Congratulations Jill Redwood, leader of Environment East Gippsland! In a landmark decision today, the Supreme Court has found that the government has a responsibility to look for and protect endangered wildlife before logging in the contentious Brown Mountain forests of East Gippsland. “This judgment has implications for all native forests that are set to be destroyed by logging,” said EEG spokesperson Jill Redwood. “If we hadn’t sued VicForests, Brown Mountain would have been illegally logged by now. And Brown Mountain is just one area. The government is logging publicly owned forests every day without endangered species surveys.” EEG Website for more updates

Tasmanian wildlife are in a terrible situation and there is a great need for better laws to look after their welfare and habitat. Candobetter did articles on this problem Tasmania, West Australia, Victoria - our wildlife are ignored by government, and fortunately the recent Auditor General Special Report No. 78, Management of threatened species (Tasmania) will hopefully provide a good basis for your submissions. Please send your submissions to us and we will publish them.

A Tweed Shire NSW resident delivers an impassioned speech to the local council on the importance of biodiversity protection. Read the reaction she got from one councillor, the Mayor and the local paper!

Photos by Jill Quirk added on 21 July. Latest Update: Leader Newspaper 2 August coverage of Protest March to Alistair Harkness's office, Frankston This will make you angry. In the first project to come under the notorious "Major Transport Facilitation Act," bulldozers move in to nationally significant heritage Westerfield before the Heritage Council Decision comes out. Picket line ongoing, since 5 July. Contacts for the picket site: S Walsh Mobile: 0405 380 312 Also Gillian Collins Pines Protectors 0414 309 960 and Jim Kerin Defenders of the South East Green Wedge Mobile 0409 501 764. Original notice was from Julianne Bell, Secretary, Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.
PO Box 197, Parkville 3052, Mobile: 0408022408

Australians need help from the world's ecologists! Royal National Park, known to many tourists as the closes to Sydney, is the world's second-oldest National Park and Australia's first. It is under threat through adjacent overdevelopment by the growth-mad New South Wales government. Even Australia's primeminister doesn't want growth now and Sydney's expansion must be stopped. Royal National Park is of world class historic and ecological significance and it is incomprehensible and alarming that the NSW Government is allowing development to encroach.

Grandiose fantasies about filling up a continent to create a great and powerful nation are not exclusive to Australia. Demographic hubris is alive and well in Canada too, and even now, after the loss of 20% of our best farmland to development, with more than a thousand species at risk and an immigrant population that has, over the last two decades, generated four times as much GHG emissions as the Albert Tar Sands megaproject, there are people who believe in a Big Canada concept. Irving Studin of the University of Toronto is one of them.

Russian Trade Minister asks where the kangaroos are in Queensland after being shown around rural Australia where the 'roo meat industry pretends they are in 'plague numbers'.

What immoral hypocrisy we have in Australian Government when one department legitimises mass kangaroo slaughter as a 'kangaroo industry' and promotes 'kangaroo harvesting', while another department promotes the kangaroo as its 'hopping icon.'

Tourism Australia's latest marketing campaign claims to be based on the 'core truth'.
Well how can it be truthful? Tourism Australia needs to drop the kangaroo logo from its advertising while the slaughter continues or else drop its core truth campaign.

Kangaroos are indeed what is 'unique and special' about Australia. It is immoral to slaughter wildlife. It is hypocritical to promote wildlife values while also promoting its slaughter.

A proposed 380 lot subdivision opposite the Serendip Sanctuary in Lara, Victoria, will have devastating consequences on the area by destroying the natural habit, risking the welfare of animal and bird life, increase the chances of flooding and put added pressure on local infrastructure already at breaking point.

The 2008 Belconnen Massacre - lest we forget

We are reminded of the brutal Belconnen massacre of 500 kangaroos yesterday two years ago on 19th May 2008, followed shortly afterwards with another 4000 or so kangaroos massacred at the Majura Army training area.

These wildlife massacres reflect a prevaling backward colonial attitude by our government towards native animals. Native animals were regarded as vermin by early colonists. This attitude prevails.

Today's 21st century official slaughter of Australian native animals is no different to the official slaughter of Australian native people by European colonists, who treated Aboriginal people as vermin.

Some claim kangaroo meat is 'green'. Some claim killing kangaroos is 'better' for Australia's environment. So what if Australian farmers of lamb, beef, pork and chicken transitioned to kangaroo?

To this author it is like employing Ivan Milat to skin platypus for tourist purses.

Personal bias aside, Australia's Federal Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry, has highlighted the flawed presumptions of Australia's roo trade being unviable.

Your chance to become an Urban Avatar!
Environment East Gippsland's Inaugural Melbourne Meeting.
6pm Wednesday 12th of May, 2nd Floor, Kindness House, 288 Brunswick St, FITZROY.
(This is the Forest Group that is in court over Brown Mountain.) Please write feedback on how it went.

