Sometimes it is the little stories that shed light on the big ones. There is a lot of triple-bogey-sized news at the moment and most of it is economic – although, considering the economy (as someone once said) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, every economic story is really an environmental one.
Right now the big knobs are fighting for airtime.
At one end of the rope are those saying we have to put the brakes on curbing emissions given the stockmarket woes. On the other end are the hold-the-line crew, who say we have to push on and fight climate change because of and in spite of any financial meltdown…Again this week there was a lot of dross cloaked in argie bargie about emissions trading, clean coal (good botulism), climate change blah, blah…Essentially it feels like we are fillibustering the planet – talking until the water is up to our ankles.
So back to the so-called little story that illuminates the big one…
A swag of media outlets, this week, covered the heart-rending, tear-welling plight of the Benton family, who live at Townsville Queensland. They are pissed off because they have bought a block of land that has an endangered species on it…
As the SMH reported:
Planning to build a home with swimming pool and sheds, they received a letter from the federal environment authorities on February 22, citing the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act) and saying they could not proceed because the land was habitat for the black-throated finch.
“We’re annoyed. It’s our land,” Mr Benton said.
“How can they tell us what to do on our land?”
Mr Benton said even if they get to build on the property they will still be under the control of federal authorities.
“If we want to put a garden bed in we have to put a referral in. If we want to put a fence up we’ll have to put a referral in,” he said.
“We certainly don’t agree we have to live under someone else’s laws on freehold land.”
Why on Earth was such land for sale?
The developers say they didn’t know the finch was protected and the federal government is now investigating…
It’s easy to feel sorry for people like the Bentons but harder to feel sorry for their attitude…Why not make a feature out of the fact that a spectacular little animal lives on their land? Why not modify their plans to accommodate a creature who has been there a lot longer than them? I wonder whether the finches are happy to have Ma and Pa Grimwald turn their habitat into a tin shed display village? Private property rights are important but so is compassion for things other than people and selfishness. When the Bentons bought their block it mustn’t have been your typical suburban quarter acre of kikuyu - clearly it would have looked like someone else’s home already. It’s no wonder we are in the pickle…And everybody knows exactly what will happen – the Bentons will get their pool, their sheds and their big house and the finches will be evicted.
Amidst all the news there was one colourful character who got a lot of attention this week…It was the swift parrot (pictured above), an incredibly beautiful, desperately endangered bird that has the misfortune of preferring real estate of the old -growth kind. As the Age reported its numbers are plummeting:
Sightings of the flashy red and green parrot have declined sharply in its winter home of flowering eucalypt woodlands in Victoria and NSW, surveys show.
Checks by 400 volunteers, conducted under a federal-state recovery plan for the bird, found that instead of improving, the number of sightings declined from 2.5 per survey in 2000 to 0.5 last year.
Already listed as endangered, with fewer than 1000 breeding pairs in 2003, the swift parrot might be close to critically endangered, said Chris Tzaros, conservation manager of the non-government organisation Birds Australia.
A new report, by forests campaigner Margaret Blakers and botanist Isobel Crawford, found the swift parrot’s limited foraging and nesting habitat was being logged at a rate of 1000 hectares a year, with nests almost certainly destroyed by logging.
Federal Environment minister, Peter Garrett said the Tasmanians should protect the habitat. There’s a big difference, though, between should and will.
A fundamental truism of environmental politics is: when in doubt or when things get hard invoke that great manifestation of all things environmentally holy, the whale. The Liberals did it with incredible success and now Peter Garrett too has become a whalerider. As the ABC informed us:
Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett has confirmed Australia has appointed an ambassador for whale conservation in an effort to bring an end to commercial and so-called ”scientific” whaling.
Former diplomat Sandy Hollway, who was appointed to the position, has held discussions with officials in Japan and the United States, he said.
Mr Hollway’s appointment will ”deepen our dialogue with leaders in Japan and other countries ahead of the southern summer,” Mr Garrett said in a statement.
Real Dirt says let’s create an entire Department of the Whale….
