Thank You for your inputs thus far. I've looked up several websites on
species extinction in Australia. There are quite a few. The following one may be of interest:

http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/spp/

It tells us that "Australia has an abysmmal record on species extinction. More mammals have become extinct in Australia over the last 200 years than in any other country in the world. Many other species which live in our forests and woodlands are now in severe
decline. This is particularly the case with most of the 300 Australian animals and birds that use tree hollows to nest and find
shelter. Hollows only form in trees older that 120 years."

The website makes it quite clear that we need to "protect more
habitats to allow endangered forest and woodland species to
avoid extinction. The destruction of habitat and old trees has
to stop if we want these species to survive."

The Koala, Masked Owl, Yellow-Bellied Glider, Tiger Quoll, are just some of the species mentioned. There are many more - Google them for yourselves.

Surely we could do something to protect their habitats
to prevent the extinction of our threatened species. We have species that are not found anywhere else. They are an aesthetic treasure, capable of delighting our senses and giving us some vision of what we are so carelessly destroying. They've been here far longer than we have. If some different creature were to have the calamitous effects on other plants and animals that we ourselves do, we would undoubtedly consider it the most noxious and virulent pest to crawl upon the face of the earth.

Lexi

Excellent topic.

When someone asked on another thread recently, "How much biodiversity is necessary?"

I wanted to weep. Cry for the failure of our education system to educate the very basics of natural science, tear my hair out at the systematic and deliberate distortion of many facts about our world.

As you know species become extinct when the environment changes to one where a species cannot adapt and dies out. This can be on a cataclysmic scale such as when earth was hit by a massive asteroid, sending up ash into the atmosphere which prevented sunlight reaching the planet resulting in plant die-off, and the demise of herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs in a sudden death all over the globe. Apart from sudden events, species extinction usually occurs more slowly, ensuring that biodiversity is maintained even if the individual species are different.

Our agriculture, mining and habitats are altering the ecosystem at rates faster than many habitats can cope; we lose too many at too fast a rate, then the gene pool is limited to our loss.

For those interested, please read the following:

"Biodiversity... is most often thought of as the variety of organisms on earth. Yet it also includes two other factors: ecological diversity (the variety of ecosystems and ecological communities) and genetic diversity (the range of genetic differences found within and between species).

“All three aspects are crucial for the success and development of life on earth,” explains People and the Planet, a group raising environmental concerns based in London. “Since environmental conditions at every level are constantly changing, only diversity can ensure that some individuals and species will be able to adapt to the changes.”

Species declines and extinctions have always been a natural part of that process, but there is something disturbingly different about the current extinction patterns."

http://www.gaiadiscovery.com/nature-biodiversity/why-biodiversity-is-important-sustaining-ecosystems-with-eco.html

I apologise if I have repeated what others already written, having come late to this thread. However, I believe the message bears repetition. We will never learn all there is to learn about the natural environment, that is no excuse to not understanding the basics.

The Age:
February 18, 2010

“The controversial Bald Hills wind farm that catapulted the endangered orange-bellied parrot to fame in 2006 is under renewed scrutiny, after it was quietly granted permission to make its turbines more than 20 per cent higher. The Howard government unsuccessfully tried to kill off the Bald Hills proposal citing protection of the rare bird, but the State Labor government gave it the green light.

Wind farm spokesman Matthew Croome said impact studies were submitted as part of the request for a height increase and they found there would be negligible change generally, and further stated that there would be no impact specifically for the orange-bellied parrot, but Mr Croome could not share the reports with The Age.

Planning Minister Justin Madden said the changes would see up to 20 per cent more renewable energy produced and would give approval for the height increase.”

I throw this in because I heard several farmers complaining about the coming wind farms in the Southern Highlands and an endangered parrot that is the symbol of the district being at risk. Well my OLO Brownites, what is more important, the bird or the fiberglass?

