Forestry advocate Barry Chipman claims the election reveals almost universal support for the Tasmanian pulp mill. "Both Labor and Liberal went to the election with clear policies supporting the pulp mill's development, as opposed to a "stop the mill" campaign by Green candidates....Timber-dependent families throughout Tasmania view this massive 80 percent voter support for the major parties as a resounding tick for the project."

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Gus: In some ways, this shows that democracy can make the wrong decision for the future... There lies the very problem of democracy in which a wrong majority can rule, swayed by advertising that what is right is wrong and vice verso... Or that we had to vote between two major packages that contained this particular policy no matter we liked it or not... We voted for John Howard four times until we booted him out... does this mean we were right the first four times and wrong on this one, or wrong four times and right this once...? I will opt for the latter...

Ban GM crops anyway...

Bats Perish, and No One Knows Why
By TINA KELLEY

Al Hicks was standing outside an old mine in the Adirondacks, the largest bat hibernaculum, or winter resting place, in New York State.

It was broad daylight in the middle of winter, and bats flew out of the mine about one a minute. Some had fallen to the ground where they flailed around on the snow like tiny wind-broken umbrellas, using the thumbs at the top joint of their wings to gain their balance.

All would be dead by nightfall. Mr. Hicks, a mammal specialist with the state’s Environmental Conservation Department, said: “Bats don’t fly in the daytime, and bats don’t fly in the winter. Every bat you see out here is a ‘dead bat flying,’ so to speak.”

They have plenty of company. In what is one of the worst calamities to hit bat populations in the United States, on average 90 percent of the hibernating bats in four caves and mines in New York have died since last winter.

Wildlife biologists fear a significant die-off in about 15 caves and mines in New York, as well as at sites in Massachusetts and Vermont. Whatever is killing the bats leaves them unusually thin and, in some cases, dotted with a white fungus. Bat experts fear that what they call White Nose Syndrome may spell doom for several species that keep insect pests under control.

Researchers have yet to determine whether the bats are being killed by a virus, bacteria, toxin, environmental hazard, metabolic disorder or fungus. Some have been found with pneumonia, but that and the fungus are believed to be secondary symptoms.

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Gus: further in the article, insecticides amongst other things are mentioned as a possible source of the problem... Could be.

Some of the products we manufacture are poisons. powerful poisons. Millions of tonnes of it.... Some might not even affect fruit-flies but they might affect other animals, other insects... Soaps, detergents, solvents, insecticides, herbicides, toxins, viruses, poisons — you name it we make with intent to destroy something and we might destroy a thousand more things in the process, which we don't even know or care...

In most cases of extinction, a couple of (or more) converging interfering factors will be at the source of it... Changes happen "naturally" but we do our bit to make sure changes happen to suit us. Some change have suited us some have not... Fair enough but it's good to see scientists being alarmed about these problems because without realising it we might be digging our own grave. Well, not us personally, but us, via firms like Monsanto, without even these firms knowing it...