If only the planet had more people like Keith Muir we would be in much better shape than we are today. Sadly consumerism, greed and vested interest has much more influence with government than sublime beauty and fragile landscapes. As a result we see our water catchments sacrificed to destructive industry, the air that we breathe mortgaged for new coal mines and our ancient forests felled to feed Japanese paper mills.
Endeavouring to protect Australia's unique natural heritage is not some kind of weird green eco madness..it is logical sane and rational. As Thoreaux once said "In wildness is the preservation of the world"

Hasbeen,
Please don't comment on things you clearly don't understand, you write on things like this and in doing so, subtract from the sum total of the world's understanding on everything. The younger generation is confused enough without you inventing new science

what a pity that the author has completely failed to mention the one major influence over all Australian wilderness which has been as crucial as climate, biodiversity and soils in creating and then maintaining wilderness: namely, the Aboriginal people and their all-pervasive influences which have changed and then managed/used our so-called wilderness areas for the past 40,000 years. Any discussion about wilderness which doesn't acknowledge Indigenous influences and the need to actively return them to our landscapes is fatally flawed.

Bernie

I think you are missing the point.

If all humans were to suddenly vanish from the face of the earth - the wilderness would be just fine. Humans are the only part of the ecosystem that the ecosystem can manage without.

Rain would still fall, kangaroos would still bound, fish swim in the seas and waterways and so on.

Aborigines co-existed within Australia's ecosystem far more successfully than the later immigrants, with less destruction and change. That time is long past, we are now having to deal with the reality and result of our massive changes to the landscape and extermination of many flora and fauna.

Severin - if all human beings suddenly vanished from the planet, Australia's wilderness areas would quickly and permanently change for two reasons. First, weeds and feral animals would quickly dominate those parts of the ecosystem where they had competitive advantages or ineffective natural control agents. Inland Australia would be overrun by camels, donkeys, horses, pigs and rabbits (to name just a few) together with cane toads in our north and weeds such as tamarisk.
Second, the landscape that Capt Phillip found in 1788 was an Aboriginal-moulded one where the Indigenous people had modified virtually all parts of Australia to suit their needs (for example, they had caused the extinction of the mega fauna and changed most vegetation assemblages through their use of fire). If Aboriginal people are removed from Australia along with the more recent migrants, the country will go back to what it was 40,000 years ago, dominated by less frequent but more intense and larger bushfires. Under this scenario, the wilderness will still be wild but it will change even more radically than has happened over the lat 200 years.
It's for this reason that any discussion about wilderness in places like Australia where the original inhabitants have had thousands of years to influence the landscape must include a commitment to maintaining those Aboriginal landscape influences.

Any discussion about wilderness which doesn't acknowledge Indigenous influences and the need to actively return them to our landscapes is fatally flawed.
Bernie Masters,
There were only about 300,000 inhabitants of this country before the outsiders thronged in. There was no industry no, housing, no infrastructure, no nothing. It is literally pointless to draw any comparison to what is happening to the country nowadays. Even if 22 million people would suddenly adopt the original Aboriginal lifestyle than wilderness as we know it would disappear in a flash. The point being, there are just too many people ! Over time nature controlled overpopulation with decease but the intelligent among us have managed to destroy that mechanism. So what's the answer ? WAR, of course ! On one hand we destroy nature to keep more & more people & on the other hand we don't have the means or brains to accommodate them all. Pretty stupid of these intelligent beings, eh ?