Land & environment

Up to 60,000 tonnes of softwood logs will start to be shipped off Kangaroo Island to support South Australia’s forestry sector and booming housing construction industry, with applications to the Construction Softwood Transport Assistance Program (CSTAP) now open. The CSTAP is jointly funded by the Morrison Coalition Government and Marshall Liberal Government and provides assistance to freight bushfire-affected softwood logs salvaged from Kangaroo Island to the South Australian mainland and then to sawmills with immediate capacity to process structural timber.

In a first for the Southern Hemisphere, researchers have shown a bacteria can successfully sterilise and eradicate the invasive, disease carrying  Aedes aegypti  mosquito which is responsible for spreading dengue, yellow fever and Zika.    The breakthrough could support the suppression and potential eradication of Aedes aegypti worldwide.

Tweed Shire Council has been recognised as one of three top leaders in global river management at the prestigious 21st Thiess International Riverprize  for its work on the Tweed River ... Council has been working with a broad range of partners for more than 30 years on projects to increase the health of the Tweed River, following a series of devastating fish kills in the late 1980s.

The Southern Queensland Inland and New South Wales Border Regional Water Alliance (SQINB-RWA) has committed to advancing negotiations around planning for the area’s long-term water security ... “Cooperation between the three levels of government will be a key feature of finding solutions and identifying new water sources": Toowoomba Regional Council Mayor Paul Antonio.

The draft plan for the management of wild horses in Kosciuszko National Park has been released for public comment. Environment Minister Matt Kean said the draft plan strikes the right balance between protecting the fragile alpine ecosystems and recognising the cultural heritage values of the wild horses ... The draft plan is open for public comment until Tuesday, 2 November 2021.

Robert Onfray. Before I started our travels, I recall hearing and reading stories about the parlous state of the Murray River and its basin. These calls are always louder when there is a drought. On our trip, I have spent a lot of time on the Murray, the Lachlan and Edward Rivers, as well as the Murrumbidgee Irrigation area. We also stopped at Wentworth to observe the mouth of the Darling into the Murray River.

In September, strong winds often drive tens of thousands of blue sea creatures ashore, and the beaches are littered with their dead bodies. The surface of the open ocean supports large populations of these organisms that live their lives afloat, sometimes forming huge rafts kilometres long, carried by the currents and blown along by the wind.

Chris Murray. From the mid-1920s until 1941, when the palm seed exports collapsed during World War II, ratting was no recreational pastime, but an obligation for all Islanders who received income from palm seed sales via the Island Board’s shareholding system (and that included all Island men, women and children) ... Mary Marlowe takes up the story of a typical rat hunt in some detail ... The dogs, all three of them, were quivering at the rumps and lifting their forepaws from the ground in anticipation of jumping for the rat the instant it should appear out of the banyan log ...

LHI Board. Residents and visitors are advised that a leopard seal has been observed on the southern end of Middle Beach since Sunday and is likely to stay in the area for several days to rest and recover ... The seal has cookie cutter shark bite wounds, which are showing signs of healing, and the seal will be monitored over the coming days.

Greater Shepparton City Council and RiverConnect are inviting the community to join BirdLife, Australia’s annual Aussie Backyard Bird Count from 18-24 October 2021 and discover the birds sharing our local backyards, parks and reserves.

The professional association representing some 1,000 forest scientists, researchers and forest land managers in Australia has welcomed the paper  Indigenous knowledge and the shackles of wilderness  by Associate Professor and Wiradjuri man Michael-Shawn Fletcher. The Institute of Foresters of Australia and Australian Forest Growers President Bob Gordon said the paper provided an opportunity for solution focused dialogue regarding how we manage our forests, and highlighted the need to engage and work closely with Traditional Owners.

The world-famous Daintree National Park has been handed back to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people, part of 160,000 hectares of land in Cape York that is again in the hands of traditional owners following an agreement with the Queensland government. The planet’s oldest rainforest joins Uluru and Kakadu as UNESCO world heritage sites under management of First Nations people.

It took three fire trucks, two water trucks, and an excavator to put out a fire at the Lakes Creek Road Waste Management Facility ... “If you ever tossed an old mobile phone or even a battery in your general waste and thought ‘what could be the harm?’, well incidents like this are the answer,” Councillor Latcham said.

Geoff Helisma. A group of Southgate residents is opposing a proposal to develop a solar plant in an area they say is “visible to residents all around”. Tasmanian-based company, Infinergy Pacific, wrote to residents who live near the proposal on August 5, advising that it is “currently investigating the feasibility of developing a solar farm on neighbouring land at 58 Boorman’s Lane, Lower Southgate” ... Spokesperson for the residents, Steve Grimes, said, “We’re not anti-solar, we’re against the location they are currently proposing.”

NSW is set to attract more than $37 billion in investment while slashing  emissions by 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, under updated projections and objectives released as part of the  Net Zero: Stage 1 Implementation Update.  Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the state’s new objective of halving emissions by 2030 – up from 35 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 – shows that NSW is serious about setting itself up for the future while helping the world decarbonise.

Once limited to science-fiction, drones and facial recognition technology have since become part of modern life and now the technology is being harnessed to help save Australia’s koalas. In new research being undertaken by Flinders University in partnership with conservation charity Koala Life and the SA Government, non-invasive koala monitoring techniques are being developed using drones and facial recognition technology to count, identify and re-identify koalas.

The World Fisheries Congress might be over, but all of the presentations will be available online for another six months, so it’s not too late  to register. In the meantime, if you missed it, here are some spoilers for you.

There is much debate within the scientific community regarding the relationship between bushfire and forestry but what is not debated is the overwhelming impact climate change is having on the frequency and intensity of severe weather events and resulting bushfires. In the past 50-years there has been a 40% increase in very high fire danger days, and this is set to triple in some parts of Victoria by the end of the century according to the International Journal of Wildland Fire.