"their (koala) numbers are at least as high as the were in 1788"

mhaze where did you get that "fact" from, pluck it out of you know where.

Maybe "the were" high refers to what you were smoking in 1788. You have the hide to question what, and how I post! Another one in a glass house.

Paul,

I find your attitude unbelievable. Your regularly just make stuff up (stuff-up being the operative word). You've specifically said you refuse to explain things you assert. Whenever caught out in one of your flights of fantasy you habitually just 'disappear'. Yet as soon as you see something that doesn't fit you fantasies you demand evidence and cry foul.

So, Koalas. There were so few koalas around Sydney that it was 10 years before Europeans sighted their first. Thereafter because of the reduction in aboriginal hunting in the region and the active remove of the dingo, the numbers exploded. This remained true for all areas settled by Europeans. So by the end of the 19th century, koala numbers reached their hiatus being unnaturally high due to European practices.

A review by the NSW Chief Scientist found that genetic and historic data showed the numbers in NSW were quite low pre-European settlement. But 'low' is a subject number. They were low compared to the hiatus in the late 19th century. But perhaps they were the 'right' numbers and the higher numbers were 'wrong.

This is a standard problem among the doomsayers. They look at things at their best and assume that is normal. Agricultural land that wasn't viable in 1930 became viable in the 1960s. Now that they are losing viability, the doomsayers see....well doom.

Nathan,

"A plantation is not a forest. "

So why are you mentioning it in a deforestation discussion?
You assume that everything cut down is natural and everything replacing it is plantation. Evidence?

People plant plantations with the aim of cutting it down. A large portion of the yearly 'deforestation' is plantation which gets replanted. But that doesn't sound scary so.....

"sadly in your society and under your control we will having nothing much more that "survival of the fittest"."

Well no. We have a society that has solved the famine problem that plagued mankind since there was a mankind. We have a society that solved the child death problem (before the 20th century, 1 in 2 children died before the age of 5). We have a society that is solving the assumed population crisis without coercion.

Do you deny that this is a golden age for mankind? Not perfect but closer to perfect than ever before. Yet you want to tear up the things that made that society possible?

We can't escape the visible signs of pollution,
particularly in the rapidly developing cities in the
poorer parts of Asia. One can't escape the
urban slums and water-borne diseases in
many of those countries. And we can't help but
notice the famines and poverty in much of sub-Saharan Africa.

We have to change our ideas
about nature, about human nature and about how we wish to live.
It's a valid question raised by Nathan - how do we humans relate to nature?

Our demands on nature are a crucial constraint in determining how
many of us there should be and how much we should consume.
The more each one of us consumes, the less there can be of us
if we're not to overload and degrade the natural system on which
we depend for food, shelter, clothing, and ultimately life.

If we get to the stage of seriously overloading the planet,
nature itself will take revenge and there will be less of us.
An overload of pollution will result in epidemics with disease
carried by polluted water, and overload of our soils will
result in declining yields of food. There are so many more
pressures we are applying to our ecosystems, that we will see
the human population culled by our own excessive behaviour.

We are going to need to understand both
nature and ourselves much better. We are
going to need a science-based framework - and
science itself to guide us.

The first recorded European encounter with a koala was by John Price in 1798, 10 years after first settlement. As the koala requires a very selective habitat, something the Sydney region was not particularly suited for.

The Eora people who were settled in the Sydney region at the time of the first European arrival were highly dependent on the harbour, bays, rivers and creeks as their primary source of food supply, and food was in abundance. Combined with carefully attended gardens Aboriginal people had little need for such animals as koalas.

The fact the first European crossing of the Blue Mountains did not take place until 1813, 25 years after first settlement, the European environment was very much restricted. It was John Oxley in 1817 and 1818, 30 years after settlement that any extensive exploration of NSW took place. Oxley went on to survey the Moreton Bay region in 1823.

Hi Foxy,

My wife tells me of her childhood, they lived in their ancesteral valley about 10 miles from the sea. On a kai (food) gathering expedition, often walking the 10 miles to the seashore. There was an abundence of kai to catch and gather, they were told only take what we need, get greedy and you upset Tangaroa, and bad things happen.