In sharp contrast to the seed-eating songbirds he studied for his PhD, Flinders graduate Toby Galligan is now on a mission to save birds that live off the bodies of the dead.

After completing his PhD on the evolutionary ecology of Darwin’s small ground finch in 2010, Dr Galligan (pictured) took up a position with the UK-based  Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), with the task of helping to protect vultures from chemical poisoning in Nepal and India.

Among the world’s most misunderstood creatures, South Asian vultures are now under significant threat – with three species listed as critically endangered – due to their susceptibility to diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory drug which is administered to ailing cattle in South Asia.

While vultures can consume bacteria-infested carcasses without repercussion, they have a particular sensitivity to diclofenac so when they feed on contaminated cattle carcasses their kidneys become clogged with uric acid, leading to visceral gout, renal failure and certain death.

Alongside a global network of conservation experts known as SAVE (Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction), Dr Galligan and the RSPB are trying to halt the decline in vulture populations and provide an environment free from diclofenac and similar toxic drugs.

Dr Galligan said that despite a ban on the manufacture, sale, importation and use of veterinary diclofenac by the Indian, Nepali, Pakistani and Bangladeshi governments, the drug still remains the cure-all of choice among untrained veterinarians, which make up the majority of veterinarians working in these countries.

“Diclofenac came onto the market in the ‘90s and by 2000 the population of oriental white-backed Gyps vultures declined by 99.9 per cent – that is, one in every 1000 birds survived – which is an unprecedented rate of decline – even faster than the decline of the dodo,” Dr Galligan said.

“While the South Asia governments banned the manufacture and use of veterinary diclofenac in the early 2000s, many pharmaceutical companies circumvent the ban by selling diclofenac for human use in 30ml vials, which contain the right size dose for treating cattle,” he said.

Dr Galligan said SAVE and the RSPB were now trying to promote a vulture-safe alternative to diclofenac, known as meloxicam, among livestock owners, untrained vets and pharmacists, and was also advocating for a ban on the 30ml human-intended vials.

A number of “vulture safe zones” have also been set up to conserve the remaining Gyps populations, with a focus on raising community awareness and thereby clearing the environment of contaminated vulture food. In addition, the three critically endangered Gyps species are being bred in captivity for future release.

However Dr Galligan said the battle was far from over, with more research to be carried out on the susceptibility of the elusive red-headed vulture to diclofenac poisoning.

“Very little is known about the ecology, biology and threats to this species but what we do know for certain is that, like the three Gyps, the red-headed vulture is critically endangered and rapidly declining.

“I’ll be leading a satellite telemetry study of mature red-headed vultures so we can learn more about their ecology and if one of our tagged vultures dies, we will be able to locate the carcass and perform a post mortem which will provide the best evidence of the possible cause of decline.

“When we know what is causing the decline in this species, we can either incorporate it into existing conservation action for Gyps vultures or design specific conservation action.”

More than a dozen mental health-related and volunteer agencies are taking part in Flinders Mental Health Week activities. Mr Andrew Wood (pictured, centre), Head of Health, Counselling and Disability Services encouraged students to get involved in volunteering. “There is good evidence that doing some sort of volunteering – even for two hours a week – is good for your mental health.”

A new Student Mental Health Action Plan is to be developed at Flinders University in response to last year’s National Summit on the Mental Health of Tertiary Students.

The initiative will be announced today by Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Professor Andrew Parkin at a function marking the University’s annual Mental Health Week.

Head of Health, Counselling and Disability Services, Mr Andrew Wood (pictured, centre) said the University was seeking the input of students and staff, as well as mental health practitioners, to develop the Plan.

“There has been a growing recognition, particularly in the past five years, in universities all around Australia that mental illness is a significant issue for university students,” Mr Wood said.

“It affects not only the student’s quality of life: it affects their ability to study, their ability to do well – and it can also play a part in whether students finish degrees at all,” he said.

Following the Summit, a set of guidelines was released covering areas such as mental health awareness and promotion, staff training, accessibility to support services and communication.

