#settlersociety — Public Fediverse posts

Rabbits are the biggest threat to Australia’s native species. Why are their numbers booming again?

“They can get to incredible numbers and you see the whole landscape gets denuded."

"Though they were introduced on the first fleet during the British invasion in 1788, research has traced the species’ continent-wide spread to one consignment of 24 rabbits brought in to the country by settler Thomas Austin in 1859."

"By the 1920s, rabbits had reached plague proportions with estimates numbering them in their billions. More recent counts put the current population at closer to 200 million but the true number is unknown as there is no formal monitoring.Their impact on the landscape has been measured. One study found rabbits were having negative effects on 329 threatened species in Australia – more than any other invasive pest."

“Peri-urban areas have become a breeding ground because it is more difficult to have people control them there, mainly because the rabbits can be under buildings, for example, or in gardens." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/14/rabbits-austraila-population-native-species-threat
#biodiversity #wildlife #pests #EuropeanLegacy #CoffsHarbour #PeriUrbanAreas #pets #NSW #SettlerSociety
#Image: Pet bunny with own real estate at Charlesworth Bay, Coffs Harbour. Many (ex-pet) rabbits hopping around the CBD.

The #Land Lord's Game

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above
Don't fence me in
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love
Don't fence me in...

* Australia's housing market >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-01/common-wealth-house-prices-land-resource-taxation/106852936

* Rentierism
describes an economic or political system where individuals, corporations, or even governments generate wealth by controlling and extracting "rents" from scarce assets, rather than by creating new products or services

* Financialisation
"is the process by which financial markets, institutions, and motives gain increasing influence over the broader economy, society, and corporate decision-making. It represents a shift from an industrial economy—where profits are generated primarily by producing goods and services—toward one driven by financial engineering, speculation, and wealth.

* Expansionism
Go West - Westward movement refers to the historic 19th-century migration of American settlers to the Pacific coast. Driven by "Manifest Destiny". Colonialism is the physical practice of establishing settlements and taking direct political control over a foreign territory,

* Nazis moving into foreign territories (eastern Europe) looking for "Living space" (Lebensraum)

* 'Boundaries bursting" #globalisation - Leaving the "safe operating space" of planet Earth.

Don't fence me in | Bing Crosby & Te Andrew Sisters (Lyrics) >>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G84dJHgLE-4
#land #ThePropertyGame #CommonWealth #housing #AffordableHousing #rentierism #inequality #extractivism #mining #housing #monopoly #speculation #wealth #expansionism #WideOpenSpaces #Europeancolonisation #SettlerSociety #PlantetarianBoundaries #ethnonationalism #xenophobia #IndigenousPeoples

Monoculturalism and Project Invisibility
Silencing dissenting Indigenous voices

"Project Invisibility is a sustained campaign to remove First Nations leaders from public boards and other senior government roles."

"We're going back to the [master] days, like you have your head bowed, you're too afraid to put your head up and speak your mind because you might be out the door."

"It means you'll have the same old Eurocentric version of the world in your policies, everything you're doing within government will be white, anglicised."

"They are eradicating, invisibilising us, and destroying our history and culture." >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-20/langbroek-remains-silent-over-aboriginal-leadership-changes/106817420
#IndigenousPeoples #FirstNations #IndigenousVoices #TruthTelling #invisibility #culture #monoculture #monoculturalism #SettlerSociety #EuropeanColonisation #governance

Unsheltered in the wide open spaces

Unhoused in Australia: "‘A sobering indictment’: 14 homeless people die a year in public parks or countryside in Australia, analysis finds:"

"Between 2010 and 2020, 54 rough sleepers died in public parks, the analysis shows. Eighty-five homeless Australians died in countryside areas – including in bushland, desert, beaches and riverbanks – in the same period...It is a sobering indictment of societal abandonment and systemic failure." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/may/09/homeless-people-deaths-per-year-australia-ntwnfb

The human right to adequate housing. Housing is a right, not a commodity
https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-housing/human-right-adequate-housing
#housing #precariousness #abandonment #HomelessnessCrisis #AffordableHousing #PublicHousing #privatisation #DecadesOfNeglect #HumanRights #homelessness #Unhoused #FamilyViolence #SettlerSociety #commodity #rentierism

Harvesting fruit and vegetables 'in the middle of nowhere': The Pacific Islander farm workers scheme

"With about 30,000 PALM workers in Australia as of October, that equates to about 30 deaths per 100,000 people — more than six times the national average of 4.8 per 100,000."

