Search

Mountain Journal

Environment, news, culture from the Australian Alps

Open Search
Tag

environment

Environmental protection laws under attack

Nothofagus, Mt Toorongo, VIC

Changes are afoot to dramatically wind back cornerstone federal environmental protection laws. Under these changes, State Governments would be given sweeping powers to assess and approve major development projects. If implemented, these changes would be a disaster for our nation’s environment and wildlife.

In 1999, the Howard Government introduced the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. It was meant to protect environmental areas and wildlife that were so important, and so at risk, that their existence was of national importance.

Since it was introduced, the EPBC Act has saved only a few wild places from mining and other development. Many thousands of developments have gone ahead.

Australia’s environment is now under unprecedented attack. Nine open cut mines are planned for Tasmania’s pristine Tarkine forests. The Broome community are battling the construction of a massive gas hub at James Price Point that would mark the beginning of the industrialisation of the Kimberley . The Great Barrier Reef is becoming a coal and gas highway, and could lose its World Heritage status.

The State of the Environment Report 2011 paints a grim picture. More and more endangered species are moving closer to extinction, and we are losing our precious places.

40 years backwards

This is the most serious attack on environmental protection in over 40 years. It doesn’t take much imagination to see what the environmental implications of state decision-making would look like for our environment. In Queensland, Premier Campbell Newman has opposed any delays to coal projects, saying that Queensland is “in the business of coal”.

In Western Australia, four out of five Environmental Protection Authority decision-makers on the proposed James Price Point gas hub had to disqualify themselves because of conflicts of interest; the single remaining member, unsurprisingly, approved the proposal.

In Victoria, intervention by Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke was required to stop Premier Baillieu from overturning the previous government’s ban on alpine grazing, to reintroduce cattle into national parks under the guise of a ‘grazing trial’ that was likened to ‘scientific whaling’. Meanwhile, the New South Wales Government has changed laws to permit private hunters to shoot in national parks and allow fishing in critical grey nurse shark habitat.

The major environmental victories of past decades have largely been won by the Federal Government overturning bad development decisions by state governments. Without strong federal laws, the Franklin River would be dammed, the Great Barrier Reef would have oil rigs and Fraser Island would be a sand mine.

Yet later this year, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meets to agree to the framework for handing over of approval powers to the states. Decisions about renewing Regional Forest Agreements could be made at any time.

We need decision-makers to hear our voices now. Friends of the Earth is mounting a campaign − ‘Nature: Not Negotiable’ − to prevent the gutting of federal environment laws and to strengthen the federal government’s role in protecting the natural environment.

This campaign includes mobilising around the upcoming COAG meeting, organising with local campaigns, lobbying and community campaigning.

For more information on this work or to get involved, please email lauren.caulfield@foe.org.au

You can also find us on Twitter @naturenotneg or on Facebook at ‘Nature: Not Negotiable’.

Please support our campaign to ensure these powers are not undermined.

Info on the campaign is available here.

Our petition is available here.

0

Lessons to learn from the Snowy

The following opinion piece comes from the Weekly Times.

Snowy River in Kosciusko National Park

GOVERNMENTS have failed the mighty river, writes LOUISE CRISP

The big spring releases from Jindabyne Dam into the Snowy River will capture the media’s attention this week.

Snowy Hydro Ltd will allow up to 84 gigalitres to flow down the Snowy River during the next two weeks.

Although they are much reduced, the spring releases are intended to mimic the huge spring snowmelt flows the Snowy was named for.

Most people now believe the Snowy has been saved.

When Jindabyne Dam was completed in 1967, the Snowy River had 99 per cent of its headwaters captured and diverted west to the Murray-Darling Basin for electricity generation and irrigation, resulting in severe degradation of the Snowy and considerable economic loss to the downstream communities.

In 1996, an expert panel scientific report identified that a healthy river needed the equivalent of 28 per cent annual natural flow below Jindabyne.

Ten years ago, the Victorian, NSW and Commonwealth governments signed agreements and legislation to fund a 10-year plan to return environmental flows to the Snowy.

The three shareholder governments of Snowy Hydro Ltd were committed to providing $375 million to Water for Rivers for savings in the Murray and Murrumbidgee systems to off-set increased flows by 2012 to:

THE Snowy River below Jindabyne Dam – up to 21 per cent of annual natural flow.

SNOWY montane rivers – up to 118 gigalitres a year.

SEVENTY gigalitres a year to the Murray.

The three governments also agreed to return up to 28 per cent to the Snowy below Jindabyne Dam post-2012.

