Study of 56m-year-old leaves counters claims from Trump administration members of ‘benefits’ of fossil fuel pollution
Adding huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is set to cause the Earth’s forests to wither and die rather than flourish, according to a new study that counters erroneous claims that fossil fuel pollution will green the planet.
An analysis of fossilized leaf cells from a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (or PETM), which occurred about 56m years ago, has helped reconstruct how the world’s forests responded when planet-heating gases were previously being released at a rapid rate.
The proposed design of the Adelaide street circuit that will host the Australian MotoGP from 2027 will be publicly released in the coming weeks, prompting Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith to sound a warning.
Feral cats and foxes now roam across almost all of Australia. These predators are a major reason why many species have been driven to extinction.
In response, conservation groups and authorities have turned to safe havens – islands or large fenced-off areas on land. Well known havens include Newhaven in the Northern Territory and Faure Island off the coast of Western Australia.
After feral cats and foxes are removed, authorities can reintroduce endangered native mammals such as bilbies who can live their lives in the wild, rather than in zoos or captive breeding programs. Many are now flourishing, such as the brush-tailed bettong and greater bilby. These havens have become a powerful tool to pull many mammal species back from the brink.
Unfortunately, our new research shows mainland safe havens don’t yet offer strong protection for many other groups of animals, such as frogs, reptiles, fish, birds and invertebrates. Many species from these groups are similarly threatened by introduced predators as well as other invasive threats, from black rats to deadly fungal infections.
This is because safe havens are often set up for mammals and don’t protect the range of habitats other animal groups need or exclude their specific threats. We will need to create new safe havens for non-mammal species. We have pinpointed several priority areas on the mainland where future safe havens could extend protection.
Nowhere to hide
To test whether safe havens were protecting other animal groups, we examined the known ranges of 123 species of threatened reptiles, amphibians, birds and invertebrates considered highly susceptible to introduced species.
We found only two have populations currently inside existing safe havens – the great desert skink and western swamp tortoise. Some frog and fish species have specific havens, such as breeding sites fenced off to protect them from feral pigs or other threats.
Our research shows few current havens are likely to have suitable habitat for our target species in the future.
This means our current network of safe havens aren’t enough. We need more in different locations and designed to counter different threats.
What’s more, we will need to account for future shifts in where these threatened species will occur given human-induced climate change.
While existing safe havens can keep out cats and foxes, they’re not designed to stop rats or birds. But these can pose real threats to threatened invertebrates and amphibians.
Location, location, location
Australia will need safe havens for the foreseeable future. It makes sense to ensure our network is inclusive and protects as wide a range of species as possible, beyond just threatened mammals.
We used models of where species are likely to be found in the future while accounting for future climate projections. This let us identify the top 1% of priority locations for new safe havens aimed at protecting non-mammal species most at risk from invasive species.
Many of these regions are in eastern Australia. They include the Victorian Alps, the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales, and Tasmania’s Central Highlands.
Creating a robust network
There’s no silver bullet to protect the many hundreds of Australian animal species at risk. Each often faces many different threats simultaneously in addition to invasive species.
As the safe haven network grows, it will be necessary to design some to respond to threats which cat and fox-proof fences don’t protect against.
Finer-scale fencing or netting may be needed, or the creation of havens in natural refuges such as isolated waterways or islands.
If priority locations lie in tough terrain where extensive fencing is less viable, it may work to create mini havens protecting a smaller set of species.
For some species, it may work to have “leaky” havens where invasive species can’t get in but threatened species can move in and out. This would help avoid genetic bottlenecks due to isolation.
For some species, fences won’t work at all. For instance, the green and golden bell frog is threatened by both the lethal chytrid fungus and invasive fish such as mosquitofish, which eat its eggs. For this species, our earlier research suggests the best safe haven would likely be a wetland on a high plateau rather than a fence.
A similar option for other species is to use mesas – high, isolated landforms with flat tops – to keep invaders out. This could be a cost-effective solution, as these provide long-term refuges for such species to recover.
The green and golden bell frog is threatened by both invasive fish and a deadly fungus.Auscape/Getty
All havens have limits
Keeping threatened species in the wild rather than captivity has many benefits. Bringing animals back to the land restores their key ecological roles, such as digging through soil and spreading seeds.
Their presence benefits other native species who they have evolved alongside over millions of years, making ecosystems more functional.
Despite these benefits, havens are not a long term solution. Animals protected from predators and other threats lose their wariness. If they’re released outside the fence, many are quickly eaten. Some researchers are exploring ways to expose animals to a few predators so that the wariest survive and breed. The point of safe havens is to buy time for scientists to find longer-term solutions.
