NZ/ Aotearoa :100% pure and clean, green

New Zealand's unique #biodiversity is at risk as the government plans to boost mineral exports to $3bn by 2035
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/27/fast-track-to-where-the-new-law-opening-up-new-zealand-to-a-mining-boom
#newzealand #Aotearoa #biodiversity #conservation #wildlife #mining #extractivism #FossilFuels #laws

Stopping Bill 97: Land Back in Action on Nitaskinan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfNsPzEnqM0

For weeks now, Indigenous land defenders across so-called Quebec have been rising up to protect Nitaskinan — their ancestral territory — from industrial logging and the Legault government’s proposed Bill 97.

Blasting Aboriginal heritage sites

"Half a decade on from the blasting of Juukan Gorge by mining giant Rio Tinto, the laws that allowed the destruction to go ahead remain largely in place."

"We have been living with these types of Juukan Gorge-like incidents on everyone's country since the establishment of mining on our country, and it's not going to go away."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-24/five-years-since-juukan-gorge-destruction-pilbara-heritage-laws/105295474
#IndigenousHeritage #IndigenousPeoples #law #extractivism #destruction #JuukanGeorge #iconoclasm #Australia

Grassroots Resistance to Environmental Destruction in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Part II: Šipovo, Jezero, and Jajce https://www.byteseu.com/1030009/ #Bosnia #BosniaAndHerzegovina #BosniaHerzegovina #dams #EnvironmentalDestruction #extractivism #Herzegovina #Resistance

“It only makes sense to talk about restoration when deforestation is controlled.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/20/long-read-deadly-mission-amazon-rainforest-dom-phillips-bruno-pereira
#Australia #Amazon #rainforests #deforestation #crime #cattle #extractivism #IndigenousPeoples #restoration

Wood for the trees, Jonathan Green, November 2023
https://www.themonthly.com.au/november-2023/essays/wood-trees
#biodiversity #ecosystems #NativeForests #IndigenousPeoples #wildlife #EPBCAct #SamuelReview #extractivism #degradation #LoggingIndustry #mining #harm

When you hear someone say that "AI is the future of search" as if it is a great thing, and a foregone conclusion, what they are actually saying is that the doors to any individual blog or website or resources are closing. The digital waypaths to finding sourced content directly are being shuttered and boarded up. That human search via multiple methods utilising various recommender systems is being removed. In favour of a single gateway to pre delivered materials all owned by private monopoly companies. And we are expected to react as if this is a good thing, the "future".

Queensland government cuts Environmental Defenders Office funding despite pre-election promise for support

"The service that we provide is sometimes inconvenient for powerful vested interests...There were countless examples of free legal advice the EDO had provided to individuals, landholders, First Nations groups and community groups to help them combat the interests of developers, mining companies and governments."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-15/environmental-defenders-office-funding-cut-queensland-government/105293462
https://www.edo.org.au/the-latest/
#environment #conservation #law #EDO #ToondahHarbour #PurlingBrookFalls #water #BottledWater #Santos #extractivism #VestedInterest

Another happy story from the world of extractive techno-capitalism.

National Environmental Standards

Create new, legally enforceable national environmental standards to deliver better environmental protection or continue with the big quarry model this term?

"Nature doesn’t negotiate. Nature is a system of systems, and if we take too much from it those systems begin to break down – usually irreversibly."
>>
https://theconversation.com/its-a-hard-job-being-environment-minister-heres-an-insiders-view-of-the-key-challenges-facing-murray-watt-256465

Samuel Review
https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/epbc/epbc-act-reform/standards
#EPBCAct #BiodiversityCrisis #Biodiversity #Ecosystems #FirstNations #restoration #nature #extractivism #harm #LoggingImpacts #mining #water #extraction #FossilFuels #ClimateDisruption #destruction #governance

NSW forestry agency should be shut down for repeatedly breaking law, critics argue

"Professor David Heilpern, a former court magistrate, claims the NSW Forestry Corporation is no longer fit for purpose and should be disbanded. A former magistrate and one of Australia’s most experienced scientists have launched an extraordinary attack on the New South Wales government’s logging agency, describing it as effectively a “criminal organisation” that should be shut down after a string of court convictions."

