environmental law

As we understand it, individual States are free to “manage” their own (protected) wildlife. However, the "management" of wildlife ends up evolving into a business of exponential commercial proportions, with momentum to keep supplying the meat and skins for domestic use and international export markets. (Photographs by Brett Clifton)

(Photographs by Brett Clifton)[1]

‘Management’ becomes mandatory to keep up demands, and we end up with a commercial kangaroo meat trade in Victoria, until now, stating there are NOT enough kangaroos in Victoria to sustain a commercial kangaroo killing industry in the State.

Authority to Control Wildlife permits granted willy-nilly by dysfunctional state departments

Victoria's deficient and seriously flawed system of ATCW (Authority to Control Wildlife) permits must be addressed and scrutinised. It's far too easy for landholders to gain ATCW permits, without getting advice on non-lethal alternatives. With so much of Victoria's land in private hands, the vicissitudes of fires, droughts, floods, on top of all the human impacts, our wildlife must be protected properly and with integrity. We already have the highest mammal extinction rate of the modern world. There should be wildlife corridors linked to national and state parks, then farmers blocking their transits would not be able to label them a "pest" - and apply for permits to "control" (kill) native animals. Planning has devolved into creating real estate opportunities rather than real planning for biodiversity and our environment. Kangaroos breed very quickly? Only about 25% of joeys survive in the wild. Kangaroos are endemic to Australia, and are native animals. Their numbers increase when there is good feed, and naturally decline in the poor times. They live in perfect harmony with the environment, and 16 million years of experience puts them well ahead of us modern humans.

State crocodile tears for starving kangaroos don't fool wildlife carers

The false empathy with the kangaroos that will "starve" and therefore must be killed is disturbing and hypocritical. The hideous massacre of kangaroos in Canberra, ACT, is shameful, Healthy kangaroos were slaughtered and incredibly became scapegoats for conservation concerns. Then the graziers blame Russia, a country that sensibly ended the import of kangaroo meat for hygiene and health concern. Livestock are eating the grass, and causing havoc is another excuse for “management”. It's the livestock industries that are responsible for high extinction rates in Australia. They denude the country of grass, eating much more than kangaroos and doing untold damage, with their cloven hooves. Human overpopulation in the Middle East and South East Asia will drive demands for live exports, further exacerbating the problem. Australia has one of the worst mammal extinction rates in the world, with 22 mammals becoming extinct over the past 200 years.

THINKK Research group at Sydney University of Technology

A report by THINKK, a research group at the University of Technology, Sydney, proved that kangaroos rarely compete with sheep and cattle for pasture?—?calling into question the legality of culling animals on the grounds that they are competing for food. The contrary it true – livestock compete with kangaroos for food, and their rapacious feeding habits and consumption pattern are threatening kangaroo survival! Kangaroos have their first young at around 3 years; they can raise one joey per year; joeys are dependent for 18 months; joeys have high rates of mortality. How can graziers and others suggest that populations can “explode”? How can “researchers” seriously provide graphs which double or triple populations, and claim that their monitoring in any sense “tracks” populations? If there are 100 kangaroos one year, and a population has a M:F ratio of 1:1, of the 50 or so does that could conceivably conceive, only 25% or so of these are likely to successfully raise their young to independence, and there may be 110 or 115 the next year, period.

Getting things in proportion

While kangaroos, other native species, and the natural living environment generally, are often considered to be in conflict with agriculture, does this label them all as “pests”? Those native species which persist in developed landscapes are the displaced remnants and tatters of native fauna trying to subsist within a landscape which has been fundamentally transformed by the human pursuit of production objectives. The power of the States must be quelled and the mask of “managing” kangaroo numbers must not be driving the commercial kangaroo killing industry, which shames Australia, the nation of the highest mammal extinctions in the world. We strenuously object to the suggestion that the industry expand to China and Russia. Aboriginal people respectfully killed one kangaroo at a time for sustenance and they used every bit of their totem kangaroo they did not kill on an industrial scale as happens today! The acquisition of a taste for kangaroo meat, by over a billion people in China and Russia , will ensure another species suffers and eventually becomes extinct.

NOTES

[1] Source of photographs

The source of the photographs was Brett Clifton and the subject was a kangaroo called Jelly and it was called, "January 2013: Jelly and the art of scratching."  You can view the series of three of this lively kangaroo at Brett Clifton's famous "A Kanga a Day" pages, here at brettclifton.com/wordpress/?p=1747

Original Source of article:

This article is based on a letter sent to the Hon Tony Burke, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities (ALP), with a copy to the Hon Greg Hunt, (Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage, and Federal Member for Flinders, Victoria), on February 8, 2013 by Maryland Wilson, President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council.

Kelvin Thomson, MP for Wills, has written to Prime Minister Gillard, asking her to consider and respond to the concerns of constituents about planned changes to the federal environment act. Have any other ministers done this? We would like to hear from them if so. See also this article which contains links to petitions etc.

