Australian Wildlife Protection Council

Eve Kelly, who is the very hard working Secretary for the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC), is also a wonderful singer and songwriter. She composed and performed this song with Josh Geoghegan. She then uploaded pictures of rescued baby wildlife from friends and contacts all over the place. So the song is illustrated with many wonderful pictures - in fact, they get better as it goes on. It will probably make you sniffle a bit but you will feel better to know that Eve is working for AWPC. Please consider donating to AWPC here and here online. The money will be very well spent. AWPC is engaged at a level I have not seen before for wildlife or wildlife carers. Such is the predicament of our wildlife in the face of 'planning' and population growth and the most unsympathetic government departments you could imagine.

I found what struck me personally as egregious growthist propaganda dressed up as an academic research article on The Conversation, yesterday: "Blaming immigrants for unemployment, lower wages and high house prices is too simplistic." [February 23, 2018 11.26am AEDT]. The article was headed up by professor of economics, Robert Breunig from the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, and co-authored by Mark Fabian, Postgraduate student, Australian National University. Professor Breunig disclosed that he receives funding from the Productivity Commission, which I think is a leopard with continuously changing arrangement of spots according to whatever political background it needs to blend into for survival. Leith van Onselen's debate with Migration Council's CEO Carla Wilshire of the on the ABC’s National Wrapdocumented here, seems to illustrate this, but for all I know the professor and his student actually believe what they write.

Wildlife rescuer and carer, Rebecca Koller, has observed an unprecedented number of Spectacled flying fox casualties in a traditional breeding site located near a new hotel construction in Cairnes. The spectacled flying fox is a threatened species.[1] Despite many attempts to get the Australian government to investigate and or intervene, the government has failed to get back to her. This is even though the problem has received extensive publicity and the species is about to have its threatened status upgraded from vulnerable to endangered. The source of this article is correspondence between Ms Koller and The Australian Wildlife Protection Council.

“Avoid culling roos for development by planning wildlife corridors,” says Craig Thomson, AWPC’s new Wildlife Planning Officer. In the face of state planning avoidance of obligation towards wildlife, Mr Thomson and AWPC want to crowdfund the purchase of private land to preserve wildlife corridors from being fenced off by farmers or built over by suburbia. The situation is increasingly dire for kangaroos and koalas particularly. Please consider helping this initiative. Contact details at end of article.

The following letter from the Australian Wildlife Protection Council Inc. to the Victorian Ombudsman urgently signals the failure of Victorian law to protect Victorian wildlife and the lack of standing for wildlife carers against ill-based and frequent cull permits to farmers in a situation where no-one actually counts the kangaroos or actual ferals, like rabbits. The situation is truly scandalous; Victoria's almost useless laws were conceived and are administered with utter cynicism.

Maryland Wilson, President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council, announced today (June 30, 2015) that Queensland LNP Senator Barry O’Sullivan will have a singular focus when he spearheads an Australian government trade delegation to China to try to seal the deal on kangaroo meat exports. #kangaroo #exploitation. The Trans Pacific Partnership agreements, if they go through, would worsen the already terrible situation of many Australian native animals and could provoke species extinctions.

See also: 1 in 10 wild bees faces extinction in Europe, study warns (25/3/15)

Inappropriate fuel-reduction could see more losses of threatened species.

In late January, 2014, after wildfires tore through two conservation parks in South Australia, researchers scoured the charred terrain for signs of life.  Tragically, they found nothing; only the charred silence of an empty, burnt landscape!  The 60 remaining breeding pairs of Mallee emu-wren (Stipiturus mallee) in South Australia had been lost and the species was now extinct in the state.

The fires ignited in two conservation parks in South Australia’s Mallee region that were home to the only remaining South Australian populations of the endangered Mallee Emu-wren, and another fire in the Victorian mallee, 12 kilometres southwest of Ouyen, burnt the entire 13,000-hectare reserve that was one of two small populations in Victoria of the endangered Black-eared Miner. (Article republished from the Australian Wildlife Protection Website at "End of the line for the tiny Mallee Emu-Wren?"

See also: Help Save Koalas From Extinction! (9/1/2014) on the Australian Wildlife Protection web site.

With the destruction of yet another juvenile dingo on Fraser Island, the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC) and the National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program (NDPRP) today issued a joint criticism of the Queensland Government for its continuing mismanagement of the Fraser Island dingo population.

The juvenile male dingo was destroyed by Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service staff this week after it allegedly stalked tourists near Eli Creek on the Island and nipped an 11 year old child.

Prescribed burns in Victoria, leave many hundreds of thousands of dead wildlife- have just watched this video and am shocked – had no idea how bad the results of prescribed burns are- video exposes unsustainable toll on native animals with planned & implemented burns in Victoria, causing immense suffering and death ~Maryland Wilson

Article reprinted from AWPC website

Human exposure to 1080 is very severely restricted by law, for obvious reasons. The same does not apply to other species in baited areas. The major animal welfare concern over the use of 1080 relates to its extreme cruelty and its lack of an antidote. The major environmental concern relates to its effects on non target animals, either through ingestion of baits or by secondary poisoning. Article by Sheila Newman with Maryland Wilson, President, Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC)

Mr Cole, originally from Preston in Victoria, is a humble and ordinary man with compassion. To oppose the police and go ahead and rescue a struggling joey, in deep murky water, was a courageous and selfless act. He saw a struggling creature needing help, and did what he could.