Our research offers a blueprint for a new generation of climate-ready safe havens able to protect many more species and give many lesser-known species a fighting chance.
John Gould receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program.
Australia is famous for its coral reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef on the east coast and Ningaloo Reef in the west. Both World Heritage-listed reefs attract thousands of visitors each year.
But there’s another vast network of coral reefs in Australia that few people know about. More than 1,000 uncharted northern coral reefs were recently identified using satellite imagery along the north coast of Australia.
Due to the remote location, and the challenge of conducting fieldwork in croc-inhabited waters, these northern reefs have been largely overlooked and understudied. They are deeply valuable to the species that call them home, and the Traditional Owners on whose Sea Countries they lie yet their value to Australia has too often gone unrecognised.
As marine heatwaves and coral bleaching on Australian reefs become more frequent and severe, work to safeguard them must extend beyond iconic systems to include Australia’s northern reefs. Otherwise, we risk losing them – not because they are less important, but because they are largely out of sight and out of mind for many Australians.
Coral reefs provide immense ecological, economic and cultural value by harbouring marine animals and plants, supporting fisheries that feed millions of people worldwide, and buffering coastlines from erosion. For Indigenous peoples around the globe, reefs contain culturally significant sites and resources essential for cultural and community wellbeing.
This means reef decline is not only an ecological crisis but a social one, which threatens livelihoods, cultural heritage and fundamental human rights.
The urgency to understand these understudied reefs has never been greater. Following global coral bleaching in 2023–25, which affected 87% of the world’s coral reefs, climate models predict strong El Niño conditions are returning to Australia this summer. We can expect warmer ocean temperatures and a heightened risk of coral bleaching.
A saltwater crocodile watches from the beach near Umbakumba, Groote Eylandt. It can be difficult to do fieldwork at these northern reefs due to their remote location and croc-inhabited waters.Xavier Hoenner Photography/Getty
Climate change is changing Australia’s reefs, and we must tackle the climate crisis. But, concurrently, we need to give reefs the best possible chance of surviving the changes already underway. Consequently, Australia’s efforts to conserve and restore its reefs will influence the future of many of them. And we face difficult choices about where to direct our limited funding and subsequent conservation efforts.
In recent months, an additional A$91.8 million of federal funding has been announced to protect the Great Barrier Reef. And the Western Australian government has launched an $11 million coral regeneration and enhancement program for Ningaloo Reef and Exmouth.
But Northern Territory reefs have not received the same attention, and when reefs remain excluded from conservation and management decisions they are at risk of silent loss.
Our new research, undertaken in partnership with the Anindilyakwa Land & Sea Rangers, merges modern science with First Nations knowledge of Sea Country to document changes to local coral reefs around Groote Eylandt, the largest island in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Although reefs in this region are estimated to cover more than 3,200 square kilometres, they were only first described in the scientific literature in 2004. For context, more than 5,000 scientific studies have focused on the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef, yet fewer than ten have examined reefs in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and none have focused on the corals themselves.
Working alongside the Anindilyakwa Land & Sea Rangers, we surveyed five reef sites around Groote Eylandt and observed coral cover on the reefs ranging from 5–47%. These sites shared the characteristics of some of the world’s most marginal reefs, where tougher coral species have persisted.
There have been only ten scientific publications on the northern reefs, compared with thousands on the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo.Hadley England
Massive, slow-growing species dominated, while fast-growing branching corals – which create much of a reef’s three-dimensional structure – were rare or absent. Without historical monitoring, we do not yet know if these branching corals have always been scarce, or whether past disturbances, such as bleaching or cyclones, have driven their decline.
Our work also documented significant coral bleaching in February 2024, which may otherwise have gone unrecorded. It was only detected because of our strong partnership with the Anindilyakwa Land & Sea Rangers, whose stewardship was expanded to include visual inspections of the local coral reefs. This enabled us to identify and document bleaching.
This shows designing scientific projects with local knowledge is essential for understanding remote reef systems, which have historically received scant scientific attention.
Larger, slow-growing corals dominate these reefs.Hadley England
We need to know more
Remote, understudied Australian reefs are just as vulnerable to climate change as other, better-known and celebrated reef systems.
Given their immense value, particularly for Traditional Owners like the Anindilyakwa peoples, more research is needed to understand their changing ecology.
Without long-term monitoring and local expertise, Australian scientists are unable to track how these reefs are changing, or make wise decisions about their conservation.
