The Editor

In southern Australia, whether native forests are subject to harvesting or left untouched, if appropriate landscape scale forest fuel management is not undertaken, high intensity bushfires at a mega scale can occur in any summer, particularly when there are two or more years of below average rainfall. Any climate change effects are a reason to do more mitigation by fuel reduction.

We have a fire problem in Australia that is not being addressed. And it has nothing to do with climate change. Nor is logging a major contributing factor since very small areas are available for harvesting each year. It is about the decisions in the 1990s across most states, but particularly in NSW and Victoria to lock up millions of hectares of forest into national parks and manage them by benign neglect and allow the fuel levels to build up.

On 23 August 2021, the Ombudsman release a redacted report into his investigation of Council’s historic billing practices. The trigger for the investigation was a complaint in 2018 from the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement on behalf of Aboriginal people into Council’s electricity and water billing practices ... Council acknowledges, and is sorry for, the harm and mistrust caused by its past billing practices, is committed to implementing all of the recommendations in the report, and welcomes all community input as to how we can move forward together.

National Indigenous Radio Service. A recent investigation by the South Australian Ombudsman has found the remote council of Coober Pedy in the state’s north, pressured Aboriginal residents into requesting money from Native Title funds to help pay off their overdue electricity and water bills.

After four months of delivery in the metropolitan area, the Heavy Vehicle Driving Operations Skill Set will now be delivered through South Regional TAFE to address the shortage of truck drivers in regional WA.

In a cultural first for Australia, a sapling from a sacred tree revered by the world’s Buddhist community has been imported from Sri Lanka in what can only be described as a great biosecurity success story.

Queensland Resources Minister Scott Stewart said the Federal Court will recognise the Warrgamay People’s long-standing rights to more than 185,000 hectares of land and water at a virtual hearing ... the decision covers an area from Lucinda on the coast, up to and along the Seaview Range and into Girringun National Park.

The use of the feed additive Bovaer ® (3-NOP) was recently evaluated as part of an MLA-funded project on reducing enteric methane emissions in Australian feedlot operations, and was found to reduce methane production by up to 90%.    

Australia’s aquaculture sector continues on a trajectory of steady growth, but the entire industry has experienced disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the  latest edition of ABARES’s  Australian Fisheries and Aquaculture Statistics.