If this month’s Queensland election is as tight as some polls suggest, voters in the state’s north – where Labor was reduced to just two seats after its huge 2012 election defeat – could prove decisive…
At the Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit, which concluded yesterday in Sydney, environment minister Greg Hunt announced A$6 million to combat illegal logging. While the funding builds on legislation to ensure…
While we can never know for sure, an extraordinary number of animals and plants are threatened with extinction — up to a third of all mammals and over a tenth of all birds. And the problem is getting worse…
How do the products we buy affect the world’s rainforests? In the lead up to the Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit held in Sydney this week, The Conversation is running a series on rainforest commodities…
How do the products we buy affect the world’s rainforests? In the lead up to the Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit held in Sydney this week, The Conversation is running a series on rainforest commodities…
Palm oil plantations have an overall negative impact on biodiversity, according to research released this week. The study, published in Nature Communications, found palm oil plantations are home to fewer…
The Great Barrier Reef is in trouble, and a draft government plan to ensure its survival does not go far enough. A number of submissions including those from the Australian Academy of Science and Environmental…
For years the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee - and then Universities Australia - warned higher education in Australia was moving inexorably towards a tipping point. Without substantial increases…
Australia’s prime minister Tony Abbott is set to sign a deal with India that will allow the export of uranium to the country. There are concerns that some of the uranium will be used to produce nuclear…
Approval for dumping dredge spoil within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park at Abbot Point could be reopened, with port developers reportedly considering storing dredge material on land. According to the…
If my Facebook feed is anything to go by, last month parents scrabbled to make costumes of popular characters from children’s books. They were preparing for the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s annual…
Scientists are coming to the conclusion that we are on the brink of a mass extinction — the sixth known in the history of the Earth, and the latest since an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs 65 million…
“The best thing you could do for the Amazon is to blow up all the roads.” These might sound like the words of an eco-terrorist, but it’s actually a direct quote from Professor Eneas Salati, a forest climatologist…
Tonight’s Four Corners on ABC investigates dredging at ports on the Great Barrier Reef, including claims that the federal government is reportedly seeking alternatives to dumping dredge spoil at sea at…
The latest healthcheck of the Great Barrier Reef shows the overall outlook is “poor”, and getting worse. According to the Outlook Report produced by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, climate…
What do school chaplains and cassowaries have in common? Both highlight the degree to which federal governments struggle to devolve quality public decision-making to the right level. Our schools and our…
A landmark study by the Australian Human Rights Commission reporting that one in two mothers has experienced work discrimination shows employers clearly believe they have legitimate reasons to discriminate…
What is it that makes rockstars so attractive to the opposite sex? Turns out Charles Darwin had it pegged hundreds of years ago – and it has a lot to do with peacocks. In The Descent of Man, and Selection…
Dredging has a direct impact on coral health, according to a study published today in PLoS ONE that shows for the first time the link between dredge spoil and coral disease in the wild. The research, led…
Australian farmers and rural land owners are being told that they will be given powerful and direct incentives to store carbon in the land under the federal government’s new climate policy. But is that…