wildlife corridors

I spent some hours on the US side of the wall near San Diego one night in the early 1990s. (Yes there has been a wall there since at least Kennedy’s time.) Crossing the wall was essentially a nighttime activity, but the “Mexicans” (they may have been mostly Mexicans going backwards and forwards between family in Mexico and illegal jobs they had in the USA) seemed to have ladders permanently against the wall on their side. Their heads appeared over the wall well before dark, sometimes waving cockily. After dark the border force vehicles cruised up and down on a road on the US side about 200 metres (in most places) from the wall, trying to guess where the “rushes” would come. Tourists sometimes came to see this nightly game.

(Meanwhile those with the right papers, including thousands legally working in the USA, streamed into the USA via about ten lanes of traffic near San Diego, with 30 second checks of their papers and car-boot.)

The technique at the fence was for a dozen, or for several dozen, people to all jump down together at a given place, preferably when there were no US vehicles in sight, and make a “rush” through 200 or 300 metres of no man’s land on the US side, and on into the suburban fences and backyards of San Diego and safety. With luck, they would overwhelm the defenders, and many or most would get through. Those captured were manicled with cable ties and taken to a processing centre where some details would be taken. They could be kept only a few hours before lawyers would appear to encourage them to claim refugee status. Since the US could not afford this expense, they would simply process and bus them back to Mexico, sometimes so promptly that the same person would be rearrested later that night while making a second attempt to enter the USA.

Effect of the wall, or of extending it? Mainly it seemed to discourage those not young and fit enough to jump down from it and run the gauntlet. Those I saw being processed were largely young males. I remember one young woman with a child that had a T-shirt saying “I love L.A.”, but I don’t think this method of entry worked well for families. You would need a certain fitness level and a certain disrespect for law or at least for US law, but with persistence you would get into the USA. There was therefore no real screening of who got into the USA; yet granted the possibility of being “processed”, anyone on an international wanted list might need to be cautious or at least have false ID. (This difference is the main reason that “illegals and crime” is an issue in US debates but not in Australian ones.)

A see-through fence would make a lot of sense for the border-guards, so they could see where their opponents were massing. On the other hand, groups like FAIR www.fairus.org think the single most important thing required is E-verification (a system that would force employers to verify that anyone to whom they gave a job was a genuine US citizen or permit holder). Paper certificates were easily purchased by illegals, but on online database would be harder to fool. But Trump knows his supporters want something tangible, like a big wall; and has done little on E-Verify.

Complaints from the USA side about the system in the 1990s were: that the illegals suffered no real penalty for failed attempts; that they created a nuisance for house-holders near the border by trampling and running through their gardens and scaling their fences, and a hazard for motorists (since in fleeing they sometimes ran across highways); and that apprehending them was difficult and physically dangerous work, and often resulted in unintended injuries both to the “illegals” and to those physically tackling them. “Having a rush of illegals go over you is kinda scarey!” And of course the whole “rush” systems seems like an insult to many US voters’ notion of national sovereignty.

Animals are losing their trees in droves. The cause is population growth. There is a new tree removing policy for all dams and retarding basins in Victoria, treating small retarding basins as if they were big dams, and treating trees as problems, where previously they were considered desirable. See inside for locations. This policy applies in other states as well. VicRoads is also suddenly removing trees en-masse from roadsides and median strips! None of these policies gives adequate consideration to wildlife habitat or cruelty impacts. There is no overall coordinating policy for Australia to ensure the preservation of wildlife and wildlife corridors at local, state and national levels, nor to avoid heat-island creation and local climate change, or citizen despair. With constant clearing for new suburbs and roads all over habitable Australia, tree removal by governments and contractors is reaching the level of a national civil emergency.

Trees and Retarding Basins

The reason for this change of policy around retarding basins is that we have become so overpopulated, due to wilful government policy, that flooding has become a problem.

"When a natural catchment is progressively urbanised, the stormwater runoff characteristics of that catchment change accordingly.The runoff response becomes quicker and larger as the introduction of urban features (eg paved streets, tiled roofs, concrete driveways) reduces the capacity of the catchment to store and retard stormwater flow." (Norman Himsley, "A guiding hand for flood retarding basins," ANCOLD.)

Trees are blamed, when previously they were planted to keep the water table low, stabilise landforms, and suck up floodwater. If there has been a scientific review of the literature regarding the pros and cons of trees on dams, it has escaped me. For this reason, I am very leery of the new policy. ANCOLD is the source of the new guidelines, but you have to pay over $100 to access them, since Melbourne Water is using a private publication.

Victoria's population growth

Victoria's population growth - at around 2.4% is one of the fastest in the world, with a doubling time of under 30 years. Australia's growth at 1.6% is the fastest of OECD countries. No wonder Victoria is now using the ANCOLD rules for *large dams* in order to manage small local retarding basins. These basins were adequate when they were made, before Jeff Kennett, Steve Bracks, and their successors, decided to rapidly grow Victoria's population. (See /node/5262 and /node/5268. In Victoria, where Melbourne Water manages about 224 retarding basins, there has been a sudden onslaught of mass tree removal with very limited 'community consultation' and absolutely no viable plans for affected wildlife. In this article I have named some affected retarding basins. If you put them together you can see how this de-treeing policy will impact all Melbourne's green wedges and wildlife corridors. How can anyone pretend that we can preserve Victoria's wildlife and our pleasant green spaces if this population tsunami is allowed to go ahead?

Banyan Reserve retarding basin, Carrum Downs.
Removal of trees. Late January schedule.

https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/banyan-reserve-retarding-basin-upgrade

Campbellfield retarding basin, Sages Road, Glenroy, 80 trees to go

https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/campbellfield-creek-retarding-basin

Fairbairn Road retarding basin, Duff Street, (within the J and P Cam Reserve) at Cranbourne, tree removal

https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/fairbairn-road-retarding-basin-upgrade

Glen Valley Retarding Basin located on Glen Valley Road in Forest Hill

Lernes Street Retarding Basin located on Hylton Crescent in Forest Hill

Glen Valley retarding basin - no info here.
https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/glen-valley-retarding-basin-upgrade

Jack Roper Reserve (CSL) retarding basin in Glenroy. Tree Removal.

https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/jack-roper-reserve-retarding-basin

Masons Road retarding basin, Masons Road Reserve, Blackburn

https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/masons-road-retarding-basin-upgrade No information here. Just takes you to a Melbourne water search engine.

Navan Park retarding basin, Navan Park, off Centenary Avenue, Melton West

https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/navan-park-retarding-basin-upgrade No mention of removal of trees.

Roxburg Park retarding basin: Retarding basins at Shankland Gully (also known at St Clair Reservoir), Shankland Gully 2C, Lake Mcivor and Tiffany Crescent. Work includes removal of trees.

https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/roxburgh-park-retarding-basin-upgrades

Ryans Road retarding basin, Diamond Creek. Removal of trees.

A community bulletin was issued in November 2017. https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/ryans-road-retarding-basin-upgrade

Retarding basin located in Taylors Lakes, Chichester Drive, neighbouring to both Lake Shelduck and Lake Heron. Removal of Trees:

"trees must be removed from the whole length of the embankment."

https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/sasses-avenue-retarding-basin-upgrade

Troups Creek West Wetland and Hallam Bypass retarding basin on Drysdale Avenue in Narre Warren North. Tree removal.

"Vegetation removal from the wetland; this will be replaced with plants that will improve the natural treatment of stormwater"
https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/troups-creek-west-wetland-upgrade

Yarraman Creek retarding basin, Elonera Road, Noble Park North. Removal of trees.

Undated community bulletin indicating works would have started on Monday 22 January 3pm – 4pm.
https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/yarraman-creek-retarding-basin-upgrade

Christmas Hills land-sale. Melbourne water selling off public land previously earmarked for the Watsons Creek Storage Reservoir, which it says it no longer needs. There was some 'community consultation', but this land is going to be turned into a suburb.

https://yoursay.melbournewater.com.au/christmas-hills-land-sale

RECENT PAST WORKSThompsons Road retarding basin, Lawson Poole Reserve in Cranbourne. Trees were removed. https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/thompsons-road-retarding-basin-upgrade

Trees have been removed. There is a community information bulletin here: https://www.melbournewater.com.au/files/Communitybulletin-EastBurwood-May2017.pdf The following link leads nowhere useful: https://www.melbournewater.com.au/what-we-are-doing/works-and-projects-near-me/all-projects/east-burwood-retarding-basin-upgrade

Several more if you do a search for Melbourne Water and retarding basins.

The proposed solution for bandicoots (SBB) in the Botanic Ridge and Devon Meadows urban development area has a number of problems. Bandicoots are expected to cross extremely busy roads via inadequate corridors. I ask, "Would it not just be so much more cost effective to simply exchange SBB’s from the RBGC to the Pines and from the Pines to the Royal Botanical Gardens Cranbourne? (RBGC)"

The Department of Environment, Land,Water and Planning (DELWP) believes that 30m wide corridors for SBB’s to other areas will compensate for the loss of habitat and lack of contact with other bandicoots . This is my response.

The corridor from the RBGC to the Pines is about 8 km long and has to cross Pearsdale Rd, Cranbourne-Frankston Rd, the extremely wide Western Port HWY (double road), Potts Rd and McClellend Drive in order to lead into the Pines and this reserve needs to be fenced in with a predator-proof fence and no dog walking allowed in the reserve.

Road crossings are not only costly but also create bottle necks and it is every ones guess how SBB’s can cope with the extremely wide Western Port HWY underpass alone.

Four to six times a year of fox baiting on both sides of the corridor on an ongoing basis is not only extremely expensive but there is no guarantee that it will be successful.

There is also the need for a fence on both sides of the corridors in order to guide the SBB’s to where they are expected to go.

A further question is whether the whole length of this corridor can be properly provided with suitable vegetation.

If one walked the whole length of it there would be surely some more difficulties encountered. A Population Viability Assessment would surely cause laughter at all of this.

And what about the yet unspecified and prohibitive costs involved?

Would it not just be so much more cost effective to simply exchange SBB’s from the RBGC to the Pines and from the Pines to the RBGC?

Further more, such an extremely narrow and long corridor is still untested and there is definitely no proof that it will work. SBB’s deserve much better than this and need to be treated with dignity in large reserves.

The corridor from the RBGC to the Western Port Bay is also an extremely narrow corridor and is about 10 km long and has to cross Browns Rd, North RD, Smith Lane, Baxter-Tyabb Rd and many more smaller roads and finishes up at nowhere in particular near Western Port Bay. It encounters the same extreme difficulties as the corridor above.

The rest of the proposed corridors will surely encounter very similar problems.

This nationally endangered species needs to be properly protected within large reserves and protected within a predator proof fence, rather than to try to condemn them into these corridors.

I have now attended three workshops on how to compensate for the loss of southern brown bandicoot (SBB) habitat because of urban expansion adjacent to the Royal Botanical Gardens Cranbourne.

At the first meeting I went with a totally open mind in order to see what was on offer for the loss of SBB habitat adjacent to the Royal Botanical Gardens Cranbourne. I was willing to see how corridors would work, where they would be located and how wide they were to be. I also wanted to know what other alternatives there were on offer. To my disappointment, there were nothing else but corridors recommended as compensation for habitat loss and b pop loss. Large reserves did not get a mention. There were also no considerations about the effects of climate change.

At the second meeting, things somewhat improved. While corridors were still the main subject, some reserves and trans-location of SBB’s was also suggested. After examining the viability of the proposed corridors I found that at least two of them, one to the Pines and one to Western Port Bay were, in my view, a ridiculous idea in too many ways which I have already detailed in an earlier report. For the rest of the corridors I decided to wait until I could see the area where they were to be placed and to examine the presence of remnants of SBB’s in the Koo Wee Rup area.

At the third meeting and bus trip I became clearly aware that corridors in this region were subject to the same limitations as the previous two corridors. I had to conclude that all of the recommended corridors were not only ridiculous but also extremely so. On the last stop we were shown a drainage lane with good vegetation and flowing water. In spite of this, SBB’s were still trying to move to each side of this corridor and into totally unsuitable habitat. My question is, how much longer can they survive there while exposed to further urban development and the presence of foxes and cats and floods?

Collectively, a Population Viability Assessment (PVA) applied to all of these corridors to estimate whether they will work for SBB’s would fail totally. (A standard PVA estimates the species population survival potential for the next 100 years.) My own assessment is that these untested corridors will be a total waste of money. They will not work and SBB’s deserve better than just a piecemeal solution.

Lets think about the SBB’s. What would they prefer? If one honestly wanted to provide the best for them, they would have to be properly protected as they are at the RGBC and should be so, in some other, similar reserves as well. We have a moral obligation to properly protect this species by keeping them in reserves such as the RBGC and some other similar reserves. I have no objection to maintain existing pockets of SBB’s in the wild by intensive fox and cat control for as long as they can survive there. However, for them to be able to exist in new, untested corridors is, in my opinion, nothing but a costly gamble and is guaranteed to fail. Have we not learned as yet from the untold failures that occurred with the Eastern Barred Bandicoots where they became nearly extinct before they were eventually protected in large reserves only or on islands. I therefore beg the Department of Environment Land Water and Planning (DELWP) to think clearly and honestly about the many problems with those far too narrow corridors for bandicoots and respond properly to the outcome of a realistic PVA study on them.

Wildlife corridors appear to be the ideal solution in most people’s mind when it comes to the protection and enhancement of wildlife. There seems to be a deeply embedded corridor mentality that makes people believe that wildlife corridors will cater for everything. However, there needs to be a closer examination as to what type of wildlife will use corridors? And what type of corridors can be of a positive benefit to wildlife.

In the case of the Southern Brown Bandicoot (SBB) , to promote ONLY corridors in the Royal Botanical Gardens Cranbourne region for their survival is totally unacceptable and unproven. SBB’s should not be simply used as a bargaining point in order to create wildlife corridors. SBB’s are not a corridor living species by nature and therefore I can not see how, especially in brand new corridors, and with so many obstacles, that these corridors could be successfully used by bandicoots. They would also be severely isolated in corridors for long periods which will result in in-breeding and incest, problems which could be easy overcome if they lived in large reserves.

I therefore totally disagree with the proposal in TRYING for SBB’s to live within corridors ONLY and especially where they are exposed to foxes, cats, dogs and cars as well as the disturbance from adjoining urban housing estates.. They cannot, and will not, survive in these conditions! The unfortunate bandicoots would be condemned to a network of narrow corridors where they have to try to survive in what is left for them.

Even while some old, isolated remnant bandicoot populations still just survive in some linear fragments, such as road sides or drainage lines, it should not be expected that they will survive in newly created corridors and all will be OK for the future of this species.

These are cruel expectations and there is no real future for the SBB. They will not survive A proper scientific evaluation needs to be carried out, know as Population Viability Assessment. Bandicoots living under the above proposed conditions would never pass this test! Another situation, which has not been fully considered, is what if the corridors are considered a fire hazard, passing between housing estates? Vacant building blocks in these estates have to be cleared and slashed before each summer. In addition, the corridors will be most likely be used by people to walk their dogs, making predator control virtually impossible.

In respect of new corridors, I have never heard of a case where a long and narrow, brand new corridor was able to connect two substantial colonies of bandicoots. I have no objection to a short and wide corridor linking with two substantial colonies of bandicoots with appropriate protection such as predator proof fencing. However, such a possibility does not exists in these regions, due to the fact that SBB’s living outside the Royal Botantical Gardens Cranbourne and in the Koo Wee Rup swamp area can now only be found in some linear fragments. Fox and cat control will not be able to protect them there for ever.

Strangely, when a corridor for bandicoots is still seriously considered to link the RBGC with bandicoots on Quail Island; with Koo Wee Rup, and into the Frankston area it becomes obvious to me that no proper thought was given to the implication encountered .

The distance to Quail Island alone is 10 km and to Koo Wee Rup much further.Disastrously, the latest news is that there are at present fewer than 100 bandicoots remaining on Quail Island due to feral pig disturbance. Bandicoots will have to swim from the island at exactly the right spot to find the entrance of the open-ended corridor on the mainland visa versa. The corridor needs to be at least 200 m wide but Malcolm Legg, the local ecologist, suggests they should be 1 km wide. In addition, to provide any form of protection, the corridors need to have a predator proof fence on both sides (therefore 20 km of fencing is required for the Quail Island corridor alone) and all of these corridors have to be re-vegetated to suit bandicoots. This type of scenario applies also to the proposed corridors to Frankston and the Pines.

Another problem is that the majority, if not all, of these corridors have to cross several roads and many will have serious bottle necks. These corridors were recently approved by the former Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment, Senator Simon Birmingham, after “serious consideration” , and were recommended in the most recent strategy AS THE ONLT SOLUTION. There is no costing for them or for the cost to obtain some private land. This and other such proposed corridors, will do absolutely nothing for the long-term protection and well-being of the SBB. This deeply inbred corridor mentality is the reason why all of the Government’s strategies to protect the SBB’s have so far failed. A PHD student, Sarah Maclagan, currently caring out research into SBB’s in this region, agrees that corridors are only a small part of a solution for the ultimate protection of them.

I further question why the SBB’s are expected to mostly survive in corridors within this region when for a closely related species, the Eastern Barred Bandicoot in western Victoria, no corridors have been considered for them, and for good reasons.

To my dismay, I am absolutely amazed that in all of those failed strategies there was never a mention of keeping bandicoots within large reserves surrounded by a predator proof fence. In the Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve at Frankston North, there were at one time at least 400 bandicoots. The $ 1.6 million allocated for predator proof fencing was taken away, in spite of the $ 20 millions spent in the reserve on underpasses for this bandicoot as well as for the re-vegetation of large areas to suit them. To allow dog walking in this nature conservation reserve seems to be more important to Parks Victoria then the protection of this nationally endangered bandicoot,.

I note that, beside the Pines, there are several other reserves on the Mornington Peninsula which have suitable habitat for bandicoots and should be considered such as the Briars Park at Mt. Martha which already has a predator proof fence around their nature reserve as well as many other reserves where bandicoots used to be in their hundreds.

In order to prevent the extinction of this species, some ‘insurance’ colonies within large reserves should be a priority.. Bandicoots will be so much happier and safer in a much more natural environment where they can retreat in the hot summer into cool gullies and freely spread out in all directions in winter . It will be more natural or akin to ‘wild’ conditions, than being crammed into narrow corridors and exposed to all the threats that are created by corridors. As to the health of the gene pool, bandicoots can be easily exchanged between reserves by trans location.

Anyone really and sincerely concerned with the survival of this species must first and foremost make recommendations for SBB’s to be re-located within reserves such as the Pines, the Briars and possibly two other reserves, surrounded by a predator proof fence.

Why not copy the proven success experienced in the RBGC and follow this example rather the risk trying to condemn bandicoots into corridors?

To invest millions of dollars as a long-shot in unproven corridors for bandicoots is an expensive way to achieve even more failures. There is, at present, already $20 million wasted on under passes in the Pines and this could be exacerbated by loosing yet more money in the construction of unproven corridors especially created for SBB’s.

