Habitat Australia articles from February 2005

Habitat Australia archives from February 2005

Letters.(green Views)
February 1, 2005... Writing letters to newspaper and magazine editors is one of the best ways to express your concerns for the environment. Habitat would like to reward readers who write to us. This issue red-star letters will receive a copy of David...

Water debate.(green Views)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2005... In response to your correspondent Ross Carter's letter (Habitat, December 2004) I believe he is a little over-sensitive regarding tap versus bottled water, and his refusal to drink the former. I have never drunk bottled water in my lifetime and...

Chuck the remote.(green Views)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2005... In your December 2004 article How can you reduce your ecological footprint you raised the issue of remote controls and appliances on "standby". I did some testing and found that the two appliances in our household with remotes, the TV and VCR,...

Casual council vacancies.(ACF Notices)
February 1, 2005... Nominations are invited from members to fill two casual vacancies on ACF Council, one in the Northern Territory and one in Queensland. Candidates, proposers and seconders must all be ACF members and nominations must be received at ACF's...

Draft ACF policy statements.(ACF Notices)
February 1, 2005... As outlined in the October edition, ACF's Council is undertaking a policy review. At their December 2004 meeting, Council approved three substantial redrafts of existing policies and one brand new draft policy and are seeking comments from...

Sydney Branch meetings.(ACF Notices)(Australian Conservation Foundation)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Be amongst the first to contribute to the exciting new ACF Sustainability Outreach program by coming to the Sydney Branch meeting on Tuesday, 8 February. Learn from Sustainability Campaigner, Suzie Brown, about how the ACF plans to help local...

Laying in the danger zone.(Online Discussions)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2005... To be fair, talking about people being laying in the danger zone, in the past 1000 years Thailand has never had a tsunami. I'd hardly consider it a high risk zone for tsunamis. Poor finances make for poor city development & planning, and...

Red gums.(Online Discussions)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2005... Recently I was in Central Australia and walked the Todd river bed in Alice Springs. I was told the big gums were dying due to the lowering of the water table and the increasing salinity. These trees represent the ancestors of the...

Defining old growth.(Online Discussions)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2005... I live in Western Australia where we had a very successful campaign to save our Old Growth Forests(OGF). What the people here did not know was what the real definition of OGF was to be. The truth now is that the JANIS criteria was used...

Hot stuff.(Online Discussions)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2005... In Queensland the population is preparing for another scorching summer. Sales of air conditioners have skyrocketed. People seem to be unaware of alternative cooling methods such as double glazing, shades and blinds, whirly birds and insulation....

A word from the Executive Director.
February 1, 2005... The generosity of Australians for those suffering terribly from the Tsunami will help rebuild shattered lives. Our hearts go out to those affected. WAHLI (the 'Indonesian Forum for Environment'), our colleague organisation, has lost staff and...

Sommerville.
February 1, 2005... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Caption: "State-of-the-art global warming modelling by the world's most esteemed scientists indicates that a few degrees rise in global temperature will dramatically reduce average rainfall in South America, with...

Support for natural tsunami protection.(campaign Trails)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... The Boxing Day tsunami wreaked some of the worst devastation the world has seen. More than 150,000 were killed, and millions, across ten nations, lost their homes and livelihoods. ACF supports the work of humanitarian aid organizations in...

In memoriam--Mohammad Ibrahim.(campaign Trails)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Mohammad Ibrahim, the Aceh-based executive director of WAHLI (The 'Indonesian Forum for Environment'), perished on December 26 with his wife and child in their home in Banda Aceh, the worst hit area in Indonesia. Mohammad was an inspiring...

ACF sponsors organic future!(campaign Trails)
February 1, 2005... One evening, last December, deep beneath a central Melbourne pub, and a long way from the back paddock, ACF joined a crowd of consumers, retailers and farmers in raising a glass to a new voice for your right to healthy, tasty and...

Gunns legal action--ACF urges investors to act.(campaign Trails)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... On 14 December 2004, Tasmanian timber giant, Gunns Limited, announced it had commenced legal action against 20 environmentalists and environment groups claiming close to $6.5 million in damages. ACF has declared its support for the...

First steps for the darling.(campaign Trails)(Darling Basin, Australia)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... While the health of the Murray River continues to be a major focus of community concern, discussion of the health of its major tributary, the Darling, has been lacking. Recognising this gap, the Community Advisory Committee (CAC) of the Murray...

Sydney Metropolitan Strategy update.(campaign Trails)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... The second Sydney Futures Forum was held in December and plans for the Metropolitan Strategy were partially unveiled. The plans included 5500 hectares of new parklands in Western Sydney and a land release plan for 150,000 new homes in Sydney's...

ANZ giving program doubles donations.(campaign Trails)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... A new ANZ bank initiative will see the bank match internet banking customer donations up to $1000 made through its matched charity customer donations program. ACF relationship development manager Julian Bentley said it was exciting to be chosen...

Newsroom ...
February 1, 2005... With the help of a media monitoring and analysis service provided by Rehame, ACF kept on top of environmental issues as they bounced around the media in 2004. They say a picture paints a thousand words. But sometimes a few well--(or...

Climate change competition winners.(campaign Trails)
February 1, 2005... Congratulations to Ken Fletcher, of Victoria, the winner of the ACF cartoons for climate change competition. Ken has won an starter pack, including an eco-showerhead, toilet water flush saver, greywater diversion value and other goods, valued...

