fish and shellfish stocks. Indeed, the US Pacific coast aquaculture industry is already experiencing a reduction in the shellfish populations. This will be in addition to the pollution of fresh waterways already explored in a post last year.

Of the various experiments aiming to understand the impact of the rapid increase, the largest project is the pan-European Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification (BIOACID) scheme. Giant mesocosms sunk in a Swedish fjord have been sealed with local ocean water (and associated organisms) and half of them modified with the projected pH level.

Similar but small projects are underway in New Zealand and the Canary Islands, with preservation of edible stocks a key priority. Another problem with a decline in shellfish species destined for human consumption would be the loss of the raw material for chitosan, which may prove to be an ecologically-friendly replacement for plastic packaging.

Clearly, there could be numerous - and some as yet unknown - knock-on effects from the ocean acidification. Unlike the rise in atmospheric temperature, it is much more difficult to see the results of this fundamental change and for the public to understand the consequences. Yet again, the life forms affected are far from the cute poster species usually paraded to jump-start the public's environmental consciousness. Unfortunately, these may prove to be far more critical to the future of humanity and the wider world than say, giant pandas or Amur leopards. It's time for some serious sci-comm to spread the warning message!

Why tiny organisms can be big news: three stories focused on the smaller scales of life

I've often mentioned how small-scale life is overlooked compared to the larger creatures we share this planet with. Three recent examples concern progressively smaller species and show both how little most people know about such organisms and how such apparently inconsequential life forms can effect our species.

The first example comes from Shropshire in the United Kingdom and occurred last month. A family in Telford came home from holiday to find that the fish in their ornamental tank had died. On cleaning the tank, the toxic fumes that emanated from it were so dangerous as to poison the family, leading to a stay in an isolation ward while their house was sealed off. The agent responsible for this none other than Zoanthid soft corals growing on a tank ornament, which turned out to be palytoxin, for which there is no antidote. Severe cases can lead to death from respiratory or cardiac failure, making it the second most poisonous non-protein substance.

Incidentally, none of the news reports stated if it was the toxin that killed the fish in the aquarium. What is most interesting about this story was that the family were reported as being unaware that the coral was alive, in addition to not receiving a warning from the store they bought the coral from.

I'm uncertain whether they meant that they didn't know that corals are animals rather than plants or whether they considered them as some type of mineral! Either way this sort of lack of fairly basic knowledge about the natural world always fills me with amazement, as I would have thought that a combination of primary school books and David Attenborough documentaries would have supplied this information to just about anyone in the UK today.

Leaving aside the obvious fact that nature is not a harmless mis-en-scene built for the enjoyment of mankind, this example shows just how dangerous even small-scale life can be; proof indeed that you don't have to travel to Australia to come into close contact with highly toxic species. Once gain, global warming may increase such encounters, as since the start of the twenty-first century, the Mediterranean has been experiencing mass poisonings due to algal blooms produced by a palytoxin derivative. Perhaps the moral here is better education before buying a pet!

If NASA's recent announcement of the 2025 Europa Clipper mission comes to fruition we will be one step closer to knowing if there are exotic forms of life in the ice-blanketed ocean of this moon of Jupiter. However, it is possible that our very own Moon might already be harbouring animals of an altogether more terrestrial nature.

The Israeli Beresheet lander crashed there in April this year but news reports have suggested that a few thousand passengers in the form of barely visible tardigrades (no more than 1.2 millimeters long) may have survived, albeit in a dehydrated form of hibernation. Able to survive in a tun state without water and in conditions of intense cold and heat - as well as a high vacuum - these water bears are only susceptible to ultraviolet flux.

Experiments conducted on the International Space Station prove that tardigrades can be rehydrated back to normal after exposure to the outer space environment. The probes demise appears to have been rather fast, so whether the water bears could survive the impact and sudden change in temperature and loss of atmosphere is doubtful. Most news stories seem to play the cuteness factor, with few mentioning that biological contamination of another body could be a breach of international law. Of course, the Moon's lack of atmosphere and liquid water mean any survivors are likely to remain in a tun state unless they can be retrieved in the future.

Tardigrade research may one day aid the development of long-duration space travel and human hibernation. What I'd really like to know about this story is that had Beresheet landed successfully, just what were the plans for the tardigrades anyway? None of the articles I read stated just what sort of scientific experiment they were the unwilling participants in. It's not like they would be able to phone home!

The third story concerns a life form whose individuals are microscopic but none the less important in terms of their environmental impact en masse. Back in 2004, the Waiau River in New Zealand's South Island was found to contain large masses of didymo, a type of freshwater diatom or single-celled algae not known to be native to the Southern Hemisphere, let alone the country. Individual
Didymosphenia geminata, colloquially called 'rock snot', might not be any more than one or two hundred microns long but they are capable of generating clumps and strands of mucus around a meter in size. Other South Island rivers were soon found to be equally contaminated, with other nations ranging from Canada to Chile finding similar proliferation.

What made this outbreak interesting is that algal blooms are usually due to an excess of nutrients entering fresh water sources, primarily from agricultural run-off. In the case of didymo it appears to be quite the opposite, with massive increases in mucus production being generated by a severe lack of phosphorus. Ironically, this means that attempts to reduce nutrient levels in the affected rivers might have only exacerbated the problem. As evidence in favour of this hypothesis, rivers tested in New Zealand's North Island have been shown to contain a combination of high phosphorus and dead didymo cells.

It hasn't even been established beyond doubt as to whether didymo has been accidentally introduced to New Zealand and elsewhere, or whether it has always been a minor, unobtrusive component of the ecosystem previously kept in check. While some environmental departments and organisations seem to prefer the former option - presumably as ammunition in the fight against invasive species - either origin still leads to potential degradation. Smaller insect species that congregate around rivers and streams, such as gnats and midges, tend to increase in numbers at the expense of larger ones such as caddisflies and mayflies. This in turn could have a knock-on effect on freshwater fish, crustacea, and probably wading birds too.

Financially-important human activities are also affected, from commercial fishing to hydroelectric schemes, but there appears to be no method of eradicating didymo without destroying other life in the same river. Therefore it may turn out that the only solution is to pollute rivers with phosphorus in order to keep the diatom population at a minimum!

This is far from the first time that I have discussed small-scale life but the issues raised by these three stories show yet again that we maintain traditional scale prejudice at our peril. Whether it is a single household experiencing (potentially fatal) poisoning to widespread changes in freshwater environments, we need better public education - and probably far more funding for international research - in order to minimise the problems generated at scales usually beneath our gaze. When it comes down to the crunch, such organisms have a far greater impact on the global ecosystem than all the endangered pandas, elephants and rhinos combined. As for those lunar tardigrades, I wonder how they are getting on..?

