The report from the council entitled ‘Hot, dry, and deadly: Impacts of climate change on nature in NSW’ also found farm productivity would fall up to 13 per cent in some sectors if emissions were not slashed.

“The CSIRO warns that we can expect it to get to 3.8°C hotter, with a staggering 48 per cent less rainfall here,”  NCC campaigns director Daisy Barham said to a large crowd on Goulburn on July 20. 

“The Goulburn region will become hotter and drier, making conditions tougher for native wildlife and dramatically changing some ecosystems.  

“Rainfall and temperature changes will alter many elements of the region’s ecology, including flowering times for eucalypts and other plants, that will alter the migration pattern of birds and the frequency and intensity of bushfires.”

She said the Southern Tablelands were already experiencing a dry winter and this would be an indication of things to come. 

“Goulburn had only about 10mm of rainfall in June this year, which is about 80 per cent less than average. Rainfall has been well down in other regions too, with Bathurst receiving 1.2mm, 97pc less than average and Yass receivinga little over 3mm, or 95pc down on the average,” she said. 

“Extremes like these are a taste of what Goulburn and the whole of the central west can expect if we don’t urgently slash climate pollution,” Ms Barham said.

In relation to ecosystems and species, Ms Barham said forests, woodlands, grasslands, rivers, wetlands, and farms in the Goulburn district would deteriorate because of hotter, drier conditions under global warming.

She said the region’s woodlands have tree-hollows that host a huge variety of birds, possums and gliders.

“Warmer, drier conditions will lead to hotter, more frequent fires that will remove tree hollows vital as nests for these animals. Without nests, these species will quickly decline,” she said.