Category Archives: News

With apologies, here’s a statement of the obvious: roads aren’t just bare surfaces for carrying vehicles. They’re framed by roadside reserves, which carry some very important vegetation. Mount Alexander Shire Council is preparing a planning scheme amendment to insert a … Continue reading →

The reason we started the last post by stating the obvious is that, maybe, the obvious is not so obvious. On glancing through 1998 Roadsides Management Strategy we came across this sentence, referring to machinery working on roadsides: ‘Blades on slashers … Continue reading →

Local cartographer Mal ‘Jase’ Haysom has just released the latest in his series of excellent maps, this one being of the Muckleford Forest. The map can be found at the website of Cartography Community Services, along with others in the … Continue reading →

Extensive media coverage, accompanied by plenty of smoke haze: DELWP’s autumn management burning program is now underway. Although this program is regularly described as an ecological exercise, no one is really under any illusion: it’s an effort to protect communities … Continue reading →

Victoria has a new biodiversity plan. Protecting Victoria’s Environment—Biodiversity 2037 was launched last week by the State Government. It can be found here. Readers may remember that FOBIF made a brief submission to the process of developing this paper last … Continue reading →

Having registered this depressing fact, we need to look at the current document, and ask: what does it add up to? It adds up to money. Here’s a key passage: ‘The degraded health of Victoria’s biodiversity is the result of … Continue reading →

The document is full of praiseworthy but often vague aspirations, but on occasions it does get specific, as in this: ‘Estimate of relative area required to deliver statewide targets [by 2037]: 4 million hectares of control of pest herbivores (e.g. … Continue reading →

Here are some interestingly provocative quotes from Biodiversity 2037: ‘Native plants and animals have an intrinsic right to exist, thrive and flourish.’ But elsewhere in the document we read: ‘Human-induced changes to the environment have, in some situations, led to … Continue reading →

The March edition of the VNPA’s Parkwatch magazine is now out, and can be found online here. It contains, among much else, informative stuff about Crusoe Reservoir, between Castlemaine and Bendigo; plans to log the wonderful Wellsford Forest, north of Bendigo; and … Continue reading →