“It’s a comprehensive set of ‘best practices’ which encourages universities to see student mental health as everyone’s business – not just the business of counsellors and doctors,” Mr Wood said.

“It’s something that affects students but also impacts on staff in various ways.”

Mr Wood said that in addition to providing student mental health awareness training for general and academic staff, an important focus of the Plan would be to help students become more resilient.

“That’s part of mental health promotion: how to help students cope with life’s often complex pressures and to help them build their own resourcefulness to deal with life.”

As part of its strategy to increase awareness of and support for mental health, Flinders will add a new online mental health resource to the University website.

Developed by the University of Queensland, The Desk is a self-help website that offers information on topics such as procrastination, study skills and improving your mood. It will appear on the Current Students homepage in a version that is specific to Flinders resources and support.

Flinders students or staff wishing to contribute to the Student Mental Health Action Plan can contact Health, Counselling and Disability Services by email or by phoning 8201 2118.

Visiting Flinders today, Senator Chris Evans, Federal Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research, was briefed on the University’s initiatives in promoting entry and providing support for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and on the expanding Work Integrated Learning (WIL) programs for students.

During his first visit to the Bedford Park campus, Senator Evans met Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Professor Andrew Parkin and senior staff, and also talked with staff of the LOGOS Centre about its activities, which are focused on teaching and research on Greek language and culture. Federal MP for Hindmarsh Mr Steve Georganas also attended the briefing.

In an informal session, the Minister met three students from lower socio-economic backgrounds who are now involved in the University’s mentoring programs for students in the local region.

He also talked to a group of seven students who have been involved in Work Integrated Learning programs run by Flinders. Three of the students were recently returned from the Washington Intern Program run by American Studies, while the other students had recently completed work placements in business, education and tourism. WIL staff gave a demonstration of the newly developed online program aimed at preparing students for their WIL placements.

Senator Evans is pictured with students Joanne Young (Education) and Shaun Donnelly (Tourism).

Sea lions ©SATC

Like whales, sea lions are contributing to marine ecosystems in the most fundamental way possible, research by a Flinders graduate has found.

Dr Trish Lavery, who established that Southern Ocean sperm whales offset their carbon emissions by defecating iron on phytoplankton, has found that the digestive mechanisms of Australian sea lions mean that they too are making vital nutrients available to the first tier of the marine food chain.

Her research, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, found that the sea lion gut has a characteristic microbiome, or bacterial profile, that is high in types of bacteria able to metabolise iron and phosphorus.

“While bacteria are net consumers of nutrients in energy-poor environments, in nutrient-rich environments like the surface of a faecal particle, bacteria can make soluble more vital nutrient elements from faecal matter than they require for their own growth,” Dr Lavery said.

“This leads to leaching of these nutrients into the surrounding waters where they can become available for free living phytoplankton microbes.”

Dr Lavery said the sea lions may therefore help to keep nutrients where they can be incorporated into the food chain.

“The bacteria in Australian sea lion faeces may limit nutrient sinkage to depth and enhance the persistence of nutrients in the photic zone where they are available to support primary production by phytoplankton.”

And for creatures whose cold marine environment makes a layer of protective fat a valuable asset, Dr Lavery also found evidence that the metabolism of sea lions is actually geared towards obesity.

Her study found a ratio of crucial bacteria similar to that in previous studies of obese humans and obese mice.

“This suggests that the gut microbiome may confer a predisposition towards the excess body fat that is needed for thermoregulation within the cold oceanic habitats foraged by Australian sea lions,” she said.

Salt water from the Indian Ocean about to meet fresh water from Moore River, Western Australia. © iStockphoto

A team of Flinders University researchers has developed a new method for predicting how much seawater will intrude into underground water storage systems in the future.

Led by Associate Professor Adrian Werner, from the School of the Environment, the team has devised a new maths-based approach to estimate the vulnerability of coastal aquifers to seawater intrusion, with the research recently published in the international journal Ground Water.

