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Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

The Surprising Adaptability of Some of the Natural World to Human Interference

- Antonia Parker

Australia has suffered greatly since European arrival. The plants are ruthlessly culled for farming and development, or strangled by weeds. The animals are forced to exist in small pockets as habitat destruction and fragmentation takes their homes, and they are hunted or outcompeted by introduced species. The land itself is being flayed, the fragile topsoil ripped up by hard-hoofed livestock and harsh European farming practices and then stripped away by dust storms. A land already known for its aridity becomes drier and drier as animals from all over the world guzzle water that the land can't sustainably provide, while natives adapted to work in concert with the land, not against it, die. Increasing salinity kills plants that have managed to hang on this long, and the environmental degradation costs Australia billions every year.

Australia is known for its unique biota. Over 80% of our flora and fauna is endemic, found only in this country. That's an astonishingly high percentage, and such diversity is clearly worth protecting. Yet Australian animals are becoming endangered or even extinct horrifyingly quickly. Human impact is doing irreparable damage to a country that has been isolated from all others for over 55 million years. When Benjamin, the last known Tasmanian tiger, died in Hobart Zoo on 7th September 1936, his death marked the death of an entire family of unique marsupials, the Thylacinidae, a family that had existed for over 25 million years prior to the systematic extermination of the thylacine by humans.

However, not all Australian animals are doing badly from the arrival of Europeans. In their photo essay, Bird-Atmosphere Worlds point out that sometimes, nature adapts to humans, coexisting or even thriving, doing better than before. For Australian fauna, this is the case for three species of kangaroo: the Red Kangaroo (Macropus rufus), the Eastern Grey (M. giganteus), and the Western Grey (M. fuliginosus). For these roos, the primary population control has always been access to water. All across rural Australia, particularly in semi-arid areas, farmers have been putting in water for livestock, and as a result kangaroo populations have boomed. In fact, the Eastern Grey Kangaroo, which requires more water than the Red, has been expanding its range westward so that it now overlaps with the Red Kangaroo.

A lot of Australia is suffering, but nature is resilient, and some species have not only adjusted to human interference, but are now thriving because of it.

Dawson, Terrence J., Kirsten J. McTavish, Adam J. Munn, and Joanne Holloway. “Water use and the thermoregulatory behaviour of kangaroos in arid regions: insights into the colonosiation of arid rangelands in Australia by the Eastern Grey Kangaroo (Macropus giganteus).” Journal of Comparative Physiology. B, Biochemical, Systemic, and Environmental Physiology 176 (1) (January 2006): 45-53. doi: 10.1007/s00360-005-0030-2.
Tourism Australia. Australia's Animals. Website. Available at: https://www.australia.com/en-ie/facts/australias-animals.html.

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The birds always perceive the changes in the atmosphere before we do…
The birds always perceive the changes in the atmosphere before we do…

How huge the tree, how tiny the weed, both under this soft stable membrane of the earth. The remains of the sunset’s orange light flash back with the grasses’ fresh smell, and voices of little invisible creatures – a choir of birds, lots of them, singing the dawn away, fading into the night sky.

The misty, foggy air permeates and infuses into every inch of the leaves, the playground, the clothes, the tree barks, the acne on the skin, the sparrows hidden and silent in the nests.

Early morning and it was the first day in weeks that there were so many promising clouds, and so tenuous was the birds’ morning call – pressure, moisture, proximity: every molecule in the air shouts, rain, rain.

I wonder what the bird makes of the sky above – how the change in atmospheric pressure might feel against their fragile collection of hollow bone and feather. Does the immense pressure of gravity seem a heavier burden to the humble native miner than it does to us?

Does the royal spoonbill too share the joy of warming his legs in the sun, cold from wading through the sharp waters of the lagoon? His plume splays, forming a gentle crest on the back of his head. Washed in the listless afternoon sun, one could be forgiven for reading pride in his stance.

The eastern osprey makes her home at a height that dwarfs the surrounding trees, and her nest reminds us that if we stretch we can touch the upper reaches of our atmosphere. Reminds us that even though we can touch the sky momentarily, it is not ours. Though we made this tower, she has made it her own. Just as we adapt to nature, nature adapts to us.

[Writing and photography by Gemma and Merah]

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