Environmental Boom In Australia

A few months ago the looney left was warning of permanent drought in Australia. As usual, they had no idea what they were talking about.

ACROSS the great Lake Eyre basin that covers the heart of Australia, there is an environmental boom occurring, the kind not seen in decades.

This week the Herald travelled to the centre of the basin – Lake Eyre itself – to witness the landscape’s revival, driven by three consecutive years of heavy rains.

Normally a once-in-a-lifetime event, for the third year running Lake Eyre has filled with water flowing down the basin’s rivers from outback Queensland. By comparison, Lake Eyre filled just three times last century.

While much of the water has come to Lake Eyre – which is 700kilometres north of Adelaide and the lowest point in Australia – from the north, it has also been raining in central Australia. Whereas the average yearly rainfall is 120millimetres, 450millimetres fell last year alone in the Lake Eyre region.

The basin’s “boom cycle” has spurred an eruption of bird and mammal life. Throughout the basin there is now a plague of native long-haired rats. Confined to the Northern Territory’s Barkly Tablelands and western Queensland Channel Country in dry times, in a few short years the rats have spread half a continent to the southern reaches of the 1.2million square kilometre Lake Eyre basin.

Along the rivers that feed Lake Eyre, birds – such as the Australian pelican or the rarer Eyrean Grasswren – are in abundance.

http://www.smh.com.au