There are at present far too many pseudo experts who seem to know better than people involved with bandicoots for over 40 years. Their recommendations are based on emotions only rather than on clearly evaluated and scientific evidence which, unfortunately, unfortunately resulted in a long history of failures for this species.

While I strongly support the creation of corridors between housing estates for other wildlife and in order to prevent wall to wall urban development, we should not use the endangered bandicoot as bargaining chips for the establishment of corridors, and in this way, restrict the ways they should be properly protected.

Therefore, the creation of corridors and the protection of bandicoots must remain two distinctly separated issues! For the prevention of regional extinction of this species, they must not be provided with just corridors only.

“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.

On Monday 7 December 2015, the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC) announced its appointment of Mr Craig Thomson, of Wildlife Ecosystems Retention and Restoration, as their Wildlife Planning Officer.

"It's a great privilege to work with AWPC," said Mr Thomson. "Currently with land clearing for development, councils require ‘offsets’. But offsets very rarely consider what happens to displaced wildlife, except for 'managing' it, which is a euphemism for conducting 'cull' or 'fertility' programs.

Maryland Wilson, AWPC President, said she was shocked to read of Ian Temby's recent call to cull kangaroos ahead of development as the only option for roos displaced by Melbourne's expansion. ("Call for kangaroos to be culled along Melbourne's urban fringe,”by Simon Lauder, ABC, 30 Nov 2015).

"There is another non-violent solution," she said. "It is a scandal that we have suffered through a succession of planning documents for Melbourne, without any allocating land for habitat with interconnecting continuous wildlife corridors that would enable safe passage for native animals. They have also failed to provide more than a tiny handful of animal bridges and underpasses at significant points on roads where wildlife often cross. Kangaroos, koalas, and other wildlife are increasingly road accident victims. As Melbourne expands to accommodate its human population growth program, suburban development pushes them out onto roads. This is planning negligence. "

AWPC says it has repeatedly engaged with councils in devising detailed plans for wildlife corridors. To date, however, no state government has cooperated with these plans, despite obligations to protect wildlife under the Fauna and Flora Guarantee Act.

"Instead, we have been repeatedly stone-walled. The result is the carnage Mr Temby suggests can only be avoided through culls. AWPC will be seeking a meeting with the Andrews State Government to negotiate for wildlife corridors instead of culling," said President Maryland Wilson.

Mr Thomson spoke of an imminent campaign to buy land on the Mornington Peninsula through crowd-funding. The aim is to create a private land reserve system for a wildlife corridor between national parks to sustain wildlife in the future. He says the matter is urgent as suburban development and a recent spate of farm-fencing are blocking the kangaroos' natural behaviour on the Peninsula.

Mr Thomson added, "It is ironic that some farmers are paying a lot of money for services that kangaroos would provide for free. For instance, vineyards spend much time and money keeping grass and weeds down between the vines. But, if they took down the fences and let the kangaroos in, the roos would not eat the vines, but they would keep the grass short."

CONTACT: Mr Craig Thomson, Wildlife Planning Officer, AWPC: 0474651292; Maryland Wilson, President, AWPC: 61359788570

http://wombatawareness.com/2015/02/UPDATE 26-02-2015 - The millionaire bequest fell through! Brigitte and the wombats of South Australia are now facing a truly awful situation. She has set up a donation site in absolute desperation, no amount too small: https://www.chuffed.org/project/wombatssoontobehomeless and we hope our readers will spread this news. No-one else is helping the wombats in SA on a large scale and long term; wombats are starving, dying of mange and being killed by cars and farmers. As you know they are adorable and precious... and really worth saving. Thanks for any help.

The strange and unforgivable decline in wombat appreciation in the 20th century

The reputation of the wombat declined over the 20th century and is now at an unforgivable all time low. People may be interested to read "Rossetti's Wombat: A Pre-Raphaelite Obsession in Victorian England". This lecture by Harold White Fellow, Angus Trumble, at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, 16 April, 2003, gives a little-known history of wombat appreciation in Britain by 19th century poets, who called the wombat "the most beautiful creature of all". Here is a quote from a description written about 200 years ago, about a pet wombat which was taken to England (not that we approve the kidnapping of wombats to England):

"The wombat, burrowed in the ground whenever it had an opportunity, and covered itself in the earth with surprising quickness. It was quiet during the day, but constantly in motion in the night: was very sensible to cold; ate all kinds of vegetables; but was particularly fond of new hay, which it ate stalk by stalk, taking it into its mouth like a beaver, by small bits at a time. It was not wanting in intelligence, and appeared attached to those to whom it was accustomed, and who were kind to it. When it saw them, it would put up its forepaws on the knee, and when taken up would sleep in the lap. It allowed children to pull and carry it about, and when it bit them did not appear to do it in anger or with violence."

Whilst we do not approve of kidnapping wombats, we do approve the peaceful and positive interaction with them and wonder why it does not happen more frequently in Australia. Perhaps it is because we have been misled by our governments and education system to believe that they are unapproachable. Maybe this is another case for Gloria O'Possum to investigate.

Wombat Awareness Organisation Ltd., Research Conservation Education Rescue Unit

A hairy-nosed wombat community at Portee Station where this rare and persecuted animal is being rehabilitated and protected.

The site of the Wombat Awareness Organisation Ltd., Research Conservation Education Rescue Unit tells the rest of the 20th and 21st century story and that is where to go to purchase a little piece of outback Australia for the wonderful hairy-nosed wombat.
Here is a delightful film (link has been updated to new address)about this wombat refugee community in South Australia, run by Brigitte Stevens and her partner, Frank Mikela. It certainly bears out the earlier reputation of the wombat as a lovable and cuddly animal.

You may also sponsor a wombat, like this one, called, "Turty"

It is great to see a big effort being made to help wombats and the people who care for them with such dedication.

UPDATE September 21, 2010Millionaire bequest due in 12 months - but money urgently needed now

Brigitte Stevens still needs funding urgently, but urgently only for another 12 months or so, when the release of the first million dollar installment of an $8m bequest is scheduled to come through. Only recently has the news arrived that a US horse-racing millionaire has left to this organisation for wombats!

The millionaire's family has chosen to remain anonymous. According to Kim Wheatley, "US millionaire leaves estate to Wombat Awareness Organisation, the millionaire visited the organisation a couple of years ago to meet wild wombats.

He was shown the shameful conditions in which the South Australian government's laws and wildlife monitoring have reduced the wild population.

"I took him out into the wild population and showed him wombats with mange, wombats that were starving to death and wombats with burrows from motorbike tyres," she said.

Brigitte has another paid job just to pay the bills the organisation generates. According to Kim Wheatley's article, last year's vet fees amounted to $70,000. Now Brigitte hopes to buy two new properties and to run a 24 hour free veterinary advice clinic.

Ms Stevens - who works to help pay bills, including last year's $70,000 vet fees - wants to buy two properties in the Murraylands and run a 24-hour free vet advice phone clinic. But she is having trouble simply maintaining the Wombat Awareness Organisation at the minute, since the first installment of this bequest is still a long way off - around 12 months.

Please consider helping these kind and dedicated people to make it through to the time this windfall arrives.

Video inside. This article is about the effects of 390,000 ha of native vegetation targeted to be burned every year in Victoria, Australia's most cleared state. The video inside this article documents how vast numbers of Australian wildlife are burned alive in scientifically dubious prescribed burns, mandated by the Victorian Government. It asks whether the cruel and avoidable fate of many wildlife in prescribed burns is really protecting human lives and assets or merely a way of meeting an arbitrary target. Others would be much harsher and say that this may be a calculated strategy to rid the state of wildlife in addition to an apparently deliberate failure to cooperate with wildlife activists in making easily protected wildlife corridors to connect viable habitat.[1]

The Labor Government in Victoria created these machinally destructive laws after the 2009 bushfires, but the Liberal Government has not questioned them. Those currently heading the Victorian animal holocaust are Dennis Napthine, Premier of Victoria (denis.napthine [ AT ] parliament.vic.gov.au),
Ryan Smith, Environment Victoria Minister (ryan.smith [ AT ] parliament.vic.gov.au) and
Peter Walsh Minister for Agriculture (peter.walsh [ AT ] parliament.vic.gov.au).

Government burning off decisions arising from the bushfire commission seem mostly based on spin. They do not acknowledge in their methods to avert bushfires the predominant role of humans in starting them. Nature accounts for only about 6% of fires, mostly in the form of lightening. Ninety point nine per cent (90.9%) of vegetation fires are caused by humans through arson (35.2), through 'accidents' (36.2%), by 'incendiary' (? explosions etc) (13.3%), and through prescribed burns reigniting (5.4%). (3.9% are described as 'other'.)

"Bushfire, arson, what do we know now?" (the source of the above graph and figures) is a Productivity Commission report on the role of arson in creating fires. As we might expect of the economic technocracy, one of their recommendations is prescribed burn-offs to limit the arsonist's bang for his/her buck! In other words, do the job for them? Absolutely no regard or even a thought for the living creatures that suffer. The authors note that it is hard to stop arson in large vegetated areas. We note, however, that there has been a huge reduction in parks and forest staff on the ground, like rangers, since the Kennett government 1992-1999, with Labor governments continuing this folly.

Shooters encouraged in parks, but not wildlife carers

Whilst governments are gung-ho to allow shooters into national parks to 'control pests', what about compensating wildlife activists and carers who are willing to roster themselves in forests during the fire-season and to monitor animal welfare and visitor activity, day and night if necessary? People who care for injured wildlife and love the bush are very unlikely to set fire to habitat.

Faulty bushfire management compounds faulty climate change management

The values of the Liberal Government avoid the issue of climate change. Their population growth and development policies (like the Labor government's before them, despite the rhetoric) actively increase high carbon-emission producing activities and drying and warming of land. Much of Australia's carbon emissions come from land-clearing, but in Victoria (and Australia) the government is encouraging more new development, and consequently more land-clearing. As well, intensification of development means that people are confined to small airless and eaveless appartments which can only be cooled by air-conditioners, which put heat into the air outside and demand more coal-fired electricity to run. Victoria's grotesque 'planning policies' increase local heat island effect and the overall risk of the climate heating and drying. We note that Victoria is soon to subject VCAT to committee regulation that will see even less control over the 'planning' that is overrunning our democracy and heating our environment.[3]

The mass media and government have avoided acknowledging the demonstrable fact that old growth forests burn much less than new or 'managed' forests. New forests and plantations dry through thinning or through repeated burnoffs which then favour combustible vegetation that survives fires, thus creating a man-made fire-vulnerable landscape and reduction to inland rainfall. The prescribed annual burn-off target greatly increases the drying of vegetated land and vegetation kinds. Trees not only create local 'heat islands' but vast old-growth forests cool vast portions of the environment as well as efficiently regulating below-ground and above ground hydration through transpiration.

For those who were in Victoria during the 2009 fires, and remember the heat leading up to the fires, the active promotion through legislation of these drying factors (although in guise of fire-precautions) is insane. At best it appears like gross incoordination of knowledge and policy; at worst it seems quasi-homicidal.

Government by the ethically bereft in Victoria and Australia

It is as if we are governed by a self-appointed moneyed caste which has lost all respect for nature, other species and the citizens of Victoria themselves. The environmental laws are flouted [2]and then, when attention is drawn to this, our corrupt parliaments simply change the laws.

For those of us who grew up in a social environment that enjoyed the outdoors and strongly valued passive interaction with native wildlife, with a culture of wildlife protection and respect, this is shocking. We realise that we are ruled by a planning technocracy that has no higher human values, makes empty promises, speaks in cliches, and makes laws to advantage its members.

It has taken many of us decades to accept that this is really what is happening. At best we are witnesses to great callousness, at worst we are witness to the construction by elites of a kind of civilisation that is only concerned with enriching a small elite at the expense of their fellows and the total destruction of the natural world.

The people responsible are obviously not able to work out the ultimate consequences of their policies, which will see a so-degraded Austrlaia that survival for most, if not all, will become doubtful. They are also not scientists, except in the technologies that further their immediate wealth. They have no humane philosophies. If they are religious, it is with dogmas that blind them to consequences and help them to further their own immediate interests. They are like Steven King's Tommyknockers, whom education has equipped with "a limited form of genius which makes them very inventive, but does not provide any philosophical or ethical insight. Instead, it provokes psychotic violence."[4]

This class is also ruling all states of Australia.

Inquiry into 2009 bushfires

The article below is a report on the inquiry into the 2009 Victorian bushfires, which were among the most frightening ever, occurring in deadly temperatures in the mid-forties. It shows the typical approach of the mainstream media, which always backs the status quo and attributes science and foresight to the establishment in its conditioning comments about how 'scientific evaluations have always been part of intelligent fuel reduction strategy' and its illogical conclusion that 'an effective wildfire control strategy must attempt to control fires throughout the forests. The paragraphs quoted below, however, also contain telling comments from environmentalists, but these paragraphs were right at the end of the full article, where most people never read. To consign these important observations to the end of the article, naturally diminishes their value in the readers' eyes. Also, note the use of 'experts' in the Royal Commission. Experts are usually part of the establishment. If you are not part of the establishment or disagree with it, then newspapers are unlikely to call you an 'expert'.

"Environmentalists, who for years have opposed fuel-reduction burns on the grounds that they damage the environment, have taken a new tack. The Greens, for example, now claim that they never opposed prescribed burning, but wanted a scientific evaluation of each burn conducted before it was approved, to ensure the survival of fauna and flora.

While this sounds reasonable, the fact is that these considerations have always been part of an intelligent fuel-reduction strategy, which must recognise that fires have been a natural feature of the bush, and it can be assumed that fauna and flora are adapted to survive low-to-moderate intensity fires.

[Candobetter comment: The huge arbitrary annual target promotes a regularity of holocaust that was never present in the environment where Australian animals evolved. Furthermore, this pyromaniacal target occurs in the most cleared state and where wildlife are threatened by many other intensifying and expanding processes. To cite evolutionary theory under these conditions is inappropriate and has grave consequences, as we see in the film above.]

Another line of attack, put forward by some environmental groups in central Victoria, is that the DSE should be setting fire to grass and weeds in close proximity to housing, rather than burning forests.

A spokesman for the groups said, "We cannot understand why DES fuel-reduction teams keep burning public forest blocks, when the dangerous areas closer to settlements are neglected." (Bendigo Advertiser, March 24, 2010).

Another member claimed that the DSE had produced no research analysing the effect of fuel-reduction burns on central Victoria's box-ironbark forests. The groups had adopted the motto, "Hazards not Hectares", to emphasise the need for burns in high-risk areas, rather than large areas of bush.

However, an effective wildfire control strategy must attempt to control fires throughout the forests, without neglecting high-risk areas close to human habitation. " (Source: "BUSHFIRES: Victoria changes tack on fuel-reduction burns," by Peter Westmore, News Weekly, April 17, 2010

NOTES

[1] Such as those of Maryland Wilson, Malcolm Legg and Hans Brunner http://candobetter.net/?q=node/1012 and http://candobetter.net/?q=taxonomy/term/73over years on the Mornington Peninsula, attempting to link Greensbush National Park with Devilbend Reservoir, sundry then extant green paces and Frankston Reservoir. All eroded by development and then all prospects of a corridor completely destroyed - some would say gratuitously - by Peninsula Link - which could have provided many underpasses and overpasses but only provided one, in the Pines Flora and Fauna reserve, where the local Frankston Council then failed to use money allocated by government to install a predator proof fence to protect the local bandicoot population, which then became extinct. Now our only hope is a southern brown bandicoot program in the Werribee Zoo. Imagine! Needing a zoo to preserve this once common animal. Everything, from kangaroos to platypuses is now stuck in the remaining isolated and dwindling patches of habitat on Mornington Peninsula, which has been targeted for growth since Jeff Kennet made it part of Greater Melbourne. Instead of a green peninsula biosphere once touted, the Victorian government intends to build new roads and railway down to Hastings Port, of which 400 ha it then means for intensive industrial development.

[2]Victorian Fauna and Flora Guarantee Act
Auditor General's reports

[3] "GENERAL BUSINESS
7 JULY 2014

10. CHANGES TO THE VICTORIAN AND CIVIL ADMINISTRATIVE (VCAT) ACT
Planning Appeals Coordinator: Gareth Gale
General Manager Planning & Development: Stuart Draffin

PURPOSE
The purpose of this report is to brief Councillors on changes made by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) Amendment Bill 2014.

BACKGROUND
On 1 April 2014, the VCAT Amendment Bill 2014 received Royal Assent, and became effective on 2 June 2014. No community consultation occurred as part of this Amendment.

DISCUSSION
The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal Amendment Bill 2014 contains substantial reforms relevant to the planning jurisdiction.

Most significantly, the reforms would enable the Tribunal to:
1. Invite a responsible authority to reconsider its decision at any time in a review proceeding
2. Make an order in relation to fees (including application and hearing fees), separate from its power to award costs
3. More actively manage the use and giving of expert evidence in proceedings
4. Make an order removing a person as a party to a proceeding if it considers that:
•??the person's interests are not affected by the proceeding; or
•??the person is not a proper or necessary party to the proceeding
5. Delegate certain functions of the Tribunal (such as making procedural orders or consent orders) to its registrars.

It is the first two reforms that are likely to be of most significance to Council. Below is a summary of those two proposed reforms.

New section 51A - Tribunal May Invite Decision-Maker to Reconsider Decision

In the context of the planning jurisdiction, this new provision would enable the Tribunal to invite a responsible authority (usually Council) to reconsider its decision at any time in the proceeding. The new section provides that on receiving the invitation to reconsider, the responsible authority may:
•??Affirm the decision
•??Vary the decision
•??Set aside the decision and substitute a new decision for it.

The new provision requires the Tribunal to ensure that, as far as possible, a proceeding's priority is not affected by inviting the responsible authority to reconsider its decision (unless the parties consent). As a consequence, the Tribunal may specify a timeframe within which a responsible authority may reconsider its decision.

One possible opportunity for Council to reconsider its decision might be following mediation and/or the amendment of plans. However, this process only seems warranted in order to avoid a hearing extending across multiple days – cases which are generally contained within the Major Cases List. Given there is clear intent in the new provisions to ensure a proceeding is not delayed further, coupled with the fact that all Major Cases List applications have hearings listed only six weeks after any mediation, it is difficult to contemplate under what circumstance this process will be useful.

It is further noted that Council already has the opportunity to reconsider its position during a VCAT process. As such, this change to the VCAT Act might not offer any new real change other than introducing a more formal mechanism to do so. This new process raises a number of procedural questions which are yet to be understood.

New Section 115 – New Power to Make Orders in Relation to Fees

This section provides that the Tribunal may, at any time, make an order that a party to
the proceeding:
•??Reimburse another party the whole or any part of any fee paid by that other party in the proceeding;
•??Pay, on behalf of another party, the whole or any part of any fee that may be required to be paid in the future by that other party in the proceeding;
•??Reimburse another party the whole or any part of any fee that may be paid in the future by that other party in the proceeding; and
•??Require a party to pay the whole or any part of a fee in future in the proceeding.

