A deer plague has already taken over most natural areas on the east coast, including farmland and open spaces around the Sydney metropolitan area. Scientists predict that without action, feral deer will spread west from the Great Dividing Range and invade every habitat in Australia.
Now, the Invasive Species Council reports that we have a national, coordinated and systematic approach to controlling feral deer on the table. The draft National Feral Deer Action Plan is a huge win because it outlines a concerted effort of both state and federal governments to beat this massive threat to our World Heritage areas, our national parks and to nature.
Our Society supports the work of the Invasive Species Council which has been a driving force behind the plan. They won a senate inquiry, gained a national deer coordinator, and now have a plan to stop alarming numbers of feral deer spreading across the country.
Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Cox, will be looking at ways the draft plan can be strengthened, to get a final plan adopted, resourced and implemented. He says it’s ambitious, but it’s needed:
“This nationally coordinated, systematic approach is exactly what nature needs everywhere. Such a response is what we will be fighting for early next year during the review of Australia’s environmental laws. Just as we’ve had a breakthrough with deer, we also need a breakthrough in this system that protects nature.”
The Gardening Responsibly initiative was officially launched in NSW with the aim of reducing the number of ornamental plants that “jump the garden fence” and become invasive weeds.
Gardening Responsibly is the result of five years of hard work and collaboration between the NSW Government, Australian Institute of Horticulture, Nursery and Garden Industry NSW & ACT, Macquarie University, and many others, and is set to be a game-changer. It brings together all stakeholders involved in the ornamental plant trade, including government, industry, growers, suppliers, landscapers and consumers, to ensure ornamental plants with a low likelihood of becoming invasive weeds are promoted and sold by nurseries and suppliers. As a result, the initiative hopes to jump-start a Gardening Responsibly movement, where everyone plays their part, from suppliers to consumers.
The initiative will first pilot in NSW and then be rolled out nationally in the coming years. In NSW, there are already a number of participating nurseries, suppliers and landscapers promoting Gardening Responsibly and using the Gardening Responsibly eco-label:
From an article published in Cosmos by Jamie Seidel, a SA freelance journalist.
A network of fast-charge stations is being installed on 6600km of West Australian roads. And a new generation of utility trucks hopes to put them to work.
Regional Australia has long been leery of the electrification trend. Can these cars, trucks and buses go far enough, fast enough? And where are all the roadhouses offering a refill of electrons anyway? Now, in 2022, the technology has proven itself.
And the infrastructure and supply side of things is catching up.
A $43.5 million project initiated by the WA government aims to link “the world’s most isolated city” with remote mining, fishing, agriculture and tourism hotspots through an “EV Highway”.
Dandenong-based SEA Electric and Brendale-based Ausev hope to hitch a ride on this significant infrastructure investment.
Brisbane’s Tritium DCFC https://www.tritium.com.au/ will be one of the suppliers of 98 modular fast-charge stations installed across 49 different road stops positioned no more than 200km apart. These 15-minute rechargers will stretch from Perth north to Kununurra, south to Esperance and east to Kalgoorlie. The network is expected to be fully operational by 2024.
“Western Australia is a state with vast unpopulated distances, and governments have a role to play supporting highway electrification in rural and remote areas where site utilisation may not be profitable for private sector operators,” says Tritium CEO Jane Hunter.
While [electric cars] appeared in metropolitan Australia, their relevance to regional Australia remains limited. Something of greater utility is needed to get the electric vehicle ball rolling.
And now electric trucks, pickups, utes and four-wheel-drives are poised to take their place on country roads. Not to mention in and around the new mining and processing facilities producing the raw materials needed for modern batteries and electric motors.
The BossCap group https://bosscap.com.au/about-us/ in Queensland aims to remanufacture up to 1000 US-sourced Ram and Ford trucks and utilities each year to Australian standards.
It began by converting the EV Ford F150, among others. Now it builds its own Australia-optimised bodies under its Ausev brand on imported electric vehicle chassis. “We see an opportunity in electric trucks which are already very popular in the Australian market – it looks like being a very long time before supplies of EV trucks get here,” says BossCap managing director Eddie Kocwa.
SEA Electric also recognises this opportunity, doubling its solar-powered assembly facility in Dandenong, Melbourne, to enable a production rate of eight electric heavy vehicles per day.
“We have attracted incredible interest from a wide cross-section of leading companies and government bodies, who seek to improve their environmental sustainability, despite a lack of policy and incentives to fuel growth in the sector on these shores,” CEO Tony Fairweather says. “The recent change of Federal Government and subsequent increase in EV activity, has provided SEA Electric with renewed confidence that appropriate policy and incentives may be close.”
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