Koala numbers in Qld are dropping rapidly, and I think it comes down to habitat encroachment, ie. houses and domestic dogs, etc.
Gunnedah in NSW is 100km away from me and has a big koala population but can't recall ATM whether numbers are stable or not.
A huge worry is the Tassie Devil's facial tumour and rapidly dropping numbers.
Hopefully the breeding program that's been undertaken up on Barrington near here really comes off, it's looking very promising so far.
Unfortunately things like this fly under the radar, and when you lose either predator or prey out of an eco system it has reverberations right through the chain.
Eventually something moves in and balance is restored, but it may not be the balance that we want.
I really do believe that humans are increasing the rate of change of things, there's seven
billion of us now, there were under one billion in 1800 and every one of us consumes far, far more of our natural resources than any one individual did two hundred years ago.
To give it some perspective, imagine what everything looked like in our own country before white fella got here, and then extrapolate that to across the globe. Think of the deforestation that's occurred worldwide in the last two hundred years, which is less than a blip in time in a geological sense.
Sheer numbers suggest we must be making an impact, and to me it's a little scary what we are collectively doing as a species, we continue to consume finite resources as if they are infinite.
I also agree that the world is a little more complex than any computer modelling can predict, but from my perspective from living and working on the land, and now supplying services and goods to people working the land I'd like to see a little more thought from our political leaders and city dwellers on how fragile our environment, and in particular water resources are in this country.
At the moment the extraction industries almost have carte blanche over where and how they do their thing, and with an ever increasing world population food security will become a huge issue globally in a very short time.
Mining exports don't earn near as much as people are led to believe, our Ag sector still earns massive export $ and will continue to do so, as long as we have decent river and artesian water to do it with.
Do I sound like a greenie ?
Possibly, but Farmers and Greenies are finding they have a lot more in common than they ever realised, and are working and supporting each other around around here in the battle against govt and the extraction sector.
BTW, there was a very good article in yesterdays Sydney Morning Herald (and I assume The Age) by Ross Gittens, the papers economics editor on the why's, workings and idea behind a non revenue raising tax (in relative terms) like the Carbon Tax.
If you can scrounge a copy from somewhere, it's well worth the read. Unfortunately I can't find it online.
Personally I think it's a dumb move, but it's no where near the bogey man the Mad Monk has made it out, either.
A better idea might have been along these lines if Govt wanted to encourage change in the big polluters.
Once upon a time Australia encouraged industry to invest in new technologies with a 150% tax write off for R&D.
As an example, at the time, BHP employed
600 people, purely in R&D, spending billions of $ on research.
Guess how many BHP employ in pure research these days ?
A big, fat 0.
A PhD mate of mine worked for them and ran a lot of their research stuff during those days and this was his suggestion during one of our 'fix the world and get rid of the poliies' conversations, and IMO it has huge merit.
(he runs cattle on 1500 acres and owns the local newsagency now)
John Howard and Sneaky Pete Costello dumped that incentive, just as they squandered even bigger potential surpluses and infrastructure investments on middle class welfare just to buy votes, and the current lot are too dumb to re-implement it.
And we wonder why our good tech like solar panel technology has all gone offshore to China or the US ?
A carrot works better than a stick, ask anyone that works with animals
