Jennifer Marohasy

THE key recommendation in the Native Fish Strategy for the Murray Darling Basin 2003-2013 – a document developed by the Murray Darling Basin Commission, (MDBC) and adopted by the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) – was the need to address the issue of cold water pollution in particular from the Hume dam. The strategy, published [...]

A DECISION made in Cambodia this month by the United Nation’s World Heritage committee could add 172,000 hectares of forest to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. Federal Minister for the Environment Tony Burke was seeking to have the deal sealed without proper scrutiny, in particular by using a loophole in the UN guidelines to [...]

I visited Hidcote Manor Gardens in Warwickshire earlier today. They have several honey bee hives and a notice board claiming three different reasons for the decline in honey bee colonies across the UK. “The number of honey bee colonies in the UK has halved in recent years. This is probably due to: 1. The use [...]

HUNDREDS of millions of dollars have been spent on fishways, resnagging, riparian revegetation, not to mention the billions for water buyback, all recommendations of the Native Fish Strategy for the Murray Darling Basin 2003-2013 [1]. Those who implemented the program, however, claim no progress, in particular that numbers of Murray cod are still in decline [...]

IT is ten years since the launch of the ‘Native Fish Strategy for the Murray Darling Basin 2003-2013’ [1]. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on the program including to re-snag the main channel of the Murray River with microchip embedded logs, building fish-ways and of course returning hundred of gigalitres of water. [...]

I READ with interest an article in The Fremantle Herald newspaper in which global warming was blamed for rising sea levels, which in turn were said to be submerging the mud flats in the Swan River estuary and thus destroying the habitat of migratory birds. Reading it, I could not but reflect on my own [...]

Media Release 850 billion litres of water purchased through Federal Government buybacks has not been used according to an Australian Audit Office report, Commonwealth Environmental Watering Activities, released today. This is despite the Federal Government not expecting to acquire even half the Murray Darling Basin water it has deemed necessary for environmental watering purposes. The [...]

MANY South Australians, and the Australian government, and the Murray Darling Basin Authority, claim that it is necessary to have barrages across the bottom of the Murray River because of the upstream irrigation industries [1]. There is no equivalent large-scale irrigation in Singapore, but they have barrages across the Marina channel. In Singapore, unlike Australia, [...]

HOW could scientists conclude that half of the Great Barrier Reef has been lost in the last 27 years: target coral reefs most affected by cyclones, coral bleaching and crown-of-thorn starfish outbreaks, while ignoring more representative reefs with healthy corals. And I didn’t make that up! It’s documented in a peer-reviewed study by H. Sweatman, [...]