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Building greener cities helps people thrive too
Sarah Bekessy | December 7, 2018A new approach to urban design which treats biodiversity as an opportunity, rather than a constraint, would improve the quality of life of future city dwellers as well as help protect ever more threatened urban habitats and species.
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Victoria’s old cell-phones help Congo’s gorillas
Open Forum | December 7, 2018More than 115, 000 mobile phones have been collected and recycled through a community campaign at Zoos Victoria, preventing around 12 to 20 cubic metres of waste going to landfill and recovering 182 kg of materials whose mining threatens wild populations of eastern Grauer’s gorillas in the Congo.
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Victoria’s wet spring won’t damp down summer bushfires
Catriona May | December 4, 2018While spells of wet weather make a small impact on the risk of bushfires in the summer, long-term climate trends are much more important in shaping the extent of the threat.
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Feral cats and foxes menace Australian mammals
Open Forum | December 3, 2018The twelve Australian mammal species at greatest risk of succumbing to predation by cats and foxes have been identified in new research.
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Queensland’s land clearing policy backfires
Open Forum | December 2, 2018Australia has some of the highest rates of private land deforestation in the world, and policies designed to prevent the destruction of remnant natural vegetation may even be making it worse.
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Australia’s threatened birds in crisis
Open Forum | November 29, 2018Populations of Australia’s endangered birds have collapsed by half since 1985, according to Australia’s new Threatened Bird Index.
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We may have hit ‘peak livestock’ if we want to reach our climate goals
Open Forum | November 28, 2018We need to admit we’ve hit ‘peak livestock’ and cut back on meat consumption to reduce carbon emissions, according to a Harvard expert.
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Why tropical trees die
Isabelle Dubach | November 26, 2018Scientists have shed light on tropical tree deaths – with results predicted to have important implications for managing forest biodiversity.
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Researching ways to restore Tasmania’s kelp forests
Open Forum | November 21, 2018A new joint research project between IMAS and the Climate Foundation is studying the possibility of restoring Tasmania’s iconic giant kelp forests, which have almost disappeared over recent decades due to ocean warming.
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Logging must stop in Melbourne’s biggest water supply catchment
David Lindenmayer | November 18, 2018The Thomson Catchment is the only one of Melbourne’s large water supply catchments open to logging. Given the critical importance of the Thomson Catchment, the Victorian government needs to cease logging and prioritise the supply of water to the people of Melbourne.
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The ‘domino’ threat of global extinction
Open Forum | November 16, 2018New research reveals the extinction of plant or animal species from extreme environmental change increases the risk of an ‘extinction domino effect’ that could affect and even end all life on Earth.
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Fighting the drought with natural sequence farming
Ian Rutherfurd | November 15, 2018Slowing flows in rural creeks with “leaky weirs” may help reduce erosion and rehydrate the floodplain and more research on their effectiveness could help the nation’s farmers battle drought.