"The corporation has been convicted of more than a dozen environmental offences, including a judgment in the land and environment court last year that found the agency was likely to reoffend and had poor prospects of rehabilitation.They get caught, investigated, prosecuted, a criminal conviction, a fine – which the public pays – and they carry on and do it all again."

“There is just no integrity, accountability or justice in this model of operation.”

“For the Forestry Corporation, breaking the law and harming the environment and wildlife has become like a game of charades played under the protection of the state."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/may/11/nsw-forestry-agency-called-criminal-organisation-by-critics
#LoggingImpacts #LoggingIndustry #NSWLogging #BellingenLogging #SaveTuckersNob #crime #harm #biodiversity #wildlife #conservation #TheGreatKoalaNationalPark #governance #accountability #extractivism

"The experiment begun in 1492 was accompanied by a new relationship with the world and with each other, based on the novel idea that the prosperity of human societies lay in the submission of a wild and free nature to the rational act of exploitation. From then on, the entire living world was put to work, and in this first planetary empire, people, plants and animals became commodities circulating from one corner of the hemisphere to the other."

wrote Sylvie Laurent in her book "Capital et race : Histoire d'une hydre moderne"

Koalas face death, attacks and mass starvation from monoculture plantations
Cost-effective management techniques for Australian wildlife

"...Displaced animals were sometimes still up in trees that were felled and ended up with broken bones, or were orphaned babies left behind. Others were attacked by cows or dogs."

"A 2023 study of reported wild koala deaths in south-east Queensland found vehicles were responsible for about half (1,431) of all fatalities."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/11/koalas-face-death-attacks-and-starvation-as-blue-gums-chopped-down-in-victoria
#biodiversity #wildlife #koalas #LoggingImpacts #LoggingIndustry #harm #pets #Livestock #roads #vehicles #RoadTrauma #KillingZones #plantations #monoculture #extractivism #governance #Australia #extinction

Remember the Urunga wetlands waste tailings rich in antimony, arsenic, lead and cyanide?

"For five years in the 1960s and 1970s, antimony and other heavy metals leached from an ore processing plant into the melaleuca wetlands. The wetlands used to open up into a moonscape of light grey sand with not a single bit of vegetation."
>>
https://www.crownland.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-07/Urunga-Wetlands-fact-sheet.pdf
https://majorprojects.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/prweb/PRRestService/mp/01/getContent?AttachRef=SSD-5357%2120190227T035916.488%20GMT

Now they want to go for Wild Cattle Creek 'high-grade and high-tonnage' antimony-gold mining >>
https://www.listcorp.com/asx/tmg/trigg-minerals-limited/news/acquisition-of-globally-significant-antimony-project-3091939.html

A Clarence Catchment Alliance community meeting

is being hosted by the Bellingen Environment Centre,
with Blicks River Guardians and Lock the Gate Nambucca,
from 2pm on Friday May 31 at 16 Cudgery St, Dorrigo.
>>
https://clarencevalleynews.com.au/clarence-catchment-alliance-community-meeting/
#NSW #Dorrigo #Urunga #remediation #CoffsHarbour #mining #antimony #gold #extractivism #harm #WildCattleCreek #WCC #water #contamination #wetlands #rivers #waterways #freshwater #MarineWater #platypus #biodiversity #BellingenShire

"Recently, the notion of artificial intelligence for development (AI4D) has been mobilized by various actors in the global South and North. We identify five analytical categories to help us understand the different and often contested perspectives on AI4D. They are (a) a developmentalist framework that emphasizes discourses around modernity and progress through a technoliberal lens of ‘catching up’; (b) an economic development framework taken up by African states, private sector and civil society, highlighting a positive and more future-looking outlook on AI's potential for development; (c) an international policy framework tied to globally agreed on policies such as the Sustainable Development Goals; (d) a colonial and extractivist framework that articulates how AI4D reinforces old processes of oppression in new ways; and (e) decolonial AI discourses grounded in Latin American, African and Indigenous approaches. Our critical review of literature on AI4D and related expressions shows that while the notion applies broadly to the global South, the majority of publications use the term in reference to AI development on the African continent. This commentary enriches our understanding of the plurality of meanings, where they come from, what they do, and what they leave unaddressed."

