Category Archives: land clearing

Please proclaim the Great Koala National Park!

Minister for the Environment, Minister for Heritage, and Assistant Minister for Planning The Hon. Mark Raymond SPEAKMAN, SC MP
Minister for Primary Industries, and Minister for Lands and Water The Hon. Niall BLAIR, MLC
Please proclaim the Great Koala National Park!

Dear Minister Speakman and Minister Blair,

In signing this petition I am writing to express my concern over the alarming decline of koalas in NSW and to pledge my support for the Great Koala National Park. I strongly believe that this park is the best chance we have of securing a future for this iconic species in NSW.

Koala numbers have plummeted by a third in just 20 years and habitat loss, due to land clearing and urban development, has already resulted in koalas disappearing from 75% of their former range.

Populations were under serious threat from land clearing, disease, dog attacks and cars.

The Victorian Government is on the verge of establishing a new national park to protect their faunal emblem, the Leadbeater’s possum. Yet here in New South Wales and across Australia, the koala, our national icon is declining rapidly. Please don’t stand by and watch this happen.

Large  protected areas like the Great Koala National Park remain the single most effective tool for conserving biodiversity worldwide.

The proposed 315,000-hectare national park would protect the Bellingen-Nambucca-Macleay and the Coffs Harbour-Guy Fawkes koala meta-populations. It is estimated the area outlined for protection contains 4500 – or 20 per cent – of NSW’s remaining koalas. The proposal would add about 176,000 hectares of state forest to the existing 140,000 hectare local national parks estate.

Please consider that this new reserve would not only protect two nationally significant koala metapopulations containing 20% of NSW’s remaining wild koalas, but also the many threatened species that share their home, such as the Spotted-Tailed Quoll, Hastings River Mouse and Powerful Owl.

The short-term gains of unsustainable forest logging are far outweighed by the economic, social and biodiversity benefits the new park would bring.

I urge you to commit to creating the Great Koala National Park so that future generations can enjoy koalas in the wild, as we do today.


Sign the Petition

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PROTECT KOALAS AND QUOLLS. ASK FEDERAL MP GREG HUNT TO SAY NO TO INDUSTRY AT NORTH MACLEAN

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Logan & Albert Conservation Association

TO: THE HONOURABLE GREG HUNT, MP, FEDERAL MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

Dear Minister Hunt,

Please reject the development application for the proposed North Maclean Enterprise Precinct at North Maclean, South-East Queensland which involves clearing 289 acres of koala and quoll habitat.

PROTECT KOALAS AND QUOLLS

Ask Federal MP Greg Hunt to SAY NO TO INDUSTRY AT NORTH MACLEAN

Why is this important?
Since 1996, the environmental concerns raised by the community at North Maclean and Munruben have never been addressed. There have been numerous sightings of vulnerable Koalas on and around the property. There have been numerous sightings of endangered Spotted-Tailed Quolls in adjacent properties – these quoll sightings have been the first in the Greater Brisbane Area since the 1930s . Quoll roadkill has been collected from the area confirming the presence of quolls in this area. The proposed site provides valuable habitat for koalas, quolls and other threatened species including the endangered grey headed flying fox, the Swift Parrot and the vunerable Glossy Black Cockatoo.

There have been no detailed impact assessments of industry on these vulnerable/threatened species. No frog or reptile studies have ever been carried out.

By signing the petition, you are asking Minister Greg Hunt to REJECT the North Maclean Enterprise (Industry) Precinct proposal. You will be giving our unique Koalas, Spotted-tailed Quolls and other endangered/Vulnerable wildlife of North Maclean and Munruben a chance of survival.

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If this development application is approved at North Maclean, 117 hectares (approx. 289 acres) of koala food and shelter habitat will be totally cleared. The major threat to koalas is the loss of habitat. This vast proposed site is only 45% of what is eventually planned for the koala habitat of North Maclean. This current application is a dangerous precedent in the area that should not be approved.

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The site, owned by Wearco Pty Ltd, is subject to a Federal Government environmental assessment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act with a decision about the future of the corridor to be handed down on August 31.

The site is projected by Logan City Council to bring 27,350 jobs to the area and an estimated $1.2 billion a year to the ­region’s economy.

“Jobs” and “economic growth” are eating away at our environment and native species’ habitats.

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Save the Bilby – the need to de-sex cats

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Frank Manthey, Save the Bilby fund founder,  says- De-Sex cats, dogs to help solve the plight of native species

The cat problem is a human caused one. Cats make great pets, but when loose they do what they can to survive. They need to be de-sexed, and not dumped! Farmers have much to answer for, with wild dogs just going on the rampage!

Save the Bilby’s Frank Manthey is urging Queenslanders to stop dumping kittens & cats, and de-sex the ones they have. He’s been writing to councils for years to mandate de-sexing of domestic cats but they continue to ignore my emails or put the issue in the ‘too hard’ basket.