The key area that this could be useful for Council is in Enforcement Order Applications (EAO’s). Given EAO’s are generally only made in the situation where Council is forced to do so, the Tribunal could award the reimbursement of the $802 fee to Council.

SUMMARY
The new changes to the VCAT have been introduced with little forewarning or consultation.

The implications of the changes, and particularly those at the new section 51A, are unclear amongst those working within the planning profession. At this stage, there appears little opportunity to enact this new provision, particularly given there is clear intent in the new provisions to ensure a proceeding is not delayed further.

The new changes will be monitored to better inform our understanding of how they will affect Council and other stakeholders.

HUMAN RIGHTS CONSIDERATION
The recommendation complies with the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and
Responsibilities Act 2006.

RECOMMENDATION
That Council note this report."

[4] Quote from Wikipedia summary of the plot of Steven King's The Tommyknockers, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tommyknockers

The recent strategy of these organisations for the management of the Southern Brown Bandicoot is based on 99% of bias and negativity. It is a declaration of war against this species. Their barbaric program is full of hypocrisy as well as hiding the real evidence in order to bolster their arguments. Their proposals are too opaque and misleading and often quite ridiculous, simply all in order to save money!

The Department of Environment and Primary Industries (DEPI) and Parks Victoria propose to monitor Southern Brown Bandicoots in the Pines for the next ten years while they, at the same time, suggest that they have become extinct there. (This amounts to funding window dressing.)

They propose to monitor for many years how the $20 million worth of underpasses work for the absent Southern Brown Bandicoots. (A waste of public money)

They carry out re-vegetation activities especially suitable for the Southern Brown Bandicoots but don’t want them in the Pines. (Hypocritical)

They propose to conduct regulars fox and cat control programs in the Pines for the protection of this species knowing very well that Southern Brown Bandicoots are not there anymore.(Already costing well over $ 100,000.00. (Failed every time because of presence of dogs)

They refuse to install a predator-proof fence around the Pines which is the only realistic way to protect the Southern Brown Bandicoots in the Pines once re-introduced. (The DEPI and Parks Victoria just want that money, not the responsibility.)

They refuse to tell the real truth why the Southern Brown Bandicoots were lost in the first place in the Pines. (Parks Victoria’s total mismanagement and neglect)

They make it sound unnecessarily difficult about the re-introduction of SBB’s into the Pines. (Scaremongers)

They now want to spend the money specifically provided for the fence in a biodiversity damage-mitigation undertaking with EastLink in an area where they have, in their last strategy, severely undermined the safety of this species by axing connective corridors. (They will spend it elsewhere.)

They now depend entirely on fox control to protect this species in the Sub-Regions of Koo Wee Rup which they insisted did not work for the protection of the Eastern Barred Bandicoot. (What has changed?)

They have deliberately misinformed the politicians, hence the wrong decisions were made. (Common practice)

They play unfair politics with both these critically and nationally endangered bandicoot species, both close cousins of the much loved Bilby. (Cannot say what I am thinking on paper)

They really HAVE declared war on them both.

It is shocking to hear that several Frankston Councillors have voted to build over the last koala corridor in this crucial area. Craig Thomson has made a Submission to Frankston Council item 11.8 AGAINST Request for a Planning Scheme amendment to REMOVE 42 hectares from the Green Wedge Conservation Zone to allow 350 houses to be built. He says, "The land is a vital Koala migration route- it means local extinction of koalas in South Frankston. The VOTE was close 5 to 4 against the koalas. The next step for this item is for further community consultation and the Planning scheme amendment to go before the Minister."

Unfortunately Cr Aitkin’s[1] motion to refuse this amendment was defeated 5 votes to 4 and the council's officer recommendation which was in favour of the request was moved 5 votes to 4.

The next step for this item is for further community consultation and the Planning scheme amendment to go before the minister.

Developers watching for green light

The implications of this proposal are massive for the green wedge of the peninsula and would ultimately give a green light to developers (who are already watching this case very closely) to destroy our environment and open spaces.

Submission against 11.8 Request for Planning Scheme Amendment Stotts Lane

As a wildlife rescuer I am expressing my concerns that of the rezoning of 42 hectares from the green
wedge at Stotts Lane. These concerns are for the welfare of the local wildlife and the added pressure
placed on voluntary wildlife groups who have provided the Frankston city council a free service for over 25 years.

Habitat clearance is the greatest threat that faces our wildlife today and the land in question would
further deplete what was a significant bio-link between the listed RAMSAR Seaford wetlands and the
listed RAMSAR Westernport wetlands.

This land is an important habitat corridor for Koalas. Every spring male koalas migrate from Cranbourne Botanical gardens to mate with the female population that lives in Frankston South.

Since the opening of Peninsula link there has been two male koalas killed on the freeway, and if
this vital link was lost the South Frankston Koala population would be locally extinct in a number of
years.

With the continual loss of habitat in this area especially due to the new freeway, and with very little
to no offsets found in the city of Frankston. There is increased competition for habitat amongst wildlife, and as such more vulnerable species such as sugar gliders and woodland birds especially the likes of the eastern yellow robin will also become locally extinct.

With the loss of habitat and increased volume of traffic and increased number of domestic animals for such housing on green wedge land, local wildlife shelters are faced with a number of problems

1. An increase of wildlife that needs care

2. Less habitat to release rehabilitated wildlife

This means:

1. We need to find more volunteers to help run our shelters

2. We need find more funds to rehabilitate and feed wildlife

3. If we are unable to meet those needs we have limit our services which obviously causes stress to
both us and the community member we are unable to help.

4. If we are unable to find suitable habitat to release wildlife we have to look at other areas for
releasing wildlife reducing genetic viability and biodiversity of an area.

Kind regards

Craig Thomson,
Secretary Animalia Wildlife Shelter

NOTES

Not too surprising to hear of Cr Aitken voting to protect the koalas. He is an unusual man for his times: a wonderful and thoughtful councillor, whose father was also a councillor for Frankston - CDB Editor]

Labor MP David Bradbury must correct error riddled conservation funding announcement (NSW), says Geoff Brown, Stable Population Party candidate. Mr Brown, who is a New South Wales natural conservation activist, has long fought to retain Cumberland plain woodland against attempts by governments to allow it to be destroyed for massive suburban developments. He believes now that the ALP has tried to take credit for his concept of the Cumberland Conservation Corridor. Geoff is running as a candidate for the Stable Population Party.

Mark Butler, the Federal Environment Minister, and David Bradbury, Labor member for Lindsay and the Assistant Treasurer, have been called on by Geoff Brown, the Stable Population Party candidate for Lindsay, to set the voters of Lindsay straight, after Lindsay's leading local newspaper, the Penrith Press, printed a half page story riddled with errors and misinformation about Labors 2010 federal election commitment of $7.5 million towards the establishment of the Cumberland Conservation Corridor.

Geoff Brown, also the President of the Western Sydney Conservation Alliance, developed the concept for the Cumberland Conservation Corridor in 2005, and at the 2010 election ran as an Independent using preference negotiations with Labor and Liberal to extract the $7.5 million deal from Labor. So he is on top of this issue. Several articles published by candobetter.net show his record on this matter. See Cumberland plain woodland and Geoff Brown.

Brown described himself as "livid" when he read the Penrith Press article which erroneously stated that Labor had announced $7.5m towards establishing the Cumberland Conservation Corridor. He said the article made it look as if Labor had just made some new 2013 committment. He said the voters of Linsay would be confused.

"The story should have been about why it took 3 years to fulfill their 2010 commitment. The article was littered with errors based on the dubious media release put out by David Bradbury and Mark Butler. If not corrected it will let Labor off the hook in Lindsay from announcing any new local conservation funding outcomes for the 2013 election. Labor may try to fudge their way out of it”.

Geoff Brown called on David Bradbury and Mark Butler to front the voters of Lindsay and tell them:

" - That neither Labor nor Liberals have yet promised any new conservation money in Lindsay for the 2013 election
- The announcement cited by the Penrith Press was from the 2010 election and it took 3 years to cobble together an outcome
- The Mulgoa biobanking site stays in private ownership so will not become part of the publicly owned Mulgoa Nature Reserve. So no net public benefit or use for education
- The Mulgoa site was never at threat of development and was already protected under Penrith Councils LEP which zones it E2 Environmental Conservation (I argued that money be better spent trying to conserve bushland in Penriths north at risk of development)
- That nearly half of the $7.5 million was spent on land care projects that are outside the Lindsay electorate and nowhere near the proposed Cumberland Conservation Corridor. Projects such as those in the Blue Mountains and the Cranebrook wetland project are not anywhere near the CCC
- That $3.4 million funding for weed removal and the planting trees is exactly what Tony Abbott proposes with his Green Army and Direct Action policy. This outcome condones the Liberals policy
- That 2000 ha of local bush land has not been protected (David’s MR and his letterbox propaganda claims he has saved 2000 ha of local bush land. He is claiming to have protected the 558 ha Airservices Australia land at Shanes Park and 1300 ha of bush at the Orchard Hillls Defence Establishment. These sites are not formally protected. Shanes Park has the proposed Castlereagh Freeway running through it)
- That biobanking is a scheme whereby there is a net loss of habitat. Bushland gets bulldozed with developers offsetting that clearing by funding the management of bushland elsewhere. In this case the State funding came from the clearing of critically endangered bushland in the Sydney Growth Centres. It is a highly dubious method of conserving nature.
- That the land owner is not raising his income from selling the biobanking credits. He gets a guaranteed $6.6 million as the joint Federal and State funding has already purchased the credits."

Labor caught out moving the fence posts

Geoff Brown added that Labor has been caught out trying to change the location of the Cumberland Conservation Corridor. As an example he cited the wetlands at Cranebrook near the Waterside housing estate as being 'nowhere near' the CCC.”

Mr Brown says that Lindsay voters need to be aware that Labor has not yet committed any new money towards conserving bushland within the Cumberland Conservation Corridor.

Mr Brown met last week with Mark Butler and David Bradbury calling on them to fund the protection of 1500 ha of Priority Conservation Land north of the ADI Site that is threatened. He says that the 50 ha of Mulgoa land was already zoned for protection but this 1500 ha of bushland has no such conservation zoning.

In his opinion, the only way it will be zoned for conservation by Penrith Council is if there is money on the table to buy it.

"The voters of Lindsay need to join with the Stable Population Party in calling on Labor and Liberal to commit to protecting this land.”

A better, not a bigger Australia

Mr Brown concluded by saying that to his knowledge, the Stable Population Party is the only minor political party in Lindsay actively lobbying Labor and Liberal about protecting the environment and limiting more urban sprawl and traffic congestion. He said that voters could rest assured that the Stable Population Party stands for a better not a bigger Australia.

A New South Wales lawyer, Philip Howell, has written a brilliant new democratic strategy to decide from the local level upwards, how big we the people want Australia's population to be. As a population sociologist who compares international systems on this matter, I am really impressed and can only encourage everyone to support this man's remarkable contribution to our democracy and wellbeing. Look at his site for more detail on reforming our constitution.

The original site, along with the reasons for the proposal is to be found here: The We Will Decide Proposal

This section describes how the proposal will operate in practice. Further details are provided in the Explanatory Notes.

The Purpose

1. The aims of the We Will Decide proposal are:
- To give people control over the population density in their residential area, by preventing development in that area which would allow the population to grow by more than the people want. People have a legitimate self-interest in controlling the scale of development in their local area.
- To provide a connection between the number of migrants and the preference of the people for more or fewer people in their area. The number of migrants permitted to enter the country in Australia’s self-interest will be restricted by reference to the total of the local decisions made by people about the population in their area.
- To continue to allow the Commonwealth Government to determine the number of migrants permitted to enter the country pursuant to our international obligations.

The Process

2. In the online census form for 2016, any respondent whose answers confirm that he or she:
- Is over 18; and
- Has a usual residence;
will be asked a new question, namely:
‘Would you like to comment on how many people should live in your area?’
Where an online form is submitted for more than one respondent - for example all members of a household - each person submitting the form who is above the age of 18 will be asked the new question. A negative answer to the question would be recorded, and the respondent would continue on with the census form. An affirmative answer to the question would generate a unique code linking each individual respondent with the Statistical Area Level 1 (“SA1") in which his or her usual place of residence is situated.

3. Each respondent would have 14 days to log in to the ABS’s We Will Decide website using the unique code. On logging in, the respondent would be presented in sequence with 3 screens:

Screen 1 will describe what the respondent will be asked to do. View the text of the screen here: Screen 1.

Screen 2 will display a map of the area about which the respondent will be asked to make a decision. It will be based on the Statistical Area Level 1 (SA1) in which the respondent’s usual residence is located. The size of the area will depend on whether the respondent’s SA1 is classed as urban or rural by the Bureau of Statistics. In summary:
- Those living in residential areas classed as urban, or in commercial areas, will decide in relation to an area comprising their own SA1 and each adjoining SA1 which is in the same Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2).
- Those living in areas classed as rural will decide only in relation to their own SA1.
The reason these areas have been selected is explained here: Determining the Area. The text of the screen may be viewed here: Screen 2.

Screen 3 will allow the respondent’s decision to be recorded. It will show the area’s present population and ask the respondent to select a percentage change between negative 2.0% and positive 2.0% which represents the respondent’s preference for the rate of increase or decrease in that area’s population over the next five years. The selection will be made by from radio buttons or check boxes on a number line, divided at intervals of at least 0.2. (Intervals of 0.1 would be better, but may not fit easily across smaller screens.) The text of the screen is here: Screen 3. Note that the respondent is shown rates of change per year and asked to decide on an annual rate of increase or decrease.

The Results

4. Locally: Results of the people’s decision as to the level of any increase or decrease will be calculated separately for each SA1 across the country. The calculation will be made as follows:
- The response from each respondent who makes a decision about an SA1 will be recorded as a decimal number; for example, an increase of 0.2% will be recorded as plus 0.2, and a decrease of 1.5% will be recorded as minus 1.5.
- All responses will then be added.
- The total will then be divided by the number of responses.
- The result will be a decimal number between minus 2.0 and plus 2.0.
This number will express the rate of population change per year which people living in that area wish to occur throughout the next five years. This will be the People’s Decision at a Local Level.

5. Nationally: The percentage change decided for each area at the Local Level will be applied to the current population of that area to determine the numerical increase or decrease preferred in that area. The country-wide total of those local numerical increases or decreases will be the Peoples’ Decision as to the extent to which Australia’s population should increase, decrease or stay the same.

Using the Results

6. Locally: The impact of the Peoples’ Decision at Local Level will vary depending on the area under consideration. In general, the intention is that development which would permit the population of residential areas to change contrary to the wishes of the people in that area would be prohibited. To ensure some flexibility, this would be implemented as follows:
- In areas classed as residential, more intense residential development would be prevented if its effect would be to increase the population by more than permitted by the people’s decision. Extensions to existing dwellings, or their replacement with larger dwellings would not be classed as ‘more intense’, but any development of dual occupancies, villas or flats in place of a lower density dwelling form would generally be prevented, unless the development did not increase the overall population in the area. Proposals for less intense development could use the people’s decision as a reason why the development should be approved.
This prohibition could be subject to a proviso. If fewer than 10% of the people in an area participated in the We Will Decide process, the prohibition would not take effect. The decision of those who responded could be treated in the same way as for non-residential areas.
- Some people live in areas classed as commercial, industrial or rural. In such non-residential areas, the people’s decision would not be binding on Government. It would merely be another factor which could be taken into account when development applications are considered.
This would permit Governments to change commercial, industrial and rural areas to residential, or to increase the number of residences in those areas if necessary. So it would still be possible, for example, for Governments to permit residential flats in commercial areas near to major transport routes, up until the point at which the area became mainly residential, after which the people would decide.
There will be no other local impacts. No-one will be forced to move if the people vote to have a lower population. There will be no restrictions on the movement of people at all. The only restrictions will be on development which would permit a change in population density which the local people do not want.

7. Nationally: The People’s Decision for Australia will become the prime (but not exclusive) determinant of the number of people permitted to migrate into Australia.

The migration intake which the Government announces each year deals with people who will be permitted to stay for 12 months or more. In future, existing visa categories which permit entry for more than 12 months would be divided into two groups.
- A National Interest category, comprising all those who are brought in to serve Australia’s self interest. This would include skilled, business and student migrants, family re-union entrants, working holiday makers and so on.
- An International Obligations category, comprising those we permit to enter for selfless reasons, or because of existing treaties and arrangements with other countries. Mainly this group would include refugees and those admitted for humanitarian reasons, plus New Zealand citizens, who have for decades been granted free access (with reciprocal rights for Australians who move to New Zealand).

Each year a National Interest calculation would be made. From the number representing the People’s Decision for Australia (see point 5 above), the following would be subtracted:
- The expected natural increase (i.e. births minus deaths), assuming current fertility and mortality rates are equal to the average for the previous five years; and
- The expected number of migrant departures, assuming that the rate of departure remains the same as the average over the last five years.
The figure remaining would indicate the number of new visas which could be issued to new migrants each year. An adjustment would then be made to take account of the propensity of some potential migrants to obtain a visa but then not travel to Australia.

In summary, in mathematical terms:

People’s Decision minus expected natural increase minus expected migrant departures equals new National Interest visas which can be issued (propensity adjusted).

If the result of the calculation is zero or negative, the Government would be prevented from issuing visas in National Interest category for that year, because the people would have decided that it was not in their interests to admit more people that year. If the result of the calculation is positive, the Government would be able to issue visas in any of the National Interest categories up to the number permitted by the Peoples’ Decision, taking account of the propensity of some migrants not to take up the offer of a visa.

We Will Decide would have no effect on the International Obligations category. The Government would still decide the refugee and humanitarian intake, and New Zealanders would come and go as they please, as Australians do in relation to New Zealand.

Implementation

8. From the time a decision is made to introduce the We Will Decide proposal, migration levels should be reduced dramatically, pending a trial of the proposal. Assuming in-principle adoption in 2013, it should be possible to run a voluntary trial of the proposal in 2015 which can be used to guide the migration intake from then. The next census will occur in August 2016. The We Will Decide process will formally take effect when the census results become available in early 2017.

9. We Will Decide can be introduced without amending the Census and Statistics Act. A new regulation under s.8(3) of the Act would however need to be made and placed before each House of Parliament.

10. The People’s Decision for Australia could be implemented by the Commonwealth Government voluntarily following it when formulating the migration intake each year, but it would be far better for the changes to be implemented by amendments to the Migration Act.

11. The Commonwealth Parliament could impose the People’s Decision at a Local Level on the Territories, but has no power over planning and development within the States. The most it could do there would be to authorise planning authorities at all levels to take the People’s Decision into account, using the incidental power in s.51(xxxix) of the Constitution.

Implementation at a State level would require the co-operation of State Parliaments, which would need to amend their planning laws.

The Panel assembled a legal team of Sydney senior and junior counsel instructed by international law firm, DLA Piper, to apply to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal this afternoon on behalf of Australian Society for Kangaroos to injunct the ACT kangaroo cull due to commence it was thought this evening. During the hearing it was disclosed that the ACT had planned to commence the first round of shooting on Tuesday night.

