threatened species

Alan Hood is a Flood Researcher. Melbourne Water owns this Retarding Basin and their maintenance contractor, John Holland - KBR Joint Venture intend removing trees and various works in "late January" - any day now.

The Australian Wildlife Protection Council has written a letter to Melbourne Water, David Fairbridge, Frankston, and Lisa Neville, the Victorian Minister for the Environment, about a plans to remove mature trees from a wildlife corridor on the batters of a retardant basin in Frankston.

Melbourne Water is about to de-tree Frankston koala corridor by removing mature trees from banks of a huge park with a water retarding basin in it at Lee Street Frankston 3199. They are claiming that the trees are 'destabilising' the banks.

Wildlife rescuer and carer, Rebecca Koller, has observed an unprecedented number of Spectacled flying fox casualties in a traditional breeding site located near a new hotel construction in Cairnes. The spectacled flying fox is a threatened species.[1] Despite many attempts to get the Australian government to investigate and or intervene, the government has failed to get back to her.

A Crest-tailed Mulgara, a small carnivorous marsupial known only from fossilised bone fragments and presumed extinct in NSW for more than century, has been discovered in Sturt National Park north-west of Tibooburra.

Clearing our Koalas Away is a damning new report by Dailan Pugh (North East Forest Alliance, July 2017) that puts together intensive logging maps recently obtained via Freedom of Information

This scientific study into the endangered Growling Grass Frog was released overnight and looks at how the genetic diversity of the frog is being negatively impacted by the rapid urbanisation of Melbourne’s fringe. They were once very abundant in Victoria (so abundant that they used to feed them to the snakes the Melbourne Zoo!) and now only a few populations exist around Melbourne.

The scientists have found a population of the frogs in the Cardinia Shire, which has an increased genetic diversity that they hope to protect.

Claire Keely, the lead scientist on the paper, is both a PhD student and part of the Live Exhibits team at the Melbourne Museum (where they have some of the pretty green frogs in question).

Compassion was a far more effective environmental management tool than “poison and guns,” award winning ecologist Dr Arian Wallach told a recent conference of conservationists and farmers. And dingoes were an ideal agent for saving the environment and promoting co-existence between native and exotic species. The May 17, 2015 conference, “Dingo – Friend or Foe” was held at Hervey Bay Community Centre, just across the Great Sandy Straits from World Heritage listed Fraser Island where, it was argued, Australia’s war on the dingo began. Three prominent local farmers, Harry Jamieson, Lindsay Titmarsh and James Hansen told the conference of dingo problems, worse in recent years than ever before. (Article by Arthur Gorrie. )

This article describes the important contribution of bandicoots to tree health and ecology. It raises the much wider costs of bandicoot extinction and tree die-off associated with such extinction.

See also: 1 in 10 wild bees faces extinction in Europe, study warns (25/3/15)

Inappropriate fuel-reduction could see more losses of threatened species.

In late January, 2014, after wildfires tore through two conservation parks in South Australia, researchers scoured the charred terrain for signs of life.  Tragically, they found nothing; only the charred silence of an empty, burnt landscape!  The 60 remaining breeding pairs of Mallee emu-wren (Stipiturus mallee) in South Australia had been lost and the species was now extinct in the state.

The fires ignited in two conservation parks in South Australia’s Mallee region that were home to the only remaining South Australian populations of the endangered Mallee Emu-wren, and another fire in the Victorian mallee, 12 kilometres southwest of Ouyen, burnt the entire 13,000-hectare reserve that was one of two small populations in Victoria of the endangered Black-eared Miner. (Article republished from the Australian Wildlife Protection Website at "End of the line for the tiny Mallee Emu-Wren?"

Jill Redwood, as coordinator of Environment East Gippsland, conducted a landmark environmental court case that saw her group awarded damages against the Government Forestry corporation, VicForests, who were told to conduct proper investigations for the presence of threatened species in areas they logged and to design and enact plans to safeguard them according to the law. Three years later the Giant Trees Walk on Brown Mountain, which EEG had created in order to develop awareness of the rape of East Gippsland's forests, has been destroyed by persons unknown, equipped with heavy equipment and chainsaws.

The Australian Wildlife Protection Council wrote on September 1, 2014 to the Senate Standing Committees on Environment and Communications: "We condemn the Abbott Government’s attacks on the Great Barrier Reef, other priceless environmental institutions and native wildlife across Australia. We are dismayed by their lack of environmental protection since [the Abbott Government's]coming to power."