Praying for time: the rise and fall of the New Zealand mantis

While the decline of the giant panda, great apes and various cetacean species have long garnered headlines, our scale prejudice has meant invertebrates have fared rather less well. Only with the worrying spread of colony collapse disorder (CCD) in bee hives have insect-themed stories gained public attention; yet most of the millions of other small critters remain on the sidelines. I've often mentioned that overlooking these small marvels could backfire on us, considering we don't know the knock-on effect their rapid decline - and possible near-future extinction - would have on the environment we rely on.

One such example here in New Zealand is our native praying mantis Orthodera novaezealandiae, which for all we know could be a key player in the pest control of our farms and gardens. Mantid species are often near the apex of invertebrate food webs, consuming the likes of mosquitoes, moth caterpillars and cockroaches. I admit that they are not exactly discriminating and will also eat useful species such as ladybirds or decorative ones like monarch butterflies. However, they are definitely preferable to pesticides, a known cause of CCD today and an acknowledged factor of insect decline since Rachel Carson's pioneering 1962 book Silent Spring.

Of course, we shouldn't just support species due to their usefulness: giant pandas aren't being conserved for any particular practical benefit. From a moral perspective it's much easier to convince the public that we should prevent their extinction than that of the rather uncuddly mantis. We still know so little about many insect species it's difficult to work out which need to be saved in order to preserve our agribusiness (versus all the others that of course should be preserved regardless). I’m not averse to careful extermination of plagues of locusts or mosquitoes, but indiscriminate destruction due to greed or stupidity is well, stupid, really.

Down but not out: the New Zealand praying mantis Orthodera novaezealandiae

Back to O. novaezealandiae. I've only seen New Zealand's sole native mantis species three times in the 'wild': twice in my garden in the past two years and once in my local reserve before that. What is particularly interesting is that since initial descriptions in the 1870's, hypotheses regarding its origin appear to have evolved due to patriotic trends as much as to factual evidence. Late Nineteenth Century accounts of its spread suggest an accidental importation from Australia by European sailing ship, since it is a clumsy, short-range flier and seabirds are unlikely to carry the insects - and certainly not their cemented oothecae (egg sacks) - on their feet.

However, some Victorian naturalists thought the insect was incorporated into Maori tradition, implying a precolonial existence. In contrast, A.W.B.Powell's 1947 book Native Animals of New Zealand refers to the native mantis as Orthodera ministralis (which today is only used to describe the Australian green mantis) and the author states it may well be a recent arrival from across the Tasman Sea. So the native species may not be particularly native after all! I find this fascinating, insomuch as it shows how little we understand about our local, smaller scale, wildlife when compared to New Zealand's birds, bats and even reptiles.

The specimens in my garden have lived up to their reputation for being feisty: they seem to size you up before launching themselves directly towards you, only for their wings to rapidly falter and force the insect into an emergency landing. After the most recent observation, I looked around the outside of the house and found three oothecae, two of which were under a window sill built in 2016. These finds are cheering, as it means that at least in my neighbourhood they must be holding their own.

Perhaps their chief enemy these days is the invasive Miomantis caffra. This inadvertently-introduced South African mantis was first seen in 1978 and is rapidly spreading throughout New Zealand's North Island. The intruder - frequently spotted in my garden - has several advantages over O. novaezealandiae: firstly, it is able to survive through winter. Second, it produces rather more nymphs per ootheca; combined with hatching over a longer period this presumably leads to a larger numbers of survivors per year. In addition, and most unfortunately, the native male appears to find the (cannibalistic) South African female more attractive than the female of its own species, frequently resulting in its own demise during mating.

Humans too have further aided the decline of the native mantis with the accidental introduction of parasitic wasps and widespread use of pesticides. After less than a century and a half of concerted effort, European settlers have managed to convert a large proportion of the best land in this corner of the Pacific into a facsimile of the English countryside - but at what cost to the local fauna and flora?

Working to the old adage that we won't save what we don't love and cannot love what we don't know, perhaps what is really required is an education piece disguised as entertainment. Promoting mammals in anthropomorphic form has long been a near-monopoly of children's literature (think Wind in the Willows) but perhaps it is about time that invertebrates had greater public exposure too. Gerald Durrell's 1956 semi-autobiographical best-seller My Family and Other Animals includes an hilarious battle in the author's childhood bedroom between Cicely the praying mantis and the slightly smaller Geronimo the gecko, with the lizard only winning after dropping its tail and receiving other injuries. Perhaps a contemporary writer telling tales in a similar vein might inspire more love for these overlooked critters before it is too late. Any takers?

Buzzing away: are insects on the verge of global extinction?

It's odd how some of these posts get initiated. For this particular one, there were two driving factors. One was passing a new house on my way to work where apart from the concrete driveway, the front garden consisted solely of a large square of artificial grass; the owners are clearly not nature lovers! The second inspiration was listening to a BBC Radio comedy quiz show, in which the panel discussed the recent report on global insect decline without being able to explain why this is important, apart from a vague mention of pollination.

Insect biologists have long sung the praises of these unrewarded miniature heroes, from JBS Haldane's supposed adage about God being "inordinately fond of stars and beetles" to EO Wilson's 1987 speech that described them as "the little things that run the world." In terms of numbers of species and individuals, invertebrates, especially insects, are the great success story of macroscopic life on our planet. So if they are in serious decline, does that spell trouble for Homo sapiens?

The new research claims that one-third of all insect species are currently endangered, extrapolating to wholesale extinction for the class Insecta over the next century. Although the popular press has started using evocative phrases such as "insect genocide" and even "insectageddon", just how accurate are these dramatic claims?

The United Nation's Red List currently describes three hundred insect species as critically endangered and a further seven hundred as vulnerable, but this is a tiny proportion of the total of...well, at lot more, at any rate. One oft-quoted figure is around one million insect species, although entomologists have estimated anywhere from 750,000 up to 30 million, with many species still lacking formal scientific identification. The hyperbole could therefore easily sound like unnecessary scaremongering, until you consider the details.

The new report states that butterflies and caddis flies are suffering the greatest decline, while cockroaches - as anyone who has faced a household infestation of them will know, they are likely to remain around until the end of world - and flies are the least affected orders. So, to paraphrase Monty Python, what have the insects ever done for us?

