If This is True

If this is true, it will be the first step and develop into an exhilarating ride for mankind. Firstly to put a foundation under this dream, and then to really get teeth into discovering how we are going to extract ourselves from the use of fossil fuels. How to harvest the wind, sun and build on renewable recyclable energy and share the knowledge and technology world wide.

This will create employment, and allow people to bend their mind in the path of working with the natural world, working with what we have which we won't damage or destroy. It's taken too long, but now there is commitment..............

Forget space; this is the real challenge to which the human mind and will should first be directed. To save the natural world and use our renewable resources effectively and wisely.

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/paris_here_we_come/

Iniquities of Fuel Reduction Burns

We are all aware how destructive fuel reduction burns are in our forests. Fuel reduction burns are what the government uses to try to confuse the general public into believing it's actually doing something and that this will slow down and even prevent fires. Cynically omitting that the fires which burn property and towns and house on farmland are from grass fires. Grass that has been imported into Australia to feed the domestic livestock that has also been imported. Native grasses burn less easily.

Here is an article from Bob McDonald that sheds some more light on the fuel reduction burn process, and how it has been misused:
http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/its-time-to-stop-lighting-fires

Fuel reduction burns, if they are carried out anywhere, should be carried out around the population centres, where they will do the most good. But that's not possible because those areas are used for agriculture and usually grow imported grasses and crops. Unfortunately this is also the path the fires use to get into the towns and city outskirts.

Here also can be found some information on fuel reduction burning:
http://www.egwildlife.com.au/burns.html

Can this be real?

The apiarists of Tasmania again made it clear they wanted the logging industry to be reinstated to its former destructive level because it maintains the roads so they can get into the areas where they are able to harvest leatherwood and manuka honey in the forest. Is this for real? The first time this was mooted was in April http://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/honey-producers-want-forestry-tasmania-on-road-to-financial-health/story-fnj4f7k1-1226884353072 which I thought was mistimed, as April 1 had been and gone.

It has been said to me that Tasmania is about 2 or 3 decades behind the mainland, a kind of backwardness one associates with a lack of knowledge. This is obvious because all over the mainland beekeepers are screaming against the trees being logged, the destruction and the general obtuseness of government concerning the issue of conservation of forested areas that still exist.

When working bees back in the 60's, beekeepers were considered as the guardians of the forest. The Tasmanian beekeepers obviously don't see themselves in this way? Their vision is somewhat myopic if they haven't seen what has been happening on the mainland with the logging in operation here. More than likely, few beekeepers on the mainland would want roads into forest maintained at the cost that is extracted from the honey industry and the environment to maintain these roads.

It would be better for everyone if all logging as it's practised today, is stopped, and beekeepers have to put money into better trucks to transport their hives into the areas from which they wish to harvest the nectar produced by the still in situ trees. Trees and understorey, that if left untouched would still be producing honey for future beekeepers.

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.