Situated in Tasmania’s north west, the Tarkine is a globally significant wilderness area containing extensive tracts of Gondwanan temperate rainforest. Although not designated as a National Park, or part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, the area contains a wildly diverse landscape with rich… Read more
Once again Cape York is in crisis. Tens of thousands of hectares of native bushland are being cleared on Cape York on a scale not seen since the Bjelke-Petersen years. The aim is to open up the region to high-value agriculture in a bid to… Read more
The NSW Baird government is pushing ahead with plans to expand the state’s coal seam gas industry, after getting the green light from NSW chief scientist Mary O’Kane last week. O’Kane delivered her final report to the Baird government about the state of the CSG… Read more
This week, the Queensland Government finalised their repeal of the Wild Rivers Act. Introduced in 2005 by the Labor government, the Act aimed to protect Queensland’s 13 pristine rivers from the threat of bauxite mining, CSG drilling, major irrigation plans and damming. The Queensland Government had… Read more
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on the Australian government. Once again, toxic waste from Clive Palmer’s nickel refinery near Townsville is threatening to spill into the Great Barrier Reef and local waterways. This comes only weeks after newly released documents revealed… Read more
The Federal Government wants to amend a section of the Agricultural and Veterinarian Chemicals Act which would eliminate unsafe chemicals from our food and agricultural products. The mandatory scheme for the re-approval and re-registration of pesticides was introduced by the former Labour Government and was due… Read more
The upcoming budget will slash $100 million from the Department of the Environment over the next three years. An internal government review has indicated that 670 jobs will be shed, equating to a quarter of the Department’s workforce, with 250 voluntary redundancies expected by Christmas… Read more
The wilderness of the Cape York Peninsula is one of Australia’s most precious. One of the last wild places on earth it is a biodiversity hotspot, home to undisturbed tropical forests, wetlands and over 300 species of endemic flora and fauna. The Cape is also… Read more
Australians are becoming increasingly concerned with the impacts of large dredging projects on their delicate marine environments. After the social, economic and environmental disaster at Gladstone after large scale port dredging, local communities are concerned about the impacts on recreational & commercial fishing, tourism and… Read more
The world is experiencing extinction rates not seen since the dinosaurs were killed off, marking the end of the Cretaceous period some 66 million years ago. Australia has not been immune to this alarming trend. We have experienced a dramatic loss of species over the… Read more
The blows just keep on coming. Tony Abbott, speaking last week at a ForestWorks industry dinner in Canberra, hailed loggers as the “ultimate conservationists” and promised to end the lock-up of timber in national parks. Abbott told the audience that Australia has “quite enough” national… Read more
Greenpeace and Clean Up Australia have launched their #TRASHYSELFIE campaign to raise awareness of plastic bottle waste in Australia. 15,000 plastic bottles are discarded every minute in Australia and less than a third are recycled, meaning they end up on our beaches, in our rivers,… Read more
In a recent article in the UK’s Independent, journalist Kathy Marks poses the question, “Is Tony Abbott’s Australian administration the most hostile to his nation’s environment in history?” Marks criticises Abbott’s absolute disregard for the science of climate change and even science itself, by not even… Read more
Tony Abbott has arrived in the drought affected regions of Western New South Wales and Queensland to discuss a potential government aid package with struggling regional farmers. By all accounts, these regions have faced a devastating drought over the last two years, with some areas… Read more
In another blow to the Australian environment, the government announced that it will remove 170,000 hectares of forest from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, opening it up to logging. In a week that also saw approval granted to dump 3 million cubic metres of… Read more
An old but powerful message from the Surfrider Foundation about plastic pollution, the silent killer. According to the Australian Marine Conservation Society, around one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed every year by plastics. Say no to plastic bottles. Say no to plastic… Read more