Good-Morning James
Re the Swift parrot and logging I think I heard on ABC this AM that there was web footage of people protesting against logging having their windscreen smashed while they were in the car. Do you know anything about that? Ps it’s not all doom and gloom I bought my block at Agnes Water because there was a rare species of wallaby associated with it and my block at Coonarr because of the rare flora and if I have my way neither will be developed.
Anne-Marie – This is from Crikey, I hope that it works, I’m no tekky and can’t even watch it myself, being on dial-up
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=45007754
We’re also looking to buy land full of threatened biota. Perhaps a key diference is that we know that they are there and as a consultatant ecologist used to all the legal and planning issues, I understand both the constraints and the opportunities. The latter now includes funding from a range of sources that can help land owners to manage threatened biota habitat. However, I’ve also seen too many cases where Council zoning of land does not flag to prospective purchasers the sort of ecological constraints that are likely to affect the site. A small number of wiser Councils in NSW use property law to require that blocks known or likely to contain legally protected threatened biota (species, populations & communities) have to note this on the s.149 certificate that accompanies the title deed. It is normal practice to list other potential or known constraints in this way, e.g. bush fire, flood, landslip, etc. With this approach, a purchaser’s solicitor (or the purchaser themselves) is alerted to the constraints prior to finalising a purchase. I believe that State Govt’s should make this sort of disclosure mandatory in the interests of consumer protection and, arguably more importantly, ecological protection. James is correct in stating that in most situations like that reported in the SMH, private property rights prevail over ecological ethics. Our whole society is and has long been thoroughly anthropocentric if not anthropoexclusive (humans are the only thing afforded serious moral considerability, though other beings are sometimes given a subsidiary considerability). Most of the conflicts of this nature that I am aware of have resulted in the land owner / developer getting there way or at least largely so. Call me an eco-fascist but I don’t believe in private property rights. Land ownership is a legal construct. Nobody really owns land – Aboriginal people had it right – the land owns the people. To believe that people can truly own land to the extent that they are entitled to do with it as they wish (which planning laws demonstrate they are not) is akin to a form of anarchy. Farmers often complain about being constrained in their use of land but they are usually far less constrained than most land owners because most of us need to lodge a DA/BA for a garage, yet a farmer can change from grazing to cropping and change from one croping system to another without requiring anyone’s consent.
We need comprehensive legal (and ideally cultural) reform that makes property law subsidiary to the public/ecological interest. No land exists outside the laws ecology. No land ‘ownership’ should be allowed outside the laws of ecology.
I have a degree of sympathy for the Bentons. Presumably the Council which approved the development got its cut, then of course the developers made a profit and passed on the block fully encumbered with a threatened species for the Bentons to deal with. It’s an unfortunate fact that often the people who can least afford the loss can effectively have their property restrospectively confiscated for the purposes of conservation. It is probably their largest investment in their lives. It is meant to become their home and they are the last ones to find out in this process that it’s a no go area for development, an instruction given to them by bureaucrats who obviously live in homes that occupy space today that was at some time occupaied by nature. Clearly the block should never have been sold to the Bentons in the first place but they are the ones who will pay the highest price. I don’t have a great deal of sympathy for the attitude but understand why they feel aggrieved. They should be compensated for their individual loss. Unfortunately its cases like this that don’t help to engender support with the community for conservation. Compensation might help. Meanwhile Tasmania’s foresty department has no trouble wiping out the Swift Parrot. Where’s the equity in all of this. It’s the little guy who has to pay.
Prof – anyone who buys real estate without due diligence is .. careless. Even without the unnecessary/superfluous “services” of a solicitor or conveyancer,a simple search of titlesand council records would have revealed any encumbrance.
Dare I suggest that they knew and didn’t give a proverbial, thinking that bluff, bluster & big bucks would do the job?
Re the story of the Bentons, what’s new. People can go in and knock down trees willy-nilly and then move on to another property and repeat the process. The fate of a little bird simply doesn’t interest most (?) people. The idea of walking lightly on the earth is not a familiar one to many, perhaps its promotion would do some good? Always have the feeling that the top of the food chain status carries the most weight (I can do what I want and I’ll do it just because I can)