Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for December 19, 2007

How Many Koalas Burnt Alive on Kangaroo Island?

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Bushfires have been burning out of control on Kangaroo Island, off the southern coast of Australia, not far from the city of Adelaide. The island is known for its wildlife in particular its very large population of koalas.

kangaroo_TMO_2007346.jpg
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image on December 12, 2007. Red outlines mark areas where the satellite sensor detected scorching conditions associated with wildfires.

The bushfires in Flinders Chase National Park had burnt 11,000 hectares (about 27,000 acres) on December 12, and fires the previous week more than 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) of the island.

So, how many koalas have been burnt so far?

The image and information on the fires was sourced from the NASA Earth Observatory newsletter: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17860

Liberalism after the [Australian] Howard Government

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The latest IPA Review is now out and many of the articles from this issue are part of a feature ‘What next: Liberalism after the Howard Governmet’ and can be downloaded from the IPA’s website.

The feature includes a longish piece by me entitled ‘John Howard, Environmentalist’.

I beginning by suggesting that the story of John Howard the environmentalist is a story of deference to professed expertise and include reference to his various ‘achievements’ in this area including the banning of broad-scale tree clearing in western Queensland, the banning of fishing over large areas of the Great Barrier Reef, the EPBC legislation, and the $10 billion national water plan. This plan included the buy back of many more gigalitres than ever proposed by the then Labor opposition.

I conclude by suggesting that John Howard will, nevertheless, probably be remembered as simply the Prime Minister who refused to ratify Kyoto and ‘save the world from global warming’. I suggest part of his government’s problem was that they never had their own plan or ideas for the environment.

Before commenting you may want to read the piece at http://ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=731