This Friday, 7 December, the Federal Government plans to give away environmental assessment authority to the states. Candobetter readers should take any opportunity they can to avoid this devolution of our already semi-toothless legislation. Here is an opportunity to add your signature to a petition. There is also a Get-up campaign. Readers are invited to let us know of any other actions they are taking.Links to petitions etc inside.

What is the EPBC Act and why is it such a big deal?

Virtually the only functioning piece of environmental legislation in Australia is the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999), or the EPBC Act. It is the only law that individual citizens can bring a complaint under. The state environmental laws require you to find an officer in a government department or some other rare organisation with 'standing' who will bring a complaint for you. If you have tried to do this you will realise how this is almost impossible. Wildlife organisations and carers see grotesque crimes daily and cannot interest state bodies.

Under the federal EPBC legislation, the Federal Environment Minister, Tony Burke, has responsibility for assessing and approving (or rejecting) major development that will impact our nationally important places and wildlife, such as our World Heritage areas, threatened species and nuclear actions like uranium mines or nuclear waste dumps.

Apparently, due to industry lobbying (notably from the Business Council of Australia) and without consulting the Australian public, the government is gutting these laws and handing over most, if not all, of these federal responsibilities over to the States.

This means that Premiers like Campbell Newman, Collin Barnet, Ted Bailieu, Barry O'Farrell, etc., will be left solely in charge of protecting our Environment and World Heritage areas like the Great Barrier Reef. Since power over land and water resides in the states and they make much of their money out of buying, selling and regulating these for profit, they have a vested interest in developing land. The states are notorious for ignoring environmental law in favour of big money and development.

December 7, 2012 is D-Day for Environment

On December 7th, the Prime Minister and Tony Burke intend to hand over their environment responsibilities to the states through the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). Recent hard-won environmental protection in Australia has only been possible when the Federal Government stepped in to overrule bad state government decisions. See, most recently, Tony Burke shows courage in giving NSW and QLD koalas threatened status As the Australian Greens note, "If the States were in charge of the environment, they would have damned the Franklin River, put oil rigs in the Great Barrier Reef and let Traveston Dam go ahead."

Make no mistake; fracking, massive open-cut coal mining, huge housing developments, desecration of the Kimberlies, cattle on the highlands, fragmenting, farming and selling off of national and regional parks - will all be on state agendas.

Environment groups and scientific bodies like the Wentworth Group all agree – this change, being rushed through by COAG at the behest of big business - is the worst thing to happen for environmental protection in Australia for thirty years.

Petition to sign

The Australian Greens have put out a petition to sign http://greensmps.org.au/content/petition/minister-burke-dont-hand-your-powers-states and share with your networks.

Get-up Campaign

http://www.getup.org.au/keep-federal-govt-enviro-powers Also asking for donations at Get-up and for a lot of information about you.

Disclaimer from Editor at Candobetter.net: Note, the petition is from the Australian Greens, some of whom have shamefully ignored population pressure from high immigration and have caused debate to focus on asylum seekers. They are now - oh so belatedly - calling on people to use them to support environmental laws. Despite these failings, the Australian public need to use this opportunity to try and defend their environmental legislation (which still needs to be much much stronger) as well as to use any other opportunities that may arise. So please consider signing. And similar for Get-up, which also ignores population and insists on getting a lot of information out of you which is no doubt useful to on-sell.

Source: Press release from the Australian Greens and the Humane Society International, and independent research. Contact was also attempted with the federal office of Environment Minister Tony Burke by phone and by email, but no-one was available to comment on the day that this article was written. If we receive a response to our email we will take it into consideration.

Greens say the Port of Melbourne is polluting Port Phillip Bay

Greens MP Sue Pennicuik says that the latest PoMC quarterly report has indicated that water quality control limits were exceeded on a number of occasions over the last three months. In addition water-quality testing by ACFs Bay Monitor has confirmed that the plume from the dredger has spread further than predicted and the report that the dredger has spilled 1,000 litres of hydraulic fluid at the Entrance to the Bay just show that the Port is not serious about protecting the ecosystem of Port Phillip Bay.

"The plume from the dredger has spread further than the Port had predicted, but many others in the community had predicted that this would happen," said Ms Pennicuik.

"Arsenic, zinc, copper, nickel and nitrogenous compounds have all been found in concentrations higher than the 'control limits,' which is no surprise either due to the weak Environmental Management Plan that the Port is operating to. All of this was foreseen by scientists and others independent of the Port and the state government and sadly are coming to pass.

Laws weakened to accommodate dredging project

"The pollution and the spreading dredge plume demonstrates the inability of the PoMC to adhere to even its own watered down environmental standards."

"I find it deplorable that the response of the PoMC to these breaches is to further weaken [environmental standards] to accommodate the needs of the dredging project rather than the needs of the ecosystem of Port Phillip Bay."

"This is like removing the canaries from the coal mines when the poison gas levels rise, she said."

"My question is 'where is the regulator?' Which agency is pursuing the dredging company and the Port of Melbourne for polluting Port Phillip Bay?"

Source: Media release, 10 September 2008.
For more information call Sue Pennicuik 0407 000 270