Yes, Con,
I did not acknowledge Government, academic or volunteer contributions,
including the great work being done by our colleagues at Mulligans Flat.
My concern is that nationally, it is too little, too late and is not
keeping up with the threatening processes. Small to medium sized mammals and
frogs are generally in real trouble, and emerging issues of cattle grazing
& sporting shooters in national parks and moves to reduce “green tape” are
just alarming.
Somehow recently, environment & conservation issues seem to have
dropped off the political agenda! There was NOT ONE QUESTION to the PM
from the very well informed students on Q & A last Monday on the environment
or climate change.
Cheers,
Bruce.
From:
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2013 3:21 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] Reserves- Extinction
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
From:
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2013 12:51 PM
To:
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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