canberrabirds

Reserves- Extinction

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Subject: Reserves- Extinction
From: Con Boekel <>
Date: Mon, 06 May 2013 15:21:55 +1000
While I would not in anyway want to underplay the contribution of NGOs and the community which is vital, the establishment of private reserves has had majority funding from both Coalition and Labor governments over the past fifteen years or so.  The National Reserve Systems Program which paid out the funds has had essentially bipartisan support for all that time.

Without knowing exactly, over that time, I would guess that government funding would be in the order of over $200 million. The area purchased with this assistance was prioritized using Australian-wide bioregionalisation and focused on bioregions which had especially poor representation in the reserve systems. The area would be well over 2 million hectares.

On top of that both Coalition and Labor governments supported the Indigenous Protected Areas program which in turn supported Indigenous landholders to declare all or part of their land as a protected area and then funded programs of work on the areas. In this case, the area added to the reserve system was well in excess of 22 million hectares - at times in bioregions with little or no previous representation in the national reserve system.

Has this been enough to bring Australia's rate of biodiversty loss to around zero? Not in my view. There is a long, long way to go.

Strange to say, these wonderful government achievements, along with the achievements of the many, many volunteers and private philanthropists, seldom find themselves on the front pages of our newspapers.

Nevertheless, where they do such excellent things, governments do deserve credit.

regards

Con


On 6/05/2013 3:01 PM, m("bigpond.net.au","blaags");"> wrote:
Several NGOs have recognised this disturbing loss of Australian biodiversity, and with financial input largely from the community, have set up wildlife refuges and undertaken innovative research, monitoring, restoratio, and weed and feral animal control programs to limit and in some cases reverse declining native species populations. Some of these properties have quite large feral-proof enclosures inside which re-introduced threatened native animals have flourished.
 
The outstanding NGOs, in my view, are Australian Wildlife Conservancy and Bush Heritage Australia. Both have good web sites.
 
Cheers,
 
Bruce
 
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2013 12:51 PM
Subject: [canberrabirds] Reserves- Extinction
 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: boy nature

Sent: 05/06/13 12:26 PM

To: m("googlegroups.com","natchat");">

Subject: Reserves- Extinction

 
After reading the Australian Geographic of 2003, I reorganised my thoughts on conservation. When you think about it most small mammals have gone extinct, over this massive, massive continent. I believe it is time to say, enough is enough. WA has good examples in Shark Bay with Faure Island, Francios Peron Penninsula & Heirisson Prong, where areas are set aside for conservation, eradicating pests & reintroducing native animals.
I believe this is no solution.
But the time is beyond past, and we need to ensure last populations survive, at least until we find better solutions.
Possible examples of WA's good examples are
Guerilla island- Burrewarra point- fence off
The two islands on Lake burley griffin.

 

 


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