WHY do so many environmentalists consider cattle something to be excluded from the Australian landscape?
According to Ian Mott, a third generation landholder, they modify parts of the landscape but they do not destroy it. In the following note, Mr Mott suggests modifications to government advice on the management of livestock in riparian zones.
[Read more…] about Cattle as Part of the Australian Landscape
I first learnt about The Coorong – a narrow lagoon that runs parallel with coastal dunes for 140km in southern Australia – when I saw the 1976 film ‘Storm Boy’, the story of a boy and a Pelican.
The impression I got from the film, and then later from media reports and environmental campaigning is that the lagoon is connected to the freshwater lakes at the bottom of the Murray River, when in fact they have been separated since the 1940s by barrages – infrastructure built to keep out the Southern Ocean.
But as Susan writes in the following note, “looking at the satellite imagery of the Coorong and Lower Lakes drives home the message that the two are really part of the same ecosystem and should not have those 1940’s barrages separating them.”
There will be people disadvantaged if the barrages are now opened, in particular South Australian irrigators, and also environmental campaigners who have used images of the drying lakes to argue for more water to be taken from irrigators in New South Wales and Victoria for environmental flow.
But given the dry conditions that continue through the lower Murray Darling Basin, it is surely the best solution and would immediately restore water to this ecosystem.
In recent years bears have been moving closer to villages and cities in search of food as the bear population has been rising. Read more here.
Richard S. Lindzen … delivered a biting attack on what he called the “climate alarm movement.” … Dr. Lindzen also criticized widely publicized assertions by other skeptics that variations in the sun were driving temperature changes in recent decades. Read more here in the New York Times. Bob Carter’s report on Session 1 is here.
THIS year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of of his major work “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”.
Mr Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is generally acknowledged in the western English-speaking world as superior to any other explanation for the diversity of life on earth.
Over the last 150 years there have, however, emerged many rival doctrines that are fundamentally incompatible, most recently environmentalism.
In the following essay written to acknowledge this anniversary year, scientist Vincent Gray, outlines how the work of various influential scholars including Julian Huxley, Ernest Mayr and Richard Dawkins would have benefited from a better understanding of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Dr Gray concludes with an explanation of why the continued survival of the human race is by no means certain and what the international community needs to learn from the work of Charles Darwin.
[Read more…] about On the Anniversary of Charles Darwin: Some Consequences to Ponder
The following picture of a female ‘black’ satin bowerbird, Ptilonorhynchus violaceus, was taken in Katoomba on January 31, 2009, by Jennifer Marohasy.
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.
Read more