Tag Archives: urban sprawl

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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Perth’s lethal urban sprawl killing off Carnaby’s Black Cockatoos

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Flocks of Carnaby’s Black-Cockatoos winging their way to their evening roost sites has been a familiar sight around Perth for decades. Their days are numbered!
Updated research from BirdLife Australia shows that flocks are getting smaller as the population of these large, white-tailed, black-cockatoos declines each year.

600 people took part in Birdlife Australia’s Great Cocky Count, earlier this year, but the minimum number of Carnaby’s Black-Cockatoos recorded in the Greater Perth–Peel Region was 5518 birds, continuing the drop in numbers from previous years’ counts. Records have shown a significant, ongoing decline in their population, a reduction in flock size as well as fewer occupied roost sites around Perth.

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(image: Birdlife Australia- http://birdlife.org.au/projects/southwest-black-cockatoo-recovery)

This is not an evolutionary trend, due to climate change or other environmental trends, but deliberate habitat destruction! “Perth suburbs continue to expand into the bushland that traditionally supported black-cockatoos. So the black-cockatoos moved into the pine plantations for food and shelter, but now these plantations are being cleared and not replaced.” Thanks mainly to ridiculously high immigration levels, the human population continue to swell, and the deadly threat of urban sprawl spreads like the metastasis of cancer!

Perth’s deadly urban sprawl is heating up the metropolitan area and driving out native animal species, according to an Environmental Protection Authority report. The EPA said species that were present at the time of settlement had disappeared from the region, including 12 mammals such as the numbat, while 46 bird species were in decline and many plants were threatened with extinction. Between 2001 and 2009, some 6,812 hectares of natural bush were cleared within the Perth metropolitan region alone.

Perth’s human population grew by 2.5 per cent in the 12 months to June 2014 – an extra 48,400 people – with 2.02 million people now calling Greater Perth home. New plans mapping out locations to develop 800,000 new homes in Perth and Peel to accommodate for a future population of 3.5 million have been released by the WA Government. The cost of “progress” ignores the environmental costs, and the loss to native species!

Perth’s urban sprawl could be stopped if some of the city’s open space including parks and gardens – is sacrificed for housing! There’s never the option of slowing down our population growth! The pressure is to make the city “more compact”.

The Carnaby’s black cockatoo is one of only two species of white-tailed black cockatoo in the world. The other is the Baudin’s black cockatoo. Both are unique to Southwest Australia.

Half of Perth’s bird species have suffered declines since European settlement. Department of Parks and Wildlife senior wildlife officer Rick Dawson said at the time that 85 Carnaby’s Cockatoos had been killed on the road in eight weeks – a major blow for a species that’s declined from a wild population of 150,000 to between 20,000 and 60,0000 in 30 years.

Black Cockatoos are just another victim of ongoing human greed for economic growth, capitalistic growth, a Colonial frontier mentality, over-population destroying Nature and adding more species to our threatened/extinct list!

Take Action: sign the petition

Donate to Birdlife Australia

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Possible Federal Government EPBC de-listing of endangered species – Southern Brown Bandicoot.

In 2014, a Mammal Action Plan (MAP) was set up by the Federal Government Environment Department under authority of Minister Greg Hunt.
Among many recommendations put forward by the MAP, five early recommendations included Isoodon obesulus obesulus (Southern Brown Bandicoot (South-East)) which has been tentatively recommended to be de-listed from EPBC protection.

The reason given was that there have been too many referrals.
This does not mean SBB are in surplus, it simply reflects the obvious increasing number of applications for approval of residential/commercial development and infrastructure in locations where there are listed species and environmental constraints.

If SBB is de-listed from EPBC protection , current conservation management strategies will no longer be in place and future survival of SBB could be at risk where habitat loss occurs.

The process of listing or de-listing recommended species has several stages, one of which is to receive public comment via submissions. This opportunity will close on Friday 30th January 2015.

Due to absence of information about the MAP proposal to de-list SBB, there is little time.

Please act by lodging a submission requesting that SBB remain listed under the protection of EPBC legislation.

Gloria O’Connor

Environment South East Alliance
26th January 2015
Addendum:  SBB are now extinct at Mornington Peninsula and Frankston.

SBB were in Oakleigh in 1980’s, quarries, market gardens but eventually became extinct.
SBB also went extinct in City of Kingston (Braeside Reserve, Rowan Woodlands, The Grange) in 1990’s.

This proposal is simply based on greed for housing profits, and a blatant elimination of a natural constraint to more housing developments on crucial SBB habitat!  This vandalism of the EPBC Act, by an Environment Minister, is unacceptable!

Forward comment to:
Email: species.consultation@environment.gov.au
Mail to: Marine and Freshwater Species Conservation Section Wildlife, Heritage and Marine Division Department of the Environment, PO Box 787, Canberra ACT 2601
View consultation documentation available on Dept. of Environment website or by circulated information through community group networks.

Southern_Brown_Bandicoot_juvenile(image: juvenile Southern Brown Bandicoot)

Update: Submissions can be accepted up to the 27th February.

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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

hansbrunner_1

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