Global warming concerns block power project.(campaign Trails)(Hunter Valley Redbank power plant)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... ACF has welcomed news that the proposed $230 million Hunter Valley Redbank power plant has been rejected by the NSW government based on evidence that it would produce massive greenhouse pollution. This decision is a significant moment in...

Call for polluter-pays.(climate Corner)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Twenty-five of the least developed countries (LDCs) in the world including representatives from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific met in Tanzania in November and are planning to demand that the industrialized countries should adhere to the...

Melting mountains.(climate Corner)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Mountain glaciers are also melting and several of them may disappear entirely over the next twenty years. Cotopaxi Volcano (pictured) alone lost 31 percent of its ice cover between 1976 and 1997. Ecuadorean and French scientists are studying...

Grain drain.(climate Corner)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Research in Japan indicates that climate change will have serious implications for grain yields in a country where rice is the staple food. With carbon dioxide emissions rising by annual 1.3%, researchers say temperatures-on a typical sunny...

Sea bottom affected by changes.(climate Corner)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... A 14 year long study off the coat of California has found that although sea cucumbers live 4km below the surface of the ocean, they are impacted by climate changes above. A slow and steady rain of organic material--faeces and dead...

Engineers favour Kyoto.(climate Corner)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... The Australian Institute of Engineers found that their members strongly favour ratifying the Kyoto treaty and introducing emissions trading, favour renewable energy over "sustainable coal", and are dubious about geosequestration. There...

Kyoto Protocol ratification: a party worth celebrating? The Kyoto Protocol comes into force as a legally binding international document on 16 February after many years of blood, sweat and tears. ACF's sustainability program manager Monica Richter looks at the road ahead.(Cover Story)
February 1, 2005... NEGOTIATED IN 1997, the Kyoto Protocol has always been seen as the first of many steps required to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions. While the Protocol will not prevent major climate change impacts from occurring, its targets are consistent...

ACF presidency meets hot science: Margaret Ambrose finds that science somewhat unexpectedly becomes a whole lot more interesting when new ACF President, Professor Ian Lowe, is talking about it.
February 1, 2005... HIS PASSION AND ENTHUSIASM for explaining the science behind climate change and the need for humans to act heralds back to the days we were captivated watching the lab work of Dr Julius Sumner Miller, and more recently listening to the...

Fire the Yalanji way: the publication of a book by the Yalanji people about their fire management traditions aims to keep the language and knowledge alive.(Yalanji Warranga Kaban/Yalanji People of the Rainforest Fire Management Book)
February 1, 2005... KUKU YALANJI ELDER Eileen Walker wasn't born in a hospital. She is proud of the fact that she was born in the bush. At 60, she feels a weight of responsibility on her shoulders for keeping her culture and language alive. Along with other...

Newcastle beyond BHP: heavy industry in Australia is lobbying hard to ensure that we remain dependent on fossil fuels. The line is that developing a model for Australia based on sustainable energy sources is a pipe dream. Julie Taylor Mills considers the experience of Newcastle--a coal and steel based city, which has reinvented itself.
February 1, 2005... PLAYING SATURDAY AFTERNOON SPORT was unpleasant when I grew up in the 1970s. There were no air pollution inspectors on duty at weekends and heavy industry operated with impunity. Driving out to Lake Macquarie to go sailing meant holding your...

Going Native--living in the Australian environment.(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Michael Archer & Bob Archer Hodder Headline RRP: $35 Going Native is a provocative book and contains something to excite and offend everyone. Archer and Beale argue convincingly that, to avert a bleak ecological and economic future, we...

Equal Heart and Mind: letters between Judith & Jack McKinney.(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Patricia Clarke & Meredith McKinney (eds) QUP $24.95 The Equal Heart and Mind is a quiet and intimate portrait of the relationship between the poet Judith Wright and the philosopher Jack McKinney. Wright and McKinney met in 1944 and rapidly...

Poetry with motion: the Two-Fires festival in March 2005 is inspired by the life of Australian poet, conservationist and reconciliation activist Judith Wright. Anna Molan looks at her life and conservation work.(Obituary)
February 1, 2005... JUDITH WRIGHT WAS in her own words a poet with an axe to grind. "Conservation, Aboriginal rights, human rights... are as important to me as poetry and indeed indispensable to the writing of poetry," she said. Born in 1915 into a conservative...

Member milestones: many Australian Conservation Foundation members celebrate milestones this year. This month, habitat celebrates their commitment to Australia's environment and take a look at some of the environmental events in the years they joined.
February 1, 2005... In 1970... * Francis Ratcliffe, founder of ACF, died aged 66. * First publication of an Australian conservation directory, The Green Pages. * ACF called for a total ban on the export of kangaroo products. * A Royal Commission...

An environmental view: once you start converting a block of native forest into a ecologically sound retreat, you just can't stop. Hilary Hughes and Gary Werskey have been working on Kanimbla View near Blackheath in the Blue Mountains for the past 10 years, turning the block into a model of sustainable living.(ACF Member Profile)
February 1, 2005... IN NOVEMBER LAST YEAR they took the final step, signing a voluntary conservation agreement (VCA) with NSW's Parks and Wildlife Service, which will provide long-term protection for the property, which boasts a hanging swamp, a protected forest...

Juices putting squeeze on the environment.(consuming Choices)
February 1, 2005... Thirsty consumers are being fooled by misleading green claims made by the booming juice bar market, Victoria's peak environment group has warned. Environment Victoria singled out two of Victoria's leading juice retailers, Boost Juice and...