Seawater intrusion is a major problem that occurs in coastal areas as a result of salt water encroaching from the ocean into freshwater storage systems below the earth’s surface, known as aquifers, contaminating the water stores.

“Seawater is denser than freshwater so it pushes into the aquifer in a wedge-like shape,” PhD candidate Leanne Morgan, who helped develop the new method, said.

“When you stress the system, predominately by removing too much water, the wedge moves inland and contaminates the freshwater, meaning, for example, bores go salty – it can often be very sudden and unexpected, and sometimes virtually irreversible.”

Unlike the existing, subjective methods for rapidly assessing seawater intrusion vulnerability, Ms Morgan said the Flinders approach was theoretically based, employing both maths and physics to estimate the sensitivity of aquifers to different stresses, for example climate change.

“We took an existing mathematical model for estimating the extent of seawater intrusion and extended it using calculus to develop equations that describe the propensity for seawater to move into aquifers under different stresses, including sea level rise, pumping and recharge change.”

Meanwhile, Ms Morgan is working on a wider study, funded through the National Water Commission, to identity high-risk aquifers along Australia’s coastline.

Results of the National Scale Vulnerability Assessment of Seawater Intrusion study – a collaboration between the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training and Geoscience Australia – are expected to be released next month.

“More than 85 per cent of Australians live within 50km of the coast and with the population increasing and climate change pressures, it’s important to assess the threats to coastal aquifers because they are a major water resource,” Ms Morgan said.

“The concern is that with increased extraction, rising sea levels and reduced recharge due to reduced rainfall, our coastal aquifers will become more at risk from seawater intrusion.”

The $8 million Biology Discovery Centre under construction at Flinders is to have its own population of penguins.

As well as contributing to research into reasons for the decline of Little Penguin numbers in the wild, having penguins on-site will play a major role in the University’s teaching programs in animal behaviour.

Biologist Professor Sonia Kleindorfer said it is expected that 10 penguins will live in a specially designed enclosure in the Animal Compound, adjacent to the new building.

Pairs of Little Penguins from the Granite Island Penguin Conservation group and the Adelaide Zoo will be lent to Flinders, and it is hoped that the School of Biological Sciences will eventually be able to breed up its own colony.

A number of the Flinders penguin colony will join lizards and songbirds in the Centre’s three-storey ecosystem or “eco-dome”, which will be connected to the first-floor animal behaviour laboratory.

The animal burrows in the ecosystem will be wired for sound and visuals and the live feeds transmitted to the laboratory, while built-in scales will allow animals to be weighed without being handled.

“Students will be able to learn how to do statistical analysis and data presentation non-invasively, and while they’re doing it they get to watch the animals, which will complement their field trips,” Professor Kleindorfer said.

“We’ll be combining teaching principles about animal welfare, best practice and non-invasive observation.”

Teaching in the new building will begin at the start of Semester 2 in July, while the dome is due to be ready for its animal occupants in October.

Other parts of the Centre will be dedicated to teaching in molecular biology and microbiology. Professor Kleindorfer said the top floor of the Centre, which will offer training for postgraduate research students, will house other experimental animals, such as insect colonies.

The design and landscaping of the larger penguin pond in the Animal Compound will have input from Flinders biology student Simon Brown, who also happens to be an architect and the designer of Melbourne Zoo’s award-winning penguin enclosure.

The refurbishment of the Animal Compound will include a new walkway that will allow school groups to tour the facility, which also houses aviaries, aquaculture fish tanks, a native plant garden, and a glass house dedicated to sustainable food production and plant pathology research.

Professor Kleindorfer said most of the species that will occupy the ecosystem are endangered.

“A big part of the reason for having the penguins here is to enhance our collective awareness of the plight of creatures we generally don’t see.”

A grim and suspenseful portrait of war has won the major award at the Shorts Film Festival for Flinders graduate Anthony Maras.

