Comments

I read this in a dicussion forum about saving Milton from the threat of high-rise:

My response was:

In response to the above comment: 'Where did statistic of 75% flora and fauna destroyed come from'?

Good question. Go to the Australian Bureau of Statistics webpage

[Note: The ABS frequently changes its referencing so this link may only be temporary]

scroll down to...
A LONGER TERM VIEW

"Declines in wildlife have occurred in most parts of Australia since European colonisation. Over the past 200 years 17 mammal species are thought to have become extinct here. Fewer than 25 species are believed to have become extinct in the rest of the world over the same period, which means that Australia accounts for over 40% of the world's mammalian extinctions since 1800-10 Some other mammals, once widespread, now survive only in tiny areas (often islands free of foxes and cats); this isolation and loss of genetic diversity make species less adaptable and more vulnerable to threats such as disease.

Intensive land use, which has played a part in the decline, has been concentrated in the south and east of the country. Habitat loss, through cropping, grazing, forestry, mining and human settlements, has dramatically changed vegetation cover. The 1996 State of the Environment report assessed that since 1788:

* over 40% of forests had been cleared;
* more than 60% of coastal wetlands in southern and eastern Australia had been lost;
* about 75% of rainforests had been cleared;
* almost 90% of temperate woodlands and mallee had been cleared; and
* more than 99% of temperate lowland grasslands in south-eastern Australia had been lost.

[the net average exceeds 75% of Australia]

Wildlife has declined in northern and central Australia too, where the level of land clearing has been lower. In the arid zone, about one-third of mammal species are regionally extinct, the highest extinction rate on the Australian mainland, and many birds are declining. The extent of cattle grazing, effects of invasive species and changes to fire regimes are factors thought to have led to a decline in many animal species in these areas.

Seventeen species of mammals (and another 10 subspecies) are listed by the Commonwealth as presumed extinct in Australia since 1788. Ten of these species were last seen alive in the twentieth century, ten of these animals are marsupials, and 14 of them were found predominantly in the inland arid zone."

===================================

The following are also informative on this issue:

Facts About Land Clearing in Australia

"Land clearing is the permanent destruction of native vegetation and its replacement with agricultural, urban or other land uses.

* Australia has the fifth highest rate of land clearing in the world. We clear more bush each year than poverty-stricken countries like Burma, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and the Congo.
* Australia clears land at the massive rate of over half a million hectares a year.

* The rate of land clearing is accelerating. As much land has been cleared in the last 50 years, as was cleared in the previous 150 years.

* Woodlands are Australia's most threatened, and least protected, wooded ecosystem.

* 85% of all land clearing in Australia happens in Queensland. Victoria has lost more native vegetation than any other state, and Tasmania has the highest clearing rate in proportion to the State's total land area.

* For every tree planted, 100 are bulldozed!"

[Source: Australian Conservation Foundation]
=========================================

Australia one of worst animal destroyers

"THE earth is experiencing its sixth great extinction and Australia, along with its Pacific neighbours, is in danger of perpetuating its record as one of the worst destroyers of animal and plant species, a study by leading environmental scientists has found.

Based on a review of 24,000 scientific papers, the study published today in the journal Conservation Biology finds that land clearing and overlogging are among the greatest threats to land-based creatures and plants in the Oceania region.

Since records began, Australian agriculture has changed or destroyed half the woodlands and forests of the country. More than two-thirds of the remaining forest has been degraded by logging.

The study finds that throughout Oceania more than 1200 bird species have become extinct and climate change is threatening to worsen the crisis.

‘‘Our region has the notorious distinction of having possibly the worst extinction record on earth,’’ said Richard Kingsford, professor of environmental science at the University of NSW and one of the 14 authors of the study.

‘‘This is predicted to continue without serious changes to the way we conserve our environment,’’ he said, noting that half of Australia’s mammal extinctions were directly or indirectly caused by humans.

This year, the white lemuroid possum, which lives at high altitudes in Queensland’s tropical northern rainforest, was identified as being in extreme decline.

‘‘The lemuroid possum has shown itself to be particularly sensitive to rising temperatures and may face extinction if we cannot reverse these trends,’’ reported John Williams of James Cook University.