The legislation also required the NSW Government to establish an independent Snowy Scientific Committee to provide advice on the best environmental flow release regime and produce annual state-of-environment reports on the rivers affected by the Snowy scheme.

So where are we 10 years later?

In November 2010 and October last year, large spring flows were released into the Snowy River below Jindabyne from water savings obtained by Water for Rivers.

While the Snowy has seen some good flows this year, it is far from saved.

The annual allocation to the Snowy below Jindabyne this water year (beginning May 1) is only about 15 per cent of the annual natural flow, and half the required minimum environmental flow identified by scientists in 1996. Releases below Jindabyne are unlikely to be much more than 15 per cent, as half the water acquired by Water for Rivers is general security or low reliability.

These entitlements would only deliver much real water to the river in exceptionally wet years.

The upper Snowy River in Kosciuszko National Park was scheduled to receive increased flows from 2007-08 (below Guthega Dam) and from 2009-10 (below Island Bend Dam). However, these sections of the Snowy have not received environmental flows.

For months the Snowy River in Kosciuszko National Park remains a dry stony riverbed.

In addition, the main eastern tributary, the Eucumbene River, and many other tributaries were not included in the original Snowy legislation and will not receive environmental flows.

Snowy Hydro Ltd has made one release to the Murray in 2005-06 of 38 gigalitres.

There is now 230 gigalitres of taxpayer-funded water savings owed the Murray River held by Snowy Hydro Ltd in Snowy Scheme storages. Nevertheless, the Murray Darling Basin Authority has included it in baseline modelling for the proposed Basin plan.

The 2002 legislation also required NSW to establish the independent Snowy Scientific Committee but it was delayed until 2008.

The committee produced a series of invaluable public reports on the adequacy of flows to the Snowy and the upper Murrumbidgee.

The committee’s term expired on May 15 last year and despite commitments from the three relevant NSW ministers, it has still not been re-established.

The 10-year plan to restore the Snowy is a simpler and smaller version of the proposed Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

The failure of governments therefore, to deliver the environmental outcomes for the Snowy, does not bode well for the future of the Murray.

    Louise Crisp is vice chairwoman of the Snowy River Alliance

Check here for a you-tube video on the upper Snowy river.

0

Help needed to protect Australia’s biodiversity from Hawkweeds on the Bogong High Plains

Orange hawkweed flower. Photo: Mark Imhof, DPI

2012/13 Bogong High Plains
Hawkweed Surveillance Volunteer Program

Help needed to protect Australia’s biodiversity from Hawkweeds on the Bogong High Plains

Native to Europe, Hawkweeds have recently become established on mainland Australia.  Posing a serious threat to Australian biodiversity and the structure of natural communities, it is imperative that the incursion is eradicated before it’s too late.

Hawkweeds spread quickly via runners and roots forming dense mats, inhibiting and out-competing native vegetation.  In grassy ecosystems like the High Plains, dense patches of the weeds dominate the spaces between grass tussocks that are vital for the survival and recruitment of native flora and fauna.

Survey sessions will be conducted during the active flowering period. Most sessions will be five days long, the session between Christmas and New Year will be four days. Attendance for a full session is preferred but is not essential.

Accommodation will be provided at Falls Creek. Transport will be provided to survey areas each day.

The surveys for 2012/2013 season will be held over the following dates:

Session 1: Monday the 10th – Friday the 14th of December
Session 2: Monday the 17th – Friday the 21st of December
Session 3: Thursday the 27th – Sunday the 30th of December
Session 4: Monday the 7th – Friday the 11th of January
Session 5: Monday the 14th – Friday the 18th of January

For more information or to express your interest in the program, please contact:

Keith Primrose
hawkweed@parks.vic.gov.au
Mobile: 0428 508 299
Mt. Beauty Parks Victoria Office: (03) 5754 4693

0

a copper zinc gold mine in the Vic Alps?

Benambra from McMillans Lookout. Image: en.wikipedia.org

The Stockman Project is located in the Victorian Alps, 470km by road north-east of Melbourne and 60km by road north east of Omeo. The project contains two copper-zinc-lead-silver-gold rich deposits, called Wilga and Currawong. Wilga was discovered in 1978 and Currawong in 1979. Denehurst mined the copper rich core of Wilga deposit from 1992 to 1996. In 2006, following rehabilitation of the plant site and tailings dam by the Victorian Department of Primary Industries, the project was put out for public tender as part of an exploration incentive program. Jabiru Metals Limited (Jabiru) was awarded the project in March 2007.

