It sounds weird, but releasing small cane toads ahead of the main invasion front can help predators learn to avoid the biggest, most toxic ones. Here’s exactly how it works.
Australia’s Great Northern Savannas are the largest and most intact ecosystem of their kind on Earth. But they still face pressure from grazing, mining and agricultural expansion.
Ever since British settlement, water rights in Australia’s north have favoured landowners over traditional owners, effectively locking Aboriginal people out of agricultural development.
As Australia joins a New York summit to discuss the UN Sustainable Development Goals, it still faces questions over whether it is meeting water standards at home.
Effective development planning must anticipate where growth might occur and its wider impacts. So, if the federal government is serious about cities policy, it needs a proper settlements plan.
It’s full steam ahead for bringing vast increases in farming to northern Australia. In fact, probably too fast to adequately consider the environmental impacts.
The federal government’s recent White Paper on developing northern Australia has disturbing echoes of the 1890s, a time when unbridled capitalism and indentured labour developed the North.
The recently released white paper on developing northern Australia ignores an elephant in the room: climate change. While the paper sees a bright future for the north (roads, rail, dams and food), without considering climate change we can’t be sure the north will even be liveable.
The White Paper on Developing Northern Australia represents the most comprehensive attempt yet to think through the development possibilities of the north.
This year’s federal budget outlined plans for infrastructure in northern Australia, but it will need to do more than build roads and rail to sustainably develop the north.
Amid talk of paths to surplus and investing in infrastructure, both sides of politics seem to have forgotten Australia’s longstanding responsibility to govern sustainably, and not just for the economy.
Do politicians really have to choose between being pro-development or pro-environment? No, says Allan Dale, and Queensland’s new government has the chance to prove it.
Cane toads, introduced in 1935 to control cane beetles, have now spread across a huge swathe of Australia, from the Kimberley in northern Western Australia to northern New South Wales. They’re still spreading…
While you may have heard about the increasing threat that climate change and rising seas pose to Pacific islands — already forcing some communities to move — Australia has its own group of islands that…
Managing Director, Triple Helix Consulting; Chief Executive Officer, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research; Professorial Fellow, ANU Fenner School for the Environment and Society, Australian National University