Adani : Carmichael Coal Mine : Federal Court set aside government approval

A reply to a letter sent to Greg Hunt, Minister for the Environment :

Thank you for your email concerning the Carmichael Coal Mine in Queensland.

The Australian Government is committed to protecting the environment, including the Great Barrier Reef and addressing climate change.

Over the next decade, more than $2 billion will be invested in improving the health of the Reef. We have also implemented a new shipping plan to provide additional protection for the Reef.

When the Coalition was elected, the Reef was under threat of being listed as in-danger by the World Heritage Committee. After significant new funding investments and policy changes to ban capital dredge disposal, the Committee has held Australia up as a global role model in the management of the Reef and our Reef 2050 Long Term Sustainability Plan.

We are also committed to addressing climate change and are well on track to achieve our emissions reduction target by 2020 and have set a target of a 26-28 per cent reduction by 2030 based on 2005 emissions. This is a strong and credible target and will see Australia make one of the most significant contributions per capita with emissions reducing by at least 50 per cent.

In regards to the Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail Project, the Federal Court recently, with consent of all parties, formally set aside the approval under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth). This related to a technical, administrative matter and, to remove doubt, the Department advised that the decision should be reconsidered.

The decision was taken after a thorough environmental impact assessment process occurring over several years. The assessment looked at impacts on all relevant nationally protected matters, including the ornamental snake and yakka skink and included strict conditions to protect these two species. Another key species for which there were robust protections put in place is the black-throated finch, with approximately 31,000 hectares required to be protected. The project approval also included world-class environmental conditions for the protection of water, including a requirement for the return of at least 730 mega-litres of water per year for ten years to the Great Artesian Basin.

We will now be reconsidering the approval decision on the project. While we appreciate you may not support this project, the Government is required to assess these projects under environmental law without fear or favour in accordance with our strict national environmental laws.

Thank you for writing on this matter.

Yours sincerely

Deb Callister

Assistant Secretary

Assessments (Qld, Tas, Vic) & Policy Implementation Branch

Environment Standards Division

Department of the Environment

Rode Rage fundraising for Kids in Cambodia and Wildlife in Thailand

Dear Campaigners,

Please find above details of our upcoming Trivia Night on Friday October 4th to raise funds for our Khmer Rode RAGE project ( www.facebook.com/khmerroderage ) to bring a team from the Cambodian Children's Trust to the RACV Energy Breakthrough in November this year and to raise funds for the ongoing work of CCT (www.cambodianchildrenstrust.org )and the Wilderness Friends Foundation Thailand (www.wfft.org ).

Last year's event was a great success and we again anticipate a night of great fun and entertainment which would make an excellent end of week staff function or as a lead in to a bigger night out for the more adventurous :)   .... you have fun, a local kids program is supported and Cambodian kids and Thai elephants and tigers get fed and cared for.... win-win-win.

We would be extremely grateful if you were able to organise a table (or 2 or 3) for this event and if you could distribute/display this poster as widely as possible.  Bookings can be made by return e mail or phone.  Tables of 10 or smaller groups /individuals happily accommodated.  Perhaps we could use this as an opportunity for a post election BCN meeting and form up a table between us and partners??

Thanks and best wishes,

Tony Davidson 
Rode RAGE 
0419563920
www.roderage.com.au

Decades ago I joined my first environmental organisation. Now it's celebrating 50 years - Wildlife Preservation Society of Qld

The first environment organisation I ever joined, the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, is celebrating 50 years of activities this year.  

Networkers might be interested to join in the celebrations.  See, the document below to plan how you will join in.

When I think of what I have learned over a lifetime and reflect on what a naive, know nothing, enthusiast I was way back then!  My husband and I joined - I think perhaps it was because some of our friends did.  We were living in Toowoomba in Queensland.  

The membership was small and trying to establish itself (this would have been late 60s or, more probably, the early 70s).  The bit I do remember after all the decades is that Judith Wright visited Toowoomba and I was the only one available (being a non-working mum back in those days) to look after her.  I remember going out on the edge of the Toowoomba Range where Ian Leslie (he had been at Toowoomba's Channel 10 for donkey's years and looked as if that would be where he would stay - but he went on to national fame on 60 Minutes) interviewed her.  

Toowoomba Garden Festival
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A couple of years ago, when a friend and I went to Braidwood to the Two Fires Festival, Don Henry (formerly the WPS director - see details below) was there and mentioned his days with the WPS.  As a matter of interest, he asked was anyone in the audience ever a member back then.  A few hands, including mine, went up. All rather fitting considering the connection between Judith Wright and the Festival.

Don's details taken from here.

Crocodiles are to be up for grabs for trophy hunters in the NT. Do Australians really want this?

If there is one thing that turns me off tourism quicker than anything else - it's the tourists.  I have had two occasions in my sightseeing life when I was turned off in spades.  One was a visit - where I made my "no more zoos, ever" pledge to myself - to the Western Plains Zoo, Dubbo where I was under the misapprehension that I would see animals on the plains as I had in Kenya.  The animals might not have been behind iron railings or in cages but the swales of earth imprisoned them in a similar way - and I have never forgotten the forlorn looks of the giraffes and the uneasy pacing backwards and forwards of the snow leopard.

But what took the cake was a visit to the wolf.

One viewed the wolf from a raised platform looking down into long grass where the wolf lived.  When the wolf appeared, the noise from those around me frightened the wolf back to the furthest end of his habitation in what I can only presume was terror.

This brought back another nauseous memory of when I took a trip on Yellow Waters in Kakadu.  The trip was full of interest - the bird life, the vegetation including distinctive trees.  I looked around my companions on the flat bottomed barge and found expressionless faces.  No one, it seemed to me, was as impressed as I at what was surrounding us - until..... until we came upon a crocodile basking on a mudbank in the sun.  Then, those around me sprang to life.

