John,
Just a quick comment on fact 4.
While that information about land clearing was true when the first issue of
the ABS Measuring Austrlia's Progress came out in 2002, the story has
changed a little in the last couple of years. I the 2004 edition of MAP we
noted that about 250,000 ha was cleared in 2001 (about 40% less than 10
years earlier). This is largely because of a significant drop in
landclearing in Qld.
Perhaps an alternative fact is some of the information that was in the
national land and water resource biodiviersity audit in 2003. They divided
Australia up into 384 bioregions and found a fairly grim picture when they
looked a trends of decline or improvement among threatened species. In
particular they found ...
Threatened birds were declining across 240 subregions; had gone extinct in a
further 14; were static in 38 subregions; and improving in three.
That's quoted in the 2004 MAP
m(".nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/62c","//www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs");">http:
0ccada5421f81ca256e7d0000264b!OpenDocument
cheers
Jon
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