Australia commits $2m to ‘Amazon of the Seas’

admin /15 May, 2009

Australia commits $2m to ‘Amazon of the Seas’

Posted Fri May 15, 2009 6:13pm AEST
Updated Fri May 15, 2009 8:25pm AEST

Australia has promised $2 million in aid to a new regional partnership charged with protecting marine life in the waters of the coral triangle.

The coral triangle is an area of ocean to Australia’s north that is regarded as one of the richest marine environments in the world.

Seven countries have signed an agreement to work together to protect the area from the effects of overfishing, pollution and climate change.

Beach bought for hard headed birds

admin /15 May, 2009

Life’s a beach … the chicken-sized maleo now lives exclusively on Sulawesi island. Photograph: Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation Society/AP

 A hard headed bird that incubates its eggs in hot sand and flies immediately on hatching has been granted a private beach on an Indonesian Island.

The Conservation Society of America bought the beach on an insland near Sulewesi for $US12,500 to protect the rare Maleos bird which relies on volcanic sands or sun soaked tropical beaches to hatch its eggs.

Middlebury College’s Biomass Heating and Cooling Plant

admin /15 May, 2009

Middlebury College’s Biomass Heating and Cooling Plant

In 2004, when Middlebury College committed itself to cutting by 8 percent its carbon emissions – a pledge it would later strengthen, to full carbon neutrality by 2016 – “among the different actions that were identified, biomass was clearly one that could make a big difference,” recalls Jack Byrne, sustainability coordinator at the renowned Vermont liberal-arts college.

“The other question it’s important to ask, that we asked for our willow project, is: Okay, right now there’s sufficient [fuel] capacity. But what happens five years from now, if many more people switch to wood as a fuel source, which is quite likely to happen?”

— Jack Byrne, Sustainability Coordinator, Middlebury College

UTS research to help grow sustainable timber building

admin /15 May, 2009

Friday 15 May 2009

UTS research to help grow sustainable timber building

University of Technology, Sydney researchers are joining an international research consortium to develop large-span timber buildings for a wide range of uses in New Zealand, Australia and other export markets.
The Structural Innovation Timber Company (STIC) is made up of New Zealand and Australian businesses, universities and research organisations, funded by industry partners with matching funding from the New Zealand government.
UTS researchers are being given more than $1.6million dollars to examine timber floors for multi-story timber buildings, with the aim of developing structural systems to ensure high quality, long term structural, acoustic, seismic and fire performance.

International seabed claims flood into UN

admin /11 May, 2009

Conflicting boundary claims for possession of the continental shelf are expected to generate fresh diplomatic unease

From the Guardian UK

Parrot ‘ putting hundreds of job’s at risk

admin /11 May, 2009

ABC – May 11, 2009, 8:59 am 
 
The New South Wales Government has raised concerns that hundreds of jobs could be lost because of a ban on logging in the state’s south, imposed because of concerns about a rare parrot.
The state has been ordered to stop logging the central Murray wetlands because of the impact of red gum harvesting on the superb parrot, also known as the green leek parrot, which is listed as a vulnerable species.
New South Wales Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald says he has asked for an urgent meeting with Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett to discuss the issue.
He says he will ask for the ban to be reversed.