Comments

Consider the source of this propaganda. From what I've gathered this man (I use the term loosely) is a vile pocket minion of the tarsands. In no way is Ethical Oil independent. The Keystone XL corruption proved this. A book coming from someone who "interviewed" occupiers by asking about 20 people at the Occupy Movement if they had enough condoms is not worth the ink. Anyone who throws racial slurs (What racial slurs? - Ed) as a form of debate when met with First Nations death rate concerns during a public forum does not deserve the space you allotted to post his ideals. Yuck.

Reprinted from the ABC news
(words in brackets are mine)

Protected dugongs and sea turtles are being cruelly slaughtered in Queensland's Torres Strait to supply an illegal meat trade, an investigation by ABC's 7.30 has found.

The program has aired confronting footage that shows the brutal methods used to hunt the animals, with turtles being butchered alive and dugongs drowned as they are dragged behind boats.

The investigation throws into sharp relief the conflict between Indigenous Australians and animal rights activists over traditional hunting methods and exposes a black market in animal meat.

Activist Rupert Imhoff spent a fortnight in the Torres Strait, filming the hunting of the turtles and dugongs, both listed as vulnerable to extinction.

He used a secret camera to film scenes of animal cruelty, including the slow death of a sea turtle.

"It didn't actually die until they took off the bottom shell, actually peeled off the shell," he said.

"And then it just let out one last gasp of air and passed away."

Both dugongs and turtles are protected by federal law, but the Native Title Act gives an exemption to traditional owners, who can hunt to satisfy their personal, domestic or non-commercial communal needs.

The traditional hunting methods are seen by animal activists as deeply cruel but Queensland exempts native title hunting from its animal cruelty laws.
(human laws can't over-ride animal rights, or their indigenous rights)
'Too sensitive'
("Too sensitive" is simply political-correctness at the costs of the welfare of sentient animals. It's a cop-out)

Lawyer and advocate Rebecca Smith says conservation groups avoid criticising Indigenous hunting.

"It's just too hard, too prickly, too sensitive," she said.

"It's often deemed people who are opposed to traditional hunting are often called racist, but there is nothing racist about saying this is cruel."

National Indigenous radio broadcaster Seith Fourmile is a passionate advocate of the Indigenous right to hunt. He has nothing to do with the scenes of animal cruelty exposed by 7.30.
(Any "rights" must also be seasoned with responsiblities and consideration for other living creatures)

"We're working with the RSPCA to actually look at that cruelty to animals," he said.

It's just too hard, too prickly, too sensitive ... people who are opposed to traditional hunting are often called racist, but there is nothing racist about saying this is cruel.

(more like reverse racism - these traditional owners have the "right" to atrocities against defenceless and so-callled protected native animals, but they are protected from normal, average Australians?)

Rebecca Smith

"But it has got to be a cooperative approach."

The slaughter in Australia's north goes well beyond the bounds of traditional hunting.
(There are indigenous peoples who are protective of our wildlife and concerned by their slaughter and declining numbers. Indigenous peoples should be the custodians of our environment and wildlife, not their enemies)

Former abattoir worker Colin Riddell has spent years collecting evidence of dugong and turtle killing. His investigations reveal the killing goes much further south in Queensland's coastal waters.

James Epong is a Mandubarra man who lives on his traditional lands an hour south of Cairns.

The Mandubarra have declared a moratorium on the taking of turtle and dugong, but around them an illegal meat trade flourishes.

"Nine times out of 10, the illegal trade is to sell the meat for the benefit, for grog money or drugs," he said.
(There's nothing "traditional" about grog and drugs or the black market)

"One person that we know of in Yarrabah made $80,000 in one year."

Mr Fourmile says there are also non-Indigenous people involved in the illegal trade.

"They are involved with the trading, with selling it, passing it down - some of the turtle meat has gone as far south as Sydney and Melbourne," he said.

In the Torres Strait, Horn Island appears to be a transport hub for the illegal trade. On four separate occasions, 7.30 has confirmed multiple eskies arriving on the afternoon flight from Horn Island to Cairns.
'There's no jobs'

All the Indigenous people interviewed by 7.30 recognised the illegal trade and are committed to ending it.

"There's no jobs on Aboriginal community, let's not lie about it," Mr Fourmile said.
("Green" jobs should be created as park rangers and protectors of native animals and their habitats)

"There's no doubt this is happening. I'm not going to lie about the fact that there is some people out there doing it."

Cape York saltwater people like Frankie Deemal are working to end the esky trade.

There's no jobs on Aboriginal community, let's not lie about it. There's no doubt this is happening. I'm not going to lie about the fact that there is some people out there doing it.
Seith Fourmile

"We don't have no legislative framework in place in which we can police the kind of rogue killing, the kind of outsiders coming into our place," he said.

"We don't have the kind of legislative assistance to do that."

And the Mandubarra people are helping to protect the turtle that has helped sustain them.

"I went out to get one where I normally go and there was just nothing there," said James Epong.

"I came home empty-handed and I thought, 'I can't have this'. I want my kids to experience what I'd experienced. So from that day we just said no more hunting."