Associate Professor Emma Camp swims over the reef.Hadley England
Emma F Camp receives research funding from the Australian Research Council, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, Rolex Perpetual Planet iniative, Gladstone port corporation, and CORDAP.
Ariel K. Pezner receives funding from the University of Technology Sydney.
Dane P. G. Wattle receives funding from the University of Technology Sydney.
The latest update of nationwide flood maps, to be released next year, will give communities across New Zealand the clearest picture yet of the regional risk of flooding.
But as it stands, this state-of-the-art tool leaves out a critical piece of the puzzle: the water table in shallow coastal aquifers, which fluctuates with the seasons and, over the long term, rises with sea levels.
As our recent research shows, coastal groundwater responds to sea level rise in different ways. Where the water table is free to rise with the sea, it does exactly that, rising toward the surface and increasing the risk of groundwater flooding.
This maintains the flow of fresh groundwater to the coast and keeps saltwater intrusion at bay.
However, where the water table is instead held down by low, flat topography, the flow to the coast weakens, increasing the risk of saltwater intrusion.
Either way, these changes happen out of sight underground and rarely make it into adaptation planning tools, even though nearly one in five New Zealanders live in low-lying coastal areas.
Waters rising from beneath
We usually think of floods as storm surges, crashing waves and ocean water topping sea walls. But rising seas are not only pushing against the shore from the outside – water is also rising from beneath.
Beneath coastal landscapes, there is a vast and mainly uncharted resource of freshwater. When rain falls on the land, it slowly drains down into the subsurface where layers of sand, gravel and rocks form a saturated groundwater zone.
Driven by gravity, this shallow freshwater flows slowly through the ground toward the coast, eventually reaching estuaries, tidal creeks and the ocean. Where these aquifer systems meet the coast, the water table often sits just below the ground most people live and work on.
New Zealand’s low-lying coastal areas span around 9,000 square kilometres nationwide. This thin coastal margin also reaches inland along river valleys and basins such as the Hauraki Plains and the vast Canterbury Plains, making up just over 3% of the total land area.
A twin hazard to infrastructure and freshwater
It helps to imagine coastal landscapes as a bathtub being filled both from the tap at the top and a source of water percolating from below.
Most coastal adaptation planning focuses on surface and atmospheric waters: rivers, heavy rainfall and ocean swells. Yet along much of New Zealand’s coastline, the water table lies just meters, sometimes centimetres, below the surface.
In many low-lying coastal areas, rising seas will fill aquifers high enough to spill over the rim, with groundwater rising above the land surface long before the ocean’s saltwater ever breaches the coastline.
Groundwater flooding damages natural resources, agricultural land and built environments. Saltwater intrusion threatens drinking water supplies and coastal ecosystems.
When groundwater levels rise, they diminish the capacity of the soil to absorb heavy rainfall, making surface flooding far worse. Slow moving and persistently high water tables compromise soils and critical underground infrastructure such as wastewater and stormwater pipes long before land is permanently submerged.
Road sub-bases weaken, drainage lacks, wastewater pipes crack or float, septic systems fail and basements experience persistent dampness and structural damage.
Attention to coastal aquifers is growing, both in New Zealand and globally. But planning regulations and infrastructure design still treat groundwater as a static variable rather than a dynamic and emerging hazard.
Closing the gap between sky, surface and subsurface
To build genuinely resilient communities, we must bridge the gap between atmospheric weather, surface water flows and subsurface hydrology.
Excluding shallow water table dynamics from national flood modelling risks giving local councils, homeowners and insurers a false sense of security. A flood map that only looks at surface runoff tells only half the story.
Historically, groundwater monitoring has focused on deep aquifers to secure drinking and agricultural water supplies. This has left shallow coastal water tables largely unmapped.
Gathering data on these shallow systems is frequently viewed as too costly and technically complex for individual regional councils to manage alone. However, patching together fragmented regional data is no longer sufficient. We urgently need a coordinated effort to track water tables.
Planning for climate adaptation requires observing, measuring and modelling these systems together. Integrating long-term water table responses and short-term seasonal variations into New Zealand’s national flood maps is entirely achievable and essential.
Most people don’t think about the water table sitting just below their feet, let alone plan for it. Until models account for what happens below the surface as well as what falls from the sky, we will keep being caught out by floods rising quietly from below.
Amandine Bosserelle received funding from the University of Canterbury, the Resilience to Nature’s Challenges research fund and the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
Leanne K Morgan receives funding from the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
