Eagle shot.........

We live in a world that is difficult to bear at times. More thinking people could change that. However it seems people with the capability to be most destructive think least about what they do or the consequences of their actions. The damage they do with anonymity, as they live on the boundary of decency and the laws which have been created to protect the vulnerable, but needing the most concrete, irrefutable evidence before they are enforced.

The eagle, now dead in the tree in the pictures on this page are a shock to any reasonable person. It is testament that there is little that can be done even if a strong suspicion exists regarding who might have been the perpetrator of such an atrocity. The dead eagle is the only proof available. Assumption and speculation, no matter how well filtered through reason is not proof.

The cowardly, illegal shooting of this eagle would have caused the shooter dismay seeing the body of the bird getting caught up in the dead branches, instead of falling to the ground to be disposed of clandestinely.

Lost to us. Why?

It has often been said: Farmers observations are quite good, but their interpretation is rubbish.

Henry David Thoreau wrote: By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber. ......Henry David Thoreau.

In the days of old, farmers saw wedge tailed eagles on the carcases of lambs and carrying the carcases of lambs, which is a good enough and simple observation, but they interpreted it as the eagles having killed the lambs. Never suspecting their husbandry may be the cause of the ewes giving birth to weak or dead lambs. These carcases, if left lying around could spread or create disease environments, but removed, cleaned up by the eagles would circumvent that happening. Eagles are doing a service for the farmer, but that worthy doesn't think it through and reaches for the gun.

Eagles are not starlings, they don't flock. So any given area might have two or during breeding seasons only four birds would use a very large area. Lambing is generally 3 or 4 weeks. The ewes protect their lambs and after a couple of weeks, healthy lambs are too robust for an eagle to consider as live food. Rabbits are another story as are foxes

Enough to make anyone weep.

Even small struggling lambs are very heavy. Can an eagle carry one such and if so, would they pass over a dead lamb, which is their preference as they are carrion feeders, that will hang inert in their talons and feed their family just as well? It beggars belief that any farmer doesn't protect the a wedge tailed eagle and yet so many are killed through long entrenched misinformation and ignorance passed down through the generations and followed without further examination.

Wedge tailed eagles are protected by law, certainly in Victoria. It seems to make little difference as many people still can kill with impunity if there are no witnesses.

We know, or we all should know, unless there is something seriously wrong with out thought processes. Alive, eagles are wonderful, they help people who farm wisely, and they enhance all our lives by occupying their place in our world and engaging us with a beauty we can only envy. Dead, an eagle screams at human stupidity that should make us all feel guilty and ashamed.

Fuel Reduction Foolishness......

The Victorian government has decided that they start fuel reduction burning again. This can't be fair dinkum. They are even going to burn in the areas that were already burnt? Where wildlife have already been lost or managed to get away and survive and are now in areas where there is food and shelter they can use. So the DEPI are going to burn that food source and shelter and make certain that wildlife will do it really hard and any that need some time to recover almost certainly die.

One wonders where these people who run these departments get their ideas. Maybe from some tunnel visioned, biased research grants the government has supplied. Which like most research is directed and channelled in a certain way to ensure that the actual effects of the natural world don't get in the way of the desirable result.

Fuel reduction burns further than 10 kilometres from the boundary of main population centres is in fact species genocide. However, that is the aim of the Victorian government at any rate.

The wildlife of this state are a thorn in the side of the current state government. They can't log the whole state and turn it into a virtual desert so they can sell off some of the most valuable timber in the world at a bargain price and reduced to its lowest common denominator, wood chips.

The voting public seem to have very little consideration for the states wildlife. The general public vote hoping to maintain their job security. It's not going to happen. Jobs are never going to be secure again, and neither is a pay packet or a pension or anything else that was once relied upon to make people go into massive debt and become slaves to forces they never thought were anything but benign, because they were applied to others until the circumstances changed. Not themselves. They were right Jack, so who cared about the rest. Donating a little of what they could spare makes the general public feel virtuous and means they don't have to stand up and be counted. No one was giving anything more than that. Charity for most people is giving what they have spare and salving their conscience.

So when the state government uses fire as a fear element to be able to do what they want with the forested areas of the state, they realise the people who live in cities are not going to donate something that they can without any real cost. Their voice to have fuel reduction burning, out in the forested areas stopped. Think about it.

Even if fuel reduction burning worked. By halting fire in the far reaches of the forest, the last bastion of all Victoria’s wildlife, how does that help the people in the cities, towns and smaller population centres? It doesn't. The only areas that should have any protection is no more than 10 kilometres from the boundary of every city and town, and the best protection is a wall of water, created by infrastructure that only even needs to be put in place once and will not cost bucket loads of money to maintain.

Each year the Victorian government uses fuel reduction burning to reduce both numbers and species of wildlife that are hindering their efforts to denude the country it controls within the state boundaries. If the animals who live in the areas of the special places that have been saved in the state are gone. These special places can be plundered. Though it won't create many, if any jobs, rather make those already wealthy even more so. The Victorian government circus puts a positive spin on it and convinces the gullible voting public that they are being looked after and making their jobs and homes secure.

More about fuel reduction burns here:
http://www.egwildlife.com.au/burns.html

I suppose if you read about what the Victorian government is doing in a comic, you would think such stupidity could only be depicted in that sort of forum. But we see it happening, here, now, in real life and still people vote for governments that promise to help with something that they have jettisoned in reality, but appear to be doing, even as jobs and fire security is diminished.