The Palace, a film that used real locations in its depiction of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, has already won awards at the Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne film festivals and the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards. It has had international attention too, winning Best Short Fiction Film and Best Director at the 2012 Beverly Hills Film Festival.

The film, which describes the fate of a young Cypriot family caught up in the conflict, was written and directed by Mr Maras, who is a law graduate. The Gold Shorts Award includes a trip to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

Another former Flinders student, Madeleine Parry, received the Silver Shorts award for Murder Mouth, a documentary about a young woman confronting the killing of animals that attends her meat-eating diet.

BA graduate Storm Ashwood received a merit award for directing Paper Planes, as did graduate and former staff member Shane McNeil, who wrote and co-directed The Moment with Troy Bellchambers.

The Adelaide-based  Shorts festival, which is the only national competition dedicated to short films, received 60 entries across all genres this year. Flinders University is a sponsor of the festival.

Ranger Uranium Mine, Northern Territory

Dealing with groundwater at mine sites – from the conceptual phase of mine planning through to operations and closure – is the focus of a new course being run by the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT), based at Flinders University.

The three-day course, to be held in Perth in July and Brisbane in August, will explore the various issues relating to mining and groundwater, from the early stages of extracting groundwater to build a mine, known as mine dewatering, to the management of waste rock and potential contamination.

Dr Lloyd Townley, Director of NTEC Environmental Technology and co-convener of the NCGRT course, said dewatering was often assumed to be the single most important groundwater-related issue for the mining industry, although there were many other aspects for engineers, groundwater scientists and other specialists to consider.

“Mine dewatering is certainly important for access and safety reasons but it’s also important to decide how to best use that water,” Dr Townley said.

“Sometimes it’s evaporated, sometimes it’s used in the process of extracting minerals from the rocks and sometimes it’s injected back into the ground so there are a lot of issues with how you manage the water that’s taken from the ground,” he said.

“It’s also essential to consider issues relating to contamination caused by waste rock – with mining you target particular rock types that contain minerals but in the process you need to bring other rock to the surface which is placed in waste rock dumps or in tailings storage facilities.

“When exposed to air and water, the sulphides in waste rock and tailings can produce sulphuric acid and lead to metals being transported off the mine site by rainwater or surface drainage, potentially contaminating nearby streams, rivers, lakes and groundwater resources.”

Dr Townley said the course will cover the full spectrum of mining activities, including iron ore, coal, gold and copper, and will explore issues at all stages of mine development – from the early conceptual stage to feasibility studies, construction, operation and finally rehabilitation and closure.

John Waterhouse, a Principal Hydrogeologist with Golder Associates and co-convener of the NCGRT course, said it was crucial for both mining personnel and groundwater specialists to be well-trained and to communicate across the various aspects of groundwater and mining.

“In the future, Australia and the world will have a number of ongoing challenges at some sites long after mining has finished,” Mr Waterhouse said.

“For mining companies and the community, mining presents benefits and challenges.

“It’s also an opportunity for people in the workforce to forge careers in the management of groundwater at mine sites from early investigation phases and, at some sites, long after they’ve closed.”

Groundwater in Mining will be held in Perth from 25-27 July and in Brisbane from 1-3 August. For more information or to book call (08) 8201 5632 or email industrytraining@groundwater.com.au

Restricting the amount of time a child spends in bed could lower levels of sleep-related stress and anxiety, a Flinders University researcher believes.

Dr Michael Gradisar, a senior lecturer in clinical child psychology, is about to begin a new study to determine whether childhood insomnia and separation anxiety can be treated by controlling the time a child spends in bed, and the amount of sleep they have.

Behavioural sleep problems, including bedtime refusal or resistance, delayed sleep onset and prolonged night awakenings, affect one in every two children at some stage of their lives, and are usually induced by the fear of a threat to themselves or their families, such as a break-in.

Dr Gradisar said his past research had shown sleep-anxious children experienced a better quality of sleep and less night-time worry if they went to bed later.

