Ecos articles from November 2004

Ecos archives from November 2004

To new initiatives.(Editorial)(Editorial)
November 1, 2004... Welcome to the final issue of ECOS for 2004, tackling arguably the two most high profile Australian environmental topics this year: environmental flows, and logging and forestry issues. Loaded with political sensitivities and innately...

Misima mine damage raises concerns.
November 1, 2004... Canadian-based resources company Placer Dome is drawing international attention for the impact of its gold and silver mine on the tiny Papua New Guinean island of Misima. As Placer Dome, which controls 80% of the joint venture in Papua New...

Indigenous managers for dugong and turtle harvests.(North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance)
November 1, 2004... With new concerns over excessive traditional hunting of dugongs and turtles in the Torres Strait, an Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 assessment will be undertaken of their harvest, and a $3.8 million federal...

A guide to managing biodiversity impacts under climate change.
November 1, 2004... The release by the Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council of an action plan to help natural resource managers deal with the impacts of climate change on biodiversity is significant. It confirms we have accepted that real and possibly...

Renewable energy purchases are on target.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... The number of wholesale energy purchases that include the required amount of renewable source electricity is at an all time high, providing significant inertia to the renewable energy industry in Australia. According to David Rossiter, the...

Back to the future for sintering.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... Charcoal from trees planted to combat salinity could lead to more efficient and cleaner steel making. Sintering, which agglomerates fine iron ore into useable lumps, is usually fuelled by coke 'breeze'--the fine particles left over from...

Meat diets drive water consumption.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... According to international water expert Professor Frank Rijsberman, a person's diet, not how long they spend in the shower, is the main determining factor in per capita water consumption, with meat requiring vastly more water to produce than...

The Aquadam: a sea-change for water storage: could a radical Australian idea for floating self-powered desalination reservoirs be a timely solution for water supplies, changing the way we handle water on land? It is an ingenious idea, and it just might work.
November 1, 2004... Australian's are learning to live with water restrictions, reduced rainfall, disappearing aquifers and the ravages of drought. But what if we didn't need to? What if there was a way to supply our unquenchable demand for fresh water--to provide...

Returning the lifeblood to rivers.(Progress)
November 1, 2004... A quiet revolution has taken place in our understanding about the fundamental role that rivers play in healthy landscapes and productive local communities. The emerging science of environmental flows is providing overwhelming evidence of the...

A drought experiment--environmental flows resurrect irrigation country.(Progress)
November 1, 2004... When the Murray Wetlands Working Group offered environmental flows to landholders in irrigation season 2001-02, there were 10 takers for the approximate 250 ha of country involved and 600 Megalitres (ML) of water. In the following season, the...

How healthy river habitats suffer from altered flows.(Progress)
November 1, 2004... The journey from pristine and unmanaged rivers to today's heavily exploited waterways is largely a story of social and economic values that favoured irrigated agriculture and flow regulation over the natural resources of rivers. The...

Clever planning and management approaches.(Progress)
November 1, 2004... If there's one thing that is clear about the complex management of environmental flows, it's that improving river health takes time. It can take 10, 50 or even 100 years before environmental responses show up, so the question is, what...

Where wild things are dammed.(Comment)(protest against dam construction on the Burnett river )
November 1, 2004... Growing protests surrounding the Paradise Dam project under construction on the Burnett River in south-east Queensland illustrate the public's concern that both federal and state governments can still override sustainable development...

Treasure islands.(Recherche Archipelago )
November 1, 2004... The Recherche Archipelago is regarded one of Australia's most spectacular seascapes. Now, after the community of Esperance stood up to initiate a major scientific investigation of its vulnerable underwater habitats, this rugged chain of...

The logging jam is clearing: if Australia's forestry industry develops according expectations, conservationists and loggers could soon find themselves united on the same environmental front.(Progress)
November 1, 2004... Such a prediction seems improbable as divisive debate on old-growth logging in Tasmania continues to dominate forestry news nationally. But it's in-line with a vision for the way forward emerging from other parts of the industry. Despite...

Logging Van Diemen's land: is there a green light for more sustainable forestry in Tasmania?(Progress)
November 1, 2004... Although the origins of the Tasmanian forestry debate extend back decades, there's recently been a growing sense of ecological urgency from the green side that there could soon be nothing left to fight for; that continued logging of the state's...

The long white cloud over New Zealand's forests.(Progress)(South Island Landless Natives Act)
November 1, 2004... New Zealand, it seems, represents somewhat of a curious paradox. While the world's attention has been attracted to the country's 'clean, green' image, it is not widely known that the 'Land of the Long White Cloud' has a dark history of massive...

Letting the locals lead: an innovative framework of regional responsibility for the management of our natural resources is emerging. Brian Head presents an overview.(Progress)
November 1, 2004... Over the last twenty years, governments in Australia have been urgently developing new approaches to sustainable natural resource management (NRM). Building on some successful independent examples, cooperative regional scale governance has...

Moving with the times: a university case study.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... Protecting the Future showcases tangible examples of the practical implementation of sustainability and the triple bottom-line plus one (comprising environmental, social and cultural economic and governance dimensions) in the scholarship and...

The major steps to sustainability.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... There are now a range of titles published which provide important perspective on aspects of sustainability in Australia, but In Search of Sustainability is set apart by its combined contributions to a thorough overview by some of the country's...

Empowering the energy challenge.(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... In Clean Energy, David Rand of CSIRO Energy Technology and co-author Ron Dell present a welcome survey of the energy problems facing society over the coming decades and the prospects for their solution. The authors emphasise the importance...

Safari hunting--in Australia?(Research)
November 1, 2004... Most parts of Australia are cursed with at least a few species of feral animals, such as pigs, deer, goats, foxes or buffalo, and some people have a passion for hunting such game. Put the two together and you have a safari hunting industry....

Improving the weak assessments of GMO risks.(Research)
November 1, 2004... Having identified the lack of a coordinated and fully rigorous international approach to measuring the potential effects of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), CSIRO scientists have been working on improving the way we assess the actual...

Sharks could save lives: while in an evolutionary context sharks are a long way from humans--our evolutionary lineages diverged almost 500 million years ago--sharks have an immune system similar in many ways to our own.(Research)(Immunoglobulin New Antigen Receptor)
November 1, 2004... Shark populations are declining around the world, but their value to science, and the enormous potential value of biocompounds to us generally, have been reaffirmed now researchers have discovered that sharks' unique antibodies may help...

Events calendar.(Calendar)
November 1, 2004... Supersoil 2004--3rd Australian/New Zealand Soils Conference Sydney, 5-9 December. www.icms.com.au/supersoil 7th Asia-Pacific Complex Systems Conference Cairns, 6-10 December. http://ai2004.cqu.edu.au Peats Ridge Festival--promoting...