In this week’s budget Premier Mike Baird slashed funding for the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage by almost 10 per cent.
(image: Environment Minister (NSW) Rob Stokes)
This review is nothing more than a thinly veiled attack on the most important laws protecting native plants and animals in NSW.
Conservationists fear that threatened plants and animals are under attack from a review of conservation laws in NSW, due to a review to land clearing laws.
(Reprinted from AWPC website)

It is shocking to hear that several Frankston Councillors have voted to build over the last koala corridor in this crucial area. Craig Thomson has made a Submission to Frankston Council item 11.8 AGAINST Request for a Planning Scheme amendment to REMOVE 42 hectares from the Green Wedge Conservation Zone to allow 350 houses to be built. He says, "The land is a vital Koala migration route- it means local extinction of koalas in South Frankston. The VOTE was close 5 to 4 against the koalas. The next step for this item is for further community consultation and the Planning scheme amendment to go before the Minister."

In 1996, on the sixtieth anniversary of the last Tasmanian tiger’s death in Hobart Zoo in 1936, 7 September was declared ‘National Threatened Species Day’ — a time to reflect on what happened to the thylacine and how similar fates could await other native plants and animals unless appropriate action is taken.

Image: Numbat, Perth Zoo, Western Australia

In this save the birds campaign, Paul Sullivan, the Chief Executive Officer of Birdlife Australia, writes of how frustrated he is that the major parties are just ongoing standing by while birds and other creatures go extinct. He argues (as if it should be necessary) that it would cost very little money to save each threatened species. He does not mention how overpopulation, overdevelopment and agriculture are eating up habitat, but you know...

Measures are now in front of parliament to allow logging contracts to be signed up to 20 years and give the state-owned timber company VicForests more control over when and where to log.

The Leadbeater's Possum is a nationally threatened species.  II has been estimated that as few as 1,500 of these possums are left in the world. 

Like Lemmings jumping off the cliff towards deliberate mass suicide when their populations explode, VicForests are programmed for destruction.

The Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC) is gravely concerned by the ‘use and commercialisation of Australian native animals’, their extinction rates, cruelty inflicted on them, and recreational hunting. Even more so, given that Australia has the world’s highest extinction rate. Instead of apologising for crimes against nature, the Victorian State Government seeks to extend further exploitation.

Twenty thirteen awaits us tomorrow. What is reasonable to expect of the year which some may see as being an unlucky number? Should we reach for the sky or just try to maintain business as usual?

Environment Minister Burke has shown more courage than previous environmental ministers, surprising environmentalists. Koalas in NSW, Queensland and the ACT will be classified as vulnerable under a protected listing by Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke. Mr Burke says koala numbers have dropped by 40 per cent in Queensland and by a third in NSW over the past two decades.

"Minister Burke has ruled out protection for all koalas and we are concerned these northwest NSW koala populations may be left off the threatened species list, even while their populations are falling dangerously low." Zoologist David Paull: 75 per cent decline in the relative abundance of koalas in the Pilliga from 1993 to 2011. Estimates only 500 to 2000 koalas left in the area.

On the northern coast of N.S.W. adjoining the Gold Coast and S.E.Queensland lies Tweed Shire, christened as the Green Caldera by once Environment Minister Peter Garrett. This area is famous for one of the highest biodiversity levels in Australia and infamous for the greatest level of biodiversity loss in N.S.W. thanks to the fact that the vast majority of Tweed councillors are pro-development.

Injunction extended

The Supreme Court 19th September extended the injunction to stop logging in Sylvia Creek forest near Toolangi after VicForests agreed to the moratorium.

MyEnvironment - Toolangi forest logging halted until 2012

The conflict between koalas and humans is due to the fact that koalas prefer forests growing in better soils, and most of these forests have been chopped down for agriculture and housing.
The Australian Koala Foundation estimates that there a possibly as few as 43,000 koalas remaining in Australia. Koalas are a “vulnerable species” in NSW.

Controversial Tweed Shire Council has a history of making poor environmental decisions that are hugely unpopular with the largely Green-oriented residents. It is the second most complained about council in New South Wales. However in November 2010 the councillors voted for the worst possible blunder which will be recorded as a major crime against Nature.