The Independence Group has now bought up Jabiru, and is proposing to recommission the Wilga mine and establish a new mine four kilometres to the north (the Currawong deposit).

Check here for a summary of the project, and some of the issues concerning locals.

0

Pest trees in Kosciuszko reinvented as mulch

This news release comes from the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage.

Image: NSW National Parks – Office of Environment & Heritage

Media release: 10 September 2012

Field staff have been converting pest trees into valuable mulch to improve native animal habitat and suppress invasive blackberry and briar weeds in parts of Kosciuszko National Park.

NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) Senior Field Supervisor Danny Matthews said the mulched trees, mostly poplars, had been spreading at an alarming rate.

“Five field staff recently spent 26 days removing and chipping hundreds of trees over an area of six hectares at the Talbingo Landslip Quarry near Talbingo Dam wall,” Mr Matthews said.

“During the construction of the Snowy Scheme, and particularly between the 1950s and 1970s, exotic trees were planted for erosion control and this had unintended consequences for native ecosystems.”

Mr Matthews said European species including willow, broom and poplar were planted in parts of Kosciuszko National Park and in many cases they had spread and become weeds.

“Replacing exotic trees with native vegetation will not only protect soil stability, it will have broader environmental benefits.

“And chipping these trees has produced about 800 cubic metres of mulch, which we have spread to boost organic levels in the soil and help stop weed infestations in the undergrowth.”

This major woody weed eradication program in Kosciuszko National Park is tackling exotic trees on Guthega Road, reducing Scotch Broom in the Snowy River, and removing kilometres of willows in the Tumut River.

More work is planned this year, including the removal of thousands of willow stems in the Eucumbene River and helicopter-based work in the upper reaches of the Tumut River between the T2 power station and the Elliott Way.

Weed eradication programs like the one underway in Kosciuszko are one way the Office of Environment and Heritage enhances the care and management of National Parks for a healthy environment.

1

geothermal technology in the Victorian Alps

Following on from a recent post on this site about a number of ski lodges at Mt Hotham installing solar panels to provide power, this is an update about a club at Hotham which has also started to use geothermal power for heating.

Image: Brush Ski Club

According to Wikipedia,

“A geothermal heat pump, ground source heat pump (GSHP), or ground heat pump is a central heating and/or cooling system that pumps heat to or from the ground.

It uses the earth as a heat source (in the winter) or a heat sink (in the summer). This design takes advantage of the moderate temperatures in the ground to boost efficiency and reduce the operational costs of heating and cooling systems”.

According to the Brush Ski Club,

“Victoria’s Alpine Resorts are facing the challenging hurdles of rapidly escalating energy costs, climate change and the national target to cut greenhouse emissions. We fully endorse Australia’s Keep Winter Cool initiative and are proactively committed to sustainability outcomes.

In an effort to jump these hurdles Mount Hotham’s B’Rush Ski Club has searched for many years to find an energy efficient and environmentally friendly solution to our energy requirements. In a location where winter temperatures dip to below minus 10 degrees keeping a large building at a comfortable room temperature has a high energy demand. In the past, B’Rush Ski Club has employed a combination of electric and gas fired boilers to provide hot water and heating for our guests. With energy prices on the rise and the desire to reduce our carbon footprint the club began a search for an alternate energy source.

After looking to the USA and Europe, where similar alpine environments exist, the Club decided on ‘GeoExchange’ or Ground Sourced Heat Pump (GSHP) technology. GeoExchange technology is commonly used in Europe and North America to provide low cost, low emission heating and cooling of buildings. Ground Source Heat Pumps or GSHPs are recognised as the most efficient and environmentally friendly heating and cooling systems available today, using as little as 25 % of the energy of conventional systems. This translates directly to lower costs and lower emissions.

A GHSP system is much like a reverse cycle air conditioner. The major difference is that instead of using the outside air to provide the energy the GSHPs extract renewable heat from the ground via a system of bores drilled into the earth. These bores carry a refrigerant loop that extracts ground heat, transporting it into the building. This solution will provide both heating for the building, via floor heating and radiator panels, as well as hot water for 40 guests.

The GeoExchange project has been facilitated by the Victorian Government’s ‘Four Seasons Energy Pilot Program’. The Victorian Government has provided 50% funding for the bore drilling as well as expertise and guidance in design and implementation. The assistance of the Government has turned a possibility into a reality.

