Tag Archives: housing growth

Kangaroos must be “culled” for urban sprawl

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A wildlife “consultant” has called for a radical new plan to cull kangaroos along Melbourne’s urban fringe before there is any more housing development.  What’s “radical” about this solution to wildlife?  Due to lack of vision, foresight and planning, it means killing them!

This new “plan” is about caving into the whims of property developers, and the plans of our State government to blow out our urban fringe for more growth-gluttony  and housing.

Thanks to Melbourne’s obesity, urban sprawl keeps stretching out north, causing problems for residents and wildlife. There are more fences, road and houses, causing chaos and causing kangaroos to become trapped in factories, rooftops and school yards.  Their habitat is being impinged upon and eaten away by infrastructure and clogged up, due to human population growth.

Instead of addressing the problem, and implementing any real plans for the city, the waist-line of Melbourne keeps expanding as 100,000 new people per year keep it engorged.

Wildlife Victoria has received about 6,500 emergency calls about kangaroos this year, double the number they received three years ago.

DELWP, the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, is meant to administer the Wildlife Act, and enforce the protection of our native species, is also the State government department responsible for Planning! There are massive and blatant conflicts of interests here. 

According to DELWP’s own website, they have control over our population growth!  By 2051, there will be a projected 10 million people in Victoria, a “natural increase” of 1.7 million, and a whopping 2.8 million due to net migration.

Wildlife Victoria spokeswoman Amy Amato said “It’s definitely not an increase in the number of kangaroos in Melbourne….we’re just seeing the number of incidents in human conflict with kangaroos rising.”  In fact, our government does not know how many kangaroos there are in Victoria.

urban-sprawl

(image: The True Cost of Sprawl)

Victoria’s Department of Environment has engaged independent wildlife management consultant Ian Temby to review the situation.  His solution is to kill the kangaroos before development goes ahead, arguing kangaroos are being slowly culled by cars anyway!  So, their deaths are inevitable, and shooters don’t kill will be finished off by cars.   Then, the housing industry won’t be hampered by obstructed by native animals.

Author Ian Temby, in the past, recommended learning to live humanely with wildlife.  Known to Wildlife Victoria members as a long time as wildlife advocate with over 30 years in the DSE.

He claimed that “action to resolve conflicts with wildlife does not have to be lethal. Exclusion, repellents, changing human practices and habitat modification are all examples of non-lethal actions”.  And, “rather than killing wildlife, our real challenge is to develop and apply methods of problem resolution that are proactive, anticipating where problems may occur and taking action to prevent them from actually happening”. 

Now, his solution is CULL, CULL, the easy and lazy way of removing the problem.

There are no interconnecting wildlife corridors in Victoria, so whatever “Planning” happens doesn’t include the fate of our native species.

For too long our capitalistic economy has gorged on “growth”, and worshipped the real estate industry, caving into it’s whims for resources.  Already our infrastructure is choked and overloaded, and congestion is impeding productivity.   We are falling into an abyss of infrastructure deficit.

What values are we promoting and what benefits are there from our city’s explosive growth- except for property developers and real estate investors?

The high immigration that was beneficial in the 1950s, and 60s is now causing our cities to be over-crowded and overpopulated. Our governments are addicted to growth, and our economy is on thin ice if it depends on rising house prices and population growth.  It’s admission of being bereft of ideas, innovation, and enlightenment. It’s lazy economics, to just turn up the immigration tap to boost our economy, and expect the public to finance the retro-fitting of our city, endure a crumbling housing market, and all the deprivations of perpetual growth imposed on us!

The lack of innovation and diversity in our economy means that there’s an over-reliance on housing and population growth.  It’s a lethal and self-destructive Ponzi scheme, and will not only have a deadly impact on our wildlife, biodiversity and environment, but eventually cause impoverishment, deprivation, eroded living standards, congestion, and spiralling costs of living for human inhabitants.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Koalas could soon be wiped out in areas of Queensland and NSW – are you going to do something?

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The Hon Josh Frydenberg MP
Minister for the Environment and Energy
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600

Dear Minister Frydenberg,

I am writing to you on behalf of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council.

WWF works to conserve Australia’s plants and animals, by ending land clearing, addressing climate change, and preserving and protecting our fresh water, marine and land environments. WWF has over 80,000 supporters, and active projects in Australia and the Oceania region. We are very concerned by the much-loved and recognised koalas, as their numbers are in steep decline.

Koalas are under threat of being wiped out in parts of Queensland and New South Wales, conservation group WWF Australia has warned. (Koalas could soon be wiped out in areas of NSW and Queensland)

Dr Martin Taylor, (protected areas and conservation science manager at WWF Australia) said once the habitat had been redeveloped, that then brought in new threats to the koala, such as more cars, more dogs, “more accidents waiting to happen for koalas.”

Nowhere to go- Save Koalas

Numbers are down 53 per cent on average in Queensland, 26 per cent in NSW and in a pocket known as the Koala Coast, numbers have declined by 80 per cent over the past two decades.

