From an earlier blog

I have also argued with some head scientists and heads of governments against their "only saving species of significance" in the 1980s, while they were abandoning subspecies to fate, a fate that was highly influenced downwards by introduced cats and foxes, and camels and rabbits and toads and whatever... — all because of "budget restrictions"... It has always been my strong view that "subspecies" (quite numerous in this continent) are the essential links to our understanding of evolution — their variation in specific environment leading to new species being fascinating...

from the ABC

Greens leader Bob Brown says the Government's approval of the Gorgon gas project off the Western Australian coast is environmental vandalism.

The project involves injecting 3.5 million tonnes of C02 a year into a reservoir under Barrow Island. The carbon capture technique will cost Chevron and its partners more than $1 billion and is the biggest geo-sequestration project of its type ever undertaken.

But Environment Minister Peter Garrett says he is satisfied that the $50 billion project will not cause unacceptable damage to the local environment.

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More black sludge from the former man of midnight goo... Environmental vandalism. And this Peter Garrett — the minister for happy holes, dancing lumberjacks and joyous bulldozers — had the gall to blame former environment minister Malcolm Turnbull for the project being approved by Peter Garrett...

Unacceptable damage? All damage is unacceptable. 28 new conditions full of holes like swiss cheese... A near pristine environment to become sooner or later like a dump, once the process of vandalism is started... Then it will be proven in courts that whatever extinction occurs was not linked to the project thus the space vacated by the loosing species can be taken over by the miners, and so on and on. And in regard to dumps, someone is still advocating that Australia should become a nuke dump... Brother. See this line of comments...

barrow island from google earth

From Unleashed

So people who think trees, and kangaroos, and parrots, and flying foxes, are pests, and obstacles to progress, the obvious response after watching a documentary might be to change "pests" to "attractive pests".

Andrew Bartlett recently wrote of the "five per cent of people who allow more than one per cent of their daily thoughts to be occupied by matters political". That is, he was pointing out, in effect, those of us who are consumed by politics/current affairs, and who assume as a consequence that everyone else is too, are completely wrong.

That is why political junkies always get a shock when they find the general public uninformed about, say, Iraq, or emissions trading, or leadership turmoil, or utegate (rather in the way that those, like me, who allow none of their daily thoughts to be occupied by matters motoring, can't understand the enthusiasm of the rev heads at Bathurst). To extend Andrew's analysis we could speak of the "five per cent of people who allow more than one per cent of their daily thoughts to be occupied by matters environmental".

Whether the other 95 per cent watch nature documentaries or not, they don't care about the fate of the subjects of those documentaries.

We need a new cunning plan.

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What we need is some people that are not turncoats when elected pollies. Garrett is a prime example of such. On one hand declaring new protected habitats and on the other hand hastening the destruction of others. The two do not cancel nor complement each other. As eventually, the erosion of wild space in favor of facilities leads to the building of ten storey hotels next to the Niagara Falls and 300 foot high viewing platforms. In Aussieland, some might boast that we don't do this sort of thing... Bollocks. In many places, even at Uluru, bus parking stations have been built from the best vantage points so the tourists can hop out before the glorious sunset and on after the glorious sunset. 10 minutes of wonder. King's Canyon has suffered a similar fate. And as tourism and population expand hand in hand, new facilities will need to be created — soon smothering the purpose of the visit with entertainment, when nature has gone into the night, with gambling joints, bars and video arcades for the kiddies.

Some people say that we are part of the environment and that's fair enough. But we need to care enough not to disturb the fragile, rob the weak nor stab the beautiful. We have done more than enough of this already.

Earlier this month an Uluru tour guide told the ABC that tourists climbing the rock are sometimes defecating at the top because there are no toilets available.

The Director of National Parks continues to assess submissions on a draft management plan for the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, which proposes banning climbers from the rock for cultural, safety and environmental reasons.

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