The installation of this technology, in combination with a substantial upgrade to building insulation and an efficient floor system has cut our energy consumption by 75 % and our fossil fuel usage by more than 80 %. The payback period of 6 years is considered by the club to be completely acceptable given the expected 30 to 50 year life of our building. Since commissioning, forecasted savings have been exceeded with several spin-off benefits. The new system is spectacularly comfortable, has been universally acclaimed by our guests, the resort and wider communities and has been featured in several publications and forums, inc the 2009 Alpine Resorts Sustainability Forum at Thredbo on the 1st May.

This project is currently the highest GSHP installation in Australia and the first (of we hope, many) in an alpine environment”.

Congratulations to Brush Ski Club for their leadership on this. A number of other lodges and businesses in the Hotham – Dinner Plain area are also investigating using this energy source.

2

Ski resorts go renewable

 

The following comes from the ESPN Action Sports website and shows what is possible with a bit of effort and vision.

Panels at McMillan Lodge, Mt Hotham, VIC

As the environmental agenda continues to slip from the concerns of most resort management bodies in Australia, it has been the snow sports community who have stepped into a leadership position, with a large number of lodges and businesses signing up for solar PV panels over the past year, especially at Mt Hotham.

The following is the introduction to the article, please check the website for the full piece.

The author is Jesse Huffman.

U.S. ski resorts tap renewable energy sources to combat climate change

As the volatility of the 2011-12 season made clear, the stake ski resort’s have in resolving climate change is a big one. Over the past three years, resorts like Bolton, Burke, Jiminy Peak and Grouse Mountain have installed wind turbines, while others have pursued efficiency updates, in an effort to responsibly produce, and reduce, the power and heat involved in swinging chairs and heating lodges all winter long. Now, four more areas, from local ski hills in the Northeast to major resorts in the Rockies, have installed or invested in renewable power sources ranging from solar to biomass to coalmine methane.

Smuggler’s Notch closed early this winter after a spring meltdown saw the highest March temperatures in Vermont’s history. The same solar energy that drove skiers and riders batty as it took away their snow is now being put to use by an array of 35 solar trackers, which collectively produce 205,000 kWh per year — around five percent of Smuggler’s total electrical use. The array provides enough juice for most of the resort’s Village Lodge.

Dan Maxon, Smuggler’s Notch Solar Installation Project Manager, toured me through the installation on a recent morning, when the GPS-enabled trackers, manufactured by a Vermont company called ALLEarth Renewables, were tilted east to catch the a.m. sun.

“We believe it is important not only for ski resorts, but for all energy users to take some responsibility for their energy consumption,” Maxon told me. “There was a good confluence of energy and desire that made this project come together — we’d been looking at various renewable projects for six-seven years, but couldn’t pull them off. This one we could.”

Aspen is often seen as being one of the greenest of the global resorts, so I have included the section of the essay that relates to them. Coal bed methane is a fiercely contested issue across many parts of the world, so Aspen’s choice of energy source is interesting:

In Colorado, Aspen Ski Company is taking a leading role in developing an innovative form of clean energy from coalmine methane. The practice of venting methane from coalmines to prevent underground explosions has turned into a climate change bottleneck with 20 times more warming potential than CO2, coalmine methane contributed ten percent of the all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2010, according to the EPA.

Aspen is the capital investor in a new project at Elk Creek Mine that uses waste methane to power a dynamo and generate electricity, downgrading the methane to CO2 and at the same time. The project is a first of its scale in the United States, and helped net the resort a National Ski Area Association Golden Eagle Award for Environmental Excellence this year.

“We’ve been looking for a large scale clean energy project for over a decade and we finally found one,” says Auden Schendler, Aspen Vice President of Sustainability.

Schendler expects the 3 megawatt project to go online around September, and says that in a matter of month it will make approximately the same amount of electricity that Aspen uses annually, around 25 million kilowatt hours. “Because we’re destroying methane in the process,” adds Schendler, “this is equivalent to triple offsetting our carbon footprint each year.”

 

0

If snow making is the future, lets get it right

As winter gets into full swing and forecasts tell us there will be good falls in coming days its time to get out there.

I normally do a quick pre season assessment of developments around the resorts when it comes to environmental initatives, but given the lack of new initatives, it hardly seemed worthwhile this year.

One pleasing note is that a growing number of resorts are upgrading their snow making equipment to more energy efficient machines.

In autumn, Falls Creek got a bit of media coverage about the new fleet of snow guns they had brought in from Italy.

