This recent scientific report (Jan 2014) shows how Australia’s land mammals have extinctions suffered an extraordinary rate of extinction. We have lost over 10% of the 273 endemic terrestrial species over the last 200 years compared to only one native land mammal from continental North America going extinct since European settlement. “A further 21% of …
Stopping logging in Victoria’s central highlands would drive tens of millions of dollars into state coffers if the move was included under the Abbott government’s emissions reduction fund. Fairfax Media has seen a confidential brief prepared for the federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, which found ending logging in the highland forests, north-east of Melbourne, would …
Victoria’s frogs are facing a conservation crisis according to biologists, who warn that some of the state’s amphibians have “passed a tipping point”, while others have become extinct. Nick Clemann, program leader (threatened fauna) at the state government’s biodiversity research arm, the Arthur Rylah Institute, said the prospects for the Baw Baw frog, Victoria’s only …
Fresh legal action has been launched against Victorian energy provider Ausnet over the Black Saturday bushfires. VicForests is seeking unspecified damages from Ausnet, and also maintenance company Utility Asset Management (UAM), over a timber yard that was razed in the devastating 2009 bushfires. Documents lodged with the Victorian Supreme Court on Wednesday claim Ausnet, and …
Bill Gammage’s popular book ‘The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia’ contains many fundamental flaws and represents ‘blind advocacy’ for repeated burning’ because ‘Aboriginal people did it’. Like Keith Windshuttle’s ‘Fabrication of Aboriginal History’, Bill Gammage only pursued references – and interpretation of references – that supported his ‘hypothesis’. For Gammage that hypothesis …
VICTORIA’S environment minister will visit the high country as cattlemen continue lobbying the government over alpine grazing. The State Government last month shelved a three-year trial which looked at the role of cattle grazing in preventing fire risk at the Alpine National Park. Environment Minister Lisa Neville at the time said “science is clear” that …
Fuel reduction and ecological burning etc. are based on the assumption that all Aboriginal people undertook fire-stick farming. Joel Wright, traditional owner in southwest Victoria, is an indigenous language, culture and history researcher. He finds no evidence of wide-scale burning in Aboriginal language and culture, but does find other explanations for the history of aboriginal …
State-owned timber company VicForests has agreed to extend its moratorium on logging in certain areas of East Gippsland. An environment group is suing the timber company and the Victorian Government, over the logging of old-growth forest that is home to endangered owls. After further legal wrangling, VicForests has agreed to halt any logging of the …
LIMA: The carbon bubble is no longer a concept promoted by environmental types, or a warning from progressive analysts in the mainstream investment banks. It is now officially recognized as a potential systemic risk to global financial markets. The Bank of England has revealed that it will broaden its investigation into “unburnable carbon” – and …
