Ecological Blog

Tags: hancocks, logging, rainforest, strzeleckis

A group looking at the requirements for an Environment Effects Statement on a proposed desalination plant in Victoria has been established.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment has set up the focus group to help scope the EES requirements.

The plant will use enough electricity to run a town - producing a million tonnes of atmospheric carbon each year unless renewable energy is used as the power source.
We have suggested that as the site is on an open ocean coastline it would be ideal for a wave energy system - if the desal plant is given the go-ahead. This would get rid ot two problems - the need to offset the power generation and the visual pollution caused by the construction of additional power lines from the La Trobe Valley to the site.
Commercial wave energy 'farms' have been established off Portugal and plans are well underway in Scotland and southern England, so the technology is available. 

Amongst many other issues, the treatment of 'waste' is a big problem. As the 'waste' produced is generally either salt or high protein by-catch from the sea water sucked into the plant, why can't it be processed for commercial use. The highly concentrated brine which will be...

Tags: desalination, wave energy

There's an interesting article by Debora MacKenzie in the April 2 edition of New Scientist about what happens to civilisations when they reached a certain 'critical mass'.

She argues this chilling possibility: what if the very nature of civilisation means that ours, like all the others, is
destined to collapse sooner or later?

Disturbingly, recent insights from fields such as complexity theory suggest that they are right. It appears that once a society develops beyond a certain level of complexity it becomes increasingly fragile. Eventually, it reaches a point at which even a relatively minor disturbance can bring everything crashing down.

Some say we have already reached this point, and that it istime to start thinking about how we might manage collapse. Others insist it is not yet too late, and that we can - we must - act now to keep disaster at bay.

Environmental mismanagement

History is not on our side. Think of Sumeria, of ancient Egypt and of the Maya. In his 2005 best-seller Collapse, Jared Diamond of the University of California, Los Angeles, blamed environmental mismanagement for the fall of the Mayan civilisation and others, and warned that we might be heading the same way unless we choose...

Tags: civilisation, diminishing returns

The Victorian Government has just launched its Land and Biodiversity Green Paper which is supposed to be a document which will improve land management in this State. There have already been clear warnings that Victoria is running out of time to save many native plants and animals threatened with extinction.

Submissions on the document can be lodged until June 30 and it's worth having a good read to see what you think. Many believe that the State Government has a responsibility to protect our wildlife from a combination of habitat loss, weeds, feral animals and climate change at the same time as maintaining productive and profitable agriculture and meeting the growth requirements of an expanding population.

CSIRO figures show that nearly a third of Victoria's native animals and close to half the native plant species are threatened with extinction. Of the 90 Australian animal species already identified as at risk from climate change more than a third are in Victoria.

The Government acknowledges that 'despite the efforts of Victoria’s pioneering Landcare movement, a long history of environment protection legislation and widespread action by governments, businesses and the community, the health of our natural environment continues to decline....

Tags: green paper, land biodiversity, landcare

We are very pleased to advise that this website of Friends of Bass Valley Bush has been selected for preservation by the State Library of Victoria. It is an archive known as PANDORA.

PANDORA is a digital archive dedicated to the preservation of and long term access to Australian online electronic publications of national significance.

We thank all our members for their contributions. The group has achieved a significant reputation around the world for what we do (even though our direct work is limited to West Gippsland).

We receive questions from just about everywhere - Sri Lanka, Canada, France, UK, Holland, USA, Indonesia, Phillipines - it's amazing that so many communities are all dealing with similar issues. For some, the problems are more immediately life threatening, but we all live on the same planet and we need to work out solutions.

Tags: archived, friends of bass valley bush, pandora

Reasons behind changes to the way the new Federal Government will deliver its Natural Heritage Fund program have become a little clearer in the last few days.

Apparently there has been more than a little dismay expressed by bureaucrats and politicians at the results of audit outcomes over the last few years. Hundreds of millions of dollars have simply disappeared into the black hole of landcare networks (and others) without any identifiable long term environmental benefit.

Another issue has been the inconsistency of skills amongst the service providers who have delivered the programs. Victoria is pretty well placed with its Catchment Management Authorities - but even amongst those there are great discrepancies. The West Gippsland CMA went through a period of de-skilling several years ago and it is still suffering the results of employing people who don't understand the issues of biodiversity and effective natural resource management.

One of the highest priorities in all areas is the protection of existing remnant native vegetation - but often the allocation is a pittance compared with the funds spent on providing jobs for facilitators, project officers, co-ordinators and all the other staffing positions that anyone can deam up. The money needs to spent on things which show a...

Tags: caring for our country, catchment management, west gippsland cma