"The ACT Kangaroo Management Plan significantly, and disturbingly, fails society, the economy and the environment in the ACT and its contiguous region in numerous ways. In many respects it is a dishonest, unscientific, inconsistent, biased and unethical report that perpetuates ignorance of the place of humans in the natural landscape and fosters a culture of disrespect and harm." Professor Steve Garlick

Born in Canberra on 10th November 2008 in response to the continuing massacres of landlocked kangaroos in the ACT without consultation with the Indigenous/Aboriginal peoples and local communities, and the arrest and prosecution of six Aboriginal people who were performing a smoking and healing ceremony, on Wednesday 5 May, a new Alliance for Native Animal Survival was formed. Its aims include the establishment of land-rights for native species.

Fuel-reduction occurs on many occasions without being called that and often is not accounted for in bushfire inquiries. Nor is the impact on wildlife habitat, notably hollow trees.

Click on picture for film of lonely, distressed kangaroo corralled on US footpath by Tourism Australia (Martin Ferguson portfolio). Saturday 16 & Sunday 17 January, 2010 in Beverley Hills, Tourism Australia had a huge kangaroo on the concrete - on a busy busy footpath. The kangaroo was 8 to 10 feet away from a busy busy street and was so traumatized it was rocking back and forth over and over again...

See inside for the AJP's new charter. One of the clauses is "A population settlement and land use system that is truly sustainable for all its inhabitants and ecosystems." I know that the AJP has requested a paper on this subject. Animal activists tendn to be very aware of the impact of human population and activities on habitat and rights of other species. To join the Animal Justice Party, click here.

EEG trial update. The Brown Mountain landmark trial has begun.

How about this! There is a new political party in Australia, just for the animals and people who care about their rights and want them to have happy lives and their own space!

Wednesday 24 February from 12-2pm
on Parliament House steps, Melbourne

Tweed Valley Community levied for unwanted and disastrous development in region's main koala habitat.
Koalas are in danger of extinction within two years in Queensland and NSW cannot be far behind. No state is keeping proper wildlife statistics and development is ruining their habitat and ours. See where to send objections inside article.

There was an outcry about the illegal and brutal attack on baby koala Doug, and his consequent death, yet loggers will be allowed to destroy the habitat of a colony of koalas in the state forest on the NSW South Coast. They need protection before they are legally wiped out, simply because their homes are for woodchip profits!

Someone else who isn't impressed by the Australian and state governments' statistics and treatment of wildlife. 6000 signatures already on the petition!
See alsoDamning Auditor General Reports on Fauna protection in Australia
(Photo by Brett Clifton)

An old age pensioner tells his heartbreaking story of Josie, the little possum joey who he and his wife lovingly raised but was unable to release due to human imprinting. After 6 years of being part of Raoul Harvey's family, suddenly the RSPCA tried to confiscate her and another possum they were rehabbing. That's when all hell broke loose! It's time some new laws were made in the best interests of the animal, not the law. Read what this courageous man did to outwit the system.

The Auditor General's report pointed out numerous inefficiencies, duplications and limits of resources. What it missed was to clearly highlight is that huge amount of time and money is spent on listing endangered species and the production of management plans but no further action is taken or enforced to properly rectify the problems. (Hans Brunner, wildlife ecologist, Victoria)

In a press release on April Fools Day 2009, Gavin Jennings interpreted as a 'pat on the back' a terrible report by the Auditor General on the Victorian Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988.[1] The report said "the government's lack of baseline data or output performance measures means that it is not possible to conclude whether or not the Act has achieved its primary objectives. The available data, which is patchy, indicates that it has not," and notes failure to use the conservation and control measures in the Act, inadequate listing of threatened species, failure to develop action statements, to monitor implementation of these, or to assess their effectiveness, and that penalties for offences under the Act have not been reviewed or updated and therefore are not an effective deterrent." So government has no reliable statistical basis to make statements on wildlife numbers and health or to issue cull-permits in Victoria. Local independent counts are potentially more influential - like this one.

Here are some more Auditor General reports on the predicament of wildlife in Australia, due to the cruel negligence and sheer incompetence of Australia's state and Federal governments.

(Grey Teal - a "game" target)
The Government says conditions have improved in parts of Victoria and game ducks can be hunted sustainably. Hunters would be permitted to increase their take from last year's two per bag to five. Acting Minister for Environment and Climate Change Tim Holding said the compromise struck a balance between ensuring sustainable duck numbers and the interests of hunters.

The growth lobby appears in new guises every day, constantly trying to make itself out to be the good guy. Now a new alliance of religious groups pretends we can go on growing indefinitely, the same way that the Citizens Electoral Lobby, the Australian Property Council, and the Prime Minister of Australia do. But Tim Murray asks, "If each one of God’s 214,000 miracles born each day is precious, what of the tens or hundreds of thousands of non human life forms that are murdered that day by our expansion? Yes, 100 species are lost each day. But many more life forms are killed than that each day. How many? Who knows? Each and every day we are breeding our life support system into the ground."

Dame Judi Dench, one of Britain’s best loved and respected actors and a great animal welfare supporter, has supported the campaign to ban kangaroo products from import by all EU member states. "As a lover of animals and their welfare I am pleased to add my name to the many others across the world who are supporting this very worthwhile campaign.” (Judi Dench)