Kind of inspirational, kind of reminds us humanity has always been a bit crap, but we know that, so can do something about it.

Conclusion, broad and ongoing community support and participation could lead to better organisational outcomes.

Each count takes just 20 minutes and helps BirdLife Australia’s scientists track how our urban bird populations are faring – and just by counting, you’ll go into the running to win some incredible prizes!

The weather is warming up and it’s good to put out water. Especially now I’ve got magpies here.

However I stopped doing it because of potential disease transmission with avian flu. (Especially owning a vulnerable elderly cat - who is kept indoors but could get sick if I tracked something in.)

I’m physically disabled so would have trouble cleaning and disinfecting the water containers daily.

What’s everyone else’s plan for managing this?

Once all upstream stages were factored in – extraction, piping to a processing facility, compression from gas into liquid form, shipping, decompression back to gas and burning for energy – he estimated the total climate pollution from LNG was 33% greater than that from coal over a 20-year period.

This is not an entirely new idea – previous studies have suggested the gas industry is dirtier than often claimed – but it is nevertheless a potentially extraordinary finding

Contrary to the legal method requirements, 95% of credited area cells are located on land that has not previously been comprehensively cleared, meaning the projects are trying to regenerate native forests on uncleared land which may have never contained forests.

Invasive Species Council says 5 million native mammals, birds, reptiles and frogs are killed by feral and roaming pet cats a day in Australia

Keep your cat indoors...please.

What we have discovered is that even after almost five years, the trajectory is still in reverse. The impacts are accumulating and it hasn’t stabilised.”

Well, that was another horrific read :( We lived just down the road at the time and had visited the area to hike and swim many times in the years prior.

cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/14438566

This is important I think. Show a bit of love for inseks.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/16468312

Over the past decade, however, scientists have become reacquainted with the historical reach of Australian flat oyster reefs, which decorated about 7,000 kilometers of the country’s coastline from Perth to Sydney and down around Tasmania. Australian flat oysters—not to be confused with the far more common European flat oyster, commonly known as the native oyster—form gigantic reefs comprised of billions of individuals that can be found as deep as 40 meters. “They’re like the trees in a forest or the coral in a tropical sea,” McAfee says. Besides providing habitat and boosting biodiversity, oyster reefs are known to filter water and bolster fish production.

On the back of this learning, scientists have been working to restore these lost ecosystems—an endeavor that got a major boost in 2020 when the nonprofit the Nature Conservancy Australia teamed up with the government of South Australia on an ambitious project to bring flat oyster reefs back to the coastline near Adelaide, one of the country’s biggest cities. That project, as McAfee and his team show in a recent study, has been a resounding success so far, with the restored reef now hosting even more Australian flat oysters than the last remaining natural reef in Tasmania. “It’s quite astonishing,” says McAfee.

Big Brother. Glider Edition

FFS!

Evidence is mounting that modern medicines present a growing threat to ecosystems around the world. The chemicals humans ingest to stay healthy are harming fish and other animals.

SMaRT @UNSW

Choice quote from the article,

creates economies of purpose.

I haven't had a chance to read Hanrahan@solarpunk.net 's article about the acceptance of sufficiency yet, but i suspect the microfactorie concept pushes our production systems along a similar path.

George Monbiot and hosts Ebony Bennet and Polly Hemming get stuck into neoliberalisms insidious effect on climate, the folly of carbon offsets, and why incrementalism will never lead to systemic change.

As Ebony Bennet says, the discussion leaves you hopeful change could be just arpund the corner.

Published: 27 September 2024

Protected areas, drought, and grazing regimes influence fire occurrence in a fire-prone Mediterranean region

Máire Kirkland, Philip W. Atkinson, Sara Aliácar, Deli Saavedra, Mark C. De Jong, Thomas P. F. Dowling & Adham Ashton-Butt

Abstract

Background

Extreme fire seasons in the Mediterranean basin have received international attention due to the damage caused to people, livelihoods, and vulnerable ecosystems. There is a body of literature linking increasingly intense, large fires to a build-up of fuel from rural land abandonment exacerbated by climate change. However, a better understanding of the complex factors driving fires in fire-prone landscapes is needed. We use a global database based on the MODIS Fire CCI51 product, and the Greater Côa Valley, a 340,000-ha area in Portugal, as a case study, to investigate the environmental drivers of fire and potential tools for managing fires in a landscape that has undergone changing agricultural and grazing management.

Results

Between 2001 and 2020, fires burned 32% (1881.45 km2) of the study area. Scrublands proportionally burnt the most, but agricultural land and forests were also greatly impacted. The risk of large fires (> 1 km2) was highest in these land cover types under dry conditions in late summer. Areas with higher sheep densities were more likely to burn, while cattle density had no apparent relationship with fire occurrence. There was also a 15% lower probability of a fire occurring in protected areas.

Conclusion

Future climatic changes that increase drought conditions will likely elevate the risk of large fires in the Mediterranean basin, and abandoned farmland undergoing natural succession towards scrubland will be at particularly high risk. Our results indicate that livestock grazing does not provide a simple solution to reducing fire risk, but that a more holistic management approach addressing social causes and nature-based solutions could be effective in reducing fire occurrence.

Humanity’s rapacious consumption is more than Earth and its climate can handle, which is driving an ecological crisis.

Australians are the worst offenders per person due to our excessive resource use.

The Albanese government has given the green tick to three major thermal coal mine expansions in New South Wales, in a move that critics say lays bare the blatant disregard of climate change in Australia’s federal environmental laws.

But it is the “reckless disregard” for the effects of catastrophic climate change that has been the most jarring, with the three projects estimated to lock in as much as 1.5 billion tonnes of lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions – more than double Australia’s total annual emissions.

In short:

A group of Rising Tide protesters have stopped and climbed onto a coal train at Sandgate near Newcastle.

The group is protesting over federal approval of three coal mine expansions in NSW.

The company behind one of the expansions says it will support hundreds of regional jobs.

In short:

The largest known population of night parrots, around 50 birds, is believed to live in a remote Indigenous Protected Area in Western Australia.

A new study suggests the rare parrots may be protected by dingoes.

What's next?

Change is coming to the region with the first piece of industrial development in the area, a potash mine and 350-kilometre sealed haul road, seeking environmental approval.