Willis's Walkabouts Newsletter 92, September 2017 — Burning Issues Continued

Major Trip Update

2017 Is Almost Over

Almost over?? We can't run our trips unless we have bookings well in advance. We've only got one trip with space available before Christmas.

Northern Chile: 15 December 2017 - 12 January 2018
Two of our former clients said they'd come before we even had the draft notes. We'll hire a car (or two) and drive to a variety of different locations for day walks and possibly some longer ones.
We will be at high altitude for most of the time so the walks won't be overly long or hard. We will definitely visit the area where the photo was taken.
Guide Russell Willis. have a look at the trip notes, link above, then if you think you might be interested, click here and send us an email.

2018 — Bookings Are Coming In

As of the date of this newsletter, we already had bookings on three trips and a possible small group on a fourth.

• Kakadu Super Circle No. 1: 7-27 January
  This is the one with the possible small group. It is the longest, hardest and most spectacular trip that we offer in Kakadu.
• Bungles in the Wet: 4-17 February
  I've seen a magazine claim that their writer went on the first wet season tour to the Bungles earlier this year. Beg pardon, our first wet season Bungles trip trip was back in 2008.
  Whether or not you are interested in joining us, it's worth having a look at our 2008 Bungles in the Wet photo gallery and/or some video clips from that same trip.
• Kimberley Highlights No. 1: 13 May - 9 June
  This is the ultimate taste of Kimberley bushwalking, five sections, any of which can be done on it's own.
• Charnley River: 8 July - 5 August
  We may remove the first section and add it to our Gibb Road trip, cutting the trip back to three weeks.

Two Special Offers

1. Kakadu Light: 11-24 February or Kakadu Highlights No. 2: 18 February - 3 March
   I enjoy both and will run whichever gets to three bookings first for as few as three people, no extra charge. The other will be cancelled.
2. Get in fast and save big dollars. I am now updating the list prices. In some cases, this is the first update in three years or more. Until I've finished, I'll honour the offer on our PDF Trip List, "Anyone booking before a price change goes onto our website will lock in the old price on a trip where we provide the transport and a price halfway between the old and new where we charter it." Based on what I've done so far, that could save you $500 or more.

As for the list prices, please don't forget our very substantial Discount Offers.

Easier Trips

In the Willis's Walkabouts — Where To? section of the last newsletter, I had a section about some of our easier trips. Based on the replies to the questionnaire (which is still open, and waiting for more replies), I don't think I made my point very well.

• These are all trips I really enjoy myself. (I've reached the point where I enjoy being able to get out into the wild without having to carry a big pack for long distances.)
• On six of the seven trips listed, you carry a full pack to a base camp and do one or more day walks from there.
• As short as those walks are, you are unlikely to see anyone else for most of the time & extremely unlikely to have to share a campsite.

I think they add something extra to the current program and hope to lead one or two myself next year. If there is any chance that a trip like this might interest you, please click here to go to the questionnaire if you haven't already done so.

Special Charters

Ask and you shall receive. We ran two special trips this year and changed the dates of a third to suit the first people who booked. If none of the available trips fits your dates or where you wish to go, please ask about our charters. We can go almost anywhere in the NT and Kimberley with almost any size group, provided you give us enough notice.

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Burning Issues Continued

As you will see from the length of this section, this has become somewhat overwhelming. I'll have to continue the discussion next year. While much of what is being done is done in an effort to limit late dry season burns, it is worth noting that most of those late season burns are started by people.

Shortly after doing the last issue, I came across an article in New Scientist, How Aboriginal knowledge can help the world combat wildfires. As I said in the last newsletter, most of the burning which is now going on bears little resemblance to Aboriginal burning patterns before white settlement.

One of the researchers quoted in the article, David Bowman, came on a one week walk I led in Kakadu in early July. He was appalled by what he saw. As he says in the article, people are tempted by simple solutions. Fire is a complex question. There are no simple solutions! Sadly, as the cartoon suggests, most people prefer simple answers, even if those answers are wrong.

Here are a few of David's comments after doing the walk and reading my last newsletter.

• The core point is nearly the entire bushwalking route was burnt because the creek line was used as a fire break.
• It is impossible to claim that this is recreating Aboriginal fire management. Such sustained burning will eventually destroy riverine vegetation which is a critical habitat.
• Sure it may be reducing the extent of sandstone habitats burnt but this is a very extreme price to pay — destruction of a vulnerable habitat.
• Also some of the incendiaries are falling into sandstone heath and rainforest which as you say are the target of fire management protection.
• It is obvious that the Park's fire management based on helicopter incendiaries are causing damage — but it is only obvious if ground surveys are undertaken. Remote sensing techniques and aerial surveys can't detected these impacts as they are operating at a very fine scale.