Falls Creek Maintenance Manager Geoff Sorensen said: “our ongoing quest to make snow using less energy is coming to fruition. This winter we’ll replace energy-hungry guns with more efficient, low-energy snow guns and we will be trialling Techno Alpin’s TF 10 from Europe”.

“This is the first time it will be used in the southern hemisphere by a company renowned for its snowmaking expertise. Our weather can be more marginal (for snowmaking) down under and harsher than what is experienced in the northern hemisphere alpine resorts.

The TF10 snow gun is a fully automatic, low-pressure type fan gun.

There are also more than 130 TechnoAlpin snow guns at Perisher and 70 at Hotham.

Given that climate science tells us we will have more erratic winters, and it is reasonable to assume we will rely more on human-made snow in coming years, moving to lower impact snow guns is a good move.

0

logging and Melbourne’s water catchments

The following comes from Central Highlands Action Group and highlights the logging issue within Melbourne’s drinking water catchments.

Starvation Creek – Yarra Catchment. Image: CHAG.

Melbourne Water and Premier Baillieu overcharge us for a desalination plant while they plunder our free water from Melbourne’s catchments subject to logging.

Logging in Toolangi, tributary to the Upper Goulburn, is already ripping 3,807 billion litres of water from ‘paying’ downstream users and irrigators worsening over the next century. VicForests, the governments logging company, don’t pay for this water cost nor do Australian Paper (makers of Reflex copy paper) who receive 50% of VicForests wood supply. The owners of Australian Paper are the Japanese multi-national pulp conglomerate Nippon Paper, whose office is in Tokyo. VicForests have only paid a legitimate rent for this forest ‘use’ once since their inception in 2004.

VicForest have yet to break even since 2005 without the aid of grants. They are insolvent but are exempt from Part IV of the Trade Practices Act that would see these matters investigated by a third party like the ACCC. VicForests have avoided audits by the Auditor General after 8 years of operating.

In 2008 the Victorian ALP government received the results of the Wood and Water study committed to in the Regional Forest Agreement process (RFA) in 1998. The results of the hydrological study recommended ending logging in 2009/10 in order to improve water yields to Melbourne (DSE/Mein 2008). This was flatly rejected by government and as a result environment and local government stakeholders abandoned participation in the study.

As temperatures broke state records, angry at the state governments response to dismissing the option to end catchment logging, fifteen local governments independently carried a motion to stop catchment logging by 2010, including the Melbourne City Council. The government ignored this concern and proposed a very expensive buffer.

In 2008 the state ALP government commissioned a desalination plant and maintained clearfell logging the catchments, which in effect, firmly privatised the otherwise historically free water resource. Melbourne has enjoyed a clean, heathy water supply as a result of government in the late 1800‘s kicking timber-getters and miners out of the catchments. As Melbourne’s population grew, new water sources were channeled and created like the Thomson dam at a considerable cost to Victorians. The Thomson provides up to 60% of Melbourne’s water and is now the most heavily logged catchment in the network.

In the 2010 election the Coalition Minister for Water and Forestry, Peter Walsh, committed to hastening logging rotations down from 80 years to 50 years in the Timber Industry Action Plan (TIAP) in order to create more resource from the dwindling forests. This ultimately means that regenerating forests, after logging, growing in the band of highest rainfall, will be kept in perpetual thirst. Regrowing ash species forests lose up to 50% of water run off at 50 years of age due to their enormous growth capacity. It’s not HOW MUCH you log its where and what species you log that’s costing Melbourne critical free water!

In the TIAP, Minister Walsh made a commitment to log parks and strengthened commitments to log water catchments as an electoral promise to his National party colleagues (many of whom are loggers). So under current policy and its effects, our catchments will never yield water at their maximum delivery and we have to pay for the forfeiture via a desalination plant no-one can afford. Minister Walsh runs VicForests and Melbourne Water so he sets any checks and balances, should any exist.

In this Melbourne By-Election voters should demand that candidates openly declare their policy on Melbourne’s Water! It maybe the single greatest issue for the sustainability and survival of Melbourne.

Check here for details on protests held earlier in 2012.

0

recreational hunting in NSW National Parks?

The NSW Premier has announced plans to open up almost 80 national parks and reserves to hunting, covering close to 3 million hectares or 40% of all NSW parks and reserves.

This announcement, part of a deal with the Shooters and Fishers Party to ensure passage of the government’s electricity privatisation bill – will allow shooting of feral animals in ”a limited number of areas under strict conditions”.

It has been widely condemned.

The following, from someone living near one of the Parks to be affected, sums up the issues nicely. Check the link at the end for further background. If you live in NSW please sign the letter.