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20539517241304678

Mass aerial culling of koalas
The mindset of culling everything in this country is a colonial mentality.

"In the weeks leading up to the 2025 Federal Election, the Victorian Labor Government's approval of a barbaric slaughter by helicopter shooters, which killed 1,100 koalas, was comprehensively ignored. Mainstream media failed to report the killing, raising major censorship issues, which need to be addressed."

"I went to one small area of a cleared plantation, with about 30 eucalypts left and around 20 koalas clinging to the branches. This is the scene after harvesting, koalas trying to survive in little pockets of trees."

"There’s no excuse for Australia not to get it right. You can’t treat the environment like this. The mindset of culling everything in this country is a colonial mentality. Wildlife is suffering from our neglect. We have given nothing back to wildlife for all the good things they have done for us."

"Experts have suggested retaining 30% of the plantation blue gums, ensuring corridors for koala movement. The extent of current laws, plans and guidelines in place to protect koalas in Victoria can best be described as completely ineffective, whether they are forests, plantations or urban development habitats."
>>
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/labors-election-win-hopefully-a-turning-point-for-environment,19707
#biodiversity #wildlife #extractivism #plantations #LoggingImpacts #harm #EPBCAct #koalas

Bulldozing the habitat of endangered species in NSW

"The Australian Conservation Foundation is alleging thousands of hectares of endangered species habitat has been illegally cleared in south-west New South Wales between 2021 and 2025."

"Experts say land clearing rates are unlikely to be reduced without education and effective enforcement..A lot more land is being cleared than grown back or restored which is unusual for a wealthy, developed country like ours."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-04/mallee-land-clearing-conservation-foundation-endangered-species/105098584
#biodiversity #EndangeredSpecies #NSW #LandClearing #farmers #landholders #crime #wildlife #birds #ClimateBreakdown #EPBCAct #regulation #enforcement #CostofDoingBusiness #extractivism

Native forest regeneration failure

Logging devastated Victoria’s native forests – and new research shows 20% has failed to grow back

"Following the end of native logging in Victoria on January 1 2024, the state’s majestic forests might be expected to regenerate and recover naturally. But our new research shows that’s not always the case. "

"These degraded areas no longer hold the value they once did and they cannot provide the same level of ecosystem services such as carbon storage, water purification, or habitat for wildlife."

"With no current government restoration plan, these landscapes will remain degraded indefinitely. Our research suggests leaving nature to its own devices would mean losing a fifth of the forests logged over the past 40 years. Bringing the trees back has multiple benefits and would be well worth the investment."
>>
https://theconversation.com/logging-devastated-victorias-native-forests-and-new-research-shows-20-has-failed-to-grow-back-254465

>> original
A significant increase in forest regeneration failure following logging is driven by climatic and management factors
https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0301479725011454
#biodiversity #wildlife #NativeForests #LoggingImpacts #LoggingIndustry #extractivism #clearfelling #degradation #regeneration #failure #ClimateBreakdown

Protecting Australia's unique ecosystems or extractivism as usual ?

"With one of the highest rates of extinction in the world and more than 7.7 million hectares of threatened species habitat destroyed since 2000, Australia is considered by many to be in a biodiversity crisis...The agenda is entirely geared towards fast-tracking development."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-05-01/federal-election-2025-nature-laws-environmental-policies/105203334
#BiodiversityCrisis #EPBCAct #Biodiversity #ecosystems #conservation #NaturePositive #NatureNegative #EnvironmentalLaws #FossilFuels #koalas #LoggingImpacts #NSWLogging #governance #failure #extractivism