Here are some links which show the scientific background.

• Managing fire for plant and animal conservation
  The photo at right was from this paper which is an overview which links to a large number of scientific papers. I've put a link to a particularly relevant one below.
  The photo shows what it should be like. The areas I walked through in Kakadu and the Kimberley earlier this year didn't show anything like this. As shown in a photo at the beginning of the Burning Issues section in the last newsletter, they were almost totally burnt. There was no trace of the small animals that would normally inhabit the area.
• Testing the pyrodiversity-biodiversity paradigm for at-risk small mammals in an Australian tropical savanna
  Sounds complicated, but the conclusion is simple. "Fire frequency has more influence on small-mammal persistence than fire extent. Risk of extinction increased for all four species when fire frequency exceeded once every five years. Under current ambient fire regimes, most Australia tropical savannas burn more frequently and therefore seem to have unfavourable consequences for this faunal group and risk precipitating severe future declines."
  Current burning programs are killing our wildlife.

In 2010, I accompanied one of David Bowman's PhD students, Clay Trauernicht, on a research expedition looking at northern cypress (Callitris intratropica) into a remote area of Kakadu. As I noted at the time, "Cypress may not be a particularly important species in the overall scheme of things, but it's disappearance is an indication of the health of the environment. With small mammals in decline, possibly due to the wrong burning patterns, it may be a good marker." We found a modest number of large trees, lots of small seedlings near the big trees but almost none of a moderate size that might grow to replace the old ones. Cypress has been in a steady decline for the entire time I've been walking in Kakadu. That decline continues both in Kakadu and elsewhere throughout the north.

Not long before he did the walk with me, David Bowman revisited a long term study site in central Arnhem Land. There had been a significant increase in tree death since helicopter burning had begun. The only way he could find some of trees he'd tagged years earlier, was was with a metal detector. The only thing left was ash. A healthy forest was damaged by an aerial burning program that supposedly will store carbon.

This little Callitris cartoon and article sums it up nicely.

A Sign Of Hope?

The Australian Wildlife Conservancy coordinates fire management across two of their own properties and a mix of Aboriginal and pastoral land. I'm happy to agree that they are doing a far better job than is being done in most of the top End and Kimberley, but I still believe it could be done better. Whether or not the money is available to do it better is another question.

Not long after my last newsletter, I received a letter from the North Kimberley Land Conservation District Committee. They were very upset. If you click the link to read it, then you should also click the link to read the reply sent by the friend who gave me a lot of my original information. I also showed the letter to David Bowman who said, "The crux of the problem is that
(a) the managers are doing a bad job explaining what they are doing
(b) the approach taken is not increasing long unburnt habitat and
(c) the reliance on remote sensing as a performance indicator is off base — this is where bushwalkers come in. They are seeing the widespread impacts on the ground. All management intervention needs to be adaptive, we are learning by doing and questioning assumption and practice is healthy part of this process.

There is more, much more. There are proposals for 'carbon farming' in Kakadu. If that goes ahead, it will destroy the park as it has already destroyed large parts of Arnhem Land. No matter what some people say, replacing mature trees and shrubs with grass puts far more CO₂ into the air than it removes.

That discussion will have to wait. If nothing else, I hope that I have as many people as possible questioning the assumptions that are destroying large tracts of northern Australia.

Postscript

A couple of days before I was ready to send this newsletter, I received an email from John Storey, a long term resident of the Kimberley who has long been active in the fight to stop the excessive burning. "I've attached a copy of the Premier's letter to me that I just received yesterday. This is in reply to mine to him back in May. Same old crap fed to him by his departments. I'm preparing a reply now and will send it and copy you by week's end. More going on here. Indigenous 'rangers' still lighting up. Their supervisor had had enough and complained to DPaW ... then lost his job for doing so!"

"This is out of hand here but at least we have now 'drawn' the Minister and Premier in with making falsehoods. We must keep going and get people / clubs to write now ... or we lose the chance ... and our Kimberley."

On 26 September, ABC news ran a story Tornado-like 'fire whirls' 300 metres high tear trees from the ground in Kimberley bushfire. At this time of year, the only thing that can start Kimberley bushfires is people. If John's information is correct, some people are getting paid to light fires like this and others are losing their jobs when they complain. In my mind, it's madness.

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Your Health

Malaria

Thinking about visiting Southeast Asia? Alarm as 'super malaria' spreads in South East Asia suggests you'd better be prepared.

Dementia

Two very different stories about staving off dementia. Good news for people who walk a lot. not so good for people who depend too much on GPS.