About the fiberglass there are TENS of thousands of fiberglass wind towers sitting around California destitute and abandoned. The companies that put them in are gone, fled with the money, and the landowner has a removal cost of over $100,000 per unit.

Just a personal observation, when I drive between Sydney and Melbourne as I do every couple of months the wind farms are either not working or a decent percentage in the array are not working. I have never seen them going as seen in the pro wind propaganda vision.

Dear Ammonite,

Thgank you. In pre-industrial socieites people traditionally treated nature with respect, considering themselves a part of, rather than set apart from, the natural world. In industrialised societies our attitudes are different. Many see nature primarily as a resource of exploitation. As our "needs" increase, our capacity for exploitation expands. Many don't see our ravaging of the environment as "ravaging" at all; it's "progress" or "development." We're so used to exploiting natural resources and dumping our waste products into the environment that we frequently forget that resources are limited and exhaustible and that pollution can disrupt the ecological balance on which all of our survival depends. Thanks for reminding us of it.

Dear SOG,

I'm not familiar with that particular incident to which you refer. Bur I've come across this website which may explain a few things:

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1610250.htm

And the following on wind farms in general may also be of interest:

http://ramblingsdc.net/Australia/WindPower.html

Hi all, it seems to me that very few people would disagree that industrialised civilisation has had a terrible impact on pre-existing ecosystems and many species.

I do wonder what to do about it though. A lot of westerners feel bad about it and respond by wanting to reserve areas of natural vegetation and keep humans out as much as possible. However I think that this is another example of us getting it wrong. Indigenous cultures interacted with nature - in the case of Australia and Aboriginal people, for tens of thousands of years. The wollemi area west of the NSW central cost is an area of half a million hectares or so, and was inhabitied by Aboriginal people at least since the end of the last ice-age. A recent archaeological study found an extra 127 inhabited caves, and a stone axe only 150 yrs old. The researchers said it was like a ghost town, all the evidence of people but no people. We now manage this area as if they never existed, but they were a fundamentally important part of the ecosystem particularly with their use of fire.

We western urbanites seem to believe that if we just reserve areas and stay out the nature will reach a perfect equlibrium. Some ecologitists say this is just wrong, others think it is right but only is special cases:

Wallington, T. J., R. J. Hobbs, and S. A. Moore 2005. Implications of current ecological thinking for
biodiversity conservation: a review of the salient issues. Ecology and Society 10(1): 15. [online] URL:

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol10/iss1/art15/

Environmentalist thinking and publicity campaigns are all about reserving more areas and leaving them alone. I don't think it will work and look at the victorian fires as well as species decline in the kimberely as examples.

We will have to get active in managing natural areas if we seriously want to maintain viable species populations.

Annomite summed it up, it is about habitat and incursion, and other than the demise of humanity is there a solution?

In 1700 only 7% of earth was farmed, now the figure is closer to 40% and that does not take into account a similar amount being used for raising livestock.

The global market has contributed to pristine land being degraded. In Brazil huge areas of rain forest have been replaced by soybeans a demand fuelled by China.

Perhaps the solution is twofold, globally work towards birth control and get rid of meat from our diet, I'm not a veg by the way. Thousands of generations ago our ancestors required the protein that meat delivers to develop the brain of the apex predator, but we have it now, it comes with birth. We could give up meat for roughage, vegetables, fruits and a protein enriched basic food, Soylen Green may I suggest.

Lexi thanks for the links, I am scathing of solutions that appease but do not solve. Wind is not an option given the ongoing maintenance costs as pointed out in your link $30,000 per day just to hire a mobile crane and the pressure placed on the moving parts means regular maintenance, that is why after the government assistance it is not viable as I exampled by the tens of thousands abandoned in the now bankrupt state of California. Then you have the intrusion factor and most importantly output and the energy required to maintain it when inactive. If I was considering an alternative I would go with waves and tides, but that is major engineering in return for negligible output