Pollination is of course of key importance, to both horticulture and un-managed 'wild' environments. Insects are near the base of many food webs; if numbers were much reduced, never mind removed, the impact on the rest of the ecosystem would be catastrophic. With the human population set to top ten billion in thirty years' time, we require ever larger regions of productive land for agriculture. They may be small at an individual level, but arthropods in general total about seventeen times the mass of all us H. sapiens. Insects replenish the soil, as alongside bacteria they break down dead matter and fecal material. So important is this latter function that New Zealand has been trialling non-native dung beetles to aid cattle farmers.

One key way to save fresh water and lessen the generation of the potent greenhouse gas methane is to reduce meat consumption in favour of insect protein. If insects are no longer around, then that will be an additional challenge in reducing environmental degradation. This of course also ignores the fact that insects are already a component in the diet of many developing nations. Last year I wrote about how scientists have been creating advanced materials derived from animals. Again, we are shooting ourselves in the foot if we allow this ready-made molecular library to be destroyed.

What is responsible for this global decline? Perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out to be the usual suspects. Agricultural chemicals including pesticides have been associated with honey-bee colony collapse disorder (not incidentally, some tests have found honey samples with neonicotinoids - the mostly widely-used insecticides - exceeding the recommended human dosage) so clearly the same culprit is affecting other insects. Fresh waterways, home to many aquatic insect species, are frequently as polluted as the soil, either due to agricultural run-off or industrial contaminants. Wild landscapes are being converted with great haste into farm land and urban sprawl, with an obviously much-reduced biota.

Climate change is playing its part, with soil acidity increasing just as it is in the oceans. Even areas as remote as central Australia have seen marked decreases in insects as higher temperatures and lower rainfall outpaces the ability to adapt to the new conditions. I've often mentioned the role of invasive species in the decimation of indigenous vertebrates, but insects are equally prone to suffer from the arrival of newcomers. Although New Zealand has very strict biosecurity protocols, the likes of Queensland fruit flies and brown marmorated stink bugs are still occasionally found in or around ports of entry.

Many nations have no such procedures in place, resulting in local species being out-competed or killed by introduced species or pathogens to which they have no resistance. Until fairly recently, even New Zealand had a lax attitude to the issue, resulting in the decline of native species such as carabid beetles. When I conducted a brief survey of my garden in 2017 I found that one-third of the insect species were non-native, most of these being accidental imports since the arrival of European settlers.

If insects are so vital to our survival, why has there been so little interest in their well-being? There are some fairly obvious suggestions here. Firstly, at least in Western cultures, insects have been deemed dirty, ugly things that can be killed without a second thought. Wasps, ants and cockroaches in particular are seen in this light of being unwelcome pests, with typical insect-related phrases including "creepy crawlies" and "don't let the bed bugs bite".

It's fairly well-known that malaria-carrying mosquitoes are the most dangerous animals for us humans in terms of fatalities. The widespread outbreaks of the Zika virus haven't done them any favours either. As Brian Cox's television series Wonders of Life showed, their small size has given them veritable super powers compared to us lumbering mammals, from climbing up sheer surfaces (as a praying mantis was doing a few nights' ago on my window) to having amazing strength-to-weight ratios. All in all, insects are a bit too alien for their own good!

Clearly, scale prejudice is also a key factor. On a recent trip to Auckland Central Library I only found one book on insects versus dozens on birds. Photographic technology has been a double-edged sword when it comes to giving us a clearer picture of insects: close-ups are often greeted with revulsion, yet until Sir David Attenborough's 2005 BBC series Life in the Undergrowth, there was little attempt to film their behaviour with the same level of detail as say, the lions and antelopes of the Serengeti. It should also be mentioned that when Rachel Carson's ground-breaking book about the dangers of pesticides, Silent Spring, was published in 1962, the resulting environmentalism was largely in support of birds rather than insects.

Among all this doom and gloom, are there any ways to prevent it? One thing is for certain, and that is that it won't be easy. The agricultural sector would have to make drastic changes for a start, becoming much smarter in the use of chemicals and be held responsible for the local environment, including waterways. Vertical farming and other novel techniques could reduce the need for new agricultural land and water usage, but developing nations would be hard-pressed to fund these themselves.

Before any major undertaking, there's going to have to be either a fundamental crisis, such as food shortages, in a rich nation or a massive public relations exercise to convince people to consider insects in the same light as giant pandas or dolphins. This is not going to be easy, but as David Attenborough put it: "These small creatures are within a few inches of our feet, wherever we go on land - but often, they're disregarded. We would do very well to remember them."

The Square Kilometre Array: is it the wrong big science for New Zealand?

I've previously written about the problems besetting some mega-budget science projects and the notion that perhaps they should lose precedence to smaller programmes with quicker returns to both science and society. Of course there are advantages to long-term international STEM collaboration, including social, economic and political benefits, but there is a good case for claiming that projects are sometimes initiated without a full appreciation of the details.

Take for example, the Square Kilometre Array or SKA, the largest science project New Zealand has ever been involved with. Headquartered at the UK's Jodrell Bank Observatory (incidentally, I've been there a few times and it's well worth a visit if you're in the vicinity), twelve key nations are collaborating to construct two main arrays, one in Australia and the other in South Africa and some of its neighbours. The combined arrays will have a sensitivity fifty times greater than previous radio telescopes, allowing them to survey the sky far faster than has been done before and look back in time much earlier than current instruments.

But such paradigm-shifting specifications come with a very high price tag – and the funding sources are yet to be finalised. The €1.8 billion project is scheduled to start Phase 1 construction in 2024 and aims to begin observations four years later. Research will include a wide range of fundamental astrophysical questions, from exploring the very early universe only 300,000 years after the Big Bang to testing general relativity, gaining information on dark energy and even some SETI research.

The New Zealand contribution is organised via the Australia-New Zealand SKA Coordination Committee (ANZSCC) and is geared towards data processing and storage. The Central Signal Processor and Science Data Processor are fundamental components of the project, since the radio telescopes are expected to generate more data than the world currently stores.  As well as closer collaboration between the scientists and engineers of various nations, one of the aims of SKA is to become a source of public science education, something I have repeatedly pointed out is in desperate need of improvement.

So if this all seems so promising, why has the New Zealand Government announced that it may pull back from committing the outstanding NZ$23 million (equal to less than 10% of Australia's funding)? To date, the country has paid less than NZ$3 million. In 2015 I discussed the danger of the country falling behind in cutting-edge STEM research and Rocket Lab aside (which is after all, an American-owned company despite its kiwi founder) the situation hasn't really changed. so why did Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods declare this potential about turn, which may well relegate New Zealand to associate membership status?