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(image: Bilbies at night: The Australian Bilby Appreciation Society http://members.optusnet.com.au/bilbies/About_Bilbies.htm)

We need to implement the Trap Neuter Release program which is working in other countries; and then change the laws to prevent this problem from occurring again. No more knee jerk reactions of shooting, poisoning etc. Human responsibility comes first. All animals are sentient beings. Pam Hayes

Endangered Queensland Bilbies are to be buoyed by predator-proof fence repairs.  Experts estimate only 400 bilbies are left in the wild, with feral cats decimating numbers.

The State Government has committed $700,000 towards fixing and upgrading the 15-year-old Currawinya National Park fence.  Save the Bilby fund director said that with the repairs, new bilbies would be released in early spring this year or autumn 2017.

The Bilby story comes up every Easter when all the cat haters come out with their burning torches to hunt down abandoned cats that have been left to fend for themselves because of human irresponsibility.

Australia is infamous for being the biggest exterminator of native species in modern times.

The Bilby is the sole survivor of the six bandicoot species that once lived in Australia. For a species that covered three-quarters of the mainland, it has now disappeared from 80 per cent of its natural range. It may be less noticeable than other diminishing species, but our nation is poorer nevertheless.

Bilbies are also known as Rabbit-eared Bandicoots.

Australia once had two species of bilby – the Greater Bilby and the Lesser Bilby.  The Lesser Bilby is extinct.  The Greater Bilby is the largest member of the bandicoot family, measuring up to 55cm in body length with a tail of up to 29cm long. Adult males weigh 1-2.5kg and the females weigh between 800g- 1.1kg.  They range from 30 to 60cm in length with a 20cm tail. The females are smaller than the male and they only associate to mate.

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(image: Greater bilby at Sydney Wildlife World: By Dcoetzee - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6809991)

Diet: The Bilby is omnivorous and its diet includes bulbs, fruit, seeds, fungi, insects, worms, termites, small lizards and spiders.

Breeding: The Bilby is a fast breeder, with a 12 to 14-day pregnancy. When the baby joey is born, it looks like a baked bean with legs. It stays in its mother’s pouch for between 75 and 80 days and is independent about two weeks later. Female Bilbies have a backward-opening pouch with eight nipples.

 Habitat: Bilbies live in grasslands and mulga scrublands in the hot, dry, arid and semi-arid areas of Australia. The preferred habitats are mulga scrublands and Spinifex grassland. Bilbies once inhabited 70% of Australia and now they are only found in small areas in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South- West Queensland.

They are threatened, like many of our endemic species, by feral animals, such as cats, dogs and foxes.  Farming, for sheep and cattle, has destroyed habitat, and introduced European rabbits compete for burrows.

Why do we celebrate a devastating pest every Easter around Australia?  Easter should be celebrated with the Bilby, and ditch the rabbit as our symbol of new life, and fast breeding!

The world needs to know about the plight of this delightful animal.

(featured image: The Australian Museum web site)

Email: admin@savethebilbyfund.org
Postal Address: PO Box 260, Runaway Bay, Qld, 4216
Phone: 0405 384 351
Fax: (07) 5563 8612

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Save, Protect and Rezone Tootgarook Swamp on the Mornington Peninsula

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Petition: We call on levels of government Local, State and Federal and their departments as well as Melbourne Water.

The Tootgarook Swamp is the largest example left of an Shallow freshwater marsh in the Port Philip bay region, at 381 hectares it is worthy of international Ramsar protection.

Much of the Tootgarook swamp is inappropriately zoned as residential, and industrial with only half of it inside the green wedge.  Currently approximately 80 hectares is marked with present development proposals totalling almost a quarter of the entire swamp.

There are only 4% of total wetlands left in Victoria that are greater than 100 hectares.  Of the original wetlands in the state we have already lost over 37% in the last 200 years.

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Of the 100% of shallow fresh water marshes in Victoria, 60% has been destroyed.  It has high cultural significance for the Bunurong / Boonerwrung people of the Kulin nation, as well as high scientific value as pointed out by Sir Frederick Chapman in 1919, Australia’s first nationally appointed palaeontologist and world authority in the field of ostracods (a type of small crustacean), and close companion and co-worker with Sir Douglas Mawson.

Sir Chapman personally visited and studied within Tootgarook Swamp where he catalogued numerous fossils and ostropod species not seen anywhere else but in Tasmania showing a link of a land bridge between the two states.

Tootgarook Swamp has so far recorded 145 bird species, 13 reptilian species, 9 amphibious frog species and 12 mammals, including 5 bats, no full survey of the entire swamp has ever been done to show its true value, and much of the current data has been collected during drought time.

