If you live in bush areas of eastern or south-eastern Australia you may want to get involved in a citizen science koala spotting project: #Koalas#environment#CitizenScience
Australia's roads are "killing corridors" for biodiversity
Mobility design for extinction records
"Appin Road is known as Australia's 'killing corridor' because of the large number of endangered koalas killed on the stretch. Increased traffic on south-west Sydney's Appin Road has resulted in 32 of the endangered marsupials being killed on the notorious stretch since July 2022 – roughly half of all deaths in the district over the same period. Wildlife advocates have long referred to it as Australia's "killing corridor".
>> https://au.news.yahoo.com/developer-responds-as-aussie-road-upgrade-near-killing-corridor-labelled-pretty-horrific-030233495.html
Koalas face habitat loss pressure by deforestation and sprawl. The verge of the road is their new home now.
"Urban koalas and ones in rural areas are not doing so well, they are continuing to decline at an alarming rate.This is a classic sign of loss of habitat and these animals having to struggle in areas where habitat has been removed...The number of koalas being hit by cars recently has been concerning..."
‘Property poetry’?
"Real estate is another way to say Australia."
"Kate Holden connects Turnbull’s persistence in illegally clearing vast tracts of koala habitat, and his murder of Turner, to British Enlightenment theories of property. The English philosopher John Locke, she observes, “placed emphasis on labour to morally justify the owning of property. The more work put into the land, the more settled a man was upon it. Holden traces associations between Locke’s ideas, the history of terra nullius and the “strange, morbid fixation in Australian myth of just how hard a person has to work on this land.”
"[b]y the time of Australia’s settling, the ineluctable mark of a British citizen was land ownership. It enfranchised him, gave him rights […] Land – elemental, foundational – was the desperately prized asset in a new colony. Without it, man was only an object."
Hope for NSW forests: Court decision upholds community’s right to challenge native forest logging
Weak laws failing our forests , EDO
"In the shadow of claims made by the NSW Forestry Corporation, communities have been led to believe that they have no rights to challenge decisions about industrial logging in NSW native forests or seek action over unlawful conduct when logging destroys hollow-bearing trees and critical habitat for threatened species."
"But two recent court decisions have shattered those claims after EDO’s client successfully ran an argument which hasn’t previously been tested in the courts. After 20 years of resistance by the Forestry Corporation, it is now legally recognised that communities with a special interest have the right to hold the state-owned logging agency to account over its forestry operations in native forests."
Images of politicians and tourists seen cuddling the threatened marsupial are ubiquitous. The mascot, usually placed on a stump, has to pose and represent the 'brand' Australia.
Due to habitat destruction the animals are deprived of a living habitat and have to flee. The fragmented habitat they have to negotiate is crisscrossed with roads and dangerous canines.
Here in Bellingen, where Tuckers Nob public forest is being industrially logged, all images cropping up are of disoriented koalas on daytime roads. There will be nothing left to cuddle soon.
"Hundreds of hectares of habitat that is home to endangered and vulnerable native animals could be cleared if a new Bowen Basin mine is granted final approval by the federal environment minister. The coalmine mine would be an ‘absolute disaster’ for animals including koalas, greater gliders and glossy black cockatoos."
"Environmentalists are urging the federal government to block the development of a central Queensland coalmine that would allow hundreds of hectares of endangered koala habitat to be cleared."
Hey Mastadons, I worked today in my Friday garden job and we had a visitor, spent all day in the garden, what a treat on the official ‘Australia Day’ public holiday to have a koala visit my work place 👌🏼 #wildlife#nature#wildlifephotography, #gardening#koalas
"Tarkeeth State Forest 'plantation' excluded from protection, and high quality habitat, but outside the 'provisional assessment area' for the park - to be clear-felled with no consultation"
Koala habitat - between logging sites and highways
"Motorists have struck and killed two koalas on a busy freeway, weeks after authorities rejected calls for a small colony living in a nearby plantation to be ferried to safety."
"When timber workers began felling trees at the site in December, animal advocates had warned the four marsupials living there faced a “death sentence”. Because the plantation was surrounded by bare paddocks, they predicted the koalas would be struck by a truck or car while fleeing to the closest forest which lies on the other side of the road....Dead koalas were found within 500 metres of the plantation."
