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Is anyone else blown away that life as large as a couple hundred of these trees could remain hidden from discovery until 1994 in a developed nation? We're talki

by eloff 7y ago

Is anyone else blown away that life as large as a couple hundred of these trees could remain hidden from discovery until 1994 in a developed nation? We're talking about a national park in Australia, not the inaccessible depths of the Amazon encircled by the Andes. It makes one wonder what else is out there to still be discovered.

Infernal 7y ago
Central Australia is a pretty big place too... https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTUyNTIxNDM.NDkxNjc4OA*MTk2NzI5NDc(MzMxNzI5NDc~!AU*MTU4ODQwNjQ.MzM2MDkzMzM)NA https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTUyNTIxNDM.NDkxNjc4OA*... EDIT: It seems that these pines are in NSW, which is in the southeast of Australia, not central Australia. My point about the size of the place stands however.
- valtism 7y ago
  Speaking of central Australia, there are plenty of untouched aboriginal caves and shelters all across the desert in WA
- derrida 7y ago
  Yeah, they are just outside Sydney. The thing I loved the most about living here was the wild, it grieves me that we have lost over a billion animals, not counting insects, fish and birds.
- ben7799 7y ago
  Neither here nor there really but that page is total fail as it seems to be using the Mercator projection which is terrible for comparing sizes! Drag Greenland down to the equator and watch it shrink, it's really odd!
  - Infernal 7y ago
    Yeah that’s the point of it, if you grab a country near the equator and drag to the poles it will balloon. It’s about showing relative sizes of countries by placing them at the same point on the projection than it is about creating a projection with accurate absolute sizes.
satori99 7y ago
Not only were they discovered so recently, but the grove is only @100KM from Australia's largest city of >5M people
jamil7 7y ago
Australia is huge with a tiny population.
pjc50 7y ago
Needle in a haystack. It's roughly as inaccessible as the Amazon; at least there you have water. We "know" as a matter of statistical likelihood that there are significant numbers plant and animal (mostly insect) species in the Amazon that have been destroyed by human action before they can be meaningfully catalogued, it's just fortunate that these trees have been found and protected.
pseudolus 7y ago
An old growth forest "Avatar Grove" was discovered on Vancouver Island in 2010 close to a small city and just a few minutes from a paved road [0]. [0] https://vancouverislandbigtrees.blogspot.com/2010/12/one-year-anniversary-of-discovery-of.html https://vancouverislandbigtrees.blogspot.com/2010/12/one-yea...
derrida 7y ago
> We're talking about a national park in Australia, not the inaccessible depths of the Amazon encircled by the Andes. It is pretty inaccessible. Experienced hikers go missing never to be found all the time in the blue mountains - just walking off the suburban commuter train lines that service sydney. And that's in a few kms radius of the train line. The wollemi national park is miles away from that still, has no roads or trails that cross it, and is (was?) true wilderness - right on the outskirts of sydney. Huge part of the map was somewhere there wasn't even trails you could get in. Right next to sydney a place of equal size where you could be sure there was not a single human sleeping :) We'll have to see how it recovers. I think what is unusual is people dont' have an experience of nature anymore where its wild.
- to1y 7y ago
  To add to that parts of many parts of 'the bush' require a ridiculous amount of effort to get through. Little story, I've heard of a little town in NSW that has an unexplored collapsed gold mine from the late 1800's. The location is roughly known, somewhere in an area approx. 20km2 on some old Australians property. Few people know about it, everyone who does at some point has talked about going to find it, the landowner doesn't mind if they try.. Yet in all these years, no one has attempted it, because even if the land was flat(which it's not) it's impossible to get through without a bulldozer. Makes you wonder how the old settlers did it and what did they find in there that made it worth going to that effort.
  - quacked 7y ago
    Do you have any more information about this?
  - ummonk 7y ago
    Well, it's an incentives issue, since the landowner would own any gold that comes out of the mine.
    - mastazi 7y ago
      In Australia mineral resources belong to the Crown, the government can issue licenses to survey and/or mine, and in most cases the landholder can’t veto this process. However I believe that the landholder is entitled to a lease payment. See for example https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2014-04-03/mining-rights/5365560 https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2014-04-03/mining-rights/5... Edit: more info specific to NSW since that’s where the area discussed in the parent comment is located https://www.resourcesandgeoscience.nsw.gov.au/landholders-and-community/landholders-rights/common_questions https://www.resourcesandgeoscience.nsw.gov.au/landholders-an...
inopinatus 7y ago
This might boggle those unfamiliar with the size of Australia, but they are actually on the same order of magnitude. The area of land under Australia's National Reserve system of state & federally protected areas is 137m ha. The rainforest coverage in the Amazon basin is "only" four times larger at 550m ha. Both present access challenges due to sheer scale and remoteness. Note that Australia itself is larger again at 769m ha. Notwithstanding which, the Amazon represents a vastly higher level of uncatalogued biodiversity. The Australian locations have a diversity of biome instead, including some that are quite inhospitable to life. Since we're talking bushfires and scale, note that Australia's largest ever fire season (FY1975) burned an estimated 117m ha of land, but in remote locations; this season's fires have burned "only" 11m ha of land, but by affecting densely populated areas the the profile is higher.
oasisbob 7y ago
I'm not entirely surprised - describing these groves as being "hundreds of trees" seems somewhat generous. Offord et al describe the sites somewhat differently: "... is restricted to two populations (Site 1: approx. 23 adult trees; Site 2: approx. 15 adult trees, sites approx. 2 km apart) in the Wollemi National Park in the Blue Mountains" It's pretty easy to imagine overlooking small groves like this in a mixed stand.
prawn 7y ago
Some forms of Australian scrub are fairly thick. You aren't always walking on a forest floor amongst trees or pushing through soft bracken. Some types are dense and spiky. If it's too steep for grazing, in a country with a meagre population like Australia I'm not surprised at all that some areas go unnoticed.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
Not one as sparsely populated as Australia.