Now, I do know that wolves and crocodiles in the wild can take people's lives so I suppose I should force myself to acknowledge the scare factor - as one would for the titillating pleasure of a scary movie.  Coming close to something scary and remaining safe might be more inclined to induce a perverse pleasure than noting the Burdekin Plum or the birdlife.  

Please, if you feel you must go to a zoo to see imprisoned wildlife, can you 

• make the visit worthwhile by learning all you can about the animals you see.  
• can you think of the animals you are visiting more than yourself
• can you set a good example for the children around you so that their behaviour might improve
• can you suggest to the zoo you are visiting that they establish, as a condition of entry, a twenty minute class for visitors which would encompass an overview of the animals, noting the really shy ones and advising/warning visitors of the most appropriate behaviour around the animals.  

You can also put these thoughts into action right away by going to this website and taking action to stop commercial crocodile deaths in the Northern Territory.

The locust, the bee and the farmer: another contribution to our environmental history - what consequences?

In the last few days, I have posted here and here about the so-called locust plague and Eris O'Brien's viewpoint. The Stateline story is now up on their website.  You can look at it - and particularly note Eris O'Brien's thoughtful presentation - here.

My interest began with my friend Denis over at The Nature of Robertson who has done quite a number of posts on the locust situation which you will find by going here.  Denis's postings are quite extensive and explicit and I won't attempt to comment - but please read his posts.  They are important.

I do want to say that it is about time that we of the human species woke up to ourselves.  Who/what is the greatest threat to our wildlife, our food and water sources, our environment?  It is us.  Not the locusts.  Us.  We are a plague to our planet.  And we are not considering wiping ourselves out are we?  What we do have to do, though, is ask ourselves a few questions about what we are doing and what direction we are taking.  And we have to learn from the mistakes of our past.  And the most eloquent voice in all this was Rachel Carson.  Perhaps Carson was not the first.  However, in our times her voice has been the most significant, far-reaching and followed.

Australians, in particular, need to look at their own track record.  Point me in the right direction, Networkers, if I am wrong but I think we could take the cake for the biggest environmental vandals on the planet.

We are up there with extinctions.  We are brilliant at land clearing.  We have a penchant for importing animals which become feral: the rabbit, the fox, the cane toad, etc.  They are the highly visible ones.  Go here for more information on our toxic importations.  Australians' use of pesticides, particularly in our food chain, continues with only limited abatement.  You might like to have a look at the article below, Networkers.

Over at The Nature of Robertson, Denis asks:

I have a view about this which might not be popular, but if the Victorian Government told their electors that they were going to spray vast areas of the State with many different chemicals, nearly all of which are highly toxic to bees - what would the reaction be?

Finally, I would like, Networkers, to draw your attention to the bee.

The blue-banded native bee with a tomato blossom

Much is made of the European honey bee and the fact that Australia is now the only country in which there is a wild population. In fact, Networkers, did you know that European honeybees collect 90% of available nectar and pollen but pollinate only about 5% of our plants?  In short, European honeybees are bludgers, free-loaders.  They can take their food without doing anything useful in return - like pollination.  The really hard yakka in the bee world in Australia is done by our very own native bees.  

One of the things we might all consider, Networkers, is our gardens and how our small urban and suburban patches can make a positive contribution to Australia's ecology. Here I would like to put in a word for that great native bee attractor, the Native Frangipani.  When I lived in tropical North Queensland in the shadow of the World Heritage listed rainforest, I grew a beautiful specimen.  My neighbours were busy planting foreign palm species - and had to ask what my huge and beautiful (yes it did get to be huge) tree was.  I believe it can be grown in quite diverse regions - besides the tropics.  Its beautiful, tiny, fragrant blossom attract those little black native bees well - like bees to a honeypot.  

I would ask, Networkers, that you have one more look at the Stateline program.  Look and listen and analyse what is being told to you in images and words in this locust segment.  It begins with Victoria's premier, John Brumby.  He doesn't say much - but it is clear that his presence gives this segment his imprimatur and adds to its stature.  Because of Brumby's presence, this gives status and stature to the locust story.  But how detailed is the information provided by the proponents of spraying?  I would say insufficiently detailed.  Insufficiently describing and circumscribing safety.  This contrasts with the detailed argument put forward by Eris O'Brien.

Related reading:

Australian Bee Lore and Bee Culture: Including the Influence of Bees on Crops and the Colour of Flowers and Its Influence on Bee Life [ 1912 ]

BEES FROM THE AUSTRALIAN REGION

Bees and honey (Australian industries series ; no. 16)

A classification of the bees of the Australian and South Pacific regions (Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural 

History)

Commercial honey bees (Apis mellifera) reduce the fecundity of an Australian native bee (Hylaeus alcyoneus) [An article from: Biological Conservation]

BEES, CHIEFLY AUSTRALIAN SPECIES, DESCRIBED OR DETERMINES BY DR. H. FRIESE

A cluster of bees;: Sixty essays on the life-histories of Australian bees, with specific descriptions of over 100 new species,

The effects of the introduced honeybee (Apis mellifera) on Australian native bees (Occasional paper / National Parks and Wildlife Service)

The visual book of Australian bees (Bees in Australia)

Some Australian bees (Acad. of Nat. Sci. Proc)

On a collection of Australian and Asiatic bees (Bulletin / American Museum of Natural History)

Tree fern and honey bee: A study of aboriginal Australian ancestors of the Mapleton District

Further reading:

Beetle's big threat to bees and farmers

The exotic bee threat

Bee battle