Eco online

Summer update 2009

Inside this edition

Woodford Folk Festival: the Greenhouse
Cycling to the Woodford Folk Festival
Denying climate change
Exploring the Past
Traveston Dam: looking behind the lens
Up Close: reconnecting with nature
Christmas reading list

Woodford Folk Festival: the Greenhouse
About the Greenhouse, interviews with: Hans Baer, Sohail Inayatullah, Andrew Wilford, Graeme Taylor, Jillian Rossiter. Read the interviews here. Brought to you by Brian Rickards.
Cycling [...]

Traveston Dam: looking behind the lens

It’s often said that a picture paints a thousand words. Photographs of faces of anguish after the initial announcement, beautiful natural scenes that were so close to being lost forever and finally faces of joy and relief after the simple word, ‘no’ echoed throughout the Mary Valley.
Arkin Mackay’s images made the issue personal. They spawned [...]

Smart water solutions needed after Traveston refusal

“This is a victory of science over politics. The Greens and the community are thrilled with Minister Garrett’s decision,” said Queensland lead Senate candidate and environmental lawyer Larissa Waters.
“Minister Garrett’s decision to apply the precautionary principle by refusing a dam with palpable risks to the environment is one which restores my faith in our federal [...]

Garrett makes ‘proposed’ decision on Traveston dam

Dam opponents say the Federal Government has done the “right thing” on Traveston Crossing dam.
The announcement of Peter Garrett’s “proposed decision” to can the proposed Traveston Crossing Dam has been welcomed by all those who have spent the last three and a half years examining the proposal and campaigning against it.
Save the Mary River Coordinating [...]

Traveston Dam: these will not be forgotten years

The former Midnight Oil front-man moved to his own unique, pulsating dance style while singing words a generation would remember. The emotions his songs could invoke were strong enough for me that while watching a live performance I decided there and then to pack my bags and return home after living in Europe for several [...]

Dam opposition well and truly afloat

For a community that Government sources claim is starting to accept a dam, Mary Valley residents and others were showing no sign of it when they took too the river to visibly signpost the three mark in their fight too stop the proposed Traveston Crossing Dam.
Three years to the day since Peter Beattie’s shock announcement [...]

Brownwater Classic celebrates its twentieth

Since 1988 the Brownwater Classic at Moy Pocket has lured both locals and those involved in the environment movement to a patch of riverine forest near Pickering Bridge on the Mary River.
It’s been a celebration of the river, in particular the blackbean tree, for it is the seed pods of this tree that provide the [...]

A time for decency

What does the global economic crisis and the violent religious extremism, recently on display in Mumbai, have in common? People can so easily be led by the nose. And, become tied to one way of thinking, even if it is destructive and lacking in common human decency.
Capitalism was hailed as the victor after Gorbachev brought [...]

Premier Delays Traveston

It was a surprise announcement, from left field, as they say. The Premier on the morning news stating that Traveston Dam may be delayed by “at least several years” and that water re-cycling was in doubt. The Courier Mail would call it “Gone to Water” while the Gympie times led with “Dam’s End is Bligh”.
It [...]

Reports damn Traveston

Professor Angela Arthington of the Australian Rivers Institute and Water Co-operative Research Centre has recently released an excellent and timely paper “Australian lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri, threatened by a new dam”.
The paper draws from a number of sources to provide an overview of lungfish distribution, biology and requirements as well as assessing anticipated impacts of a [...]