Getting cows, deer, horses, goats and pigs out of national parks is proving a very difficult exercise, even though the damage they do is abundantly clear, says Phil Ingamells. When we were fighting licensed cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park, the cattlemen always asked why we weren’t arguing for control of horses and deer. …
A hardwood substitute has been developed to effectively end the need to log native forests. Researchers from the Flinders Centre for NanoScale Science & Technology (CNST) in South Australia have collaborated with Australian company 3RT Holdings Pty Ltd to develop a method for converting cheap pulpwood into a highly sustainable tropical hardwood substitute. 3Wood contains the same …
Like humans, trees warn each other of danger, look after sick family members and thrive in communities. Welcome to the real enchanted forest. According to the dictionary definition, language is what people use when we talk to each other. Looked at this way, we are the only beings who can use language, because the concept …
National Threatened Species Day on September 7 is held each year to commemorate the day the last Tasmanian Tiger died in captivity in a Hobart zoo in 1936. Environment groups Goongerah Environment Centre (GECO), Wildlife of the Central Highlands and Fauna and Flora Research Collective decided to commemorate the day this year by presenting an …
During National Threatened Species Week, Environmental Justice Australia (EJA) is calling on the Victorian government to deliver on its election promise to review the state’s threatened species laws and has released a report setting out how to do so. EJA is questioning the progress made to date by the Victorian government to meets its commitment …
Key points: Legislation will permanently ban development, production of all unconventional gas in Victoria Moratorium on conventional gas extraction to be extended until 2020 Government says ban will protect Victoria’s agriculture sector The Victorian Government is introducing legislation to permanently ban exploration and development of unconventional gas in the state, including coal seam gas and …
Bushfires in Australia can have a devastating impact on an environment and destroy homes and lives, so any effort to prevent them is a welcome move. But the way that we have traditionally understood bushfires and forest flammability in Australia is not up to the challenges of our changing climate. Thankfully, a new approach is …
The Earth’s biodiversity is under attack. We would need to travel back over 65 million years to find rates of species loss as high as we are witnessing today. Conservation often focuses on the big, enigmatic animals – tigers, polar bears, whales. There are many reasons to want to save these species from extinction. But …
Protection of remaining forest and reforestation in areas where it has been lost is vital for global climate stability. Old-growth forest can be defined as mature forest where human disturbances are negligible. In terms of age, old-growth can broadly be defined as from 120 to as much as 500 years old with individual trees estimated …
Pretty much everyone is sick of the slogans used by the major parties in the election. But jobs, growth and fairness remain pertinent to the current situation in the native forests of Victoria’s Central Highlands. There, the reality is that native forest logging provides few jobs; it is not a growth industry – its resource availability …