7 June 2013
In summary, the hearing will resume next Wednesday to determine whether the Australian Society for Kangaroos and another applicant, Animal Liberation ACT, each has standing to sue. The ACT Conservator of Flora and Fauna has undertaken not to commence any killing pending the Tribunal’s determination next Wednesday, 12 June 2013.

The matter has been stood over until 11:00 am next Wednesday, 12 June 2013 for further hearing. The Tribunal made orders that:

the Australian Society for Kangaroos file and serve affidavit evidence by close of business on Tuesday 11 June 2013 in support of its status as an entity, the interests of which are affected by the decision under review, and whether it has the authorisation to commence these proceedings.
the Respondent (the Conservator) is to file and serve affidavit evidence by close of business on Tuesday 11 June 2013 that she (the Conservator) seeks to rely on in response to the application for interim relief.

The Tribunal also noted the undertaking by the ACT Conservator of Flora and Fauna to not commence any killing or activity pursuant to the Licences (all seven) until the Tribunal determines the application for interim orders. Animal Liberation ACT filed a separate application heard at the same time and was represented by a volunteer for the company.

Queensland clearing laws could kill over 400 million native animalsl The Commonwealth must act to stop the destruction.

More about the upcoming 2013 environmental exhibition containing this painting, at end of this article under "Notes".

Sydney 24/5/13:

Impact of new Queensland laws and Coalition intentions

Humane Society International (HSI) Campaign Director Michael Kennedy said today:

“With the passage of legislation through the Queensland Parliament this week allowing farmers to clear potentially large areas of threatened wildlife habitats and graze cattle in National Parks, and news confirming that an incoming Coalition Government would devolve the Commonwealth’s national environment powers to the states and territories, a national environmental disaster is looming.”

Mr Kennedy continued,

“Under the amendments to Queensland’s Vegetation Management Act, approximately 2,000,000 hectares (5,000,000 acres) of wildlife habitats are at-risk of clearing*. Extrapolating from a scientific report** on the numbers of animals killed during land clearing operations in Queensland during the late 90s, it can be estimated that if all land clearing options were taken up by Queensland farmers, in the region of 455 million native animals could be killed as a result. And even if only a quarter of this land total was cleared, we are still talking about killing over 100 million animals.”

The Commonwealth’s Environment Protection & Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act) also protects 14 threatened ecological communities.*** in Queensland, highly endangered habitats that require the Federal Environment Minister’s permission before any development can occur that may significantly affect them. It is estimated* that 169,000 hectares of mature bushland and 366,000 hectares of important regrowth habitats of these threatened ecological communities are now at risk from clearing, presenting Minister Burke with clear reasons for intervening in Queensland.

Cattle grazing is also highly destructive on the natural environment, spreading weeds, significantly damaging waterways and having the potential to destroy critical habitats and native ground-dwelling species. Giving a few private individuals access to a highly valuable public asset, due to their continuing incompetence, is a public policy travesty. Calls by the RSPCA in Queensland to allow cattle to graze in National Parks are chronically misguided, and do not address the root cause of the plight of the animals – greed and prolonged environmental and livestock mismanagement.

Mr Kennedy concluded,

“We are urging the Prime Minister and Environment Minster Burke to change the Federal environment laws so that any incoming Coalition Government cannot devolve national environment powers; introduce new national environment “triggers” for land clearing and the National Reserve System; and to “call-in” Queensland land clearing and cattle grazing proposals and actions for assessment under the EPBC Act.”

NOTES

*http://www.hsi.org.au/emailmarketer/link.php?M=135579&N=1607&L=379&F=H

**http://www.hsi.org.au/emailmarketer/link.php?M=135579&N=1607&L=380&F=H

***HSI prepared scientific listing proposals for 8 of these threatened communities

Re image, "Apocalypse". From the original site at http://www.cantonart.org/20"This touring art exhibition confronts environmental issues facing human, plant and wildlife species in our time, from land development to natural resource depletion, and seeks to heighten public awareness through the power of art. The show is curated by Dr. David J. Wagner, author of the reference book, American Wildlife Art, and curator/tour director of an impressive list of exhibitions including The Art of Robert Bateman, The Sea of Cortez, and Endangered Species: Flora and Fauna in Peril which toured to the U.S. Department of Interior in Washington, D.C. The exhibition features iconic works such Still Not Listening, a poem and sculpture of the same title by Leo Osborne, an elegy to victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. (Image: Apocalypse, Walter Ferguson)"

International Biodiversity Day May 22
Humans are appropriating too much water for their own needs and not leaving enough for the survival of other species, according to Sustainable Population Australia (SPA).

SPA National President, Ms Jenny Goldie, says that water is essential for all life, not just for humans.

“The more water that is taken from rivers and aquifers to supply humans for domestic use, industry and agriculture, the less there is for the myriad of other organisms,” says Ms Goldie.

“Habitat loss or fragmentation, introduced exotic species and diseases, overfishing, and deterioration of aquatic environments due to eutrophication are all threats to inland aquatic biodiversity,” says Ms Goldie.

“Both the world and Australia are suffering a biodiversity crisis. In New South Wales, for instance, the Macquarie Perch, once widespread throughout Australian rivers, has disappeared from the Lachlan River except in one tributary. In a few short years the introduced species, Red Fin, has annihilated not only the perch but possibly also the Yellow Spotted Bell Frog.

“Climate change – an outcome of human activities - is an additional threat to Australia’s biodiversity. Large parts of the country will be desertified while other parts subject to extreme flooding. The effect on biodiversity is likely to be dire,” says Ms Goldie.

There are 7.1 billion humans on the Earth and it is likely there will be at least another two billion mid-century, mostly in developing countries, many of which are already experiencing water stress (when annual water supplies fall below 1,700 cubic metres per person) or scarcity (when annual water supplies fall below 1,000 cubic metres per person). All Arab countries are deemed water scarce; likewise 300 million people living in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“As still expanding populations take whatever water is available to grow food, other species will suffer. In parts of China, for instance, excessive pumping of groundwater for agriculture has caused trees to die, taking associated fauna with them.”

Ms Goldie says that for the sake of biodiversity, population growth must end.

A permit has been issued by the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection to cull 2,000 Agile Wallabies at Mission Beach along the North Queensland Coast in an area almost pristine not so long ago. Wildlife activists say that there may only be about 500 wallabies there now but a lot more humans.

Overreaction?

Some wildlife activists think that this very serious decision may be an overreaction to an opinion expressed by a Cr Alister Pike at a Cassowary Coast Council meeting on 28/03/13. In the minutes of the Council meeting of 28 March 2013, there is an item under general business, headed, “Problem Wallabies, South Mission Beach”. Under that heading it is recorded that,

“Cr Pike again raised concerns about Agile wallaby numbers at South Mission Beach. Cr Pike stated that there is now a risk of health issues with wallabies urinating and defecating in residents' yards where children play.

Cr Pike asked whether a provision to allow Councils to apply for damage mitigation permits to control Flying Foxes was extended to wallabies?

The CEO advised they did not and reinforced comments made at the Local Government Meeting on 22 November 2012 that the management/control of wallabies was not a Council responsibility, however Mr Brennan advised that the matter would be referred to the Coordinator Natural Environment Management with a request that he contact Queensland Parks & Wildlife Services to inform the Department of residents' concerns.”

No vote by the other councilors or any motion is recorded in response to this matter.

Forest clearing for development causes chaotic wallaby dispersal

Wildlife carers already express concern at a rise in wallaby mortality and orphans in the area, associated with forest clearing causing wallabies to be homeless, without shelter and exposed to traffic.

“Approximately thirty (30) Agile Wallabies are killed on Mission Beach roads and at least five (5) are killed by dogs per week. Isn’t this enough of a cull? More than 1,800 signatures (local and worldwide) on the petition against the cull demonstrates the public’s opposition to EHP’s (Parks & Wildlife) actions. Has every non-violent means been attempted to keep wallabies off the land (like improving and maintaining fences around the property) before the permit was issued? A Study by Simon Stirrat proved Agile Wallabies do not compete with cattle for food and that they prefer native fauna Are there other motives for the strong desire to eliminate the wallaby population in Mission Beach, such as extensive urban development?” (Nicole.)

How wallabies benefit Mission Beach

Nicole also asks us to think of the benefits that wallabies bring to mission beach.

By attracting tourists they stimulate the local economy through an increase in occupancy rates at hotels, B&Bs, holiday homes and backpacker accommodation. They increase spending at local businesses (restaurants, shops, outdoor activities, tours, etc.). They represent a free attraction for tourists that does not need to be maintained by anyone. That is, they pay for their own food, housing, health expenses. They diversify the ecosystem by dispersing grass and plant seeds to grow rainforest. They prune and trim native bushes. They provide free natural fertilizer. The are probably a unique, new species to Australia. This status is pending studies being completed to classify the South Mission Beach Agile Wallaby.

For people wanting to know more, here is the media coverage received by the Mission Beach wallabies so far: - ABC Far North radio interview , SBS News clip, Townsville Bulletin article, and a Northern Herald article.
Concern has spread to the rest of Australia at the apparently casual and capricious decision to remove natural fauna populations from recently settled human developments in rainforest areas.

Jan Held, Secretary of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council, writes in a letter to the Minister of Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, Mr Powell:

Brutally wiping out an Australian native animal just cause some guy whinges about them?
Much of their forest habitat has been recently allowed to be cleared so they are homeless, this is why they have ventured into suburban areas. Open areas are not at all their usual habitat, they are probably even seriously disoriented when moving about trying to find their usual food and shelter.

Jan Heald adds:

To not have any understanding of the repercussions of removing their habitat and to then complain of their visibility is completely disgusting and inhumane.

Apparently it is widely believed by inhabitants of Mission Beach that there are only approximately 500 wallabies there.

Gross mismanagement of wildlife at Mission Beach

Last year EHP approved culling 600 wallabies in South Mission Beach to address ‘overpopulation’. However, no scientific study or environmental impact evaluation was done to support this action. No study was done to support the current culling initiative. This exposes gross mismanagement of Mission Beach wildlife by your Department.

Infant wallabies despatched inhumanely and not counted in cull

During the cull, hunters are issued permits to eliminate a specific number of animals. Part of the hunter’s Code of Practice is to kill Joeys found alive in the pouch of a shot, female Wallaby. The most common methods for killing pouched young are crushing its skull under their boot or hitting and crushing the Joey’s skull against a tree.

Older baby wallabies at foot starve, also not counted in cull

Agile Wallaby Joeys feed from their mothers until they are about 18 months old. When a mother with pouched young is killed, she often has an older Joey at foot for which she still provides nourishment. By killing one mother wallaby, hunters sentence three Wallabies to death. The Joeys are not included in the “count” toward the culling permit.

SBS report on anonymous dumping of wallaby bodies at wildlife activist booth

The SBS report in the video linked here shows evidence of how human expansion has caused the kind of conflict that Australians used to think only occurred in Africa and India between wildlife activists and commerce due to overpopulation.

Who exactly is responsible?

Jan Heald says that,

Mayor Shannon has claimed that [the cull] was initiated by the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, but it was the Cassowary Coast Regional Council that applied for the permit to cull the Agile Wallabies at Mission Beach!

She says that she received an email from Cr Mark Nolan of the Cassowary Coast Council, stating that he has expressed his strong view that the planned cull is inappropriate in such an environment. He believes that Cr. Pike instigated the drastic action by publicly calling for a reduction in wallaby numbers. He added that Cr Pike is an enthusiastic proponent for more tourism in the area. Cr Mark Nolan saw the cull as discouraging to tourism in “sending this disgraceful image of animal culling around the globe. He wrote,

”Mission Beach is internationally known for its biodiversity, world heritage rain forest's fronting the reef and now we send this horrible message to the tourist industry!”

Jan Heald has suggested that the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection drop any plans to kill these Wallabies, as no scientific study or environmental impact evaluation was done to support this culling initiative.
In the opinion of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council, the proposed culling is unethical, unnecessary and the need for any such action is totally unsubstantiated.

How population growth & development trap us all (We are all wallabies)

Among the reports we have linked to above, one interviewee states that the reason for culling was partly due to complaints from a local farm about wallabies competing with beef cattle for food. A wildlife activist has said that the farm in question had not had cattle on it for two years. Correspondence below the article claims that cattle were there as recently as 2012.

Whatever the truths are in the detail, what we are looking at is the tragic and inevitable outcome of continuing human expansion up the North Queensland coast. The responsibility for this tragedy lies with federal, state and local governments that encourage ongoing immigration, through federal growth policy, through state government websites advertising for overseas immigrants, and through local governments giving out permits to subdivide and build. More and more frequently though, the local governments have lost the power to object to state governments pushing private developments.

Any wildlife carer, farmer, or politician that does not take on board these top-down Australian policies as major drivers of conflict and ecological disaster has their head in the sand.

This overpopulation is not inevitable in Australia. It is imposed from the top down, because of the demands of commercial lobbyists whose businesses benefit from population growth, while the rest of us all pay for it. At the bottom of the pile are the creatures of the rainforest and coastal plains. They suffer the most and have no voice except for wildlife activists, who find themselves trying to argue within the growth paradigm that we are all currently trapped within.

Australia needs to stop growing!

On the Sunshine Coast development has destroyed a great deal of the beautiful natural surroundings that attracted people there in the first place. Native animals are being cruelly decimated by starvation and exposure.

Developers seem animated by greed alone, machinally moonscaping lots when buyer uptake has dropped to 1996 levels[1] in Australia, despite constant mass immigration. The developer lobbies have not been able to restimulate demand, even by touting for overseas immigrants and selling property to foreign investors off the plan. (That doesn't stop them charging huge fees for membership.)

Photos by Brett Clifton

We need laws to imprison developers who ruin nature but they now run our parliaments

The conduct of developers in needlessly clearing land merits new laws that would imprison them for gross vandalism, cruelty to animals and dangerous greenhouse gas generation. The main reason that Australia lacks effective laws to protect wildlife and that it seems helpless before the grotesque appetites for speculative profits of property developers is because of the Labor and Liberal Parties' huge investment in property development and financing and the cancerous presence in State parliaments of property developers or people who represent their interests over those of other citizens.

Citizens feel helpless against residential developers

James Ray, who is a resident of the Sunshine Coast, moved into a development a little while ago. He enjoyed seeing wildlife in the surrounding bushland. Although he had some idea that this bushland was also marked for development, he was shocked to see these areas cleared way ahead of lots actually being sold. He protested that this seemed premature, but also asked why buyers could not buy lots with trees retained on them and clear them only if they chose. He wrote to his council about this in an article published at http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/ancient-bush-levelled/1794757/

Why clear land brutally and unnecessarily?

There seems no good answer to this question of why clear land unnecessarily except for the corruption in parliament and of our economic system.

In fact Australia should not be clearing any more land for housing at all and it should not be artificially growing its population either. The two things are related. We have huge immigration numbers coming in all the time, inflating prices. Investors in property development lobby constantly for mass immigration. The cost of land is now so high that even this population pressure is not producing more buyers, it is simply displacing people already here, by pricing people out of the market and into homelessness, or leaving only the option of sharing with relatives or living in group houses.

What is happening to our wildlife is a weeping sore in our society. It is consuming and deforming our whole way of life. Although Queensland and West Australia are the worst for recent wildlife annihilation due to state-induced rapid population growth, the older states had already cleared too much to keep on clearing. In Victoria, the most cleared state, population growth has outpaced New South Wales due to State Government policies that ram development down the throats of local communities despite continuous protests.

Stupidly stealing habitat from native animals and the ignorance of people

It seems that the Sunshine Coast is a dark and depressing place for those who love nature. In Victoria, in an outer suburb, also called Sunshine, things are very gloomy too.

Pamela, who lives in Sunshine Victoria, and works in animal welfare, writes:

"Every time we steal more habitat from our native animals people are stupidly surprised to see kangaroos looking lost on a new vacant block where their habitat used to be. They wander down new cul-de-sacs or get hit by cars.

People come into contact with them and call them 'pests' just because they're still there.

People believe kanga numbers are 'exploding' just because they are more visible without their Australian bush to hide in for protection from humans and dogs. When the truth is their numbers are actually dwindling because of floods, dogs, dumb human hunters, vehicle strike and bushfires.

Those who spread the myths of 'ballooning populations' are only the shooters and hunters who have a vested interest in killing them.

We also have a spate of vicious attacks on kangaroos by yobbos. Kangaroos are being shot with arrows, hacked to death, beheaded, joeys are being ripped from pouches and swung against the bullbars of utes or dragged behind them until dead.

I work in animal welfare and these sorts of brutality are an ongoing problem in this country. We should be ashamed of ourselves for the way we treat the animals we proudly display on our Coat of Arms."

NOTES

[1] "House Sales Drop: The number of houses and units sold in Australia last year dropped to 256,559, the lowest level of transactions since 1996, according to RP Data. The second half was 7.6 per cent stronger than the first, but analyst Cameron Kusher said a further incease in sales would be needed to underpin more price rises." Australian Financial Review, 10-17 March 2013, p. 3. Candobetter Editorial Comment: This is a sociopathic policy, to keep housing prices up for the benefit of the few who care more about their investments than in the country, and the disbenefit of the vast majority, who go into debt and homelessness because of this Australian political and economic phenomenon that corrupt parliaments encourage.

Life as a Wildlife carer has given me a rare insight into the world of the beautiful Kangaroo. I have witnessed first hand the threats they continually face and will continue to face in a world so entrenched with a greed mentality. As urban sprawl spreads like an out of control Cancer, the demise of the Kangaroo, I believe, is imminent. They won’t make a noise, they won’t fight back, the Kangaroo will just disappear. History will, unfortunately, repeat itself, Australia is an expert at achieving Wildlife extinctions.

This story is dedicated to the 453 Belconnen Kangaroos Killed by the A.C.T. Government in a Kangaroo Management Cull, 2009.

Message from a Belconnen Kangaroo

'Reflection In My Eyes'

I’ve lived peacefully here for a while now
But my time is up, we’ve been blamed somehow,
For the neglect and greed of man.

No gratitude for our contribution to
The balance of the land.

I ask you as I lay dying before you,
Look into my innocent eyes and reflect upon the injustice
You have given us, all because of lies.

End.
(by Leisa Moore)

Foreword

The Kangaroo Industry and the Australian Government’s aim is to brainwash the public into believing that if Kangaroo numbers were not managed they would be out of control.

My account of observations and experiences with Kangaroos over the last twenty five years , I believe, proves otherwise. I have come to this conclusion without the need of tracking collars or a film crew, just time, patience, passion and an undying love for Kangaroos.

Discovery

My discovery of animal love and compassion spans from Gooby to Kobei, with a variety of animals along the way. Fifty years of experiences, some incredibly beautiful, others terribly traumatic. My first realisation that animals experienced feelings occurred at the age of three in the backyard while peddling around the cement pathways of the cottage garden on my bike. Gooby was my first cat, a long haired Tabby, I adored him. Gooby’s tail was laying across the path blocking my racing circuit and I can vividly remember questioning myself about what his reaction would be if I casually ran over it. I stopped peddling and seriously contemplated doing the deed but decided, with the help of a piercing stare from my Mum watching me through the kitchen window and a deep affection for Gooby, it was not such a good idea.

