Biodiversity Food Health Farms

Food, Health, Farms

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"If we forget that packaged eggs or hamburgers came from animals,
a cotton shirt from a plant, a wooden chair from a tree, then we have
lost that connection with nature."
Professor David Suzuki, Geneticist and Writer

Bushfood

The fledgling Australian bushfoods industry is now exploring new ingredients based on Australia's native plant and animal biodiversity, gathered and prepared for thousands of years by indigenous Australians. Tangy Quandongs and buttery Macadamia nuts come from the rainforests; aromatic Lemon Myrtle from our woodlands; Pepperleaf and berries from the southern highlands, and spicy bush tomatoes from the desert, to mention a few.

In Kempsey, northern NSW, not so far from where I live, the Djigay Student Association has been working on a Traditional Food Tree Park where edible food plants from around Australia are being grown. A computer database is being compiled which will include scientific and common names as well as the Aboriginal names for food plants and their traditional uses. Information will also describe processing and cultivation and where possible, how the plant use is important to both past and present Aboriginal culture. The Park is supported by local Aboriginal communities and is already achieving modest successes with local tour companies and bushfood plant sales.

Health

A quick look in your bathroom cabinet will reveal many medicines that rely on biodiversity. Everything from aspirins to antibiotics to Eucalyptus oil were derived from living organisms. Biodiversity provides many useful substances for fighting human diseases. Aspirin for example, is based on a chemical from the willow tree. Morphine comes from opium poppies. Quinine, used for 300 years to treat malaria, comes from the bark of the yellow cinchona plant. Over 21,000 plants around the world have reported medicinal uses.

Lymphoid leukaemia is effectively treated with a drug derived from an Australian native vine, Tylophora.

Women in India use a drug derived from the wild yam, Dioscorea deltoidea as a contraceptive pill. However over harvesting in recent years in threatening the future of wild populations of this plant and the gene bank they contain.

Unfortunately the Gastric Brooding Frog which provided the chemical Prostoglandin E2, used in the treatment of gastric ulcers, has not been seen for over a decade.

Farms

The grazing and agricultural lands that cover almost three quarters of Australia are also a living resource of biodiversity and need to be managed to protect it. Without the natural biodiversity which lives in rural ecosystems there would be less soil formation, nutrient cycling, natural water purification and pollination of crops.

Land clearing in rural areas is a major cause of biodiversity loss. Our national parks and reserves are not large enough to protect all ecosystems.

Leave dead trees standing as homes for birds and possums.

Fence off dams and rivers from stock to allow native plants to grow and provide habitat for useful insects, frogs and birds.

Fence off bush corridors for wildlife so they can move between cleared areas.

Control exotic plants and animals such as goats, cats and pigs, which compete with natives.

Increase organic material in soils to enhance microbial biodiversity.

This section of my environment web site is based upon a booklet produced by the Department of the Environment and Heritage, Environment Australia. This material can be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes provided Environment Australia is acknowledged. Their logo appears at the bottom of this page.