The initial answer appears to be one of pure economics. Although the project is generating development of world-class computer technology, a report has questioned the long-term benefits from investing such comparatively large sums of public money. India is already an associate member while Germany has been considering a similar downgrade for some years and Canada may follow suit. The project is already  a decade behind schedule and New Zealand had hoped to be an array-hosting nation but lost out due to a lower bid from South Africa. SKA is run by a same-name not-for-profit organisation and so presumably any financial rewards are of a secondary nature (perhaps along the lines of patents or new technologies that can be repurposed elsewhere).

Interestingly, New Zealand's science community has been divided on the issue. While Auckland University of Technology and Victoria University of Wellington have objected to the downgrade, the university of Auckland's head of physics Richard Easther has support the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) decision, saying that far from providing financial and long-term science benefits (in both applied computing and astrophysical data), SKA is a white elephant, hinting that it might well be obsolete by the time it starts gathering data.

Another University of Auckland astrophysicist, Dr Nick Rattenbury, argues that the nation's public funding infrastructure is currently too primitive for it to become involved in such international mega-budget STEM projects. I simply don't know enough detail to question whether such adages as you need to speculate in order to accumulate apply here; it's clearly a well-thought out programme, unlike say the politically-motivated yet vague and probably unworkable Predator Free 2050 scheme.

If SKA was committed to solving an immediate practical problem in the fields of say, environmental degradation, food and water production, or medicine, I would probably have no hesitation in supporting it whole-heartedly, regardless of the cost to the public purse. But the universe has been around almost fourteen billion years, so I for one don't mind if it holds onto a few of its fundamental secrets for a little while longer.

Concrete: a material of construction & destruction - and how to fix it

How often is it that we fail to consider what is under our noses? One of the most ubiquitous of man-made artifices - at least to the 55% of us who live in urban environments - is concrete. Our high-rise cities and power stations, farmyard siloes and hydroelectric dams wouldn't exist without it. As it is, global concrete consumption has quadrupled over the past quarter century, making it second only to water in terms of humanity's most-consumed substance. Unfortunately, it is also one of most environmentally-unfriendly materials on the planet.

Apart from what you might consider to be the aesthetic crimes of the bland, cookie-cutter approach to International Modernist architecture, there is a far greater issue due to the environmental degradation caused by the concrete manufacturing process. Cement is a key component of the material, but generates around 8% of all carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. As such, there needs to be a 20% reduction over the next ten years in order to fulfil the Paris Agreement - yet there is thought there may be a 25% increase in demand for concrete during this time span, particularly from the developing world. Although lower-carbon cements are being developed, concrete production causes other environmental issues as well. In particular, sand and gravel extraction is bad for the local ecology, including catastrophic damage to the sea bed.

So are there any alternatives? Since the 1990's, television series such as Grand Designs have presented British, New Zealand and Australian-based projects for (at times) extremely sustainable houses made from materials such as shipping containers, driftwood, straw bales, even shredded newspaper. However, these are mostly the unique dream builds of entrepreneurs, visionaries and let's face it, latter-day hippies. The techniques used might be suitable for domestic architecture, but they are impractical at a larger scale.

The US firm bioMASON studied coral in order to develop an alternative to conventional bricks, which generate large amounts of greenhouse gases during the firing process. They use a biomineralisation process, which basically consists of injecting microbes into nutrient-rich water containing sand and watching the rod-shaped bacteria grow into bricks over three to five days.  It's still comparatively early days for the technology, so meanwhile, what about applying the three environmental ‘Rs' of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle to conventional concrete design and manufacturing?

1 Reduce

3D printers are starting to be used in the construction industry to fabricate building and structural components, even small footbridges. Concrete extrusion designs require less material than is required by conventional timber moulds - not to mention removing the need for the timber itself. One common technique is to build up shapes such as walls from thin, stacked, layers. The technology is time-effective too: walls can be built up at a rate of several metres per hour, which may induce companies to make the initial outlay for the printing machinery.

As an example of the low cost, a 35 square metre demonstration house was built in Austin, Texas, last year at a cost of US$10,000 - and it only took 2 days to build. This year may see an entire housing project built in the Netherlands using 3D-printed concrete. Another technique has been pioneered at Exeter University in the UK, using graphene as an additive to reduce the amount of concrete required. This greatly increases both the water resistance and strength compared to the conventional material, thus halving the material requirement.

2 Reuse

Less than a third of the material from conventionally-built brick and timber structures can be reused after demolition. The post-war construction industry has continually reduced the quality of the building material it uses, especially in the residential sector; think of pre-fabricated roof trusses, made of new growth, comparatively unseasoned timber and held together by perforated connector plates. The intended lifespan of such structures could be as little as sixty years, with some integrated components such as roofing failing much sooner.

Compare this to Roman structures such as aqueducts and the Pantheon (the latter still being the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome) which are sound after two millennia, thanks to their volcanic ash-rich material and sophisticated engineering. Surely it makes sense to use concrete to construct long-lasting structures, rather than buildings that will not last as long as their architects? If the reuse of contemporary construction materials is minimal (about as far removed as you can get from the traditional approach of robbing out stone-based structures in their entirety) then longevity is the most logical alternative.

3 Recycle

It is becoming possible to both recycle other waste into concrete-based building materials and use concrete itself as a secure storage for greenhouse gases. A Canadian company called CarbonCure has developed a technique for permanently sequestering carbon dioxide in their concrete by converting it into a mineral during the manufacturing process, with the added benefits of increasing the strength of the material while reducing the amount of cement required.

As for recycling waste material as an ingredient, companies around the world have been developing light-weight concrete incorporating mixed plastic waste, the latter comprising anywhere from 10% to 60% of the volume, particularly with the addition of high density polyethylene.

For example New Zealand company Enviroplaz can use unsorted, unwashed plastic packaging to produce Plazrok, a polymer aggregate for creating a concrete which is up to 40% lighter than standard material. In addition, the same company has an alternative to metal and fibreglass panels in the form of Plaztuff, a fully recyclable, non-corroding material which is one-seventh the weight of steel. It has even been used to build boats as well as land-based items such as skips and playground furniture.

Therefore what might appear to be an intractable problem appears to have a variety of overlapping solutions that allow sustainable development in the building and civil engineering sector. It is somewhat unfortunate then that the conservative nature of these industries has until recently stalled progress in replacing a massive pollutant with much more environmentally sound alternatives. Clearly, green architecture doesn't have to be the sole prerogative of the driftwood dreamers; young entrepreneurs around the world are seizing the opportunity to create alternatives to the destructive effects of construction.