I dismounted my bike and carefully picked up Gooby who greeted me with his soft purr and gentle smooch and decided it was time to have an afternoon sleep with my beautiful Cat. It was at that very moment I awakened to the fact that animals have feelings and emotions. I have in the fifty years since that day experienced many beautiful moments which are also etched into my heart and have added to convince me that animals have an incredible capacity to love and care for, not only their own species, but also Humans.

In The Beginning

I have been a Wildlife carer specialising in Kangaroos for almost half my life and have lived with Kangaroos twenty four hours a day, seven days a week for all that time. I came to live in the Adelaide Hills in 1983, an area which is fortunate to still have pockets of bush where beautiful Western Greys are native. Unfortunately, habitat loss and the usual suspects which threaten Kangaroos including barbed wire fencing, increased human population vehicles and dogs, there are going to be Kangaroo casualties. I decided to convert my property into a safe haven for Wildlife and become a carer for injured and orphaned Kangaroos and Joeys.

My new life with Kangaroos began after being invited by my sister to attend an Open Day at an R.S.P.C.A. shelter. As I wandered around checking out the various animal related stalls I came across a group of Wildlife Carers sitting with Joey Kangaroos who were snugly tucked away in hanging hand made pouches. After a brief chat I was encouraged to put my name down to perhaps adopt an orphaned Joey. I guess the organisation involved in rescuing the Joeys felt that I would be a suitable candidate as I had a small property in the Adelaide Hills where Kangaroos could be cared for in relative safety. In South Australia Kangaroos are not allowed to be released into the wild if they have been hand reared.

A year after the Open Day, out of the blue, I received a phone call from the Kangaroo Network asking if I would like to take on an orphaned Joey. The Joey was a Red Kangaroo male from Port Augusta, orphaned after his Mother was shot. I hesitantly said,‘yes’ and named him Androo. Soon after acquiring Androo I received another call and was advised to take on another joey to keep Androo company, another Red Kangaroo Joey, a female this time, I named her Roobei. Roobei was orphaned after her Mother was involved in a collision with a vehicle.

Androo and Roobei came to school with me, I was employed as an Art/Design teacher at an elite boys college in Adelaide. Each morning before my trip to work I would bundle up the Joeys along with the pouches and milk formula required for the day. Joeys at a very young age require special milk replacement formula four times a day, need to be kept calm, they also require warmth and minimal handling.

Only a few carefully screened boys ever got to see the Joeys, boys whom I trusted would not stress them in any way.

When I first started the teaching position at the College I vividly remember overhearing horror animal stories the boys had with each other as they went about their work. There was a great deal of cruelty in their conservations. By the end of my eighteen years teaching there, the attitude of the boys in regards to animal welfare completely changed and each and every day I was pleased to hear something pleasant about animals or being greeted by a boy with a creature of some sort with an injury which I was expected to help in some way.

Androo and Roobei had to remain a secret until I felt it safe to reveal the secret in the Art room to the Principal.That meant hoping that the three hundred and forty Preparatory school boys I asked to keep the secret did just that. Luckily, the Principal accepted the fact that two Joeys would be attending the school for a short time and all was well. I was able to keep the Joeys safe in the dark room and allow them access to the whole Art room at recess and lunch.

A few months passed and the Joeys were coping excellently and becoming more active and interested in their surroundings. It was nearly Christmas and I was looking forward to the Christmas holidays which would be the time to prepare them for their new lifestyle. At the end of the Christmas holidays Androo and Roobei would not be returning to school, they were getting too big and too active, they would remain at home.

I could hardly wait to return home to be with them the first day back after the Christmas break. The anxiety experienced being from being away from the Joeys was too much to bear. My only option was to risk the financial security of being employed full time and apply to go part time so I could spend more time helping Wildlife. I was granted a reduction in contact time giving me the opportunity to became more involved in Wildlife issues and was offered the position of S.A. Representative for the Australian Wildlife Protection Council. I still hold that position and do all I possibly can to help the beautiful Kangaroo.

A New Addition to the Mob

A few years on, half way through one of the Art lessons a student approached me with some alarming information. He informed me that his family had a Joey in a box in the garage at home. After some intense interrogation, the horrible story was revealed. The boy’s Father and Grand Father had been shooting Kangaroos on their country property on the weekend and one of the Does shot had a Joey in her pouch. Apparently the boy pleaded to his father that they take the Joey home to keep. The petrified Joey had been kept in a cardboard box for forty eight hours without fluids. I insisted he contact his Mother and to bring the Joey into me. Permits are required to keep or hand raise Wildlife and these people had no permit and no idea what they were doing.

It was not long before a beautiful little Western Grey arrived in a cardboard box, scared and dehydrated, a female with barely any fur, just a velvet haze over her body, weighing 600 grams, I named her Frooshei. Her pale blue undeveloped pupils stared up at me, I instantly fell in love with her as I did with Androo and Roobei.They were my life and I wanted the best life I could give them. Veterinary help was almost non existant back then so it was really hard getting help in that regard. I had been reading and researching anything I could possibly get my hands on about Kangaroo diseases and medications, diet and Kangaroo husbandry. Frooshei is going to turn fifteen this year and has developed into a fiesty girl who believes it is her job to boss around the younger Joeys she shares her life with.

The Accident

It was on one of my days off a terrible accident occured. I was on my way to get some milk formula when all of a sudden, as I was negotiating a sweeping curve, I saw a vehicle speeding towards me on the wrong side of the road. I remember experiencing about two seconds before the head on collision happened and the last thoughts I had were, “This is going to hurt,” and “I need to survive this for the Kangaroos.” Obviously, I survived the collision. I was, however, severely injured. Apparently, the driver and occupant of the other vehicle forgot to return to the left hand side of the road after road works, they were from somewhere overseas where driving on the right hand side was normal. My injuries were so bad that I was unable to continue working after trying to continue for a year following the accident. I had to resign from my teaching position which had been a part of my life for eighteen years. Since resigning I have completely dedicated my life to Kangaroo welfare, rescuing and caring for Kangaroos and voicing my concerns about the Kangaroo Industry and Government Kangaroo Management Plans and Culls. I have vowed that I will do all I possibly can for Kangaroos and this passion grows daily.

I believe my love for Kangaroos is the sole reason I have pushed through the hell of diagnosed depression due to chronic pain. I now spend every single moment with what I love, a special love only a few people ever experience.... Kangaroo love.

Western Grey Kangaroo

I live in an area which is home to the Western Grey kangaroo. Even though they are not threatened by the Kangaroo Industry the Kangaroos do experience their fair share of challenges in their strive to survive. I have been observing, documenting and photographing a Mob of Kangaroos who live close to my property for approximately 25 years, during which time I have been fortunate to observe some very intimate, numerous funny, and many beautiful moments.The Mob has had to adjust to an influx of humans due to the increased popularity of the ‘Tree Change’. This particular Mob of Kangaroos have not been subjected to ‘Culls’, they have been left to manage themselves and have proven to be expert at it. In monitoring the Kangaroos I have not needed to utilise collars fitted with transmitter devices or employ a film crew, just love and a passion for the Kangaroo was required. The Mob has never exceeded fifteen in number and the area they roam is roughly four square kilometres.

The alpha male, named ‘Hercules’ is transient and prefers to live a solitary existance except when females are in season. Hercules will then visit the females (Does) and stay around them whilst they remain in season to keep other males (Bucks) from mating them. Hercules will not always choose to mate each female, he decides whether or not to do so. The Doe will not usually allow herself to be impregnated by other Bucks so it can be a frantic time with Does racing all over the place in their attempts to escape unrelenting Bucks. This is where Mob dynamics are destroyed by the likes of the Kangaroo Industry and Government controlled Culls. The shooters who shoot for the Kangaroo Industry aim to kill the large Bucks as they get paid per kilogram for the carcass. Also, companies like Adidas insist on the large skins for their ‘Predator’ Football boots. In doing this, the Mob is no longer protected as the Alpha male is taken and the Does are chased down by the Juvenile Bucks resulting in a weakening the gene pool .

Due to predation, one out of three Joeys will not survive past twelve months of age and only one on average will grow to adulthood. Vehicle collisions, dog attacks, fences, human intervention and who knows what horror is inflicted on them when they venture onto private property, all contribute to their demise at a young age or any age in all seriousness. Living life as a wildlfe carer combined with being fortunate to live amongst wild Kangaroos is a gift. I have been priviledged to have experienced an incredible insight into Kangaroo behaviour and dynamics of the Mob and have been welcomed into their world.

Tough Boy Bailei

Words cannot express what I would like to do to the person who invented Barbed Wire. The injuries and deaths that happen to Wildlife because of the wretched stuff is horrific! I can clearly remember being called out to a property where a Joey, I named ‘Bailei’, was seen caught in a fence with it’s hind legs twisted in the Barbed Wire. As I approached the the property I dreaded what I would be confronted with. The person who contacted me was waiting and took me over to where the Joey was hanging. A possible scenario could be, the Mob the Joey belonged to was frightened by a vehicle or a dog. In the Bailei’s endeavour to keep up with his Mob he was unable to clear the fence and his legs got trapped between the two top strands of the Barbed Wire. Bailei must have been hanging and struggling for quite some time as the blood was dry and the damaged area was not fresh, the Joey had nearly ring barked both his ankles. All the fur and flesh had been ripped off in his panic to free himself from the fence, the Tendon and bone on one ankle was exposed. I covered his head and carefully cut him from the wire. Bailei was extremely brave and as soon as he was free he snuggled into my arms and fell asleep. He trusted that I was there to help him and never at any stage of caring for him did Bailei show fear. It took several months and a great deal of medication and bandage dressings to repair the extreme damage, but thankfully, Bailei made a full recovery, albeit with a very unusual pair of legs.

Frank’s Story

In my pursuit to help Kangaroos in my area I have met some people who enjoy the Kangaroos and others who make it their job to make life as difficult as possible for them. I would spend a great deal of time checking fences, patrolling roads near Kangaroo habitat for injured kangaroos and also, just keeping an eye on known kangaroo haters. This is a very dangerous part of my life. I have been abused, blamed, threatened, had my car damaged by a violent individual who was threatening a Kangaroo and countless other frightening incidents, simply because I watch out for Wildlife.

Frank, was an elderly gentleman who often noticed me watching the Kangaroos near his property and would often come out to have a chat when I drove past his house. I got to know Frank quite well, we were both concerned about the dwindling Kangaroo numbers in the area. On this occasion there appeared to be a blind kangaroo on a nearby property. I will never forget the conversation we had on that hot November night as we stood mesmerised watching a Mother and Joey interacting together, they clearly loved each other.

There was silence for a considerable length of time and then Frank asked if he could tell me about an incident he had never told anyone about before. For some reason he felt compelled to tell me about what had occurred one night when he was about thirty years old. Frank was seventy seven years of age. He went on to tell me how he used to go out Rabbit shooting with his mate when on this particular night his mate decided that they would also shoot a couple of Kangaroos for dog meat. Frank was asked to have a shot at a Kangaroo in the distance and he obliged. He took aim, pulled the trigger and realised it was not a clean shot. Frank wandered over to the Kangaroo who was writhing in pain and trying in vain to push her Joey out of her pouch. Frank went on to say that he actually heard the Kangaroo scream to her Joey ‘get away, go,the man is going to kill us!’. Frank honestly believed that he heard the Kangaroo scream those words to her Joey. Frank, with tears in his eyes, continued with the horrible detail and said that he had to shoot both, Mother and joey. He then told me he was so disgusted by what he did on that sickening night that he went straight home and destroyed his gun and never killed anything again and is now haunted each minute of his life.

It was difficult to say anything to Frank when he had finished talking, I am not the forgiving type when it comes to animal cruelty, abuse, neglect, whatever. Frank never came out to talk with me again, so I did not have to deal with the emotions that were challenging my conscience.

The Old Blind Girl

When travelling around I observe and document where and how many Kangaroos are in specific areas. I am not employed by the Government , not a Council Ranger or an R.S.P.CA. Inspector but do all I can on a voluntary basis. This lack of authority has it’s difficulties however, as I am not allowed onto properties to check Kangaroos I may be concerned about. I had been keeping an eye out for several months for an old , what seemed to be, blind, female Kangaroo. The Kangaroo appeared to be coping and was keeping up with her Mob so I felt it was best to monitor her and move her if she seemed to deteriorate at any stage. I tracked her daily and all seemed to be going well for the girl. Then one day, she had disappeared from the Mob. I searched for hours on end and had difficulty in doing so as some property owners would not let me look for her on their land. I would wake up at five am each morning and search for her and return each night at about six pm. till dark. A week later I found her, she was laying exhausted upturned with her legs in the air in a ditch. She was on a property that belonged to a Kangaroo hater, a man who had previously abused me when I stopped to remove a Kangaroo off the road, a man I believe responsible for shooting Kangaroos in the area. I needed his permission to go on his property to retrieve her but feared he would say no. I rang the R.S.P.C.A. but they were unable to come out as it was late at night and the Council Ranger would shoot her for sure. I decided to get her out myself.

I went home and got all the equipment required to do the rescue and prepared my car so I could transport her safely. I suspected she had been chased by his dogs so made sure I had the appropriate Antibiotics on hand and Dexamethasone for shock. I returned and placed blankets on her and waited in the car till I felt it was safe to make the move. I approached quietly and she did not move at all, I thought she had died. Then I noticed her beautiful face looking up at me and I could tell she was relieved that someone was there to help. Kangaroos know when they are being helped, they just know. The poor girl was in the middle of a boggy paddock with drainage pipes all over, so it was extremely difficult carrying a fully grown Kangaroo on my own in the dark. I managed to carry her through to the fence where my car was parked and manoevered her through the gate to my car door. I only had a Sedan back then so had to place her on the floor in the front of the passenger seat but being next to me I would be able to place my hand on her and speak softly if she got stressed by the unusual noises during the trip.

I carefully lifted her into the car and wrapped her securely then reached into my pocket to get my car keys.... they weren’t there! I race around to the driver’s side door in the hope that I had left them in the ignition, No !!! I had dropped them in the paddock.!!!I had a rough idea where I had picked her up and retraced my steps in complete darkness and... unbelievably, I stumbled across them. I could not believe luck was with me for a change. I ran back to the car and drove home with an exhausted blind Kangaroo next to me. I carried her into the Laundry and she fell straight to sleep, beautiful girl. I woke next morning with her in my arms and her beautiful head tucked into my body. I checked out her injuries and as suspected, she had been attacked by a dog or dogs, presenting injuries consistent with dog attack. She had bite marks and punctures all over her buttocks, legs and neck. I cleaned and dressed her wounds, gave her Antibiotics and Dexamethasone. Sadly, even with Veterinary help, the blind girl died in her sleep a few days later.

Tobei

Tobei was an absolute treasure, a hero in his own right and I believe, along with Lucei, another rescued Joey, saved my life. Tobei was adopted by Lucei who was also hand raised after her Mother was run completely over by a truck. Lucei loved Tobei and they went everywhere together, grazed together, slept next to each other. It was a windy night and after setting up the outdoor heating arrangement I had for the Kangaroos who chose to sleep on the Verandah, and sorting out the food stations, I retired to bed. The heating consisted of galvanised domes which were suspended above the areas where it was dry and comfortable if the Kangaroos felt cold. Near by, there were a couple of containers where Meadow Hay was placed. On this extremely windy night a tragic event occurred and if not for Tobei’s famous Trumpet call he always used to get my attention I would have possibly lost my life and my home.

At about 2am I was woken by the repetitive trumpet sound of Tobei, extremely loud and clearly in a state of panic. I stumbled out of bed to see what was going on and to my amazement I saw flames about to catch the eves of the house alight. One of the heaters had blown into the meadow Hay container which in turn caught the cupboard next to the house alight. Tobei and Lucei were standing there side by side, staring at the flames which had nearly taken complete hold. I managed to get the hose to the fire and extinguish the fire. I firmly believe they both knew what they needed to do and did so to save my life.

Beautiful Tobei tragically died two years later on my Birthday from a snake bite. I will never forget the bond we had with each other for nearly four years, such a beautiful Kangaroo, his memory etched in my heart forever. Lucei had tears in her eyes the day Tobei left us and for months after... Kangaroos do cry, we never got over his loss.

Kangei

Kangei was a wild Western Grey Kangaroo who often enjoyed visiting my Kangaroos, a dominant male who belonged to the Mob that resides in Council land behind my property. Kangei was about three years of age when he first came to visit, a very trusting and placid Kangaroo. Our bond was sealed the day I found him caught in a neighbour's fence. Kangei allowed me to sedate him and cut him free from the fence. We had only known each other for about a year when the incident happened but he allowed me to inject him on two occasions with long acting Antibiotics and administer Vitamin E daily for Myopathy. Beautiful Kangei would have been about four years old and weighed approximately eighty Kilograms. Realising I was helping him he would like my face and gently stroke my hand with his large soft paw, I was able to dress the wound in his hind leg and thankfully Kangei made a complete recovery. Kangei continued to visit us until March 24th 2010.

Kangei died after being hit by a car after a dog chased him onto the main road as he was navigating through bushland in a reserve where dogs are legally supposed to be on a lead at all times. The progeny of Kangei live on with other Joeys that were born after his death. I am aware of two Joeys that are definitely Kangei’s, how precious that I can still be close to him in some way. Kangei is now with his best friend,Tobei.

Mob Tactics

The dynamics of a Mob are extremely interesting to me and I believe many people underestimate the amazing qualities the Kangaroo possesses. On one occasion when I was on a Photography expedition in the bush I spotted the mob in a paddock a small distance from where they usually hung out. I stopped and watched as they were on the move and needed to negotiate a couple of Barbed Wire fences on their return to their day time resting spot. I had noticed the youngest Buck had safely crossed the dirt road along with two of the Does and one of the at foot Joeys.

Bradei, the dominant Buck at the time stayed behind to ensure all Kangaroos crossed safely. With him was the other at foot joey who decided it was time to play and rough up Bradei and not follow his Mum. Bradei kept trying to show his Joey where to get under the fence by gently pushing the Joey’s head down to the section where there was a large enough space to get under. The Joey thought Bradei was playing and I had such a laugh watching the antics of the Joey and the frustration Bradei was experiencing. Finally, with a little bit more force by Bradei and a Mother calling her boy, the Joey realised it was time to squeeze under. It was not until the Joey was safely out that Bradei felt ready to to jump the fence and join the Mob. I have seen on many occasions actions which indicate close bonds, love and also grieving of deceased members of a Mob. The bond between a mother and a joey is a special one. The Joey stays with the Mother for at least eighteen months, the female Joey many months longer and will usually remain with or close to the Mob in her adult life.

I have also observed the actions of a Mother to protect her Joey in times when threats are near. Always on the alert, the mother will communicate to her Joey to go to a predetermined spot and hide if she senses a threat. The Mother will then stand completely upright, perfectly still and watch and listen, ears flicking frantically in all directions like a radar. If she feels it necessary she will leave the scene to take the threat away from her Joey. The Joey instinctively realises it must not follow, it understands it must remain still and completely quiet and wait for its Mother to return when she feels it is safe to do so. I have observed a Joey wait more than three hours for her Mother to return. The love and excitement shown when they reunite is so precious, wow, I love them.

