During our trip through western New South Wales in March 2022, we saw significant numbers of feral goats. These goats were everywhere, spanning from Broken Hill east through Wilcannia and Cobar onto Nyngan, covering over 600 kilometres in mulga country.
We had an overnight stop on the Barrier Highway at the Meadow Glen Rest Area, about 60 kilometres west of Cobar.
Any Hollywood film producer needing a blockbuster script should look no further than New South Wales and the aerial culling of brumbies. It is a highly polarised issue and has been for many years. After all, the concern about culling brumbies is not matched by concerns to kill other feral animals or pests, such as deer, pigs, rabbits, foxes and cats.
While researching for my three-part series on the truth behind the rainforest wars in New South Wales (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), there was a constant theme in the historical account of utilising one species of rainforest timber. While the cutting of hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii) was undoubtedly very extensive in New South Wales, the scale of utilisation in Queensland was even more significant, and one of its primary uses was for butter boxes.
“Unfortunately, conjecture based on limited facts has produced “research” trumpeting catastrophic fears of extinction”. Jim Steele
“Our planet now faces a global extinction crisis never witnessed by humankind. Scientists predict that more than 1 million species are on track for extinction in the coming decades”.
As the world commemorates another Endangered Species Day, you will undoubtedly read or hear claims like the above.
It seems that the people who came up with the plan to return all Western Australia’s and Victoria’s public land to a cycle of lockup and incinerate wilderness management know as much about forest management and timber supply timelines as an average kindergarten pupil. – Quote from South East Timber Association
When I started as a young forester in the late 1980s, I yearned for the opportunity to work in our native forests.
Ever since humans have worn garments, they have had to wash them. Where to put the garments to dry has a fascinating history. We always think that pegs hung them. However, clothes pegs only have a relatively recent past. Before the nineteenth century, laundry was hung on bushes, limbs or lines without fasteners to hold the clothes in place. … Read more
“The fundamentals of science are you do not tamper with the original evidence. That has happened with our temperature record, where the past has been cooled and it makes it look as if we’re warming. That is fraud.” Ian Plimer
“BOM are right often enough to be considered, but wrong often enough not to be relied upon.
This is a story to illustrate an instructive lesson on active land management. It involves animals including humans, plants and forces of nature.
My story is a call to arms to highlight that our land management issues are not straightforward and the solutions require the fortitude to go against elitist and misguided orthodoxy.
“And of course there were ignitions by the fistful. Lightning kindled some fires, but most emanated from a register of casual incendiarists that reads like a roster of rural Australia: settlers, graziers, prospectors, splitters, mineworkers, arsonists, loggers and mill bushmen, hunters looking to drive game, fishermen hoping to open up the scrub around the streams, foresters unable to contain controlled burns, bush residents seeking to ward off wildfire by protective fire, travellers and transients of all kinds.
In April 2021, I wrote a blog about memorable fauna stories. You will note that I didn’t mention leeches, mainly because I never panicked when they were on me. I didn’t like them, but I tolerated them. I had to when walking in the wet bush all day, especially in the always moist forests in north-west Tasmania.… Read more
