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Published: 7 November 2011

Indigenous rangers help protect west Kimberley waterways


The Western Australian government has partnered with local Indigenous rangers to target an infestation of a tropical wild plant variety that has invaded the Kimberley’s King Leopold Ranges Conservation Park.

Indigenous rangers have been helping remove a vigorous weed that threatens to choke the west Kimberley’s unique rivers and gorges.
Indigenous rangers have been helping remove a vigorous weed that threatens to choke the west Kimberley’s unique rivers and gorges.
Credit: WA Department of Environment & Conservation

The wild taro plant Colocasia esculenta var. aquatilis is considered native to the east Kimberley area but is an invasive weed in the west, where it has the potential to spread rapidly and choke waterways, its favoured habitat.

Taro – known to gardeners as ‘elephant ears’ – was first introduced to the west Kimberley area at a local homestead in the 1980s and has since spread along a tributary of the Barker River.

The Barker River in turn is a tributary of the Lennard River, which flows through two of the conservation park’s spectacular gorges – the Lennard and Windjana gorges – before merging with the Meda River and flowing out to sea.

The WA Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) has partnered with the Wunggurr Aboriginal ranger group to remove the infestation of introduced taro from around the river.

In August, DEC carried out a trial program to survey the extent of the infestation and test different weed control methods.

Spraying foliage with herbicide was found to be the most effective method. Almost two hectares of invasive taro were sprayed twice in a follow-up expedition in September.

WA Environment Minister Bill Marmion said collaborative weed control work that facilitates the training and employment of Aboriginal rangers was an important component of the state’s $63 million Kimberley Science and Conservation Strategy.

Source: WA Minister for the Environment







Published: 2010

Salinity changes show wetter wet regions, drier arid ones


Evidence that the world’s water cycle is changing, making arid regions drier and high rainfall regions wetter as atmospheric temperature increases, is contained in new research published online in the Journal of Climate.1

Ocean salinity changes indicate that arid regions are becoming drier.
Ocean salinity changes indicate that arid regions are becoming drier.
Credit: ScienceImage/Greg Heath

The study, co-authored by Hobart-based CSIRO scientists Paul Durack and Dr Susan Wijffels, shows the surface ocean beneath rainfall-dominated regions has freshened, whereas ocean regions dominated by evaporation are saltier.

The paper also confirms that surface warming of the world’s oceans over the past 50 years has penetrated into the oceans’ interior, changing deep-ocean salinity patterns.

The research was based on historical records and data provided by the Argo Program’s worldwide network of ocean profilers – robotic submersible buoys that record and report ocean salinity levels and temperatures to depths of two kilometres.


1 Journal of Climate, http://tiny.cc/mb35z




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