Some ecologists see the white possum as similar to the polar bear, a symbol of the threat posed by climate change.

The study comes as WWF raised the alarm over figures showing Australia lost 300,000 hectares to land clearing in the year to 2007, the latest available statistics. This was the equivalent of clearing about 5 million suburban house blocks, Nick Heath of WWF told the Herald.

Queensland had the worst record, clearing an area equal to the land mass of the Australian Capital Territory.

It was the last year of the state’s policy of allowing broad-scale land clearing and its record dwarfed that of the other states combined.

WWF estimated that 20 million birds, reptiles and mammals would have died as a result of the clearing.

The authors are calling on governments in Australia and the Pacific to act urgently to halt the rising extinctions. Along with land clearing, logging and climate change, the threats include exotic diseases, pollution, overfishing and the introduction of foreign plants and animals."

[Australia One of the Worst Animal Destroyers, by Marian Wilkinson, Environment Editor, 29-Jul-09]

So, there are climate deniers and no doubt, land clearing deniers and extinction deniers.
The best thing Australians could do in this International Year of Biodiversity to save our wildlife is to call for Peter Garrett's dismissal as a woeful Environment Minister and not vote either Labour or Liberal at the federal and state elections.

Meanwhile, how's the land clearing in New Zealand?

Check out:

1. Wikipedia

2. Native Forest Action

Tiger Quoll
Snowy River 3885
Australia

Our anonymous contributor has a simplistic superficial view of possum slaughter in New Zealand.

Yes, the brush tail possum is an introduced species in New Zealand, introduced by colonial New Zealanders in the 19th Century to establish a fur trade.

Yes, the possum has been allowed to grow to pest proportions due to lack of natural predators, ineffectual controls and removal by NZ authorities, and by an immoral backyard fur industry that simply 'manages' the possum numbers to ensure a viable ongoing fur trade. New Zealanders are not systematically removing the possum from New Zealand in a humane way. They are only perpetuating an immoral fur trade and profiting from it like they did in the 19th Century. Such practice keeps New Zealand a backward nation.

Finding a 'use' for Australian wildlife is immoral. It is the same as finding a 'use' for the Kiwi or Kea.
It is just like killing kiwi's for down or killing kangaroos or possums in Australia. It is killing wild animals for commercial gain. It is not culling pest species humanely to remove them altogether. If it were, there may be a moral argument.

Killing kangaroos for commercial gain (meat, skins, fertilizer) is the same as killing tigers for commerical gain, just like backward Chinese are prepared to pay for to get a traditional cultural hard on.

The tired argument that it is better to kill native animals than to continue killing livestock is a slippery slope - 'Non Causa Pro Causa'. That is, if killing livestock is acceptable, then by a gradual series of small steps to killing possums, kangaroos, elephants, tigers, platypus, dolphins, kiwis, kakapo parrots, takahes, koalas, giant pandas, is by extension acceptable too? It is an fallacious argument. They used to shoot Aborigines in Australia too you know.

Yes, Australian colonists and subsequent settlers have wiped out 75% of Australia's native flora and fauna to establish an agricultural industry and lifestyle - crops and livestock. Lamb and beef continue to be bred for domestic consumption and export. It was wrong and the ethics of the landscape destruction are an historic problem. But the issue of livestock damage is introducing a completely distinct problem.
This is a diversionary tactic to change the subject. So how do we address the lamb and beef damage and the demand for this lamb and beef and the jobs they provide? "Cultural clinging to introduced destructive animals for food" is one problem. Offer solutions without shifting the problem to one of wildlife slaughter.

The problem of possum slaughter in New Zealand is the focus of the above article. Isn't the challenge to remove the possum from New Zealand effectively and humanely. As far as I can tell, the New Zealand Government has given up - bit like NZ in the cricket - no stamina.

Both New Zealand and Australia's last remaining natural places are increasingly under threat. To exacerbate that threat by encouraging wildlife slaughter for commercial gain is a quantum leap of immoral and backward butchery. Wildlife slaughter in the 21st Century is one of obsolute choice. It is an extreme leisure pursuit by sadists. It is like Australian poacher Robert Borsak flying off to Zimbabwe last year to shoot African elephants. It is a sick personal fetish.

