The current special interest push for gas and fuel infrastructure defies common sense, and is directly against our national interests. John Hewson There have been recent media reports that the commission advising the Morrison government on its COVID recovery strategy has recommended that taxpayers provide massive support to build gas and fuel infrastructure. However, Australia […]
A year ago there were fires burning on the North Coast and the forests of the mid-north coast were already tinder dry. Come November, several fires started by dry lightning strikes got the wind behind them and raced through the landscape. In the village of Elands on the Bulga Plateau we were told to evacuate […]
This is Victoria. Sadly it’s happening everywhere. When more than 90% of wood logged out of Victoria’s Critically Endangered Mountain Ash forests is pulped for paper and cardboard, there’s something wrong. State logging agency VicForests is forced to deliver at least 300,000 cubic metres of native forest logs to paper and cardboard producers Opal Australian […]
A common rat or a whimsical and smart rakali? Meet Chontelle. . . . From dolphins, sea turtles and whales, to crows, terns, pelicans and seagulls, many different creatures can be seen along the Stockton Breakwall, in Newcastle, NSW. But look closely, the more commonly seen – and controversial – sight along the Stockton Breakwall […]
To those who were paying attention, Graeme Samuels’s interim review into environmental protection laws was a sombre warning. The essential message the veteran investigator sought was a simple one. The current regime was not working – native flora and fauna were not being conserved, habitat was in an overall state of decline, under increasing threat […]
Rainforest ecologist, Les Mitchell has formed a local environment group, No Electricity from Forests (NEFF), and he believes that recent logging by the NSW Forestry Corporation (FC) has caused serious damage to endangered subtropical rainforest in the Camden Haven River catchment of Comboyne State Forest west of Kendall. As proposals to intensively harvest eucalypts in […]
So Reconciliation Week has come and gone – and also gone is 46,000 years worth of priceless history pulverised by Rio Tinto in the Juukan Gorge. An unfortunate error, apparently – the merciless miner didn’t really know what it was doing, and although some of the indigenous locals asked it to desist, it had already […]
The decisions we make about how we manage our land will tell a story for years to come. Most landholders would agree that they want their land to be healthy; I, at least, have never met a farmer or property owner who wants their property to degrade and lose ecological or financial value. But do […]
Why would anybody want to cruelly kill Koalas on a private landholding? Cape Bridgewater, is a scenic pristine wilderness at the end of the Great Ocean Road, in Victoria, near to the South Australian border, one of the highlights for locals and tourists on their vacation trips into “real” Australia. Cape Bridgewater and Bridgewater Bay, […]
We start the decade on a grim note; so far over 8 to 10 million hectares devastated by fire and a billion animals killed. Many of the surviving now threatened species only have small amounts of habitat left. We’ve lost more mammals than any nation on earth. But what to do. Ecologists like Professor James […]
Dear Di I hope that you and your loved ones have been safe through this spring and summer of unnatural smoke and fire. It is hard not to be swallowed up by grief and rage as the country we love is burned around us and our once blue-skies turn red, brown and black. These are unnatural disasters; […]
We have a government led by a Prime Minister in denial that anything is wrong. His sales pitch and hype is hitting a sour note. Not to mention the secrecy. For a marketing man he has a tin ear. Not that it matters much. Few of us are listening any more. We are struggling like […]