I have also experienced the love the Kangaroos in my care have for me. I have never had a sick day whilst being a Wildlife carer. Fact is, I can’t. Too much Kangaroo work to be done. When I experience unrelenting pain I sometimes have to lay down for a while, but I am never alone. The Kangaroos sense when I am unwell and will always join me either on my bed or on the floor next to the bed. Sometimes I am lucky to get any of the bed but feel so happy when they are with me. They are my healers.

The Kangaroos have a choice to do as they wish, they can come inside or they may choose to graze and lay around outside. I love it when I am their choice.

Kobei

As mentioned at the beginning of my story, my journey spans from Gooby to Kobei. Kobei came into my life on August 31st 2010 at the age of five months. He was orphaned after his Mother lost him from her pouch when being chased by a dog on someone’s property. The owners of the property left the little Joey, whom I named ‘Kobei’, after Kangei and Tobei, near a bush all night in 3 degrees C. amongst predators such as Foxes, in case the Mother returned for him.

Unbelievably, Kobei survived the night but his Mother did not return. How such a small Joey could survive those conditions astounds me till this day. Kobei apparently stayed in the same place all night. He did not move a centimeter. They picked him up and I was contacted and asked what they should do with him. Kobei became part of my Mob and has been with my other Kangaroos ever since. Kangaroos are very accepting of new arrivals and I gradually introduced him into my Mob. He has grown up to be a vibrant and content Kangaroo who loves Lucei and his other Mob friends that live here.

A Wish

I would much prefer that the Kangaroos who have had a second chance of life with me never had to experience losing their Mother but I suppose they are the luckier ones in a Country that insists on slaughtering millions of Kangaroos and Joeys each year. Kangaroos are blamed for just about everything and have been betrayed since white man set foot on their land. It’s little wonder that when they are observed they are always on the lookout for Human threat, introduced predators along with the ongoing loss of habitat due to degradation of land and urban sprawl. Where I live I have noticed the number of Kangaroos drop 75% in twenty years and there is no Kangaroo Industry here to blame, only human intervention, greed and a blatant disregard for Wildlife. I have seen and still see people buy properties knowing it is home to Wildlife and feel it is their right to apply for destruction permits to get rid of the animals.

Sadly, I don’t think there will be many Kangaroos in my area in the near future and only then will the Kangaroo haters be happy. Life as a Wildlife carer has given me a rare insight into the world of the beautiful Kangaroo. I have witnessed first hand the threats they continually face and will continue to face in a world so entrenched with a greed mentality. As urban sprawl spreads like an out of control Cancer, the demise of the Kangaroo, I believe, is imminent. They won’t make a noise, they won’t fight back, the Kangaroo will just disappear. History will, unfortunately, repeat itself. Australia is an expert at achieving Wildlife extinctions.

My Wildlife journey, so far, has been like a Roller Coaster, I have been pushed to say and do things I never thought I would or could. I will continue to support Kangaroos for as long as I live.... they are my life long passion.

My biggest wish is for the Kangaroo to be appreciated and respected before it is too late, so that the amazing people who relentlessly endeavor to give a voice to these precious, sentient beings can continue to admire, observe, photograph, love and appreciate their wonder.

Dale Peterson begins his thesis with the execution of elephants for crimes of murder against humans. An unusual, well-argued and inspiring book. Peterson co-authored the famous Demonic Males, an anthropological study in their own environment of several kinds of apes, including humans. I expected him to come up with something new on the subject of animal morality, and I was not disappointed. This is a real thesis, a slow burning one that reaches a high temperature.

Dale Peterson begins his thesis with the execution of elephants for crimes of murder against humans. He thus arrests our attention with a couple of concepts most of us probably don't mull over every day in relation to elephants: 'execution' and 'murder'.

Execution and Punishment

Firstly, he calls to our minds the difficulty of killing an elephant and of how authorities 'execute' elephants mostly when those animals have done something that makes them seem pretty dangerous - generally maiming or killing a human. The level of decision-making and authority to kill the elephant in question is such that it takes on the character of an execution and a punishment.

Then he introduces the concept of 'murder' by non-humans of humans. He shows how people in earlier times have tended to assume intent and deliberation in animals and that, even though this assumption has been largely dropped with the institution of Cartesian values that say animals are machines without feelings, with elephants people tend, despite themselves, to assume intelligence and planning.

Australians might recognise the motif of execution and murder in the way we sometimes deal with sharks and crocodiles after one of them has killed one of us. And then, there is our attitude to dingos. And pit-bulls.

Speciesism

An important part of Peterson's logic depends on establishing that most species think of themselves as the most important, possibly the only 'real' species, just as humans do. He gives an example of how, when human observers were educated not to interact at all with non-human apes in the Goodall studies - the non-human apes simply forgot the human apes were there. They accommodated their presence in the sense that they went around them, but the almost never attempted to interact. Humans went off their radar - just as most other species are nearly always off most humans' radars.

Obviously you have to read the book to understand what Peterson is talking about here. He is sufficiently original to surprise most people saturated in animal ethology, evolution and animal rights literature.

Empathy a widespread evolutionary trait

Species self-centredness does not exclude a capacity for empathy when there is meaningful interaction with another species and within one's own. Peterson defines empathy and argues very effectively that this is an evolutionary trait shared by many species apart from humans. Readers may not be surprised by this observation, but they will probably be impressed by the reasoning and examples.

With this significant beginning, Peterson goes on to examine other perspectives on animals in laboratories and in the wild which many of us won't have thought of. He also has a lot of unusual but well documented examples from the wild, in part due to his long association with Jane Goodall.

Emotional attitude

When I was deliberating about buying this book, I wondered how Peterson would deal with his own emotions on these subjects and with those he might expect in a reader. Emotional attitude is very important in such works because it can put readers off for a number of different reasons. For instance, some readers might seek to avoid the pain of knowing of awful treatment of animals. Conversely, animal rights readers might suspect an author who did not express indignation and anger. On the other hand, scientific readers and people used to repressing their emotions might prefer an absence of emotion. How does Dale Peterson deal with this? He doesn't become 'emotional' but he nonetheless validates the experience of animals by describing their reactions - for instance how laboratory rats would go hungry and even risk starvation to avoid imposing pain on their rat-neighbours when that was a risk entailed in seeking food - for instance where pressing a lever to get a pellet of food appeared to cause another rat to receive some kind of 'punishment'.

Does Peterson rail against the people who would deliberately cause animals - from lab rats to chimpanzees and elephants - pain? No, he doesn't. But the actions of the animals to protect each other dignify the animals themselves, and so the reader makes their judgement.

Peterson succeeds here in a very difficult field: he teaches us that the matter is too serious for mere indignation. Serious in a manner that requires intense reflection on our relationship with other creatures, with ourselves and each other.

Whales

"The puffin (harvested locally, the waitress promised) was sliced thin, its gaminess muted with litchi and fig. The minke whale, also finely carved, tasted like beef tenderloin with a faint metallic finish; it was savoury and delicate when paired with an airy washabi cream." (Liz Alderman, New York Times travel journalist, 2013)

The industrialized killing of whales during the twentieth century was 'perhaps the most callous demonstration history offers of humankind's self-appointed dominion over animals. One searches almost in vain for an expression of sympathy, compassion, understanding, or rationality. In their place were only insensitivity and avarice.' (Richard Ellis,2003. The Empty Ocean).

Whales are present throughout the book, an undercurrent in the form of educated interpretations of Moby Dick, which will absolutely fascinate anyone who has studied it, but the cetaceans surface, so to speak, in their full glory, in the last chapter.

Now I am not one to be impressed by interspecies comparisons with human intelligence because I don't think I judge other species' worth in relation to humans. I have therefore never been very taken by the popular iconology of whales and porpoises. I love the sea and enjoy the creatures in it. They are a whole other planet. They do not need to be like me for me to want them to be.

Whaling on the west coast of Australia

No, when I think of whales, I think about how, when I was a child about five years old I participated in one of the last whale hunts off the West Australian coast. Two whalers were involved - one Australian and one Russian. My father (a scientist) was a guest for the day on the Russian boat and my mother and I were on the Australian one. The two boats competed for a mother whale and her calf. The Russians caught the mother and the calf. It was windy. The sea was roiling. The whales, although huge, appeared and disappeared among the waves. I remember the excitement of the pursuit and apparently friendly competition between the boat crews pursuing the same whale.

When we came ashore, we left the real crews to deal with their catch and drove to the country pub where we were sleeping.

Early the next morning we returned to the whaling station, eager to see the work that had been done. We climbed up on a rise above the station and looked down into a bay like a pit between cliffs. Our stomachs lurched at the sight. Humans were climbing over the partially exposed skeleton of the huge mother whale in a scene that resembled one of Hieronymous Boch's versions of hell. They were hacking away at the giant creature like ants with axes and knives. Was the little one lying beside its mother? I cannot be sure of my memory. I do remember that even my father (a man who made his own spears for underwater fishing) lost his bullish enthusiasm for the scene. The terrible smell of rotting whale even outdid the visual desecration of such an obviously monumental animal. Above everything else, the smell drove us away, gagging with horror, suddenly deeply depressed.

I was glad when I became aware they had banned whaling some years after that. Since then I have enjoyed the sight of whales with the feeling that - at least those I can see in Australia - are not menaced by a local whaling industry. Since there are already so many people out there protesting on behalf of whales, with an apparent appetite for associated posters and films, I have felt I could choose to spend my time trying to defend our very deserving Australian indigenous land-creatures and vegetation, which lack the profile in their own country that whales do, but suffer similarly.

Whale statistics

Reading Dale Peterson's last chapter, however, concentrated my mind on the precarious position of whales. Peterson doesn't waste the reader's time with excess adjectives and examples. He makes the matter perfectly clear. Some whale populations that recovered from initial whaling bans are now nearly extinct, largely due to the current activities of the Japanese, the Greenlanders and the Icelanders. Some of the biggest creatures on the earth - with much larger brains than ours and similar neuronal connections - and perhaps with superior morality and values - are close to being wiped out by a bunch of badly-educated apes who no longer are in touch with what is going on around them. There is no excuse for whaling. There is no excuse for extinction. We have no excuse, except perhaps that, collectively, we humans are not as smart as we think.

"Altogether the brains of cetaceans show 'a structural complexity that could support complex information processing, allowing for intelligent, rational behavior.' That's the word from the neuroanatomists, and those scientists who have been studying cetacean behavior for the last several decades strongly support it, finding a group of animals who have excellent memories and high levels of social and self-awareness, who are excellent at mimicking the behavior of others and can respond to symbolic representations, who form complex and creatively adaptive social systems, who show a broad capacity for the cultural transmission of learned behaviors ... and so on."

"Nearly half of the thirteen great whale species are currently listed as endangered, some critically so, while a number of localized populations are gone or just about gone. The right whale of the North Atlantic, once common, is now down to a population of around three hundred and still declining. These giant animals were given their name in the old days because, as slow-moving and naturally-buoyant-after-death creatures, they were the 'right' ones to find and kill. Now they are right for extinction, with their continuing decline today, largely the consequence of accidental collisions with ships. The magnificent blue whales of the Antarctic, abundant until whalers discovered them, have been reduced to around 1 percent of their original numbers. At more than a hundred feet long and 150 tons heavy, incidentally, these animals are the largest creatures ever to have lived on this planet, land or sea, but they, too, are teetering on the edge of nonexistence. Also endangered or threatened are the gray whales of the northwestern Pacific, the fin whales, the sei, the beluga, and the sperm whales. 'Trusting creatures whose size probably precluded a knowledge of fear,' writes author and marine wildlife expert Richard Ellis, in The Empty Ocean (2003), 'the whales were chased until they were exhausted and then stabbed and blown up; their babies were slaughtered; their numbers were halved and halved again.' The industrialized killing of whales during the twentieth century, Ellis concludes, was 'perhaps the most callous demonstration history offers of humankind's self-appointed dominion over animals. One searches almost in vain for an expression of sympathy, compassion, understanding, or rationality. In their place were only insensitivity and avarice.'

"The International Whaling Commission (IWC) was originally organized in 1946 to support the industry by promoting the supposedly 'sustainable' harvesting of whales. But commercial whaling had, by the second half of the century, reduced the numbers of most species so decisively that in July of 1982 the IWC declared a moratorium on all whaling.

That important and positive event has been challenged continuously by the Starbucks[1] of this world. The Soviet whaling industry simply continued harvesting whales of all species, all ages and sizes, while falsifying their reports. The Japanese officially adhered to the terms of the moratorium by identifying their whaling as 'scientific' rather than a commercial enterprise. Iceland ignored the moratorium, allowing its ships to kill one hundred minke whales and as many as one hundred and fifty endangered finned whales during the 2008 and 2009 seasons. The Norwegians have never stopped whaling either and continue to slaughter hundreds of minke whales yearly, insisting that whale killing is a glorious part of their cultural heritage and, furthermore, that these giant mammals eat too many fish. During the 2009 meeting of the IWC, meanwhile Greenland,backed by the Danish government, applied for permission to harvest as many as fifty endangered humpback whales over the next five years for the purposes of 'aboriginal subsistence,' even though Greenland already has a surplus of whale meat, which is sold in supermarkets."

Exotic eating driving extinction everywhere

After I began writing this review, I was sad to read the following in an internationally syndicated travelogue by New York journalist, Liz Alderman, about Iceland nightlife:

"We studied the menu and pointed to the puffin and minke whale appetisers, Icelandic delicacies. The puffin (harvested locally, the waitress promised) was sliced thin, its gaminess muted with litchi and fig. The minke whale, also finely carved, tasted like beef tenderloin with a faint metallic finish; it was savoury and delicate when paired with an airy washabi cream."

Liz Alderman was not starving, was not an indigenous hunter, was not unable to procure other kinds of food, so how could she be so blind and deaf and dumb to the imminent extinction of the whale and the puffin?[3] And, if it sold articles, would she also sample elephants' tusks and tigers' bones? Where would she draw the line? Would she, could she draw a line anywhere?

Is there any hope for the world? Are we any different from the Ancient Romans who gorged themselves with rare animal dishes and self-induced vomiting so as to be able to eat more?

It is as if every local rule that ever developed to save something for later and maintain the populations of food sources is being eroded by marketing for short-term gain to nations of unhappily fat people who cannot avoid exposure to the brainwashing.

I know I am not the only one who is absolutely sick of the multiplication of cooking shows on television. I rarely turn on my own television, but television is now everywhere - on the back of airline seats, in hospitals and doctors' waiting rooms, in public squares. It is a form of ideological pollution. At every hour of day and night we are sold the idea of eating more and more kinds of animals, to seek the out wherever they may hide and popularise their demise. So we are supposed to admire a man who urges us to taste fried spiders, then follow the camera's eye as it roves greedily over other produce, passing casually over the sad little face of a small dead bat. The image haunts me still, because I have actually been friends with a bat. I recorded it in this film, Gracie, the flying fox.

Julia Buch, who introduced me to the friendly bat took to saving baby bats orphaned on bat hunts in New Guinea, when she was a child. A tradition of bat eating among a small population of New Guinea clans-people is one thing; 7.5 billion people hunting down every bat and every spider, every tasty rare plant and turning their habitats into fields for soy and corn is like some kind of scary nightmare. Yet that is what is happening! Humans have become the nemesis of every other creature in the world. Our behaviour is monstruous.

NOTES

[1] Starbuck was one of the characters in Moby Dick. He was less impressed by Moby Dick and Captain Ahab than most of the crew. He wanted to get on with business and go home to his wife.
[2] Liz Alderman, "The nights and lights of Reykjavik," Australian Financial Review, February 22-24, 2013, pp22-24.
[3] Puffins are hunted for eggs, feathers and meat. Atlantic Puffin populations drastically declined due to habitat destruction and exploitation during the 19th century and early 20th century. They continue to be hunted in Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

The Atlantic Puffin forms part of the national diet in Iceland, where the species does not have legal protection. Puffins are hunted by a technique called “sky fishing”, which involves catching low-flying birds with a big net. Their meat is commonly featured on hotel menus. The fresh heart of a puffin is eaten raw as a traditional Icelandic delicacy.

Conservation

SOS Puffin is a conservation project based from the Scottish Seabird Centre at North Berwick to save the puffins on islands in the Firth of Forth. Puffin numbers on the island of Craigleith, once one of the largest colonies in Scotland, with 28,000 pairs, have crashed to just a few thousand due to the invasion of Tree Mallow, an exotic plant which has taken over the island and prevented the puffins from accessing their burrows and breeding.[21] The project has the support of over 450 volunteers and progress is being made with puffins returning in numbers to breed this year.

In the summer, children in Iceland walk around local areas with boxes and containers to rescue puffins that land in dangerous spots, such as close to cities, where the city light has confused them into trying to fly into that direction, as opposed to diving in the direction of the light reflecting off the sea water near their burrows. The children who rescue puffins then later release them at sea, and away from the city. Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin

About the author of this review

Sheila Newman is an evolutionary sociologist. Her home page is http://candobetter.net/SheilaNewman Her most recent book is reviewed at /?q=node/3155. See below for where you can obtain a copy.

Click here to Buy PRINT VERSION of S.M. Newman, Demography Territory Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations (2013)

Magnificent, significant, relevant, a happy elephant ...

Apologies and warning that it requires a facebook connection to see without ads, although you can also see it here on you-tube.
 

It is so rare to see

other creatures enjoying

the sea. In Australia, where

I live, even dogs can only

swim in the evenings with

their human friends.

Highways cut off access to

the sea for any non-human

creature that cannot fly.

Here is a film to remind us of what we are missing by transforming this world into a uniquely human one.

Tony Burke had no legal obligation to even consider the threatened koalas in Leard forest for the Maules Creek and Boggabri approval. New loopholes could see developers and miners determining if koalas are under threat.

Federal documents obtained by the ABC unveiled on 13 February that the Federal government is endeavouring to make it even easier for miners and developers to avoid protecting koalas.

This comes as Federal Minister Tony Burke approves the Maules Creek and Boggabri open cut coal mines in Leard forest, despite never considering the impacts to koalas.

"The thousands of hectares of Leard State forest to be destroyed by the open cut coal mines are teeming with koalas, however they are offered absolutely no protection by the 2012 addition of the koala to the federal threatened species list," said Naomi Hogan of The Wilderness Society.

Tony Burke had no legal obligation to even consider the hundreds of Koalas that will certainly die as a result of the Boggabri and Maules Creek open cut coal mines in Leard forest. The Maules Creek and Boggabri open coal mining applications were lodged before the koala became a federally listed threatened species, so the Federal government isn't obliged to even consider the koala's plight. The koalas in Leard forest now face a slash and burn future. In essence, the federal koala protection law is useless to the koalas facing a forest wipe out by the Maules Creek and Boggabri open cut approvals."

This date discrepancy is just one of many loopholes in our Federal environmental protection law.

