National News - September 2007
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30/09/07 Experts call for return of the natives Hannah Edwards, The Age, Life and Style
30/09/07 Big game has a big environmental impact Hannah Edwards, Environment Reporter, The Age
30/09/07 Bye-bye birdies: 45 species feeling the heat John Elder, The Age Links
20/09/07 Ask new ANZ CEO not to support Gunn's pulp mill ; Letter From :- Luke Chamberlain, TWS; Tasmania; Sept 07
National News 18/09/07 128 scientists voice mill fears; Andrew Darby, The Age Tasmania; Sept 07
Hannah Edwards, The Age, Life and Style
September 30, 2007
Pet theory ... Francis Buckley, 8, and sister Brigid, 6, of Dulwich Hill, with their olive python Cuddles.
Photo: Fiona-Lee Quimby
PET lovers should consider keeping native animals instead of a potentially destructive cat or dog, the NSW Government says.
"Cats really do cause absolute devastation to native animals," Verity Firth, the Minister Assisting Environment Minister Phil Koperberg, said. "If you are wanting to get a pet, think about getting a pet that is environmentally sensitive."
More Australian households are choosing native pets - licences to keep them increased from 13,000 to more than 18,000 in three years - and animal experts have called for a relaxation of stringent laws in NSW restricting ownership.
Most mammals, such as possums, cannot be kept in NSW.
Christopher Cheng, the author of Locally Wild, said laws should be softened to allow native animals to be kept as pets but people should be licensed to keep them.
Mr Cheng, a former teacher at Taronga Zoo, said possums, bats, bandicoots and wombats would make good pets. Quolls would be a good replacement for cats as they can be affectionate and interact with humans.
Working as a wildlife rescuer alerted Peter Buckley to the damage domestic pets can wreak. Now he has a menagerie of native animals at his Dulwich Hill home.
There are dragons and pythons, including the "extremely docile" Cuddles, and Mr Buckley has named two lace monitors after his children.
Hannah Edwards, Environment Reporter, The Age
September 30, 2007
TONIGHT'S grand final is likely to have the same impact on the environment as more than 500 cars, each travelling 15,000 kilometres.
A survey has found that more than 2000 tonnes of carbon emissions will be produced by activities associated with the match.
It's not just the blazing lights needed to illuminate Telstra Stadium or the large amount of food and beverages consumed by the crowd of 82,000 that will have an impact, a survey prepared exclusively for The Sun-Herald by Carbon Planet found.
Air travel by the 2000 Storm supporters flying to Sydney will be the largest contributor to the event's environmental footprint, producing about 1269 tonnes of carbon.
Carbon Planet prepared the audit based on statistics provided by Telstra Stadium.
The production of 7000 event programs has emitted 2.86 tonnes of carbon.
Producing and transporting the food and beverages is forecast to produce 70.1 tonnes.
Carbon Planet's senior emissions auditor Davide Ross said: "The main issue with any of these events is how people get to the event."
Telstra Stadium has several environmentally friendly features including using recycled water to flush toilets, collecting rainwater from the stadium roof, installing taps that turn off after five seconds and lights that switch off when there is no movement detected.
An opaque roof allows plenty of natural light and the clippings from the field are collected for green waste.
Source: The Sun-Herald
John Elder, The Age
September 30, 2007
An orange-bellied parrot.
Photo: Wayne Taylor
The last night parrot seen in the wild was a headless corpse. The remains, found last year in a Queensland national park, looked like an over-sized budgerigar: similar markings and shape but a stumpier tail.
Of course, budgies live in cages whereas the night parrot - known as the Tasmanian tiger of the sky - has been flirting with oblivion on the harsh plains of inland Australia since the 1880s.
It was first thought extinct in 1915. What makes the headless corpse all the more pitiful is that it could well mean the white flag finally going up for the species.
There's only one bird officially listed as becoming extinct on the mainland since European settlement and that's the paradise parrot, dead by the 1920s.
The night parrot will be the second once the "remaining undiscovered populations wink out", says Professor Stephen Garnett of Charles Darwin University and chairman of Bird Australia's threatened species committee.
"We've been very lucky so far compared with other countries," says the professor, speaking of Australia's low extinction rate of birds, which includes eight species lost from our territorial islands. But the luck's running out fast.
In a paper he co-wrote, to be published next month, The history of threatened birds in Australia and its offshore islands , Professor Garnett makes a long list of disturbing predictions as to the viability of our bird life because of feral species running amok, human sprawl and climate change.
The paper predicts 45 Australian bird species will be threatened to some degree by increases in temperature by 2050. Already the wedge-tailed shearwater is struggling to feed itself because waters of the Barrier Reef are getting too warm to sustain its diet of fish, squid and crustaceans.
The impact of climate change, long predicted, "is now starting to show an impact on numbers", says Professor Garnett.
The fairy tern has all but disappeared from Victoria and South Australia as a breeding bird because of the salinity killing the fish they feed on, and the mismanagement of river flows destroying their nests. In the Coorong and Murray lakes region, the fairy tern's stronghold breeding ground, nests have been flooded during rises in the water level, while foxes have gained access to nests when water levels have fallen. Along the Younghusband Peninsula shoreline near the mouth of the Murray, foxes have destroyed 95 per cent of nests in the past two years.