Setting low standards: bovine TB, badger culls and political pressure on science

If there's a single type of news story that's almost guaranteed to generate widespread sympathy across the British Isles it is one concerning the mistreatment of animals. Over the past five years, badger culls aimed at preventing the spread of bovine tuberculosis have generated much public debate, with opinions varying from those who think badgers are completely innocent victims to some who want to see the species eradicated anywhere domestic cattle are kept. Since the number of farmed cattle in the British Isles is close to ten million, this presumably means the no-badger zone is rather on the large size!

When debates concerning agriculture start to get overheated it usually reduces to a battleground between farmers and so-called townies, with mudslinging and emotive slogans taking precedence over the facts. In this particular case the badgers have an unusual ally in the form of rock musician and amateur astronomer Brian May, who has received much of the criticism usually reserved for tree huggers, animal rights' campaigners and environmentalist types in general.

As I've mentioned before, a species often receives support based more on its cuteness factor than anything else (I consider the irascible and curmudgeonly Mr Badger in Wind in the Willows as a fairly accurate representation of the true critter) so the farming community has seen fit to complain that ignorant, urban-based activists are unaware of the challenges Mother Nature throws at the agricultural sector.

Such stereotyping and reductionism does nothing to alleviate the issue, which other nations face in similar circumstances. New Zealand, for example, has a rapidly escalating battle over the use of 1080 to poison introduced predators. Even though many environmental organisations such as Forest and Bird proclaim it the most effective method the debate is far from settled, with the anti-1080 movement using emotive pleas in their campaign that at times combines hysteria and aggression in equal measure.

The UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has funded an independent scientific review from Oxford University as to the efficacy of the cull, resulting in popular press reports that the evidence does not support it. Indeed, the high ratio of dead badgers in return for a 'modest' reduction in the disease has been given as a key reason to stop the culls. This might appear to be a nod towards animal welfare, until you read that other issues include their cost and complexity and a desire for the Government to gain in the opinion polls. A key scientific argument against the effectiveness of the culls come from rural vets, who support data suggesting even at maximum success, the reduction in new cases of cattle TB would only be 12-16% - in exchange for a culling of over 70% of local badger populations.

So what does this example say about humanity's attitude towards the environment and the use of science to reinforce that attitude? In terms of numbers of individuals, humans and our domesticated species (both livestock and household pets) vastly outnumber the inhabitants of the wilderness. The once diverse ecosystem has been vastly reduced, predominantly in the temperate regions suitable for intensive farming. But in return for this largely irreversible loss we have gained all-year round access to an incredible variety of inexpensive foodstuffs; clearly, our gastronomic gains take precedence over the wider ecosystem.

In the case of wild badgers as disease vectors, it isn't just the livelihood of individual farmers that are at stake. The European Union's threat to impose trade sanctions on the UK, such as a ban on the export of live cattle, must be considered as a potential loss at the national level. Little wonder then that the British Government implemented the cull after what has been termed 'a randomised trial period' or more impressively, 'over fifteen years of intensive research.' Even so, was the result of all this enough to justify the finality of the chosen method - or was the scientific data manipulated in the name of political expediency?

One telling example of how the culling might have been ordered due to political pressure rather than any scientific smarts was the use of evidence from other nations that are successfully controlling bovine TB. Australia and New Zealand have been held up as examples of how control of the disease vectors can vastly reduce or indeed remove the problem altogether. Except of course that those two nations don't have any badgers; it is the possum, a semi-arboreal marsupial, that is responsible for the spread of tuberculosis there. It seems to me that two creatures from such vastly different lineages should never have been seen as workable comparisons; the natural world just doesn't fall into the neat categories we would like it to. As a matter of fact, the UK Government has partly blamed the lack of success on the badgers themselves for failing to follow predicted behaviour. In 2013 the then Environment Secretary Owen Paterson stated that the animals had cheated by 'moving the goal posts'!

The Oxford University research reports that far more cases of bovine TB result from transmission between cattle rather than directly from badgers, explaining that farmers are not following Defra guidelines to minimise the spread. Even Defra itself states that there has been not nearly enough implementation of badger-proof feed storage and fencing, while its chief scientific adviser, Ian Boyd, has been quoted as admitting that badgers may only be responsible for as little as 6% of bovine TB! This incidentally comes from the man who in 2013 wanted complete control over what scientific results were reported to Government ministers, presumably so as to maintain a clear-cut, pro-STEM political lobby. Hmm, methinks I smell something fishy...

What can we conclude from these shenanigans? If scientific research doesn't provide reliable support for a method, shouldn't the mistake be admitted and a new approach implemented? Science is the sole invention of humanity with built-in error correction but when it gets embroiled in politics, unabashed use of political tools such as spin can prove fatal. In this particular case, the fatalities in the short term were the badgers. In the long run, an unbalanced ecosystem would have resulted. And we all know which species likes to think of itself as the pinnacle of creation. There's enough denial of scientific results as it is, without distortion for the sake of political convenience. Let's hope Defra has the courage to own up and try other tactics against the wily badger.

Sonic booms and algal blooms: a smart approach to detoxifying waterways

A recent report here in New Zealand has raised some interesting issues around data interpretation and the need for independent analysis to minimise bias. The study has examined the state of our fresh water environment over the past decade, leading to the conclusion that our lakes and rivers are improving in water quality.

However, some of the data fails to support this: populations of freshwater macro invertebrates remain low, following a steady decline over many decades. Therefore while the overall tone of the report is one of optimism, some researchers have claimed that the data has been deliberately cherry-picked in order to present as positive a result as possible.

Of course, there are countless examples of interested parties skewing scientific data for their own ends, with government organisations and private corporations among the most common culprits. In this case, the recorded drop in nitrate levels has been promoted at the expense of the continued low population of small-scale fauna. You might well ask what use these worms, snails and insects are, but even a basic understanding of food webs shows that numerous native bird and freshwater fish species rely on these invertebrates for food. As I've mentioned so often the apparently insignificant may play a fundamental role in sustaining human agriculture (yes, some other species practice farming too!)

So what is it that is preventing the invertebrates' recovery? The answer seems to be an increase in photosynthetic cyanobacteria, or as is more commonly - and incorrectly known - blue-green algae. If it is identified at all, it's as a health food supplement called spirulina, available in smoothies and tablet form. However, most cyanobacteria species are not nearly as useful - or pleasant. To start with, their presence in water lowers the oxygen content, so thanks to fertiliser runoff - nitrogen and phosphorus in particular - they bloom exponentially wherever intensive farming occurs close to fresh water courses. Another agriculture-related issue is due to clearing the land for grazing: without trees to provide shade, rivers and streams grow warmer, encouraging algal growth. Therefore as global temperatures rise, climate change is having yet another negative effect on the environment.