For the Mandubarra people, the turtle hunting ended in 1993.

Queensland's Department of Environment and Resource Management was contacted by 7.30.

In a statement, the department said it "takes the claims very seriously and will investigate all reports of illegal hunting and poaching".
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This has been going on for some time. The department's assurances are rather hollow!

Forests cover 31 percent of Earth's total global land area, shelter 80 percent of land-based biodiversity and provide livelihoods for more than 1.6 billion people. In recent decades, Amazon deforestation has made Brazil the world's fifth biggest climate polluter.

Australia should join the widening effort to stamp out illegal logging, according to testimony given recently by tropical ecologist William Laurance with James Cook University. Laurance noted in his presentation that much of this timber makes its way to China, which Laurance calls a "black hole" for illegally harvested timber. The timber is then manufactured into consumer goods and often shipped abroad to countries such as Australia.

Prof Laurance said China had developed ''an immense export'' market for wood and paper products, driving large-scale clearing of tropical forests in Sumatra and Borneo.

The richness of its wildlife is a huge tourist pull, but corruption, overpopulation and logging is decimating Madagascar. Nowhere else on earth has so many unique animals and plants, and nowhere else is environmental destruction so rampant and unchecked. The most valuable tree is rosewood, upon which the aye-aye and other lemurs depend, but it is being sent to China to make antique reproduction furniture for the wealthy.

China is now the “wood workshop for the world,” according to Forest Trends, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, consuming more than 400 million cubic meters of timber annually to feed both its burgeoning exports and growing domestic demands. Production of paper products has also grown dramatically in China, doubling from 2002 to 2007. As much as half of the timber and much of the paper pulp consumed by China is imported, primarily from tropical nations or nearby Siberia,

Laurance warned that timber lobbyists would try to play down the environmental and economic impact of illegal logging. Lobbyists such as Alan Oxley with World Growth International, "are being well-paid to defend some of the biggest forest-exploiting corporations operating anywhere." They use the term "illegal" very loosely, and the widespread use of Special Agricultural and Business Leases to circumvent forestry laws.

China's economic growth is at great expense to the planet and can't be sustained. Globalization means that China is able to expand and become a planetary predator.

With global population to increase by another 2.5 billion, the environmental threats we have now, due to the number of people needing the economic benefits of natural resources, will further be exacerbated. It's hard to see any of our forests, or the tropic species dependent on them, surviving into the next century. Our planet is under threat from exploding human numbers, consumption levels, and the inability to control the rapacious appetite for timber.

See also: Forest Heroes Awards Crown UN's International Year of Forests of 10 Feb 12 at ens-newswire.com - Ed.

We are big users of firearms in Australia. There are many groups of people are are legally allowed to own guns. There are sporting shooters, ADF, Police, farmers, "game" hunters, security personal, and despite the controls, criminals are still able to access arms. Such is the violent nature of our society, crime, killing and intimidation are all part of our culture. The physical action of a shotgun involves a spray of pellets, and a flying bird can be wounded by even a single pellet. Other birds flying with the target bird can also be wounded. In Victoria, duck shooter numbers have drastically decreased from 95,000 in 1986 to about 19,400 . However, over the last few years, the numbers of duck shooters on the state's wetlands dropped to a very small number. Unfortunately, there are four states in Australia that still allow duck hunting, despite strong evidence of the extreme suffering involved. Every year, during the government-declared 'open season' many thousands of ducks are shot over the wetlands of Australia in the name of this ‘sport'. During the hunting season shooters in South Australia will be allowed to bag 12 ducks each day and, in the state's south-east, 25 quail. Tens of thousands of native animals and birds, including kangaroos, emus, wombats, kookaburras and cockatoos, have been legally slaughtered in Victoria in recent years. Landowners or managers who cannot resolve a wildlife issue by non-lethal means may apply for a permit to destroy or scare the animals. Inspectors don't even have to visit the property or provide non-lethal alternatives. On the other hand, conserving and protecting wildlife is very difficult and undervalued and underfunded. Victoria is largely in private hands and large swathes are already cleared and damaged. Roads, droughts, degraded habitats, and urban sprawl are taking their toll. The colonial-like mentality of land-holders with political-historical power, and the right to kill native animals, still exists in the Victorian government. It's hard to control crime and live in harmony, without the threat of violence, while so much killing is allowed - legally.

The documentary Kangaroo Mob shown on ABC on Tuesday night angered and upset many people. While it had some value in showing perhaps a better view of kangaroos than most television does, many viewers seemed to be disappointed. My major concern was that it showed a lot of Don Fletcher's shonky research[1], (remember him, he was involved in the Belconnen kangaroo kill).

But I was also concerned that the narrator stated that landclearing, planting crops and building dams had contributed to plagues of kangaroos, which is quite blatantly wrong. With 5 major river systems across Australia, lots of billabongs and lagoons, and enough natural grasslands to support 200 or more million kangaroos, they couldn't get anything to eat or drink till we arrived and built dams and planted crops? Pull the other leg.....

Footnotes

[1] Linked page on the Australian Wildlife Management Society web-site contains link to Don Fletcher's 18.8MB pdf presentation.