My wife and I live across the water from Kosciuszko National Park and our house is within easy gunshot range of the park. The wife and I spend at least two days a week hiking in the park and the decision by the O’Farrell government to allow amateur shooters to roam our national parks is an absolute disgrace and should be opposed by every environmental group in Australia. Not just in NSW because as the Shooters Party gains more members and more clout, they will surely do deals with other present and future state and federal governments that will impact adversely on our treasured state and national parks and wildlife areas.

National parks were formed not just as quiet natural places to shuck off the stresses of modern living and a place to get away from it all, but to protect Australia’s wild places. Their ecological integrity must remain intact – meaning that the structure and function of the ecosystems with their various wildlife habitats are minimally unimpaired by human activity. Allowing bands of amateur hunters with bows and arrows and high powered rifles and pig dogs to roam the parks is hardly in the spirit that the parks were formed.

Park rangers have slammed a decision to allow hunting in NSW national parks, saying they shouldn’t have to work in fear of their safety – Sure and let’s no forget about the publics safety either !

The NSW government has now said that there will be no shooting allowed in world heritage or wilderness areas – Should we believe them?

Barry O’Farrell has broken a pre election promise not to allow hunting in the parks, and doing so has trashed the government’s environmental credentials. He has lied to the public once and so he will surely allow even more concessions in his dealings with the Shooters and Fishers Party when he needs their support.

I realize (reluctantly) that culling of feral animals in the park is necessary from time to time, but this should only be done by trained National Park personnel, and or professional shooters.

I would bet that over 90% of Australians do not want people with guns and pig dogs roaming their favourite park, and so I believe that all environmental groups in the country should protest immediately.

“Say no to recreational hunting in NSW National Parks”

Ken

Please sign the petition here.

For a map of affected Parks, please check here.

1

Vic Govt told to reveal cattle grazing documents

This story comes from the ABC. Journalist is Gus Goswell.

Image: VNPA

The Victorian Government has been ordered to hand over internal documents relating to its alpine cattle grazing trial.

The controversial trial in the Alpine National Park was blocked by the Federal Government but the State Government has launched an appeal.

It says the trial was designed to reduce the bushfire risk, based on scientific evidence.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) has ordered that Department of Sustainability and Environment emails and scientific documents be made public.

The Environment Defenders Office applied for the documents on behalf of the Victorian National Parks Association.

Lawyer Felicity Milner from the Environment Defenders Office says the VCAT order is significant.

“We’re concerned about the scientific basis for the alpine cattle grazing trial,” she said.

“Certainly we want to see the documents to apply scrutiny to that decision and see whether or not it could be said to be backed up by proper science.

“If it is not backed up by proper science then we will be attacking the Government’s decision.

“The cattle grazing trial, as I understand it, has not gone ahead because the Federal Government has said it is unacceptable but the State Government is challenging that decision in the Federal Court.

“Based on public statements from the Government and the department we are of the understanding at this stage that they intend to continue with the alpine grazing trial if they are legally allowed to.”

Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu has defended spending taxpayer dollars to try to stop the documents being released.

“The Government has taken a view about what material ought to be made public,” he said.

“You would expect the Government to reinforce the view it has about information and our understanding of the legislation.”

Mr Baillieu has not ruled out challenging the VCAT order.

“The Government will have a look at that judgment and we’ll make an assessment of it,” he said.

However, Mr Baillieu has confirmed the Government still wants to push ahead with the cattle grazing trial.

“We certainly maintain the view that the Commonwealth when it made its decisions didn’t do it on a basis that was thorough and comprehensive,” he said.

0

‘How distance made the possums grow fonder’

This article comes from The Age, journalist is Bridie Smith, April 19, 2012

Mountain Pygmy-possum (Burramys parvus). Source: Department of the Environment and Heritage

POSSUM Researchers have intervened in an emergency move to deepen the gene pool of one of Australia’s rarest marsupials, the threatened Mountain Pygmy-possum. Studies showed as few as two or three males from the isolated Mt Buller population were successfully mating with females each year, contributing further to genetic depletion of the threatened species.

However scientists from the DSE and Melb Uni have combined to ‘genetically rescue’ the Mt Buller population by removing six males from Mt Hotham and introducing them to the females on Mt Buller.

They have since tested the results of this intervention – and this year found that half the offspring are hybrids (Dad from Mt Hotham, Mum from Mt Buller). It’s good news, as the hybrids are genetically more robust than pure Mt Buller animals.

The full story is here.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