Most species of cyanobacteria contain toxins that can severely affect animals much larger than fresh water snails. Dogs have been reported as dying in as little as a quarter of an hour from eating it, with New Zealand alone losing over one hundred and fifty pet canines in the past fifteen years; it's difficult to prevent consumption, since dogs seem to love the smell! Kiwis are no stranger to the phylum for other reasons, as over one hundred New Zealand rivers and lakes have been closed to swimmers since 2011 due to cyanobacterial contamination.

Exposure to contaminated water or eating fish from such an environment is enough to cause external irritation to humans and may even damage our internal organs and nervous system. Drinking water containing blue-green algae is even worse; considering their comparable size to some dogs, it is supposed that exposure could prove fatal to young children. Research conducted over the past few years also suggests that high-level contamination can lead to Lou Gehrig's disease, A.K.A. amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the same condition that Stephen Hawking suffered from.

What research you might ask is being done to discover a solution to this unpleasant organism? Chemicals additives including copper sulphate and calcium hypochlorite have been tried, but many are highly expensive while the toxicity of others is such that fish and crustacean populations also suffer, so this is hardly a suitable answer.

A more elegant solution has been under trial for the past two years, namely the use of ultrasound to sink the blue-green algae too deep to effectively photosynthesise, thus slowly killing it. A joint programme between New Zealand and the Netherlands uses a high-tech approach to identifying and destroying ninety per cent of each bloom. Whereas previous ultrasonic methods tended to be too powerful, thereby releasing algal toxins into the water, the new technique directly targets the individual algal species. Six tests per hour are used to assess water quality and detect the species to be eradicated. Once identified, the sonic blasts are calibrated for the target species and water condition, leading to a slower death for the blue-green algae that avoids cell wall rupture and so prevents the toxins from escaping.

Back to the earlier comment as to why the report's conclusions appear to have placed a positive spin that is unwarranted, the current and previous New Zealand Governments have announced initiatives to clean up our environment and so live up to the tourist slogan of '100% Pure'. The latest scheme requires making ninety percent of the nation's fresh water environments swimmable by 2040, which seems to be something of a tall order without radical changes to agriculture and the heavily polluting dairy sector in particular. Therefore the use of finely target sonic blasting couldn't come a moment too soon.

Our greed and short-sightedness has allowed cyanobacteria to greatly increase at the expense of the freshwater ecosystem, not to mention domesticated animals. Now advanced but small-scale technology has been developed to reduce it to non-toxic levels, but is yet to be implemented beyond the trial stage. Hopefully this eradication method will become widespread in the near future, a small victory in our enormous fight to right the wrongs of over-exploitation of the environment. But as with DDT, CFCs and numerous others, it does make me wonder how many more man-made time bombs could be ticking out there...

The anaesthetic of familiarity: how our upbringing can blind us to the obvious

In the restored Edwardian school classroom at Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) there is a notice on the wall stating 'Do not ask your teacher questions.' Fortunately, education now goes some way in many nations to emphasising the importance of individual curiosity rather than mere obedience to authority. Of course, there are a fair number of politicians and corporation executives who wish it wasn't so, as an incurious mind is easier to sway than a questioning one. As my last post mentioned, the World Wide Web can be something of an ally for them, since the 'winner takes all' approach of a review-based system aids the slogans and rhetoric of those who wish to control who we vote for and what we buy.

Even the most liberal of nations and cultures face self-imposed hurdles centered round which is the best solution and which is just the most familiar one from our formative years. This post therefore looks at another side of the subjective thinking discussed earlier this month, namely a trap that Richard Dawkins has described as the "anaesthetic of familiarity". Basically, this is when conventions are so accepted as to be seen as the primary option instead of being merely one of a series of choices. Or, as the British philosopher Susan Stebbing wrote in her 1939 book Thinking to Some Purpose: "One of the gravest difficulties encountered at the outset of the attempt to think effectively consists in the difficulty of recognizing what we know as distinguished from what we do not know but merely take for granted."

Again, this mind set is much loved by the manufacturing sector; in addition to such well-known ploys as deliberate obsolescence and staggered release cycles, there are worse examples, especially in everyday consumerism. We often hear how little nutritional value many highly processed foods contain, but think what this has done for the vitamin and mineral supplement industry, whose annual worldwide sales now approach US$40 billion!

Citizens of developed nations today face very different key issues to our pre-industrial ancestors, not the least among them being a constant barrage of decision making. Thanks to the enormous variety of choices available concerning almost every aspect of our daily lives, we have to consider everything from what we wear to what we eat. The deluge of predominantly useless information that we receive in the era of the hashtag makes it more difficult for us to concentrate on problem solving, meaning that the easiest way out is just to follow the crowd.

Richard Dawkins' solution to these issues is to imagine yourself as an alien visitor and then observe the world as a curious outsider. This seems to me to be beyond the reach of many, for whom daily routine appears to be their only way to cope. If this sounds harsh, it comes from personal experience; I've met plenty of people who actively seek an ostrich-like head-in-the-sand approach to life to avoid the trials and tribulations - as well as the wonders - of this rapidly-changing world.

Instead, I would suggest an easier option when it comes to some areas of STEM research: ensure that a fair proportion of researchers and other thought leaders are adult migrants from other nations. Then they will be able to apply an outside perspective, hopefully identifying givens that are too obvious to be spotted by those who have grown up with them.

New Zealand is a good example of this, with arguably its two best known science communicators having been born overseas: Siouxsie Wiles and Michelle Dickinson, A.K.A. Nanogirl. Dr Wiles is a UK-trained microbiologist at the University of Auckland. She frequently appears on Radio New Zealand as well as undertaking television and social media work to promote science in general, as well as for her specialism of fighting bacterial infection.

Dr Dickinson is a materials engineering lecturer and nanomaterials researcher at the University of Auckland who studied in both the UK and USA. Her public outreach work includes books, school tours and both broadcast and social media. She has enough sci-comm kudos that last year, despite not having a background in astronomy, she interviewed Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson during the Auckland leg of his A Cosmic Perspective tour.

The work of the above examples is proof that newcomers can recognise a critical need compared to their home grown equivalents. What is interesting is that despite coming from English-speaking backgrounds - and therefore with limited cultural disparity to their adoptive New Zealand - there must have been enough that was different to convince Doctors Wiles and Dickinson of the need for a hands-on, media savvy approach to science communication.

