Media Reports Archives - Page 41 of 42 - Environment East Gippsland

Google accused of papering over ads

January 31, 2011

GOOGLE has been accused of stifling free speech after it banned an ad attacking a paper manufacturer over its environmental record.

The Wilderness Society paid to have its ad on Google promoting a boycott against a paper manufacturer that uses wood sourced from Australian old-growth forests.

When web users typed into Google the words ”office paper”, ”office stationery” or the brand names Australian Paper and Reflex, a link to the Wilderness Society’s website, Ethical Paper, would appear at the top of the ...

Aboriginal burn-off theory hosed down

December 10, 2010

Aboriginal Australians may not have influenced bushfire occurance, according to a new report.

Aboriginal Australians didn’t regularly use fire to manage the bush claims a new study, but experts aren’t convinced.

TRADITIONAL THEORY SUGGESTS THAT Australian Aborigines have regularly burned-off the bush as a method to manage the landscape over the last 50,000 years. But an analysis ...

Indigenous burn control a myth: study

December 6, 2010

New research puts paid to the belief that Aboriginal people used fire on a large scale to control vegetation across Australia.

The research team, who published their findings in the latest edition of the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, examined charcoal records dating back 70,000 years at 223 sites across Australasia.

Lead researcher Dr Scott Mooney, from the University of New South Wales, says the research shows Aborigines were using fire at a local scale, but not with the major impact that some ...

Cold water is poured on Aboriginal burnoff culture

December 5, 2010

The popular notion that Aborigines carried out widespread burning of the Australian landscape is a myth, research shows.

A study of charcoal records has found that the arrival of the first Australians about 50,000 years ago did not result in significantly greater fire activity across the continent.

An international team of scientists led by Scott Mooney, of the University of NSW, analysed results from more than 220 sites in Australasia dating back 70,000 years, the most comprehensive survey so far.

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Labor’s climate enemies within

August 21, 2010

Will Michael O’Connor, powerful forestry division secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, block an effective Australian response to climate change?

It’s a worry for our economy because O’Connor is a key figure behind the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and soft left factional allies Martin Ferguson and Penny Wong – who, for one more day at least, control the portfolios that really matter: energy, water and climate.

O’Connor helped both Gillard and Ferguson into Parliament. In her maiden speech, Gillard ...

Logging could boost fire risk: study

December 3, 2009

Large-scale logging could increase bushfire risk for Australia’s moist mountain ash forests, creating bigger fuel loads and drier, more combustible conditions, new research says.

A world-first study led by Australian National University ecologist Professor David Lindenmayer has found gaps in the forest canopy allow the forest floor to dry out, increasing flammability by as much as 50 per cent in some cases.

The team looked at the impacts of industrial logging in moist forests across the world, including tropical rainforest, North America ...

Firefighters demand climate change action

November 19, 2009

Firefighters have demanded federal politicians stop treating climate change like “a political football” and pass the emissions trading scheme.

Members of the United Firefighters Union of Australia have travelled to Parliament House today to urge both sides of politics to take action as senators continue to debate the scheme.

The union made a similar call for action in the wake of February’s devastating Victorian bushfires and Peter Marshall has today repeated the call as parts of South Australia are now declared ...

Declared forests turn out to be paddocks

May 25, 2009

Nearly 40 per cent of old-growth forest earmarked for protection by the State Government since the 2006 election has been found instead to be young regrowth, poor quality vegetation and cleared paddocks.

A survey by green groups found that about 15,000 hectares of Gippsland forest that the Government planned to turn into national park and conservation reserves was of no value to the timber industry and had comparatively little environmental value.

The survey findings come as the Government engages in a protracted ...

Logging strips water resource: ACF

May 20, 2009

Northern Victoria’s highest water-producing forests would produce 15 per cent more water by the end of the century if logging ceased immediately, a report will say today.

The increased water flows would benefit the two rivers most important to agriculture and food production in Victoria: the Goulburn and the Murray.

The report, commissioned by the Australian Conservation Foundation, will argue that logging montane forests in the Goulburn catchment will be less lucrative in future than maximising the forests’ potential for ...

Felled old-growth tree ‘500 years old’

April 2, 2009

A Victorian environment group has radiocarbon-tested a felled old-growth eucalypt and the result suggests the giant gum was at least 500 years old.

The battle to save the old-growth forests of Brown Mountain in Victoria’s far east has been waged by environmentalists since 1989.

When another coupe was cut down early this year, logging opponents decided to ...

Category: Media Reports