• An Ancient Cure for Alzheimer's? *
  "Researchers are wondering whether a dose of parasites could help prevent dementia."
  "The ApoE4 gene is associated with an increased risk of Alzheimers in western society. In a Bolivian group, it is associated with decreased risk."
  "Scientists often refer to the places most of us live as 'Weird' — Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic — and point out that our bodies are still designed for the not-Weird environment in which our species evolved. Yet we know almost nothing about how dementia affected humans during the 50,000 years before developments like antibiotics and mechanized farming."
• Mountains of the mind: "I've become part of the landscape and it's become part of me."
  "Sion Jair walks the Lake District fells every day, sometimes twice a day. He navigates without GPS, and knows nearly every rock and slope, a skill he hopes will keep his dementia at bay – and one he is keen to pass on before it's too late"
  "Soon after GPS first appeared in civil navigation, around the turn of the millennium, academics began noticing its adverse effect on mental maps, even damaging spatial awareness. In 2008 a Japanese researcher, Toru Ishikawa, showed that subjects given GPS rather than paper maps made more errors and travelled further. Other studies confirmed this and similar findings. No wonder there has been a spate of books on traditional navigational methods, such as John Huth's The Lost Art of Finding Our Way, and Tristan Gooley's The Walker's Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs. One area of the brain long thought to be associated with mental map-building is the hippocampus. Unsurprisingly perhaps, London cabbies who have done the Knowledge have been found to have larger hippocampus volumes. It is known that people with reduced hippocampus volumes are at a greater risk of developing conditions such as dementia. The science suggests that Sion is absolutely right in treating himself with large doses of mental map-building."

What to Drink

• Up to four cups of coffee a day may be good for you
  "An observational study of 20,000 Spanish residents has found an association between regular coffee consumption and a lower risk of premature death."
• The Two-Fold Importance of the Super-Food Coffee
  "Geroprotectors like coffee are, of course, compounds that extend healthspans and reduce disease rates. ....For decades, scientists have noted that coffee drinkers have significantly better health on average than teetotalers."
  The article has links to a number of scientific studies, all pointing in the same direction.
• Is milk good for me, or should I ditch it?
• Is bottled water safer than tap?
  According to this article from Choice, "nyone in Australia who is under the impression that bottled water is safer than tap water is very much mistaken."
  Bottled water manufacturers: as transparent as mud — read the full article and you might decide to give up all bottled water except in exceptional circumstances.

Pandemics

Back in February, New Scientist ran an article called Plague! How to prepare for the next pandemic. I've split it into three parts as that was much easier than trying to do it as a single document.

• Plague! How to prepare for the next pandemic — the main story.
• The nine viruses of the apocalypse
  These are the diseases the World Health Organization thinks we should find remedies for, fast. The first six are its highest priority.
• What you and governments can and should do
  Includes a graph that didn't come out will in the first section.

It's not just the New Scientist. The New York Times ran a similar story earlier this year,The Real Threat to National Security: Deadly Disease *
"We need to be budgeting to defend against the next pandemic."

Both publications make the same point — money spent now will save a lot more money and lives later. But, until we have a major disaster, I can't see elected politicians taking the needed steps.

While it's not a pandemic, we already have a problem. Fast-mutating flu prompts calls for more immunisations
"More immunisations in preparation for flu season could save lives as the virus continues to mutate making it more difficult to treat, according to Australia's peak medical body.It has been reported as the worst Australian flu season in about 15 years and has claimed the lives of at least 74 people."

Medicine and Money

An interesting selection of articles. Some apply much more to America, but Australia often follows the American example so we need to be aware of the problems.

• The Tasmanian Hep C Buyers' Club *
  "An innovative Australian takes a cue from early AIDS fighters to distribute generic new drugs that treat another potential killer, hepatitis C."
• How Did Health Care Get to Be Such a Mess? *
  "The problem is not the care. It's the insurance company structure."
• The health care industry is bound to collapse soon, experts say
• The Specialists' Stranglehold on Medicine *
  "Neither political party is addressing the real reason health care costs so much."
  "There is strong evidence that long-term oversight by primary care doctors increases the quality of care and decreases costs."
  "In 2015 health care spending reached $3.2 trillion — $10,000 for every man, woman and child in America. While our health care system is the most expensive in the world by far, on many measures of performance it ranked last out of 11 developed countries, according to a 2014 Commonwealth Fund Report."
• Evidence for overuse of medical services around the world
  "Overuse of unneeded services can harm patients physically and psychologically, and can harm health systems by wasting resources and deflecting investments in both public health and social spending, which is known to contribute to health."

