Creeping Change

The past few days of drizzle are most welcome after another few dry months. The gully that flows through our property would normally be burbling merrily by this time of year, but a few small pools are still all that it has to show for itself.

Wandering around the property on the weekend, the impact of the past two dry summers is still very evident. Hillsides that would normally be verdant green, are a sea of brown where whole areas of bracken died back last summer. Those areas are usually accompanied too by clumps of dead stringybark, among them a handful of the largest stringybarks on the property. At least one of the larger trees seems to have been missed in the Great Lopping of the 40's, so its sad to see such a tree go.

The bush will recover of course, but not quite as it was before. There will be a few less mature trees, a few less stringybarks - perhaps the areas covered by bracken (where the bandicoots seek refuge) will be a tiny bit smaller. And this is how climate change manifests itself - gradually.

Bit by bit the bush will change under the pressure of drier and hotter summers, and each year the Stringbark forest will recede a tiny, imperceptible bit. Species like the bandicoot will move away with it - if they can. Other species will move in, or establish themselves more widely and one day we'll look back and realise that the whole ecology has changed. Forever.

We're fortunate to own such a beatiful and biodiverse piece of bush, in such fantastic condition. And one of my Big Goals is to be able to hand our bit of bush over to the Princess Irulan when she grows up, in better condition than when we bought it.

But the impact of climate change is causing me to worry that that won't be achievable.