The swamp contains fifteen state, federal, and international protected species of fauna, along with another seven species listed as vulnerable. The majority of species threatened with extinction in Victoria are wetland dependent.

The swamp is also home to at least nine bioregional endangered plant communities. A local ecologist believes up to 24 bioregional endangered plant communities exist within the swamp and updated on ground flora surveys need to be commenced.

The Mornington Peninsula Shire is considering a proposal by Lifestyle Communities Ltd to build a 99-lot residential development for people aged over 55 on part of the wetlands.

The Mornington Peninsula Shire has released an information sheet (Tootgarook Wetland Information Sheet #TWMP15.pdf) about planning together, for the future of the Tootgarook Wetland in developing a Wetland Management Plan.

It assumed that with “management” the biodiversity and fragility of species and ecology can co-exist with housing growth!

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Save Tootgarook Swamp webpage

Petition: Save and Protect and rezone Tootgarook Swamp on the Mornington Peninsula

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Shenhua Watermark coal mine will destroy farmland and koala habitat

Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce, said “It is ridiculous that you would have a major mine in the midst of Australia’s best agricultural land,” Shenhua’s open cut coal mine on the Liverpool Plains in north-western NSW, which is one of Australia’s most productive farming areas.

The Liverpool Plains generally produce winter and summer crops, yielding about 40% above the national average of food per hectare and contributes approximately $332 million to GDP annually.

The mine’s owners have earmarked offsets to compensate for the wildlife losses, as if our native animals species were merely collateral damage. Most of the mine will eventually be “rehabilitated”, a spokesman for Shenhua said. The NSW Government approval failed to properly consider whether the mine was likely to significantly affect Koalas. If the mine goes ahead it will clear 847 hectares of koala habitat. Expecting them to “rehabilitate” is simply a throw-away line!

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Australia, the land infamous for native mammal extinctions, continues to ignore our natural heritage and the welfare of our indigenous species. Australians are losing control of our sovereignty by the betrayal of greedy politicians, overwhelmed by short-term monetary gain at the cost of our long term future.

Coal mines are not energy investment of the future.

Show us you care about our country, our people, our farmers, earth and climate change.

Petition: Revert the decision to sell to China the Watermark coal mine

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Urban sprawl threatens Southern Brown Bandicoots — Western Port Bay, Vic

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SouthernBrownBandicoot_creditReinerRICHTER

Ecologist Hans Brunner:

Bandicoots, the problems and the answer.

MY CONCERN IS the survival of Southern Brown Bandicoots (SBB) east of Melbourne and especially within the biosphere region around Western Port Bay. This is the site where during the last twenty odd years 95% of them were lost. The reason for the loss of the SBBs was the combination of incompetent and unwillingness by the then governments of Department of Environment and Sustainability, and Parks Victoria, failure to properly protect them there.

(So the very government agencies we expect to uphold the protection of wildlife and habitats are actually failing!  Promoting urban sprawl now is endemic to our culture, our economy?  Editor)

And now, the new Department of Environment, Land, Water & Planning (DELWP) plans to create a large new urban estate adjacent to the Royal Botanical Gardens Cranbourne (RBGC) called the Botanic Ridge & Devon Meadows. This area was previously covered with prime bandicoot habitat land — and now have to be somehow compensated for.

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IMAGES: Used with permission from Reiner Richter.

(Strange how the names of some streets and housing estates take on names that represent exactly some of the natural features lost under concrete — “botanic” and “meadows”, editor.)

Since then. I have attended four workshops with DELWP, SBB experts, public servants and environment consultants, about 25 people per session.

I was extremely disappointed that DELWP still insists in the continued use of only narrow corridors as a compensation for the loss of all the SBB habitat. I have earlier explained to them in great detail why these narrow corridors will definitely not be suitable for SBBs. Unfortunately, there seems to be absolutely nothing that I could do to change their mind. They were also not prepared to apply an actual Population Viability Assessment (PVA) to the area. All they did was talk about the use of it, but did not apply it, in order to prove that SBBs could safely survive in these conditions for at least the next hundred years! To me, this looked like 90% of political overbearing and only 10% of environmental input. No way could a PVA pass a test here and neither can artificial and narrow corridors be used for SBBs.

I have therefore consistently insisted that SBBs can now only be properly secured within large reserves surrounded by a predator proof fence. There are several such reserves suitable for this purpose such as the Pines, the Langwarrin Reserve and the Briars. SBBs can then be safely protected from dogs, foxes, feral cats and from competition from rabbits. Why has so much gone wrong with DELWP? Is there not one person among them who understands and loves SBBs enough to give them the deservedly highest protection available?

I now urge DELWP to urgently carry out their obligation and to put those SBBs safely into some large reserves the same way they are protected in the RBGC. I will be extremely frustrated if this is not done. Only the highest possible protection for them can now do.

— Hans Brunner

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