Sleep

• What does screen time do to our sleep? Experts tell all
• What getting no sleep really means for your body

Three that didn't fit elsewhere

• Taking Photos of Experiences Boosts Visual Memory, Impairs Auditory Memory
• Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara, Longevity Expert, Dies at (or Lives to) 105 *
  "The advice of Dr. Hinohara, who cautioned against early retirement and advocated climbing stairs regularly, helped make Japan the world leader in longevity." "He also wrote a musical for children when he was 88 and a best-selling book when he was 101. He recently took up golf. Until a few months ago he was still treating patients and kept a date book with space for five more years of appointments."
• Australia is failing new parents with conflicting advice — it's urgent we get it right
  "From the moment their baby is born, Australian parents receive conflicting advice on how to cope with newborn issues. What we are doing wastes our resources, but we're not investing in alternatives."
  The article finishes with, "Investing in primary health care has been demonstrated to be more effective, at a fraction of the price of treating problems in hospitals. Just a single visit to an Australian hospital's emergency department costs the tax-payer ten times the cost of a visit to a GP."
  Our system is set up to encourage fewer GP visits and more emergency visits. In other words, it is set up to maximise the cost to the taxpayer while minimising the health of the population. The whole article is worth a read.

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Australia Through American Eyes

Two photo essays

• Through the Outback *
  "Traveling across Australia's vast interior, our photojournalist found a land that defied easy explanations, a remote expanse filled with meaning."
• Indigenous Australia Through American Eyes *
  "A New York Times correspondent who covers race in the United States encounters a young indigenous population defying stereotypes."

Australia and China

• China's rise presents a dilemma for Australia **
  View from America of the problems we face.
• In Australia, China's Appetite Shifts From Rocks to Real Estate *
  China's breakneck growth fuelled an iron ore boom in Western Australia. Now, Chinese investors are fleeing a cooling economy by investing in Australian homes."
• China, Pursuing Strategic Interests, Builds Presence in Antarctica *
  "As China spends more on the Antarctic, and the early occupiers, the United States and Australia, face stagnant budgets, a debate rages about what China wants."
  I've been sitting on this for a long time. At last a place to put it.

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Thoughts On Our Society

A Point To Ponder

Our economy seems to depend on people spending money they don't have to buy things they don't need. How long can that go on?

Education

I think our educational system needs improving. Here are two articles that should give you something to think about.

• Mis-Educating the Young *
  "Why don't schools prepare students for life?"
  "Childhood is more structured than it has ever been. But then the great engine of the meritocracy spits people out into a young adulthood that is less structured than it has ever been."
  "How do we as a society prepare young people for this uncertain phase? We pump them full of vapid but haunting praise about how talented they are and how their future is limitless."
  My take — the young people of today will pay a terrible price if we don't get our act together.
• Want Teenage Boys to Read? Easy. Give Them Books About Sex. *
  "It's stupid to pretend that they're not interested in the thing we all know they're interested in."
  Australians aren't as uptight about sex as Americans but in some ways we're much more so now than we were 40 years ago.

Democracy and Free Speech

• The Problem With Participatory Democracy Is the Participants *
  "Our politics are broken because of ordinary people who are doing it the wrong way."
• Save Free Speech From Trolls *
  "Criticism is not censorship no matter how insistent Twitter's free speech brigade might be."
  "I felt safe knowing that we could always go back to the text. The Constitution was on my side.But that was when I thought facts had power, when what we think of as the truth was based more on observable reality and less on the incantations of paranoid uncles..."

Civil War in America

I know that American society is highly polarised. What I didn't know is that some people are beginning to think that this could lead to a new civil war in America. It's not a widespread view, but the fact that some reasonably rational people can see it as a possibility is more than slightly disturbing.

The article mentions a 'wonderful letter'. I clicked the link and liked it. Some Thoughts and Advice for Our Students and All Students. "Our advice can be distilled to three words: Think for yourself. That's not easy in today's world. Have a read and see what you think.

Aging society

We live in an aging society. Japan shows what it may come to here before too long. The Pilot in the Cockpit? In Japan, He Might Be a Retiree *
"Many retired people in the country have returned to the work force as the population dwindles and jobs go unfilled, including Shigekazu Miyazaki, who is still flying at 65."

Miscellaneous

• Canada's Comedy, the Voice of a Polite Nation, Rises in the Trump Era *
  "Political humor, 'one of our national pastimes,' is a way of pushing back against America's dominance. Its changes offer a lens into how Canada is changing, too."
• Why Are Police Officers More Dangerous Than Airplanes? *
  Fear...
• Inside the Hotel Industry's Plan to Combat Airbnb *
• US retailer trademarks 'Bondi Beach', bans its use by locals
  "Do Australians own 'Bondi Beach'? Not if you want to use it in a product name."
  This is where international agreements like the hopefully defunct TPP can get us.

Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart

Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart *
This chart captures the rise in inequality better than any other chart that I've seen. It's not as bad in Australia, but that's the direction we seem to be moving in.

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Bushwalking Info

Gear

A very short section this time. If you have good info you'd like to share, please pass it on so I can include it in a future newsletter.

• A GPS that communicates
  Scroll down for monthly charges. It's a great idea but it's not what I'd call cheap.
• Cold weather sleeping bags explained
  Featured alongside the gear review in Wild issue 160, this guide explains what you need to know when looking for a new cold weather sleeping bag.

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Resist The Internet

Two very different stories, both well worth a read.

• Resist the Internet *
  "We have nothing to lose but our electronic chains."
  "...there are also excellent reasons to think that online life breeds narcissism, alienation and depression, that it's an opiate for the lower classes and an insanity-inducing influence on the politically-engaged, and that it takes more than it gives from creativity and deep thought. Meanwhile the age of the internet has been, thus far, an era of bubbles, stagnation and democratic decay — hardly a golden age whose customs must be left inviolate."
  "So a digital temperance movement would start by resisting the wiring of everything, and seek to create more spaces in which internet use is illegal, discouraged or taboo. Toughen laws against cellphone use in cars, keep computers out of college lecture halls, put special 'phone boxes' in restaurants where patrons would be expected to deposit their devices, confiscate smartphones being used in museums and libraries and cathedrals, create corporate norms that strongly discourage checking email in a meeting."
• Psychological tips for resisting the Internet's grip
  "Studies have shown that each day we spend, on average, five and a half hours on digital media, and glance at our phones 221 times."
  "The developers of websites and phone apps all exploit human behavioral tendencies, designing their products and sites in ways that attract our gaze – and retain it."
  The article has some good tips as to how you can break the electronic chains that bind you.

We Aren't Built to Live in the Moment

We Aren't Built to Live in the Moment *
"What best distinguishes human beings from other animals is our foresight, as scientists are just beginning to recognize." Websites that are designed to suck us in every deeper are doing their best to destroy what makes us human.

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News About This Newsletter

Feedback Request

A bit of feedback as to what I can do to improve the newsletters would be most appreciated. The following short questionnaire should take no more than a few minutes. Thank you.

Restricted websites. The NY Times allows non-subscribers to look at ten free articles each month. I've got more links than that in this newsletter so I've marked them with a red asterisk (*) so that you can choose which are of most interest to you. The Washington Post also has a limit but I'm not sure what the current limit is so I've marked Washington Post articles with a double red asterisk (**).

Next Newsletter — December? Next year? With trips to Kakadu, South Africa and Chile, I'll be home for less than a month between now and 18 January. I'm not sure when I'll have time for the next one.

As always, I've already got a few things ready. Hopefully, I can get a bit of feedback about some of the things in this newsletter to include in the next one. As I've often said, Suggestions welcome.

Sending the newsletter

While I now send most of the newsletters using MailChimp, I still send about 200 newsletters using a program which is hosted on the same server that hosts our website. (MailChimp Free only allows 2000. The commercial version costs too much for an extra 200 people.) In both cases, the newsletters are sent from walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au. This is the contact address on our website. If you would like to continue to receive these newsletters, please include this address in your "friends list" so that it isn't blocked.

For some reason, some servers block the newsletters no matter what you try and do. I send these in small groups from my normal email. It's not a simple problem. If anyone thinks they might have an idea how to overcome the problem, I'd love to hear from you.

Emails sent to walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au are currently automatically forwarded to rrwillis at internode.on.net. If you want to send an email to that address, replace the word "at" with the symbol @. I am trying not to put that address any place where it can be harvested by spam bots.

We don't want to add to the mass of email spam. If you don't want our newsletter, please send us an email and let us know. We'll then delete your name from our newsletter list.

Our email address is walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au.

Note. Both MailChimp and the other program we use to send some of these newsletters have an automatic delete at the bottom. Clicking that link will delete you from the mailing list on the server but it will not delete you from our main database. One of the programs will not allow the auto delete to send me an email notifying me that a deletion has been made. If you want to be sure that you are removed from all further mailings, please send an email to walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au

If you know someone you think would enjoy this newsletter, please forward it to them. The more people who get it, the more likely it is that I'll be able to run the trips which might interest you.

Best wishes to all.
I hope you enjoy reading the newsletter as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Russell Willis

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