“In a study last year we asked parents to put their child to bed at the time they actually fall asleep, so if their usual bedtime is 7pm but they lay awake worrying for two hours we asked them to put them down at 9pm,” Dr Gradisar said.

“Not only did the children experience better quality of sleep, at the end of the two week study there was a significant reduction in their anxiety, particularly separation anxiety, which meant they could fall asleep without their parents nearby.”

In the next phase of his project, funded through a $10,000 Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences grant, Dr Gradisar will explore the benefits of “sleep restriction therapy”.

Parents will keep a sleep diary recording their child’s sleep patterns before, during and after treatment, totalling 21 days of data, to determine whether the restriction of sleep, or the restriction of time in bed, or a combination of the two, leads to reduced levels of anxiety.

“If the child falls asleep at 9pm we’ll be asking the parents to put them to bed at 9.30pm,” he said.

“Our first study showed that if you reduce the amount of time they spend in bed the anxiety gets better, and we were hypothesising that sleep restriction was the driver for that, so now we’re trying to see what happens when you induce sleepiness.

“The idea is that by delaying sleep you make them sleepier and therefore reduce the anxiety associated with going to bed.”

Dr Gradisar said he hoped the technique could also be used alongside traditional cognitive behavioural therapies for childhood anxiety disorders.

“We’ll have to find a balance as to how much sleepiness will impact their schoolwork and other activities versus the benefit to reduced anxiety,” he said.

“We’ve always focused on trying to improve sleep quality and the by-product has been reduced anxiety but the main goal for parents is that their children can sleep by themselves, so the idea of the study is to see what techniques lead to that goal.”

Having spent the past five years researching the endangered pygmy bluetongue lizard, Dr Melissa Pettigrew felt it was time to “mix things up”.

In April 2011 the then Flinders University student submitted her thesis on the conservation of Australia’s pygmy population – and in that same week boarded a plane to China on a nine-month stint to save the Siberian tiger from human impacts.

“My PhD was in conservation biology so I thought it would be a good opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge that I gained through my research of lizards to the conservation of Siberian tigers,” Dr Pettigrew (pictured, at the Chinese/Russian border) said of her volunteer efforts.

“I also work with koalas so I guess it was a good chance to mix things up a bit,” she said.

During her stay in China, as part of the Australian Youth Ambassador program, she worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society to tackle the growing issue of human wildlife conflict.

“In China there are a lot of poor rural communities which rely on cattle farming as their source of income but snares are set in the reserve and surrounding area to catch and kill deer so they can be sold primarily on the black market,” she said.

“Unfortunately the snares reduce the ungulate (hoofed animal) population which is the primary food source for the tiger population.

“Tigers are therefore now preying upon cattle to substitute their diet and this unfortunately creates human-tiger conflict.”

Her main work in China involved snare removal campaigns and improving a scheme which provides compensation to farmers whose cows have been eaten by tigers.

“I spent a lot of time physically removing the snares from the reserves and surrounding areas – it was partly to conserve the deer population but about one tiger a year gets killed by a snare and that’s a lot considering there’s only 18 to 25 Siberian tigers left in China,” she said.

Despite working on the conservation of two very different animals, Dr Pettigrew said there were several skills she learnt throughout her thesis which she was able to apply in China.

“During my PhD I learnt a lot about how to get funding so that really helped when I was over there, and I also learnt how to write for publications so hopefully one of the articles I wrote on human wildlife conflict in China will be published in an international journal later this year.

“My background in conservation definitely helped but it was still a huge learning curve to work on the other side of conservation, where you have to weigh up the livelihood of farmers and their families versus the protection of an endangered animal.”

Dr Pettigrew, who officially graduated with her PhD from Flinders last month, says she is unsure whether she will pursue her work with lizards or tigers, but for now she is happy to continue her much-loved job as a koala keeper at Cleland Wildlife Park.

“Sometimes I get asked what my favourite animal is but I don’t have a favourite – to me it’s more about the conservation of the species rather than the species itself.”