This is still far from the norm: many STEM professionals believe there is little point to promoting their work to the public except via print-based publications. Indeed, some famous science communicators such as Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould were widely criticised during their lifetime by the scientific establishment for what were deemed undue efforts at self-promotion and the associated debasement of science by combining it with show business.

As an aside, I have to say that as brilliant as some volumes of popular science are, they do tend to preach to the converted; how many non-science fans are likely to pick up a book on say string theory, just for a bit of light reading or self-improvement (the latter being a Victorian convention that appears to have largely fallen from favour)? Instead, the outreach work of the expat examples above is aimed at the widest possible audience without over-simplification or distortion of the principles being communicated.

This approach may not solve all issues about how to think outside the box - scientists may be so embedded within their culture as to not realise that there is a box - but surely by stepping outside the comfort zone we grew up in we may find problems that the local population hasn't noticed?

Critical thinking is key to the scientific enterprise, but it would appear, to little else in human cultures. If we can find methods to avoid the anaesthetic of familiarity and acknowledge that what we deem of as normal can be far from optimal, then these should be promoted with all gusto. If the post-modern creed is that all world views are equally valid and science is just another form of culture-biased story-telling, then now more than ever we need cognitive tools to break through the subjective barriers. If more STEM professionals are able to cross borders and work in unfamiliar locations, isn’t there a chance they can recognise issues that fall under the local radar and so supply a new perspective we need if we are to fulfil our potential?

Minding the miniscule: the scale prejudice in everyday life

I was recently weeding a vegetable bed in the garden when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a centipede frantically heading for cover after I had inadvertently disturbed its hiding spot. In my experience, most gardeners are oblivious to the diminutive fauna and flora around them unless they are pests targeted for removal or obliteration. It's only when the likes of a biting or stinging organism - or even just a large and/or hairy yet harmless spider - comes into view do people consciously think about the miniature cornucopia of life around them.

Even then, we consider our needs rather greater than theirs: how many of us stop to consider the effect we are having when we dig up paving slabs and find a bustling ant colony underneath? In his 2004 essay Dolittle and Darwin, Richard Dawkins pondered what contemporary foible or -ism future generations will castigate us for. Something I consider worth looking at in this context is scale-ism, which might be defined as the failure to apply a suitable level of consideration to life outside of 'everyday' measurements.

I've previously discussed neo-microscopic water-based life but larger fauna visible without optical aids is easy to overlook when humans are living in a primarily artificial environment - as over half our species is now doing. Several ideas spring to mind as to why breaking this scale-based prejudice could be important:

1. Unthinking destruction or pollution of the natural environment doesn't just cause problems for 'poster' species, predominantly cuddly mammals. The invertebrates that live on or around larger life-forms may be critical to these ecosystems or even further afield. Removal of one, seemingly inconsequential, species could allow another to proliferate at potentially great cost to humans (for example, as disease vectors or agricultural pests). Food webs don't begin at the chicken and egg level we are used to from pre-school picture books onwards.
2. The recognition that size doesn't necessarily equate to importance is critical to the preservation of the environment not just for nature's sake but for the future of humanity. Think of the power of the small water mould Phytophthora agathidicida which is responsible for killing the largest residents of New Zealand's podocarp forests, the ancient coniferous kauri Agathis australis. The conservation organisation Forest and Bird claims that kauri are the lynchpin for seventeen other plant species in these forests: losing them will have a severe domino effect.
3. Early detection of small-scale pests may help to prevent their spread but this requires vigilance from the wider public, not just specialists; failure to recognise that tiny organisms may be far more than a slight nuisance can be immensely costly. In recent years there have been two cases in New Zealand where the accidental import of unwanted insects had severe if temporary repercussions for the economy. In late 2017 three car carriers were denied entry to Auckland when they were found to contain the brown marmorated stink bug Halyomorpha halys. If they had not been detected, it is thought this insect would have caused NZ$4 billion in crop damage over the next twenty years. Two years earlier, the Queensland fruit fly Bactrocera tryoni was found in central Auckland. As a consequence, NZ$15 million was spent eradicating it, a small price to pay for the NZ$5 billion per annum it would have cost the horticulture industry had it spread.

Clearly, these critters are to be ignored at our peril! Although the previous New Zealand government introduced the Predator Free 2050 programme, conservation organisations are claiming the lack of central funding and detailed planning makes the scheme unrealistic by a large margin (if anything, the official website suggests that local communities should organise volunteer groups and undertake most of the work themselves!) Even so, this scheme is intended to eradicate alien mammal species, presumably on the grounds that despite their importance, pest invertebrates are just too small to keep excluded permanently - the five introduced wasp species springing to mind at this point.

It isn't just smaller scale animals that are important; and how many people have you met who think that the word animal means only a creature with a backbone, not insects and other invertebrates? Minute and inconspicuous plants and fungi also need considering. As curator at Auckland Botanic Gardens Bec Stanley is keen to point out, most of the public appear to have plant blindness. Myrtle rust is a fungus that attacks native plants such as the iconic pōhutukawa or New Zealand Christmas tree, having most probably been carried on the wind to New Zealand from Australia. It isn't just New Zealand's Department of Conservation that is asking the public to watch out for it: the Ministry for Primary Industries also requests notification of its spread across the North Island, due to the potential damage to commercial species such as eucalyptus. This is yet another example of a botanical David versus Goliath situation going on right under our oblivious noses.

Even without the economic impact, paying attention to the smaller elements within our environment is undoubtedly beneficial. Thinking more holistically and less parochially is often a good thing when it comes to science and technology; paradigm shifts are rarely achieved by being comfortable and content with the status quo. Going beyond the daily centimetre-to-metre range that we are used to dealing with allows us to comprehend a bit more of the cosmic perspective that Neil deGrasse Tyson and other science communicators endeavour to promote - surely no bad thing when it comes to lowering boundaries between cultures in a time with increasingly sectarian states of mind?

Understanding anything a little out of the humdrum can be interesting in and of itself. As Brian Cox's BBC documentary series Wonders of Life showed, a slight change of scale can lead to apparent miracles, such as the insects that can walk up glass walls or support hundreds of times their own weight and shrug off equally outsized falls. Who knows, preservation or research into some of our small-scale friends might lead to considerable benefits too, as with the recent discovery of the immensely strong silk produced by Darwin's bark spider Caerostris darwini. Expanding our horizons isn't difficult, it just requires the ability to look down now and then and see what else is going on in the world around us.