Logging operations to continue between NSW and Queensland after judge rejects environmentalists' court bid
"Environmentalists have lost a legal challenge to a forestry agreement between the NSW and Commonwealth governments, meaning logging operations can continue within a vast coastal area between Sydney and the Queensland border."
"On behalf of the alliance (The North East Forest Alliance), the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) argued the Commonwealth was required to assess environmental values and principles of ecologically sustainable management when it was renewed, but failed to do so".
So, this is a quick test of “generative AI” and I was using Firefly for this image. It’s actually two generated images, foreground and background with some Photoshopping.
Just a silly idea in my mind that I had not acted on creating “by hand" as it were… Kinda fun to mess about with, and with a quality that will be sufficient for many uses, I'm afraid.
Private landholders control 60% of the Australian continent.
Many of Australia’s ecosystems are severely degraded.
Only 22% of Australia’s landmass is currently protected.
"About 60% of the continent is owned or managed privately – and 70% to 90% of inadequately protected wildlife is found mostly on such land, which includes farms, pastoral leases and mines."
"Through what legal mechanism can private landholders be engaged in biodiversity conservation? A conservation covenant is a legally binding commitment landholders make to restrict how their property is used."
Koalas stuck between highways and loggers #After the timber is logged, the koalas are on their own."
"With the koalas' plantation home being harvested for timber all week, animal advocates predict the marsupials will flee to the closest patch of bush which is unfortunately located on the other side of a busy freeway."
Outrage as endangered species living in forest goes unnoticed by loggers chopping it down. 'Nothing to see here': Greater gliders, yellow-bellied gliders, koalas and powerful owls.
“Forestry Corporation admitted that they don’t do surveys for the nocturnal greater gliders at night! No wonder they aren’t finding any — they don’t want to find them, as it would seriously restrict their operations,” CEO Jacqui Mumford
"Endangered marsupials have been discovered inside a forest that was being chopped down by the NSW government, prompting calls for its operations to be suspended across dozens of sites across the state."
"After the Environmental Protection Agency was asked to intervene this week, NSW Forestry Corporation voluntarily asked its contractors to cease operations at the Styx River State Forest which borders the Cathedral Rock National Park, west of Coffs Harbour. It’s the second time since August the state-owned agency has been forced to down chainsaws because of the discovery of greater gliders."
The impacts of extreme heat events on wildlife
How koalas are trying to cope
Temperatures are predicted to swelter above 40 degrees today in NSW. People are retreating into their coal-fired AC houses and AC combustion boxes. Dogs are offered drinking bowls at almost every door in Bellingen, but Australian animals are out there in a degraded landscape, having to deal with the extreme heat we generate.
Koalas are "using a tree species they don't feed on ... [hugging] the main trunks of trees and lower to the ground. We came up with the idea they were losing heat to the tree trunks. I found a colleague with a fancy thermal camera and went out in hot weather and it's exactly what they were doing. By pressing their body into the coolest tree they could find, the koalas halved their need to drink water in heatwaves. Hugging trees may not be enough for koalas to maintain their already dwindling distribution with rising average temperatures."
"The son of a farmer who shot and killed an environment officer involved in land-clearing prosecutions has been ordered to pay $405,000 by the New South Wales Land and Environment Court in Sydney today."
"The court heard the illegal clearing included Brigalow trees, an endangered species, in a landscape of the New England region that had already been over-cleared."
Logging and koalas do not mix
Spoiler: End native forest logging altogether, seek World Heritage protection for these forests.
"Koalas cannot read maps, and do not understand human zoning. If their habitat in plantations is cleared, they die – just as we’ve seen in Victoria, where deaths of koalas in blue gum plantations have made national news."
"For a koala-protecting National Park to actually protect koalas, it must be based on the identification and reservation of high value habitat – such as hardwood plantations. If we leave all plantations out, some of the best habitat in the park will continue to be logged. Without plantations, the park will be filled with holes, severing critical corridors and hampering the movement of koalas."
What should we do?
"We have to restore the areas lost to logging and the Black Summer bushfires and flag more forested areas for inclusion – especially unburnt habitat. And the government has to end logging within the proposed park area. If we want a viable alternative, the government should begin new plantations outside the park area and buy out existing logging contracts inside the park. Logging and koalas do not mix."