Adelaide City Council is making 40 bikes available for city workers, tourists and presumably others – free for the first two hours.
As an avid bike rider, I say what a great idea.
I have my own bike for getting about Brisbane, and have often wondered about ‘packing it’ for my visits to Melbourne.
Neil Hewitt posted the following comment after my post of 19th May titled Just Released on Parks and Weeds:
“My suggestion … is that public administration of protected area estate be removed of its exclusionary influences to fair trade, by requiring that conservation management is completely self-funded from the natural and cultural resources of the reserve without subsidy or budgetary allocation.
Afterall, many were viable working properties before acquisition under the pretence of conservation and if Australia is serious about conserving its natural and cultural wealth across all tenures, a conservation economy will need to be cultivated.”
There is also an argument that sustainable harvesting programs focused on native species can enhance conservation.
Bob Beale and Mike Archer argued in the Australian Financial Review (23-28th December 2004) that mallee fowl and giant bustard would not be “facing oblivion if we served them up for Christmas dinner instead of Asian chicken and North American turkey”. Crocodile populations in northern Australia have increased from less than 5,000 in the early 1970s to over 70,000 today. This increase coincided with the development of croc farms for meat and skin export as well as a ban on shooting.
What has happened to the concept of growing the trade in Kangaroo meat? A SW Queensland grazier has suggested that without the kangaroos on his property he could probably lift his stocking rate by a quarter. Is he exaggerating? He has also suggested I write something about the value of harvesting native animals.
And I received an email from NSW landholder Kathryn Varrica asking for information about “non regulatory (as in “lock ’em up)” solutions for nature conservation.
Your thoughts?
A recent report by the Australian Institute titled “The Attitudes of Young People to the Environment” concluded that:
“Despite the increase in both scientific and political attention paid to environmental problems and a heightened emphasis on the environment in school curricula, young Australians are among the least likely to see themselves as environmentalists … They are, however, among the most likely to believe that threats to the environment are exaggerated.”
The report is based on data collected by Roy Morgan research from 56,344 respondents aged 14 and over across Australia.
Institute Director Dr Clive Hamiton has interpreted the results as a problem with our political leadership and suggested that “Howard’s children are characterised by apathy and scepticism.”
I disagree completely. I would suggest they are just a bit tired of the exaggeration and looking for something more substantive and interesting than what the mainstream media and their mostly too politically correct teachers tell them about the environment.
No doubt they will be even more jaded after the visit by Californian Professor Jared Diamond to Australia. He is speaking at the Sydney Writers festival on 29th May and in Brisbane on Thursday 2 June.
Diamond will be promoting his new book titled “Collapse”.
Ian Beale from Mungallala, SW Queensland, emailed me this picture with the headline:
Save the poor bustard – stop tree thickening.
He also wrote,
Our area has the widespread problem of thickening of woody species, but we have an increasing number of these birds in areas where timber has been controlled. One of our older district residents on a return visit noted (in the presence of our numerous plains turkeys) that the last time he’d seen one in the area was 1935.
The picture is from Readers Digest Complete Book of Australian Birds 1993.
National Parks Reviewed:
My colleague Jim Hoggett who worked for the Commonwealth Treasury for 16 years and now runs a successful cheese producing goat farm in north-eastern NSW has just written “The Uses and Value of National Parks: Does More Mean Worse?”
The 15 pager is well worth a read. It includes the comment: “Given the sheer size of the real estate involved, we ought to look beyond the idealized views and seek to know more about the function that parks perform and how well they are managed to do this. We need to examine whether there is a mismatch between our expectations of the park system and the resources we are prepared to apply to it. And, if there is a mismatch, what the different approaches to park management are that would allow us to better match the two. These approaches could involve lowering expectations and providing more finance. They could also involve more diverse use of parks than occurs now.”
A Century of Weed Biological Control:
I have just received in the mail “Reclaiming lost provinces: A century of weed biological control in Queensland” (published by Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Queensland, and soon to be on sale for $35 from www.dpi.qld.gov.au).
Written by Craig Walton it mixes an understanding of the science of weed biocontrol with a history of the researchers and their work.
It includes a 1936 quote about the successful control of prickly pear: “The retrieving of 26,000 acres of some of Queensland’s richest territory from a wilderness of prickly pear by the aid of insect colonies when all human agencies had failed is surely one of the wonders of the age.”
I have pondered that no ecologist working today, without a knowledge of the past history, would come to the correct conclusion that the distribution of prickly pear in south west Queensland is limited/determined by the search behaviour and population dynamics of a moth.
My work towards the biocontrol of rubbervine (Cryptostegia grandiflora) is featured in the book as a ‘case study’ and includes a 1986 picture of me on a bullock cart in southwest Madagascar. And it is great to read that there are some monitoring programs in place measuring the impact of the rust on the weed(pg. 60). There has also been an economic review indicating the biocontrol program against rubbervine has returned a benefit-to-cost ratio of $80 for every dollar spent.
Noeline Franklin lives in the High Country and sent me the following three images/messages today:
On drought, View image.
On carrbon trading, View image.
Coroner faces hearing, View image.
Each image is 70-80 Kb.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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