On 13 February it was revealed by the ABC that under the leaked draft federal guidelines, the applicant seeking to develop an area must establish for themselves if an area has koalas and if their proposed activity will have an impact on the habitat. The guidelines to not include any koala maps nor a requirement for long term koala surveys.

"No developer, no mining company can be trusted to undertake their own assessments of threatened species. Mining companies are driven by their legal requirement to make money, not to protect our threatened koalas. I have no doubt that many mining companies would rather see koalas dead than have them interrupting with their profits," said Ms Hogan.

Media Release 13 February 2013 from The Wilderness Society

Sad story of 3 brothers, 2 killed, one is running for his life

.

A dingo From the K'Gari Butchulla camp called "Inky "is running for his life. QPWS targets three dingo brothers for ‘crimes’ they ‘supposedly’ committed and they have been coded for destruction. Visit Youtube news story on this dingo for a news report:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypA2oeiO8Rs&list=UUdyUpJ3MnEdPLQnOuxMfAsg&index=6&feature=plcp

(Pic from Ch 7 Sunshine Coast QLD News)

Two have already been destroyed, one at the K'Gari camp site shot, where Inky was shot along with his brother who died. “Inky" survived but ran off with a bullet wound in his neck, developed an infected ear, is still running/ hiding terrified of the rangers. Another dingo Inky’s brother, ‘Byron’ known to be harmless, from Cathedral Beach was darted and given a lethal injection. This dingo was destroyed by QPWS on 4th Oct. 2012 before a public forum with the newly appointed FIDMS Ecosure on 5th Oct. This leaves "Inky” who, after his brother was shot at the K'Gari camp, ran off to join his other brother Byron at Cathedral beach. He is now being hunted by a trapper brought in by QPWS to trap and kill this terrified dingo.

An online vote poll asks ‘Should dingoes that attack tourists on Fraser Island be destroyed?’ It stands at 91% No and only 8% Yes- nearly 100% angry NO’s of community response. QPWS, Regional Manager Fraser Island, Ross Belcher admitted on ABC radio that this dingo and his brother, who were both killed, did not bite anyone. Why were these dingoes deemed dangerous and aggressive? They were future breeding dingoes, important to sustain another generation, but were given a death sentence based on an obscure report, and coded.

Those issuing death sentences do not understand dingo play behaviour; they behave like human male teenagers- boisterous. No more dingoes should die; there must be a complete moratorium on killing dingoes until Ecosure publish their peer reviewed FDIMS management strategy, which won't be until Feb next year. For decades, the fight to protect the F.I. Dingoes, has done little to improve the chances of these dingoes surviving for future generations. "Inky" and his brothers committed the crime of a code C..." a dingo was lying down 20 metres from a fisherman!! Other "crimes" the dingo commits, assume the dingo ‘knows the rules’: ‘loitering’ at visitor sites, stealing or ‘soliciting’ food, following people closely, generally associating with human presence’.

The QPWS term of ‘habituating’ is a ‘dingo committed crime’ Marie-Louise Sarjeant. P.A. Jennifer Parkhurst.

Notes leading up to the hunt for Inky

‘Our Fraser Island Dingoes need protection and honesty from Government which is not being provided’ AWPC Australian Wildlife Protection, President.

Hon. Steve Dickson. M.P. National Parks, Recreation, Sport & Racing…have under a current policy, the decision to authorise a “humane “destruction of a dingo that hasn’t bitten anyone. They state that ‘Issues for dingo’ destruction are because QPWS deemed it has committed a “code crime” of “habituation”. Specific details have not been given as to why Inky has to be destroyed.
(Ross Belcher from the QPWS: people were not harmed, but r it is extremely concerning dingo has not been caught)

QPWS have enlisted a paid shooter /trapper to the Island, setting a terrible precedence to bring in a person, who is effectively a pest control officer and a dingo exterminator. This is not acceptable in a Heritage Listed National Park, where fauna is supposedly protected. Dingoes on Fraser Island have learnt Rangers mean death or pain and avoid them, recognise their vehicles. Previous contentious FIDMS even states in the old management strategy, that a history of incidents and photos required and only as a last resort is the animal to be destroyed"

ABC Net news;” Trapper hunts rogue Fraser is dingo”: By Frances Adcock. 11th Oct 2012, saying that, “Up to 40 rangers are still looking for a dingo.” There are only 49 rangers there, so why waste time and money to chase down a dingo that is not a threat to anyone?

Indigenous people have signed Statutory Declarations to declare that Inky is not dangerous.

A comment written to Ross Belcher, Regional Manager Fraser Island on the Fraser Coast Chronicle:

“The dingo is allegedly a "natural feature" of the Island, interference with which is punishable by very serious fines and even, in some circumstances, imprisonment. So how then, Mr Belcher, can you justify either Rangers or a paid Shooters coming on to the Island and taking such action? Will the shooter be the subject of legal proceedings for “interference”? Will you be the subject of conspiracy to commit such a crime given your enlistment of the paid shooter?" (Marilyn Nuske Lawyer).

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Contacts to write to protest about the destruction of Inky:
[email protected] or [email protected] Ph 07 32248113
DERM dingo ranger. [email protected]
Ross Belcher Regional Manager FI: ph: 4121 1800. E:[email protected]
UNESCO: [email protected]
Mr. Young Hun JUNG UNESCO: [email protected] Please write or call to save Inky

The Government and opposition's population engineering continues to wreck havoc on democracy and land-tenure, affecting both private property and public lands, and impacting on established low-key local commerce. New proposed uses for the Green Wedge actually include saw-mills and display homes. The Flinders Community Association have begun issuing an information-packed alert for distribution to the local community detailing the damage that State Government changes to our Green Wedges can do to peoples' local natural, social and commercial environment, whilst removing their ability to defend what is theirs. Other communities may wish to take a similar democratic initiative before all our rights to self-government are swept away by unjust legislation to benefit developers. Note that these moves were begun by the previous Labor Government - which is hardly fighting them now. The incumbent government should be rolling back what Bracks and Brumby did, but instead, they are making things worse.MEETING IN FLINDERS COMMUNITY HALL 4 PM SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 15th 2012

Flinders Community Association warning

Minister Louise Asher of the State Government has already set in motion sweeping changes that threaten the National parks but further changes announced by Planning Minister Matthew Guy will also materially affect the character and ambience of the Mornington Peninsula and its towns and villages.

These changes, announced if fully implemented are far reaching and will affect all of us in some way.

This “one shoe fits all” approach to planning is considered by the FCA to be inappropriate – particularly after analysing how the changes would affect the Mornington Peninsula.

Some publicity has been given to aspects of the substantial changes announced by the Minister earlier this month. These have not involved prior consultation yet responses are sought from interested parties by September 21, this year.

The new approach to planning will impact on the future of the Green Wedge, on farming and on the Flinders township - while also putting pressure on the vital Urban Boundaries. In addition, commercial interests will be encouraged to invest in tourism ventures in the National Parks and Reserves.

Ironically, the stated objective of removing uncertainty about rules, policies and planning regulations to encourage greater investment will create further uncertainty, according to our shire planning department, which believes VCAT will be used more often for decision-making and we will have “planning by appeal”. In some cases landowners and developers will be given “as of right” permission to do anything they want without anyone knowing about it and leaving others with no right of appeal!

A couple of specific local examples would be that the hotel (opposed by all parties, local members and community groups) proposed a few years ago to be sited at the corner of Browns and Greens roads beside the Mornington Peninsula National Park would just be given the go-ahead without even needing to pretend it was in any way rural or interested in environmental studies. A development like T’Gallant, the restaurant, would not have to be heard over the number of customers it could service as the limit of 150 patrons is to be scrapped, as will the requirement of 40 hectares site minimum in the Green Wedge needed before building group accommodation. Medical centres, places of assembly and primary and secondary schools are all listed as acceptable for the Green Wedge etc. etc.

What the Amendment Proposes

- Green Wedge zone provisions are to be liberalized to increase the range of agricultural uses allowed without a permit. These include Primary produce sales (for produce grown on the land) and Rural Industry (other than an Abattoir and Sawmill and limited floor area to 200m2) but not within 100m of a dwelling in separate ownership and sale area less than 50 sq m.

Comment: Not requiring a permit means people have the 'as of right' means to do anything they want without having to advertise their intentions so it could mean developments could spring up before anyone knows anything about it and with no right of appeal. The damage would be irreversible. In the interest of conserving landscape and amenity, the siting and design of new buildings such as Rural store demands a permit process. Compliance supervision will need to increase to ensure retail activities sources product only from the property. Near-by urban Industrial zones can readily accommodate rural service industry.

- The list of Green Wedge zone uses subject to permit are to be widened to include Abattoir, Medical centre, Primary school, Sawmill, and Secondary school. Permits can be sought for many other uses including those previously prohibited such as Display home, and Service station, Place of assembly including Amusement parlor, Cinema, Drive-in-theatre, Library and Nightclub

Comment: These permits may not have to be advertised and can be purely at Council's discretion. There are no mandatory provisions that apply. These uses are essentially urban uses and should be located close to the urban population with access to the necessary utility services. Conflicts with farming activities producing smells, dust, noise, waste discharge etc are likely.

- Mandatory conditions are to be deleted relating to the establishment of Function Centre, Group Accommodation, R& D Centre and Research centre, Residential building, Restaurant in conjunction with agriculture etc.

Comment: Large cabin/camping parks, Function centres, and Restaurants etc and could be established on relatively small sites unrelated to agricultural activity. The main tourist routes could become lined with an uninterrupted ribbon of retail activities and restaurants.

Retention of conditions on lot size, area of use, number of patrons, and use “in conjunction with agriculture” etc is necessary to ensure that these uses do not become intrusive in the landscape. Conserving landscape and amenity is critical to maintaining the attraction of the Mornington Peninsula as a key recreation and tourist destination.

- Mandatory restriction on further subdivision in the Green Wedge zone is removed leaving management and control to Council policy.

Comment: Since 1975 the planning scheme has sought to limit the fragmentation of the farming areas from subdivision. Unless relatively strict controls over further subdivision are implemented, adequate sites for agriculture will be difficult to obtain and the further detriment to Peninsula landscapes from closer settlement will occur.

- Three new residential zones (Residential Growth, General Residential, Neighbourhood Residential) are to replace the current five Residential zones. - These will have more guidelines and multiple schedules. ResCode will stay in place as will control on building heights and some local policies (DDO).

Comment: The proposal to indicate growth/change expectations for residential zones could have merit but how will this translate to Flinders? Maintenance of existing village character is essential using existing DDO’s and policies but we will have to fight hard to ensure they remain in place. Growth should be limited to infill development within the Urban Growth Boundary.

- Shops, Offices, Cafés, Medical, Centres etc are to be allowed in these Residential zones without need for a permit within 100 metres of a Commercial zone on the same road frontage.

Comment: In Flinders, there is already an over-supply of retail floor space. The commercial frontage will be doubled under the Amendment. This 'as of right' process gives no opportunity for community review or participation in a permit process for any new development.

- Two new Commercial Zones C1 and C2 replace the 5 existing Business zones, encouraging combined business, retail and office activities. Areas in the existing Business zones 3 and 4 (used for offices, service industry and bulky household goods retailing) will now allow supermarkets and shops to establish.

Comment: Shopping functions will be spread over a wider area and may result in the death of shopping activity in many of the main business centres by encouraging new out of centre developments.

- Industrial zones are to be changed to remove limits on size of offices and allow supermarkets up to 2000sqm and some shops up to 500sqm.in area.

Comment: Industrial activities will be disadvantaged by intrusion of new shopping uses, which would be better placed in the established commercial activity centres.

What can you do?

It is vital we all understand the damage that can be done under these changes. This could irrevocably change the Peninsula as we know it – and its towns and villages. Surely this is the whole reason why tourists come here, to see something that's different not something they have just come from. Do we want the Peninsula to end up just like the Gold Coast in Queensland or the central coast of NSW? Do we want the Great Ocean Road and Wilsons Promontory to also fall under the developers hammer? Tourists want more than just a flash hotel to stay in, another fancy restaurant, another theme park. More and more they want to experience nature, history, the way things work like farming, wine making, cheese making, wildlife reserves.

If you are concerned …

If you are sufficiently concerned by all of this go to the FCA webpage at www.flindersvillage.com.auand click on the various links that give you the full detail of the Government's intentions. You can then send a submission (a letter) to the Government giving your opinions and reasons why to

Mr. P. Allen
Executive Director Planning Systems
Dept. of Planning and Community Development
GPO Box 2392
Melbourne. 3001

Meeting in Flinders

You can also come to an FCA meeting at the Flinders Community Hall at 4pm on Saturday September 15th where the FCA will be seeking approval to make a submission under the FCA banner. But, you should also send yours; the more the better.

Another thing you can do is spread the word. Only the voice of the community can persuade the Government to think twice.

Peter Hall
President.
August 2012

Conrad Annals, Acting Chief Ranger for Northern Melbourne district has advised that there is no kangaroo cull planned in Plenty Gorge next Monday and Wednesday nights, contradicting what published here on August 9. He could not comment on the lack of wildlife corridors to and from Plenty Gorge in the face of high human economic immigration numbers resulting in rapid population growth and infrastructure expansion in Melbourne and the rest of Australia.

In this article's original leading paragraph, of which this is a rewrite, we said that the growth lobby (of which the organisers and beneficiaries are mainly property developers) is both benefiting from and causing this unnecessary high human population growth. This remains uncontested. We also stand by the statement that Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) protects and advances the costly interests of the growth lobby whilst pretending to protect our wildlife. We maintain that the growth is unnecessary and so is culling - when it occurs. The AWPC promotes another way: Wildlife corridors and relocation as well as stopping high immigration.

We have put the leader which we introduced this story with yesterday at the bottom of this article.[1] In the light of Mr Annal's communication, we hasten to reassure readers that the rumoured cull has been officially denied. We retain the leader below for the record, which documents the fact that our initial information may have been wrong and we thank Mr Conrad for his timely communication, which we will pass on to our readers. We thank them for letting the Department know of their feelings because this may save kangaroos in the future. There have been past culls in this district and further afield in Victoria. The problem of human overpopulation and lack of corridors remains to be rectified. Examples of recent past culling or similar treatment of kangaroos in the same area are to be found here and here. In fact it was the problem of cruel treatment and lack of sensible policies in that area that resulted in the formation of the Coalition for Australian Wildife Corridors.

Translocation is better than killing healthy free animals. Open up wildlife corridors!

Please express your horror and disgust at the make up of Department of Sustainability and Environment, which cares nothing about kangaroos or other native animals. See for instance the recent expose by Skye Brown in "http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/culling-is-killing-not-some-act-of-humanity/story-e6frfhqf-1226443384194" in the Herald Sun Newspaper, for those who retain a passing familiarity with the Murdoch Press.

Know your Department of Environment and Sustainability (DSE) for what it really is

DSE is dominated by property developer interests and has for years been a commercially oriented, outsourcing planning and development department that protects and promotes human population growth. On the 'natural environment side' it retains almost no wildlife protecting staff, and employs mostly people representing the interests of property developers and shooters, hunters, recreational fishermen and farmers and generally promoting the killing and extinction of wildlife through their actions. Actions and policies in DSE demonstrate that real concern about the care and welfare of our native animals is very rare in the DSE Authority that your taxes pay for.

Please email the DSE Secretary Greg Wilson and tell him what you think at greg.wilson[AT]dse.vic.gov.au. Send a copy as a comment to candobetter.net.

DSE: Mass killing of Victorian Kangaroos in Plenty Gorge next Monday, Wednesday

AWPC has heard that kangaroos are to be killed in Plenty Gorge next Monday and Wednesday nights.

Plenty Gorge is located to the North East of Melbourne, in an area where high immigration numbers are resulting in rapid population growth and infrastructure expansion. The growth lobby (of which the organisers and beneficiaries are mainly property developers) is both benefiting from and causing this unnecessary high human population growth. This growth is being conducted in a manner that boxes animals, especially kangaroos, in with new suburbs and roads and then pretends that the animals themselves have become overly populous. We have previously published articles on this devastated area where wildlife have been hanging on as best they can. We in Victoria need to stand up for these gentle fellow creatures.

DSE, whilst masquerading as Victoria's natural environment protector, is really the headquarters of property developers and infrastructure engineers, who call themselves 'planners'. DSE is taking care of dirty business for the growth lobby by cruelly extinguishing the lives of many native animals. Kangaroo culls are the most dramatic of its cruel activities and DSE does not like exposure.

Relocation is the alternative to killing or to living and let living

Professor Steve Garlick and his wife Dr Rosemary Garlick have successfully relocated hundreds of kangaroos, showing that there is no need for killing these beautiful family oriented, social animals, even when their original homes are built over.

Killing is however preferred by DSE and so many pretend-environmental departments because those dictating DSE policy don't want Australia to retain wildlife in any meaningful way. They actually want our whole habitable environment to be turned into an endless suburbia and industrial park. They simply do not care what you and I think, nor how these animals suffer. Extinction is not of concern to them. They are concerned entirely by monetary economics and a growth economy.

Better than murder

DSE uses an inadequate Victoria-wide definition of ‘threatened’ which means that local populations can be extinguished without sounding the alarm so long as some numbers remain for the whole state. Pockets where animals appear numerous, due to fragmented populations trapped in small areas, are not assigned official “threatened” status. In fact little effective tab is kept of numbers.

DSE fails to assign official “Threatened Status” to species under threat

Former Executive Director Dr Ian Miles arranged for DSE Adrian Moores, Project Manager, Actions for Biodiversity Conservation (ABC), Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Division to demonstrate to AWPC the DSE Actions Biodiversity Conservation (ABC) Data Base system.

”DSE uses an inadequate Victoria-wide definition of ‘threatened’ which means that local populations can be extinguished without sounding the alarm so long as some numbers remain for the whole state ; pockets where animals appear numerous, due to fragmented populations trapped in small areas, are not assigned official “threatened” status. Little effective tab is kept of numbers. More and more native species simply vanish!” (
Sheila Newman Land-Use Planner and Environment Sociologist)

Maryland Wilson
Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC)

NOTES

Former teaser, replaced in the light of communication from Conrad Annal, Acting Chief Ranger for Northern Melbourne District.
[1]AWPC has heard that kangaroos are to be killed in Plenty Gorge next Monday and Wednesday nights. Plenty Gorge is located to the North East of Melbourne, in an area where high human economic immigration numbers are resulting in rapid population growth and infrastructure expansion. The growth lobby (of which the organisers and beneficiaries are mainly property developers) is both benefiting from and causing this unnecessary high human population growth. Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) protects and advances the costly interests of the growth lobby whilst pretending to protect our wildlife. The growth is unnecessary and so is the culling. There is another way: Wildlife corridors and relocation as well as stopping high immigration.

CO2 Group's Chief CEO, Andrew Grant says that anthropogenic climate change science is quite simple really: "It's a function of increased population on the earth." Candobetter.net received the following as a press release today. We obviously like the idea of wildlife corridors connecting national parks. By the same token, nothing in the corporate or the government area can be taken at face value. Until the corridors are established; until we can see that more is not taken away by related interests somewhere else, we have to remain cautious. Nonetheless, on face value, this is cheering news. So is the Chief CEO of CO2 Group's attitude to human population growth and carbon emissions.

