The potential rezoning of Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area for tourism development begs the question: just what is wilderness, and what is it good for?
The Wilderness Society/AAP
The Tasmanian government this month released a draft of the revised management plan for the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, which proposes rezoning certain areas from “wilderness zones” to “remote…
Butterflies aren’t the only ones with snazzy stripes.
Ben Sale
Ask people to describe what they associate with butterflies, and you will probably get an image of a sunny summer’s day, with a beautiful peacock drifting gently on the cooling breeze. Ask the same question…
Energy supply including nuclear is the best way to fight climate change and conserve wildlife and ecosystems.
James Marvin Phelps/Flickr
Should nuclear energy be part of Australia’s (and many other countries’) future energy mix? We think so, particularly as part of a solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent dangerous climate…
How many kangaroos is too many?
David Jenkins/Flickr
Each year rangers in the Australian Capital Territory cull kangaroos as part of the territory’s Kangaroo Management Plan. This year they killed a few over 1,500 kangaroos. Even though millions of kangaroos…
Young Steller sea lions in Prince William Sound, Alaska. NMFS Permit 14336.
Markus Horning
A decade ago, we set out to unravel deep ocean crime scenes we weren’t even sure existed. The crime? Endangered Steller sea lions were rapidly disappearing in parts of Alaska. Their numbers dropped by…
Could Australia’s new threatened species commissioner be the break Tasmania’s endangered devils need?
jomilo75/Flickr
Australia’s threatened animals and plants may have received a small win today — the announcement of Australia’s first threatened species commissioner by Environment Minister Greg Hunt in Melbourne. The…
Sorry Rick – you should’ve been left behind about three decades ago (along with some algorithms).
Claudio Poblete/Flickr
It’s an exciting time to be doing statistics. You heard me – statistics: exciting. It often gets a bad rap, but stats is after all at the business end of the research process. When I’ve collaborated on…
Sea turtles and climate change are not a good mix.
SteFou
Last year was Australia’s hottest on record and this year started with heatwaves. Animals feel the heat too – so how will they cope and adapt as the climate changes? Take, for example, sea turtles. These…
The Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science recognise excellence in science and science teaching. This year, we asked three prizewinners to reflect on their work and factors that influenced their careers…
From Cholera to the collapse: bankers and bacteria have both been seen as monsters.
Bankenstein
What do bankers and bacteria have in common? Finite resources, quick decision-making and an appreciation of trade-offs, according to a study in Ecology Letters. So could bacterial modelling ever help us…
With the royal baby due soon, there is much speculation on whether the family will be welcoming a Prince or a Princess of Cambridge. But perhaps science can tell us the answer, as new research from Stanford…
The finer points of Abenomics are not lost on this guy.
ippei-janine
Japanese PM Shinzō Abe has a problem, and he might end up killing an awful lot of frogs to solve it. Shares are up in Japan, but everything else has flatlined: kick-starting the stubbornly moribund economy…
The extinct kangaroo ate plants similar to those consumed by modern kangaroos in wet regions.
Image from shutterstock.com
The fossilised teeth of kangaroos and other extinct marsupials reveal southeastern Queensland three million years ago was a mosaic of tropical forests, wetlands and grasslands, and much less arid than…
The decline of this Indian vulture species has costed the economy $30 billion.
Bharat Balasubramanian
The rate of extinction of species today is many thousand times the natural rate. There are even examples that such loss can have serious impact on humans. So a critical question is: what is the role species…
The Green Revolution that began in the 1940s brought modern methods to farming through selective breeding, machinery, and agrochemicals. But 60 years on a new, more sustainable approach is required. Published…
Lonesome no more. George died on 24 June 2012.
A.Davey
There can be few words as poignant as “endling”, the name given to the last surviving individual of a species. The picture (below) of Benjamin, the last Tasmanian tiger or thylacine, is heartbreaking…
Literary critical terms and theories have been adopted by education institutions as a way to provoke thought on the relationship between humans and the environment.
Thomas Bristow
How can art and literature help us imagine a climate-changed world? In 1995, ecocritic Lawrence Buell argued that apocalypse is the single most powerful master metaphor that environmentalism has at its…
Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University