New Zealand's magnificent giant moa was once prolific and so slaughtered by Maoris to extinction. Extinction is worse than the holocaust or genocide. While millions of humans were slaughtered by the Nazis, and Hutus in Rwanda at least humans are not at risk of extinction. But there are no more moas.

Tiger Quoll
Snowy River 3885
Australia

Thanks for this response, AP.

Part of the problem is that the monstrousness of this crime is precisely what prevents many people from rationally considering the evidence, for even to do so, one risks being judged as excusing the crime.

The evidence directly implicating Martin Bryant is non-existent, so, instead the case against Bryant (which was never formally put becaus there was no trial) largely centres on supposed facts that make him and people he was acquainted with appear capable of committing the crime or at least being very bizarre.

A case in point is this excerpt from "Born or Bred":

The tragic consequences of [Martin Bryant's relationship with 54-year-old heiress Helen Mary Elizabeth Harvey], however, began early.

As the friendship moved from employer-employee to friends and then constant companions, Helen's mother Hilza was left increasingly alone inside what was fast becoming a filthy hellhole. She had been moved downstairs into the kitchen at some stage, and it was here that the old woman was forced to sleep, upright in a chair, writhing and wriggling in a bid to gain relief from an undiagnosed and untreated broken hip for most of the last two years of her life.

In June 1990, after someone made a report to the health authorities, medics arrived to find both Hilza and Helen in need of urgent hospital treatment with infected leg ulcers and living in squalor in the kitchen, surrounded not only by roaming animals, but unwashed dishes and saucepans and bowls with mould so high it was climbing out of the oven.
SEVENTY-nine-year-old Hilza Harvey was an abject horror of neglect, sitting untended with her broken hip and withering slowly in the kitchen on her chair.

As horrified as they were, the ambulance officers cast no judgment on the situation. Hilza's deterioration was rapid. After several weeks in hospital, she was moved to a nursing home where she died at the end of July.

The RSPCA took away most of the animals while Helen recovered in hospital. A clean-up order was also placed on the house, and Maurice Bryant took it upon himself to take long-service leave and attempt to coordinate the job with his son.

It took three months to scrape the filth from the floors, walls and surfaces of almost every room. A dozen skips were filled with rubbish while Helen's entire wardrobe had to be thrown away.

On the face of it, these facts present Helen Mary Elizabeth Harvey, and, possibly, indirectly, Martin Bryant, in a bad light, if we forget his IQ of 66.

Whether this is true or some facts have been omitted, or whether it was the result of a misunderstanding rather than conscious cruelty on Harvey's part, I can't say, but this is an example of the kind of information which causes many to conclude that Bryant must have been guilty in the absence of any direct evidence of his guilt.

Agent Provocateur, re: 'GDP ... A NOTIONAL Value & POP Growth - like a Cancer!'

Yes, you're on to it.

GDP is a blunt one dimensional metric, indeed never intended by its inventor to be a single metric, bit one of many. American economist Simon Kuznets in the 1930s in the wake of the Great Depression, devised Gross Domestic Product as just a single indicator of economic performance for the government of the day.

Swan is a simple person using simple measures and delivering simple messages trying to cope in a complex integrated market system and society. Read Swan's speeches. It is always a good insight to read a minister's first speech to gauge what to expect. Wayne Swan's First Speech where he condemns laissez-faire economics and champions the 'economic importance of sport'.

The following article from online news agency Der Spiegel is instructive:

'Economists Search for New Definition of Well-Being'

Another reference worth reading:

'Gross Inaccuracies – The Flawed GDP'

"The groundswell of criticism is now yielding some high-level results.

Soon the OECD–the group of rich countries–will introduce a series of new measurements aimed at going beyond GDP...

More significantly, Stiglitz and Sen argue that a real measure of national well-being requires assessment of the quality of life, the degree to which individuals have opportunities to develop their own talents, and the environmental sustainability of the system — all of which are ignored by the GDP and may or may not increase as it grows."

http://www.reboottherepublic.com/blog/economics/gross-inaccuracies-the-flawed-gdp/