Asked by the Australian Financial Review interviewer, "What is your scientific understanding of human co2 emissions which are causing dangerous levels of global warming?", Andrew Grant, Chief CEO of the C02 Group, said:

"Well, it's really rather simple. It's a function of increased population on the earth and if you go back into look at population history for example it took from the beginning of time to 1880 for the earth to get its first billion people. Now we're at seven billion. Fundamentally what we have done is cut down 20 per cent of the world's forests and liberated that carbon into the atmosphere and then we've burnt fossil fuels at a rate where we've taken a large amount of carbon from fossil fuel reserves and put them into the atmosphere. So it's no more complex than that. As humans we have liberated more carbon at a rate quicker than the carbon cycle can handle. And it's not a good or a bad thing. There's no value based in this, but the simple reality of doing that is it changes global weather patterns. The debate really is not do we need to act? Even in Australia where it's very politicised, both parties say they support reducing emissions by 5 per cent by 2020. The debate is how."

CO2 Group Press Release on Commonwealth funding for reforestation of wildlife corridors

Melbourne 8 May 2012: CO2 Group is pleased to announce it has been successful in gaining funding for two projects of the Federal Government’s Biodiversity Fund. The grants, worth $3.8 million, will support two projects in Western Australia and New South Wales.

CO2 Group’s Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Grant said: “We are delighted to receive these grants, which we see as recognition of the quality of our work in the Australian market and our deep environmental expertise.

“Our projects will research, map, design and implement targeted biodiversity enhancements across Australia’s largest commercial forest carbon sink estate. We manage a 26,400 ha estate across 30 properties in Australia’s highly fragmented wheat-sheep belt, including sites within the south-west Western Australia biodiversity hotspot.

“The two projects will integrate biodiversity outcomes with large-scale commercial carbon plantings, creating a unique partnership between a for-profit commercial entity and the government. A partnership of this nature and scale has not been attempted outside the not-for-profit sector,” said Mr Grant.

In Western Australia, the CO2 Group project will take tangible steps toward the establishment of vital corridors between both Lake Magenta Nature Reserve and Fitzgerald National Park and Corackerup National Park and Fitzgerald National Park. These corridor links will contribute to the capacity of the reserves to continue to function and facilitate biodiversity conservation in face of uncertain climatic challenges ahead.

CO2 Group’s project in WA will contribute to the Fitz-Stirling Functional Landscape Plan, the Carnaby's black cockatoo Recovery Plan and also assist with the conservation of a range of other nationally and regionally significant conservation targets such as western whipbird, mallee fowl, tammar wallaby, western mouse, and black gloved wallaby.

In New South Wales, CO2 Group’s project adjoins conservation reserves in central NSW. The selected sites will contribute to consolidation of the regional conservation estate as well as enhancing connectivity between some reserves. The reserves that will benefit include Goonoo National Park, Goonoo State Conservation Area, Pillaga State Conservation Area and Pillaga West State Conservation Area. Conservation target species include the black glossy cockatoo, mallee fowl and sugar glider. Specific flora of conservation significance may contribute to the revegetation and restoration actions.

Another CO2 Group project site in NSW offers an opportunity to commence consolidation of a chain of remnant vegetation stands along a 100km section in the Upper Central West and Plains of NSW.

All of the projects supported by the Biodiversity Fund will help to revegetate, rehabilitate and restore more than 18 million hectares of the Australian landscape over the next six years.

CO2 Group has a history of being a leader in its field and was the first organisation to achieve accreditation for reforestation projects under the NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme and the Federal Government’s Carbon Farming Initiative. With 26,400 hectares under management across the country, plus 3500 hectares of native remnant vegetation, CO2 Group is the largest provider of dedicated carbon sink plantings in Australia. The company currently manages landmark commercial contracts for Qantas Airways, Eraring Energy, Macquarie Bank, Woodside Energy, INPEX Browse, Origin Energy, Newmont Mining and Wannon Water."

End of Press Release.

Candobetter.net Ed's comment:

Please comment on this article and tell us what you may have experienced about this group and its work. Obviously this kind of investment seems infinitely superior to land speculation in its usual form, which is to clear land, build infrastructure and housing, then invite loads of people into the country in order to drive up the price of the housing. We don't see the downside of this kind of investment, except where it impinges on property rights and common land of indigenous and other Australians. But we could be naive. Obviously we have a positive view of a CEO who seems to understand the importance of human population growth in the creation of pollution/atmospheric change. Marketing companies, such as the one that sent the press release on, also understand that ecological blogs like that kind of statement. The Primeminister got support against Kevin Rudd for that kind of statement. How sincere is it? We don't know.

The current system of protection is failing Australian wildlife. Too little too late. Does legislation claiming to protect really cause habitat destruction? Current legislation let wildlife numbers fall too low, creating genetic bottlenecks that reduce long term chance of species survival. Even the largest national park is just a gene puddle, rather than a gene pool, if it is not connected to other habitat.

Article by James Fitzgerald, NSW Wildlife Council

Photo of Koala Todd. James Fitzgerald looked after Todd for 3 months last year. Todd was found starving to the north of Cooma NSW, in open farmland without a gum tree in sight. A young dispersing male, he was looking for a new population to join but with so much habitat cleared he ended up lost in open grassland, underweight, dehydrated and starving. After Todd regained weight and was cleared by the Vet he was successfully released back into the wild on 30 November 2011.

Small step in the right direction

The federal government’s decision to list the koala as threatened in NSW and Queensland, is a small step in the right direction but unfortunately does not prevent logging in the koala forests of NSW or Queensland.

Pre 1788 koala population and fire reduction service

The Australian koala population prior to British settlement is estimated at having exceeded 10 million. A population of this size would reduce bushfire risk by providing over two million tonnes per year of hazard reduction eating of gum leaves. Gum leaves are the most explosively flammable part of the Australian bush. Too often little recognition is given to the positive services Australian wildlife would provide if normal population levels were re-established.

A significant factor in the fragmentation of the Australian koala population was the large-scale killing of koalas for their skins in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In Queensland in just one month August 1927, some 584,000 koala skins were sold.
Australia’s fragmented koala population could now be as low as 40,000 and declining.

habitat fragmentation reduces species survival chance

It is a long-established scientific fact that fragmented populations of animals become genetically weaker over time. The genetic weakness then causes the fragmented populations to start to die out as they are no longer able to fight diseases or adapt to changes in their environment. The correct approach to save the koala is to restore habitat within a system of wildlife corridors to enable the koala gene pool to flow via the normal dispersal of young males.

Australian laws hard to trust

There is a growing concern that the current system of protection is failing Australian wildlife. It is often too little too late. Some koala conservationists would go so far to claim that legislation aimed to protect actually enables the destruction of koala habitat.
In any case, current protections allow animal numbers to get down to low numbers, creating genetic bottlenecks that significantly reduce their long term survival prospects.

Need to restore koalas to at least 1 million - ten per cent of pre-1788 population

The NSW Wildlife Council believes that a benchmark based on pre-British settlement population estimates should be used to restore wildlife populations to at least 10 per cent of the estimate by re-establishing gene pools, habitat and wildlife corridors. Using pre-British estimates as a benchmark recognises the inter-relational connectivity of species. The current wildlife protection system does not provide for the many mutually beneficial relationships that exist in the natural world.

Gene puddles vs gene pools

It is important to consider that even the largest national park is just a gene puddle if it is not connected to other habitat.

Wildlife rehabilitation groups know that male animals are over represented in road kill because of their need to disperse and find other populations. Prior to the large-scale killing of koalas for their skins the koala gene pool flowed up and down and across most of eastern Australia. For koalas to survive in the long term, the fragmented populations need habitat restored and most likely a supplementary breeding program guided by geneticists to reconnect the populations. The aim to rebuild the koala population to at least 10 per cent of pre-British estimates using this method is not unachievable. All it needs is community and political will.

Restore habitat and wildlife corridors to rebuild the koala population

As the koala population is rebuilt it would be necessary to re-establish animals like the Powerful Owl, as this predator would play its role in ensuring survival of the fittest by taking the occasional young koala from an unfit or inattentive koala mother. Other animals like the glider possum that help pollinate trees and is also a prey species for the Powerful Owl would need to be rebuilt so that the Powerful Owl didn’t focus all of its attention on the koala. It is these types inter-relational connections across species and the roles they play in the natural world that are not recognised in the current system of wildlife protection in Australia.

Create buffer of wildlife-friendly business with incentives

Wildlife corridors need to be defined and wildlife-friendly people and businesses encouraged to buy land along the corridors with conservation agreements and reduced rates. The bang for the buck is that wildlife corridors of re-established and connected habitat will benefit not just the koala but many other native plants and animals. It might be appropriate to reduce some of the native vegetation controls outside wildlife corridors. People would then have a choice based on their belief systems and or business needs as to where it would be best for them to live and or own land.

The 2007 United Nations Global Environmental Outlook 4 report (GEO-4), identified species collapse as a major environmental threat. We are now in the world’s sixth great extinction event. Current man-made extinction rates are 100 times higher than the base level in the fossil record.

Australia has the worst record for animal extinctions. The failure of the current protection system will end up with more animals endangered… not a functioning ecosystem. Fertility is a product of nature that is needed to replenish depleted soils that farmers and human food production ultimately depends.

Is the Australian public happy that since British settlement we have destroyed 99.5 per cent of Australia’s koala population? Most Australians have not seen a koala in the wild because of this destruction. It is now well overdue for Australia to rectify the wrongs of the past and rebuild a one million strong healthy connected koala population.

James Fitzgerald is the NSW Wildlife Council media officer.

VicForests up before the Supreme Court - again - for alleged illegal logging, thanks to the amazing avatars of Environment East Gippsland. Dig into your pockets, folks! EEG does more for you than your taxes!

Wednesday 14th December 2011

VicForests is again being sued in the Supreme Court over what an environment group believes is illegal logging of a very significant protected rainforest area. Environment East Gippsland, which successfully sued VicForests last year, is lodging papers for an urgent injunction this morning in the Melbourne Supreme Court to stop the logging.

“This is the third case of what we believe is illegal logging that VicForests will have to answer for”, said Jill Redwood, coordinator of the group. “The public thinks this type of lawless destruction of protected primary forest and rainforest only occurs overseas”.

“VicForests is still refusing to pay our legal costs of around a million dollars from last year, despite this being a clear court order. If they think this is preventing us taking further legal action, it’s not working. The public is so outraged about their criminal destruction, they have already donated enough for us to get this next legal action rolling.”

“In a proper democracy it should not be up to the public to enforce the law over an uncontrollable government entity. We should not be forced to ask the courts to ensure VicForests abides by the law. We are a developed country. We give millions to other countries to help them stop illegal logging of their rainforests. But in Victoria we are seeing the same happen with full support of the Baillieu government. Exploiting industries seem to be writing the government’s laws and policies now”.

This stand of forest was blockaded for 5 days last week and was broken up by police on Monday.

“It doesn’t take long for a determined crew of logging contractors to cut down the tall trees and smash down a forest of tree ferns”, said Jill Redwood “We hope this injunction will be successful”.

For comment - Jill Redwood: 51540145, Liz Ingham (in court for EEG): 0409 333 595

On Monday VicForests’ logging contractors were INSIDE a protected National Site of Significance for Rainforest. A small group of protesters had been holding up logging since last Thursday (8th Dec). The blockade was broken up Monday. This government run logging monopoly called VicForests is again forcing ordinary people to take legal action to stop this criminal activity of rainforest logging in our own state forests!

URGENT !!! Call for help!

VicForests’ logging contractors are currently INSIDE a protected National Site of Significance for Rainforest. A small group of protesters have been holding up logging since last Thursday. The blockade was broken up today. We haven’t heard back from any of the protesters yet. This could be the start of another court injunction!

The story in brief:

· On the 23rd Nov, Environment East Gippsland sent a letter to the DSE alerting it to the planned logging of a protected National Rainforest Site of Significance (the stand of forest had been tagged out in readiness for logging). No reply was received.

· During the week of the 7th December, VicForests contractors pushed a logging road and log landing into the site which adjoins the Errinundra National Park.

· On the evening of 7th December, protesters cabled a tree sit to 4 bulldozers, effectively halting all logging at the site.

· On Thursday 8th, our lawyers sent a letter to VicForests warning them they were inside a protected area and to respond by the end of the day as to whether they would be removing the logging machinery. There was no response.

· Our lawyers then sent a second letter on Friday 9th Dec, warning them that should logging proceed, they would seek instruction from Environment East Gippsland regarding an urgent injunction to stop the damage to this protected area of forest. There was again, no response.

· Monday 12th December, police and state forest and logging agencies cleared the area of protesters and two tree sits. There was one arrest as a result of the police using sniffer dogs!

· Monday – we also sent an urgent letter off to the Snr Sgt at Orbost Police Station detailing the illegal nature of the logging, complete with maps and sections of the relevant Acts and Code - see below (hope the images transfer OK). We asked that they refrain from arresting those trying to uphold the law. And if there are people proceeding to damage the protected site, that they enforce the laws and notify the logging contractors and VicForests of the illegality of logging and if necessary arrest them. This request is at least on the record.

We are now being forced to apply to the Supreme Court for an urgent injunction.

Environment East Gippsland has set a precedent for this by successfully suing VicForests last year over plans to log threatened species habitat. We have already established standing, and other precedents. BUT ... despite the Supreme Court ordering VicForests to pay 90% of our legal costs (in August 2010), VF is still refusing. This means another trip back to the court to force them to pay up! So despite having the standing and ability to take court action against VicForests again, we are unable to due to lack of funds.

Our lawyers will do their best to keep costs down but even just filing court papers can cost maybe $3,000. We are intending to get this done by Wed morning thanks to a super human effort of our lawyers.

We are asking a range of people and supporters to help get the ball rolling and force VicForests to adhere to the law that protects Rainforest Sites Of Significance. But most are in the same boat as us.

Can you please help at all – in any way? Donations or people willing to come to the site and help until an injunction can be secured.

Environment East Gippsland has tax deductible status so can issue tax receipts for donations. We imagine the urgent filing of papers to the court could take about $3,000. Once kick-started, the court case itself could put costs up to $10,000. Much cheaper this time, but still money we don’t currently have.

Our bank details can be sent upon request if you’d like to donate via EFT, or just go to www.eastgippsland.net.au and donate via the Paypal button.

We would appreciate any help – financially or just in spreading this through your networks.

Below are the legal details of what is going on.

Many thanks,

Jill

(03) 5154 0145

Proposed revisions to the Code of Practice for Forestry in Victoria Australia could adversely impact Victoria's threatened species. As many candobetter.net readers know, the Victorian Auditor General found last year that Victoria has utterly failed in its objectives under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act (1986) to measure and protect unique species from threat and endangerment. These changes also follow Environment East Gippsland's historic win in court against VicForests last year, where EEG sought protection under this Act for endangered species. With these changes, loggers could seek exemptions from state environment laws protecting endangered species. Victorians (and people all over the world) need to be aware of these proposed changes and to make comments. You can make a submission via this article

Main Points

According to comments reported in the Age, 3 November 2011:

The Secretary of the Department of Sustainability and Environment would be able to exempt a logging project from the requirements of the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act, which protects the state's endangered and threatened species.

"The proposed changes follow a landmark ruling in the Supreme Court last year banning VicForests from logging old-growth forest at Brown Mountain in East Gippsland, after an endangered long-footed potoroo was filmed in an area to be felled."

"The secretary will consider, among other things, the numbers required to maintain a viable population of a listed species in the area to be logged, and the amount of habitat near the proposed coupe already protected in national parks."

''The objective of the variations is to achieve a better balance between the protection of threatened species and sustainable timber production from public native forests.'' Source: Tom Arup, "New state law in the pipeline to aid loggers."

How to make a submission and how to get more information on-line

The Code of Practice for Timber Production 2007 (the Code) is a key regulatory instrument that applies to commercial timber production in both public and private native forests and plantations in Victoria. It is a statutory document prepared under Part 5 of the Conservation, Forests and Lands Act 1987. Compliance is required under the Sustainable Forest (Timber) Act 2004 and via its incorporation into the Victoria Planning Provisions.

The purpose of the Code is to ensure that commercial timber growing and timber harvesting operations are carried out on both public land and private land in such a way that:

Code of Practice for Timber Production 2007

[PDF File - 2.1 MB]

Proposed variations to the Code of Practice for timber production (October 2011)

Members of the public are invited to provide comment on a number of proposed variations to the Code of Practice for timber production to improve certainty of timber supply to the native forest timber industry, while balancing the needs of the environment.

Document explaining the proposed variations

The following document outlines the proposed variations to the Code of Practice for timber production.

Proposed variation to the Code of Practice for Timber Production 2007

[PDF File - 162.3 KB]
Proposed variation to the Code of Practice for Timber Production 2007

[MS Word Document - 60.0 KB]

If you have problems downloading this document, please contact the Customer Service Centre on 136 186 for assistance.

Summary

The proposed variations change the wording in relation to the application of Flora and Fauna Guarantee Action Statements. This aims to introduce more flexibility and allow further consideration of the importance of Victoria’s national parks and conservation reserves in the protection of threatened species.

The variations will improve the focus of conservation for threatened flora and fauna species to be applied at landscape level, and allow for a reduced focus at the individual animal or plant level.

Factors needing to be considered by the Secretary to the Department of Sustainability and Environment in determining the application of a Flora and Fauna Guarantee Action Statement are also being considered for inclusion in the Code.

Submission of comments

Anyone interested in making a submission on the proposed variations should provide their comments to DSE in writing by:

Mail:

Review of the Code of Practice for Timber Production
Forests and Parks Division
Department of Sustainability and Environment
PO Box 500
East Melbourne, VIC, 3002

Email:
[email protected]

Closing date: submissions must be provided by Wednesday 1 February 2012. Submissions received after this time may not be able to be considered.

Compliance with the Code of Practice

The department ensures that all timber harvesting operations are undertaken in compliance with relevant legislation and with the Code of Practice. Find out more about timber harvesting compliance.

Related Links

The Code refers to various laws and policies that may be subject to change. Links to state policies and other information relevant to the Code are provided below.

• Management Procedures for Timber Harvesting, Roading and Regeneration of Victoria's State Forests 2009 - Provides detailed prescriptions for forest timber harvesting operations, road construction operations, significant road improvement operations, site rehabilitation, forest regeneration and associated administrative processes.
• Native Forest Silviculture Guideline series - Provide information and recommendations on the best available practice for basic silvicultural operations carried out in Victoria's native State forests, that may be applicable to other native forest areas.
• Timber Production in the Rural Zone - Provides guidance to planning authorities about the preparation of a schedule to the Rural Zone as it relates to timber production.
• www.legislation.vic.gov.au - Victorian Legislation and Parliamentary Documents.
• Safety in Forest Operations (Harvesting and Haulage) Industry Standard (July 2007) - Provides practical advice about working safely in Victorian forests.