Teslas in space: trivialising the final frontier

Earlier this month Elon Musk's SpaceX achieved great kudos thanks to the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket and recovery of two of the three first stage boosters. Although it has the fourth highest payload capacity in the history of spaceflight, the test did not include satellites or ballast but the unlikely shape of Musk's own $100,000 Tesla Roadster, complete with dummy astronaut. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the unique payload of this largely successful mission has led to it being labelled everything from a pioneering achievement to a foolish publicity stunt. So what's the truth behind it?

I discussed the near-future development of private spaceflight back in 2012 and if there's one thing that the programmes mentioned therein have in common is that they have all since been delayed. Rocket technology has proved to be more tricky than the current crop of entrepreneurs envisaged, Elon Musk himself giving the Falcon Heavy a fifty-fifty chance of success. As it was, two of the core booster's engines failed to fire before touchdown, leading it to crash into the sea. Musk admitted that due to safety concerns this design will never - as originally intended - be used to launch crews into space. But a successful first flight for such a large vehicle had the potential to bring enormous kudos - translate that to customers - at the expense of his lagging rivals.

It could be argued that with such a high probability of getting egg on his face, Musk was right to choose a joke payload, albeit an expensive one, as opposed to boring ballast or a (presumably heavily-insured) set of commercial satellites. Even so, some critics have argued that there is enough manmade junk floating around the solar system without adding the Tesla, never mind the slight risk of a crash-landing on Mars. The latter might seem of little import, but there's presumably the risk of microbial contamination - it's thought some bacteria could survive atmospheric entry - and as yet we're far from certain whether Martian microbes might exist in places sheltered from the ultraviolet flux.

However, researchers have run computer simulations and if anything, Earth stands a far greater chance of being the Tesla's target, albeit millions of years in the future. Indeed, Venus is the next most likely, with Mars a poor third. That's if the car doesn't fall apart long before then due to the radiation, temperature variations and micrometeoroid impacts: the 70,000km/h or so velocity means that even dust grains can behave like bullets and there's plenty of natural rock fragments whipping around the solar system.

Musk has said that his low-cost, private alternative to state-led missions is intended to spur competitors into developing similarly reusable launch vehicles, bearing in mind that fossil fuel-powered rockets are likely to be the only way into space for some time to come. Talking of Government-controlled space programmes, NASA has long since decided to concentrate on research and development and leave much of the day-to-day operations, such as cargo runs to the International Space Station, to commercial outfits. In other words, Elon Musk is only touting for business much like any other corporation. His customers already include the communications company Arabsat and the United States Air Force, so interest in the new rocket is clearly building.

As to whether Musk should have fired a $100,000 car on a one-way trip (thanks to orbital mechanics, it's not strictly speaking one-way of course but let's face it, he's never going to get it back) it also comes down to a matter of taste, when you consider the environmental and economic crises facing humanity and the planet in general. The reusability factor to the Falcon Heavy rocket design does assuage the ecological aspect, but only slightly; rockets are a pretty primitive form of transport with some hefty pollutant statistics. Unfortunately, they currently have the monopoly on any space travel for the foreseeable future - I wonder if Virgin Galactic passengers could be encouraged to buy carbon credits?

A rather smaller rocket also launched into the headlines last month in the form of the US-New Zealand Rocket Lab's Electron vehicle. Cheekily called 'Still Testing', this second - and first successful - flight of the two-stage Electron paves the way for New Zealand-based launches of small satellites at comparatively low cost. This particular mission launched several commercial satellites plus the controversial 'Humanity Star', a reflective one-metre geodesic sphere that has been likened to both a disco ball and 'glittery space garbage'. Set to decay and burn up after nine months, Rocket Lab's founder Peter Beck intended it to generate a sense of perspective among the wider public but it has instead instigated a lot of negative commentary from astronomers, environmentalists and people who enjoy getting annoyed about almost anything.

Again, all publicity might seem like good publicity, but it goes to show that many people like their space technology serious and on the level, not frivolous or containing airy gestures (or should that be vacuous ones, space being space and all?) Even this individual rocket's name goes against tradition, which usually comes down to either Greco-Roman machismo or dull acronyms such as NASA's new SLS. In addition, to the unaided eye the cosmos appears to be largely pristine and pure, lacking the visual noise that commercialism bombards us with down here on Earth. Therefore the Humanity Star appears a bit tacky and is unlikely to supply the inspiration that Beck intended, a symbol that is somewhat too puny for its lofty purpose.

An older example of an out-and-out publicity stunt at the edge of space is Felix Baumgartner's record-breaking freefall jump back in October 2012. The Red Bull Stratos mission claimed to be a serious technology test (of for example, the reefed parachute design) as well as a medical experiment on the effects of supersonic travel on a human body outside a vehicle but ultimately it appeared to be an opportunity to fulfil, at least approximately, the company slogan 'Red Bull gives you wings'.

It could be argued that the jump aided research into escaping from damaged spacecraft, but even my limited understanding of the physics involved suggests an enormous difference between Baumgartner's slow, helium-led ascent and the velocity of both newly-launched rockets and deorbiting spacecraft. The mission also claimed to be at the 'edge of space' but at thirty-nine kilometres above the Earth, the altitude was far below the nominal one hundred kilometre boundary known as the Kármán line. As so often the case in advertising, why adhere to the facts when hyperbole will help to sell your product instead? Although the jump broke a fifty-two year old free-fall altitude record, it has since been beaten in much quieter fashion by Google's Senior Vice President of Knowledge, no less. In October 2014 Dr. Alan Eustace undertook a slightly higher self-funded jump that was devoid of publicity, suggesting that far from being a technological milestone, these jumps are more akin to climbing Mount Everest: once the pioneer has been successful, the mission becomes relatively routine.

With a cynical eye it would be very easy to claim that these three missions are the result of over-inflated egos and crass commercialism. The practical issue of unnecessary space junk, combined with the uneasy impression that the universe is now available as a billboard for selling stuff, have soured these projects for many. Several space stations have already utilised food tie-ins while in 1999 Coca Cola investigated projecting advertising onto the moon, only to find the lasers required would be too powerful to be allowed (perhaps they should have contacted Dr Evil?)

In 1993 the US Government banned 'obtrusive' advertising in space, but this hasn't stopped companies in other nations from planning such stunts. A Japanese soft drink manufacturer announced in 2014 that it wanted to land a capsule of its powered Pocari Sweat beverage (sounds delightful) on the moon, the launch vehicle being none other than a SpaceX Falcon rocket. With NASA's increasing reliance on private companies, is it only a matter of time before the final frontier becomes a mere extension of the noisy, polluted, consumer goods-obsessed environment we call civilisation? Frankly, we've made a pig's ear of our planet, so how about we don't make profit margins our number one concern in outer space too?