Redeveloped koala habitat is now a euphemism for its vandalisation – environmental destruction of their food sources and life-support. Just how can this legal “redevelopment” be allowed, destroying the fabric our our environment and killing off our iconic native animals?

Tourism is worth a lot of income to Australia, and nobody wants to come to see generic urban sprawl, more and more roads and developments!

The group has warned of “localised extinctions” if more was not done to stop development encroaching on koala habitats. Australia as a leading world economy should be setting environmental and conservation standards, not be worse than a corrupt, out-of-control third world nation wrecking their natural environments and forcing native animals extinctions!

We would like to know exactly what is being done to protect koalas from dying slowly and horribly because of the greed of property developers, and the growth of human numbers in Queensland and NSW?

(Supplied: with permission of WWF Australia/Sue Gedda)

“Government has to bite the bullet and put in strong protections, not just for koalas but for all our wildlife,” Dr Taylor said. Extinction is not an event, but a process. Loss of habitat is a silver bullet for threatening their survival, and their demise.

“Government has to bite the bullet and put in strong protections, not just for koalas but for all our wildlife,” Dr Taylor said.

“The problem is there are so many get out of jail free cards for the all the industries that want to destroy habitats.”

So many permits for “development”, housing growth, etc, aka habitat destruction and violation of the rights of indigenous animals to exist.

Australia already has an abysmal reputation globally as a leading mammal exterminator, due to the ignorance and damage done by Colonialism and our early settlers. They were once paid to “clear the bush”. Haven’t we learned anything from the mistakes of the past – or are we still in a time-warp of the Colonial mentality?

We wait for your response as this is urgent, and we don’t want to be the generation responsible for the extinction and demise of our wonderful and endearing koalas in the wild in NSW and Queensland. Extensive and interconnecting wildlife corridors are urgently needed, before more lethal “developments”, and much better funded responses to emergencies, and support for wildlife carers. Responding in hindsight is just assuming the worst is inevitable!

Thank you and sincerely

AWPC secretary

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Petition:Protect koala habitat in an effort to better ensure koalas will not die off.

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Koalas are declining in rapid numbers because the trees where they spend a majority of their time are being quickly chopped down.

Roads are being built where there were once trees, increasing the risk that the animals will be hit by cars. In addition, when houses are built in place of the trees that once covered the particular land, the animals are in greater danger of being attacked by the dogs of the people who now live in the newly built houses.
Cutest_Koala

Up here in Queensland and New South Wales, they’ve got koalas that are declining rapidly, population’s dropping off the face of the Earth right on their doorstep and we’re not able to do anything about it, seemingly. In South East Queensland, the human population is increasing by more than 1000 people a week. This rapid population growth and increased need for houses is placing considerable pressure on the limited remaining koala habitat.

Currently, about 80 percent of the koalas’ habitat is almost completely ruined due to human encroachment. Only a small portion of this land is now protected. This is ironic when one considers that the koala is a protected species. Yet, because the koala’s habitat is constantly being destroyed, about 4,000 of these animals are killed by cars and dogs every year.

The human population of the narrow strip between Noosa and the Gold Coast – South East Queensland’s “200km city” – will swell by 2.2 million to 5.5 million in 30 years. It’s all part of the “big Australia” policy! That extra development will finally get rid of koalas in SE Queensland, something governments been working very hard to achieve for decades. Massive immigration coupled with a PM who doles out infrastructure funding not on need but only to those who follow his radical political ideology on asset sales.

Urge officials to protect larger areas of the eucalyptus forests where these animals live in order to help save them. If we don’t do something now, koalas may soon have no place in the wild that solely belongs just to them.

Sign the Petition

The Redlands koala population, estimated in 1999 to be 6,200 animals, has plummeted by approximately 75% (in 15 years). The koala was recently listed by your government as ‘vulnerable’ in Queensland with South East Qld suffering the greatest loss of koala numbers.
Habitat loss (to property developers and infrastructure) is the greatest threat to the koala’s survival followed by disease, vehicle strikes and domestic dog attacks.

On Line Petition to save koalas in the southern area of Redlands

Since European settlement, hundreds of species have become extinct in Australia, including at least 50 bird and mammal, 4 frog and more than 60 plant species. It is likely that other species have disappeared but without our knowledge. Many other species are considered to be threatened and are listed under Australian Government legislation as endangered or vulnerable. More than 310 species of native animals and over 1180 species of native plants are at risk of disappearing forever.

As long ago as 1994 the Australian Academy of Sciences advocated a maximum population for Australia of 24 million, a figure we are fast approaching and will soon exceed. In 2010 the National Institute of Labour Studies at Flinders University looked at different levels of net overseas migration – from zero up to 260,000 p.a. – and found that all levels lead to worryingly unsustainable positions, which worsen the higher the levels become.

(featured image: koala dead at Redlands- Queensland government)

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