by eloff 7y ago

Infernal 7y ago

Central Australia is a pretty big place too... https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTUyNTIxNDM.NDkxNjc4OA*MTk2NzI5NDc(MzMxNzI5NDc~!AU*MTU4ODQwNjQ.MzM2MDkzMzM)NA https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTUyNTIxNDM.NDkxNjc4OA*... EDIT: It seems that these pines are in NSW, which is in the southeast of Australia, not central Australia. My point about the size of the place stands however.

valtism 7y ago
Speaking of central Australia, there are plenty of untouched aboriginal caves and shelters all across the desert in WA
derrida 7y ago
Yeah, they are just outside Sydney. The thing I loved the most about living here was the wild, it grieves me that we have lost over a billion animals, not counting insects, fish and birds.
ben7799 7y ago
Neither here nor there really but that page is total fail as it seems to be using the Mercator projection which is terrible for comparing sizes! Drag Greenland down to the equator and watch it shrink, it's really odd!
- Infernal 7y ago
  Yeah that’s the point of it, if you grab a country near the equator and drag to the poles it will balloon. It’s about showing relative sizes of countries by placing them at the same point on the projection than it is about creating a projection with accurate absolute sizes.

satori99 7y ago

Not only were they discovered so recently, but the grove is only @100KM from Australia's largest city of >5M people

jamil7 7y ago

Australia is huge with a tiny population.

pjc50 7y ago

Needle in a haystack. It's roughly as inaccessible as the Amazon; at least there you have water. We "know" as a matter of statistical likelihood that there are significant numbers plant and animal (mostly insect) species in the Amazon that have been destroyed by human action before they can be meaningfully catalogued, it's just fortunate that these trees have been found and protected.

pseudolus 7y ago

An old growth forest "Avatar Grove" was discovered on Vancouver Island in 2010 close to a small city and just a few minutes from a paved road [0]. [0] https://vancouverislandbigtrees.blogspot.com/2010/12/one-year-anniversary-of-discovery-of.html https://vancouverislandbigtrees.blogspot.com/2010/12/one-yea...

derrida 7y ago

> We're talking about a national park in Australia, not the inaccessible depths of the Amazon encircled by the Andes. It is pretty inaccessible. Experienced hikers go missing never to be found all the time in the blue mountains - just walking off the suburban commuter train lines that service sydney. And that's in a few kms radius of the train line. The wollemi national park is miles away from that still, has no roads or trails that cross it, and is (was?) true wilderness - right on the outskirts of sydney. Huge part of the map was somewhere there wasn't even trails you could get in. Right next to sydney a place of equal size where you could be sure there was not a single human sleeping :) We'll have to see how it recovers. I think what is unusual is people dont' have an experience of nature anymore where its wild.

to1y 7y ago
To add to that parts of many parts of 'the bush' require a ridiculous amount of effort to get through. Little story, I've heard of a little town in NSW that has an unexplored collapsed gold mine from the late 1800's. The location is roughly known, somewhere in an area approx. 20km2 on some old Australians property. Few people know about it, everyone who does at some point has talked about going to find it, the landowner doesn't mind if they try.. Yet in all these years, no one has attempted it, because even if the land was flat(which it's not) it's impossible to get through without a bulldozer. Makes you wonder how the old settlers did it and what did they find in there that made it worth going to that effort.
- quacked 7y ago
  Do you have any more information about this?
- ummonk 7y ago
  Well, it's an incentives issue, since the landowner would own any gold that comes out of the mine.
  - mastazi 7y ago
    In Australia mineral resources belong to the Crown, the government can issue licenses to survey and/or mine, and in most cases the landholder can’t veto this process. However I believe that the landholder is entitled to a lease payment. See for example https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2014-04-03/mining-rights/5365560 https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2014-04-03/mining-rights/5... Edit: more info specific to NSW since that’s where the area discussed in the parent comment is located https://www.resourcesandgeoscience.nsw.gov.au/landholders-and-community/landholders-rights/common_questions https://www.resourcesandgeoscience.nsw.gov.au/landholders-an...

inopinatus 7y ago

This might boggle those unfamiliar with the size of Australia, but they are actually on the same order of magnitude. The area of land under Australia's National Reserve system of state & federally protected areas is 137m ha. The rainforest coverage in the Amazon basin is "only" four times larger at 550m ha. Both present access challenges due to sheer scale and remoteness. Note that Australia itself is larger again at 769m ha. Notwithstanding which, the Amazon represents a vastly higher level of uncatalogued biodiversity. The Australian locations have a diversity of biome instead, including some that are quite inhospitable to life. Since we're talking bushfires and scale, note that Australia's largest ever fire season (FY1975) burned an estimated 117m ha of land, but in remote locations; this season's fires have burned "only" 11m ha of land, but by affecting densely populated areas the the profile is higher.

oasisbob 7y ago

I'm not entirely surprised - describing these groves as being "hundreds of trees" seems somewhat generous. Offord et al describe the sites somewhat differently: "... is restricted to two populations (Site 1: approx. 23 adult trees; Site 2: approx. 15 adult trees, sites approx. 2 km apart) in the Wollemi National Park in the Blue Mountains" It's pretty easy to imagine overlooking small groves like this in a mixed stand.

prawn 7y ago

Some forms of Australian scrub are fairly thick. You aren't always walking on a forest floor amongst trees or pushing through soft bracken. Some types are dense and spiky. If it's too steep for grazing, in a country with a meagre population like Australia I'm not surprised at all that some areas go unnoticed.

stjohnswarts 7y ago

Not one as sparsely populated as Australia.