No plan to save threatened animal species

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 …

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Long-Nosed Potoroo still needs help!

The draft Action Statement (protection plan) for the Long-nosed Potoroo is now out for public comment. This was one of our 4 species used to legally challenge the government recently over its inaction on threatened species protection. The draft plan’s recommended actions are very thick with motherhood statements and very thin on detail, funding commitments …

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Flying Foxes hounded from their habitat

The Grey-headed Flying-fox is listed as vulnerable. We are honoured to host a colony along the Mitchell River at Bairnsdale, but due to bat phobia, their trees are due to be knocked down by the shire to move them on. These are magnificent nocturnal creatures and are being hounded on from their camps where people …

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Mainland Quokka Colony to Face Extinction

WA’s endangered Quokka is as precarious as our own Long-footed Potoroo. ‘Find and destroy’ is also the WA govt’s plan. These friendly little characters are known to survive on Rottnest and Bald Islands off the coast of WA (both cat and fox free), but there are also a number of small populations on the mainland …

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The adequacy of threatened species & planning laws in all jurisdictions of Australia

After the Gillard Government was leant on by the Business Council of Australia to hand environmental powers to the states, combined enviro groups commissioned the Australian Network of Environment Defenders Office to write a report assessing the adequacy of threatened species and planning laws in Australian jurisdictions. The report outlines the legal framework for managing …

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Wildlife more imperiled than ever – as Gillard kow-tows to env exploiters

Just two years ago, the hard-won River Red Gum Parks along the Murray River were declared. Now they’ve just been handed to loggers. As Gillard is poised to hand the states almost total control over Australia’s environmental gems, the Baillieu Government along with the NSW government, declares they will re-introduce logging into the Barmah and …

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A new wave of extinction is in full swing, warns Tim Flannery

The links below take you to excerpts from a longer essay by Tim Flannery on the serious threats to hundreds of our native species. He calls it the ‘second wave of extinctions’ since Europeans arrived. The contempt towards the environment and endangered wildlife, as well as the deliberate lack of action by the federal and …

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Dead and dying: our great mammal crisis

IN LATE August 2009, a tiny, solitary bat fluttered about in the rainforest near Australia’s infamous Christmas Island detention camp. We don’t know precisely what happened to it. Perhaps it landed on a leaf at dawn after a night feeding on moths and mosquitoes and was torn to pieces by fire ants; perhaps it succumbed …

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Unmourned death of a sole survivor

In late August 2009 a tiny, solitary bat fluttered about in the rainforest near Australia’s infamous Christmas Island detention camp. We don’t know precisely what happened to it. Perhaps it landed on a leaf at dawn after a night feeding on moths and mosquitoes, and was torn to pieces by fire ants; perhaps it succumbed …

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