Based on a report from Professor Garnett's committee, Birds Australia recently recommended the World Conservation Union (IUCN) list the fairy tern as vulnerable on its "red list", which ranks a species' risk of winking out forever.
The Mallee emu-wren - a tiny bird weighing less than seven grams - has lost more than half its population in the past 10 years in South Australia and Victoria because of bushfires and drought. Birds Australia has recommended the IUCN list the Mallee emu-wren as endangered.
The recommendation came too late to be included in the most recent red list, released two weeks ago. The Australian mainland now has only two birds on the list ranked a few heartbeats from extinction or critically endangered (CE): the night parrot and the orange-bellied parrot of which 140 remain at large around Port Phillip Bay and Gippsland.
However, the number of birds headed for CE status - including more parrots - will multiply in the next few years, among them Baudin's black-cockatoo, Carnaby's black-cockatoo and the Australasian bittern.
With LUCINDA ORMONDE
Australia: Bye-bye birdies: 45 species feeling the heat Climate Ark .ORG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange-bellied_Parrot
Ask new ANZ CEO not to support Gunn's pulp mill
International cyberaction launched to lobby new director over ANZ support of Gunns’ destruction of Tasmania’s forests.
Letter From :- Luke Chamberlain
Victorian Forest Campaigner
The Wilderness Society
Level 2, 288 Brunswick St
Fitzroy VIC 3065
The Wilderness Society, in conjunction with BankTrack (a network of 23 international civil society organisations tracking private finance) and Rainforest Action Network, has launched www.tellmrsmith.org — an online cyberaction asking the new Director of ANZ, Mike Smith, not to support Gunns’ destruction of Tasmania’s native forests or its proposed pulp mill.
Mr Smith is a man with an extraordinary task. He will assume the role of ANZ’s Chief Executive Officer from October 1st and will take responsibility for ANZ’s environmental and social impacts. Mr Smith arrives at a time when ANZ is heavily involved with Gunns Ltd and its controversial pulp mill. If the mill were to proceed, it would spell disaster for one of the world's great natural areas, dramatically increasing logging and burning of native forest, and putting deadly chemicals from the mill’s chlorine-based bleaching process into Tasmania's waters.
Mr Smith was CEO of HSBC when in 2004 they were one of four international banks which founded the Equator Principles. The Equator Principles are a financial industry benchmark for determining, assessing and managing social & environmental risk in project financing. An analysis of Gunns’ pulp mill proposal and the assessment process were found not to meet the Equator Principles from an assessment done by BankTrack
Since 1995 ANZ has provided crucial financial services to Gunns. Today ANZ provides the company with secured bank loans with a current debt thought to be more than AU$300 million (US$250 million). In respect of the pulp mill, ANZ is understood to have advised on the project and is also the lead arranger of finance. Further, Gunns’ management states that ANZ is certain to provide project finance, underwrite the mill, and that the bank has already arranged export credit deals from Europe.
Mr Smith can put a halt to the project or help it move to a greener technology in a better location, based only on existing plantations. Mr Smith should ensure that the Equator Principles are met for Gunns’ proposed pulp mill. He can prevent widespread impacts by ending support for the destruction of Tasmania’s native forests and Gunns’ proposed Bell Bay pulp mill.
Take Action: Send Mr Smith the cyberaction now!
For more information, please contact:
Paul Oosting
Pulp Mill Campaigner
Email Paul Oosting
Workphone: (03) 63 31 74 88
Mobile: 0409 963 734
Andrew Darby, The Age
September 18, 2007
SCIENTISTS' fears about environmental approval for the Gunns pulp mill are growing, along with concerns about the Tasmanian Government's strengthening links with the forest industry.
A statement signed by 128 scientists demands a new assessment of the $1.7 billion mill, which they say poses a high risk to the environment.
Federal Government Chief Scientist Jim Peacock took evidence yesterday from project critics ahead of his report to federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, which could be completed within a week.
Concerns focus on the impact on Bass Strait of 64,000 tonnes of effluent being dumped each day. Oceanographer Stuart Godfrey and two other scientists told Dr Peacock's committee that toxic effluent would wash ashore.
Dr Godfrey also signed the statement, which said Gunns and the Tasmanian Government had failed to properly assess the impact of the pulp mill's effluent on the marine environment and the Tamar estuary.
Among the 128 signatories are scientists across a range of disciplines, including Dr Keith Sainsbury, who in 2004 won the Japan Prize, the world's highest honour for ecology and sustainability research.
A specialist on Tamar fish, Francisco Neira, said: "Impacts of the pulp mill's requirement for 4˝ million tonnes of wood per annum have not been assessed. Resultant impacts on biodiversity and water are therefore unknown."
The call to Mr Turnbull for a new assessment has been made despite approval of the project by the Tasmanian Parliament last month, when it accepted Premier Paul Lennon's advice that the mill was environmentally safe.
Mr Turnbull is expected to make a decision by October 11.
Gunns claims the appeal by the scientists is little more than another delaying tactic. "Are they seeking additional research grants?" it said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the Premier yesterday announced that the state's new top public servant would be a former chief of Forestry Tasmania, Evan Rolley. Greens leader Bob Brown said: "This is a … pro-pulp mill appointment.