A mass of taxpayer-funded forests designed to make Australia self sufficient in plantation timber and paper are now being burned by land owners as the companies running the schemes collapse amid allegations of rorting, fraud and mismanagement. View the video story at http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3803638.htm Transcript CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: It seemed like a good idea at the …
In debates about climate change and the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, there is a widely-held belief that market mechanisms, like the Labor government’s carbon pricing scheme, will reduce emissions in the cheapest possible way. As a matter of pure theory, this is correct but, in practice, it depends on what is included and excluded …
It makes better financial sense for the native forests of southern NSW to remain un-logged and left to generate carbon credits, a new report suggests. NSW taxpayers would be able to generate carbon abatement, conservatively valued at about $222 million over the next 2¬Ω decades, and use some of the money to fully compensate timber …
The future of the woodchipping industry in NSW is in doubt, following a decision by timber company Boral to sell its export arm and wood processing plant.Decades of native forest woodchip exports from Newcastle to Japan now seem set to come to an end. “Boral will exit the residue and woodchip export business and sell …
It’s cold now, but the debate over how to deal with higher bushfire risk is heating up. Firefighters and farmers around Australia are calling for more hazard reduction burns to reduce the risk of future fires, but the evidence isn’t in that this is the best approach. Tasmania had a hot, chaotic fire season, and …
You are walking through the bush when you see an enormous tree trunk, tens of metres long, lying across the forest floor. Imagine you and several dozen friends lifting it by hand. Now you’ve literally grasped the significance of trees and forests when it comes to carbon sequestration – trees are heavy, and carbon accounts …
The owner of the Eden woodchip mill has announced it will not be renewing its contract to purchase timber from state forests in East Gippsland, when the current agreement expires at the end of 2014. South East Fibre Exports general manager Peter Mitchell says international market pressures are the major reason behind the decision, and …
So Julia Gillard has declared that she wants the parties who started the so-called Tasmanian forest peace process “to do everything they can to use their abilities to silence those who haven’t gone with the mainstream consensus”. To silence. I lived with the silence of Tasmania for too many years. And now the leaders of …
“Dad, the world is missing amazing animals. I wish extinction wasn’t forever”. Despite my wife and I working as biologists, our five-year-old son came to make this statement independently. He is highlighting what I and many others consider to be society’s biggest challenge, and arguably failure: the continuing loss of species from Earth. The massive …
THERE are no plans to save most Victorian animals and plants that are at risk of becoming extinct. This is despite new data revealing more animals are becoming threatened. The latest list of threatened animals, released by the Department of Sustainability and Environment, found one animal had become extinct in the wild in the past …