"Back home, I usually drive for no more than 30 minutes before reaching my destination. Here, I'd drive for hours... after working 12-hour shifts." >>
https://www.abc.net.au/pacific/palm-workers-urged-to-obey-australian-driving-laws-/104730954

"Two Pacific Islander farm workers dead" >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-06/manjimup-fatal-crash-pacific-farm-workers/106636166
#PALM #workers #food #farms #work #AgriculturalIndustry #SettlerSociety #roads #TyrannyOfDistance #transport #rural #cars #Australia #exploitation #plantations #MobilityDesign #WideOpenSpaces #FossilFuel #FoodMiles
Image: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, 1939

Illumination in dark times
A genealogy of modern Western selfhood and a post-Western world

"Smith ... outlines a genealogy of modern Western selfhood: a radically individual, hypermasculine character that was formed during the rapid nineteenth-century expansion of the white man’s world. “Bold, conquering, and altogether assertive,” it was “dedicated to action,” hostile to reflection, indifferent to community and the environment, and guilty of possessing, Smith writes, an “undeveloped heart,” a term borrowed from E. M. Forster’s assessment of the British elite." "

" “We must alter our very relations with the world around us.” This means giving up the exalted and exaggerated idea of the West that boosts a masculinist self-image but severely constricts thought and feeling. “We should welcome our era’s uncertainties,...the not-knowing of how the post-Western story will come out.” Smith’s final warning—that “we will not survive the Western notion of the individual much longer”—should resonate today, as nineteenth-century individualism reasserts itself in the degraded Nietzscheanism of Peter Thiel and Stephen Miller." >>

* Mishra, P. (2026, April). "The Authority of Thought". Harper's Magazine.
https://harpers.org/archive/2026/04/the-authority-of-thought-pankaj-mishra/

* Somebody Else's Century: East and West in a Post-Western World by Patrick Smith. 2010 >>
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/169395/somebody-elses-century-by-patrick-smith/
#TheWest #WhiteSupremacy #masculinity #ImpulseControl #EthnoNationalism #WesternCivilization #AngloAmerican #parochialism #individualism #subjectivity #SettlerSociety #Culture #RacialInequality #war #EastWest #PostWesternWorld #DarkTimes #illumination #narrative #environment

Image: Double Bay War Memorial, Steyne Park, Sydney

'English First' policies and
the uncomfortable waning of empire

* “The English Language Bill demonstrated that New Zealand First was "trying to appeal to a racist fringe". Professor O'Sullivan >
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-05/new-zealand-first-pushes-to-make-english-an-official-language/106410158

* "The English-only movement...is a political movement that advocates for the exclusive use of the English language in official United States government communication through the establishment of English as the only official language in the United States." >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-only_movement

* “Australia is home to over 250 distinct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, comprising around 800 dialects, which are deeply connected to specific land, culture, and identity.” >
https://www.alt.nsw.gov.au/learn/nsw-aboriginal-languages-information

* 'Scarily diverse' people from First Nations or from a culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
https://theconversation.com/a-shadow-on-your-art-how-do-first-nations-and-culturally-diverse-authors-feel-about-representation-275446

* "Monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language." >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolingualism

#EnglishLanguage #EnglishFirst #language #LanguagePolicies #monolingualism #MonolingualMindset #diverse #polyglots #MultilingualPeople #NormativeMonolingualism #ForcedAssimilation #settlersociety #Anglophones #FirstNationsPeoples #Gumbaynggirr

'English First' policies and
the uncomfortable waning of empire

* “The English Language Bill demonstrated that New Zealand First was "trying to appeal to a racist fringe". Professor O'Sullivan >
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-05/new-zealand-first-pushes-to-make-english-an-official-language/106410158

* "The English-only movement...is a political movement that advocates for the exclusive use of the English language in official United States government communication through the establishment of English as the only official language in the United States." >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-only_movement

* “Australia is home to over 250 distinct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, comprising around 800 dialects, which are deeply connected to specific land, culture, and identity.” >
https://www.alt.nsw.gov.au/learn/nsw-aboriginal-languages-information

* 'Scarily diverse' people from First Nations or from a culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
https://theconversation.com/a-shadow-on-your-art-how-do-first-nations-and-culturally-diverse-authors-feel-about-representation-275446

* "Monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language." >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolingualism

#EnglishLanguage #EnglishFirst #language #LanguagePolicies #monolingualism #MonolingualMindset #diverse #polyglots #MultilingualPeople #NormativeMonolingualism #ForcedAssimilation #settlersociety #Anglophones #FirstNationsPeoples #Gumbaynggirr

'English First' policies and
the uncomfortable waning of empire

* “The English Language Bill demonstrated that New Zealand First was "trying to appeal to a racist fringe". Professor O'Sullivan >
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-05/new-zealand-first-pushes-to-make-english-an-official-language/106410158

* "The English-only movement...is a political movement that advocates for the exclusive use of the English language in official United States government communication through the establishment of English as the only official language in the United States." >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-only_movement

* “Australia is home to over 250 distinct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, comprising around 800 dialects, which are deeply connected to specific land, culture, and identity.” >
https://www.alt.nsw.gov.au/learn/nsw-aboriginal-languages-information

* 'Scarily diverse' people from First Nations or from a culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
https://theconversation.com/a-shadow-on-your-art-how-do-first-nations-and-culturally-diverse-authors-feel-about-representation-275446

* "Monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language." >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolingualism

#EnglishLanguage #EnglishFirst #language #LanguagePolicies #monolingualism #MonolingualMindset #diverse #polyglots #MultilingualPeople #NormativeMonolingualism #ForcedAssimilation #settlersociety #Anglophones #FirstNationsPeoples #Gumbaynggirr

'English First' policies and
the uncomfortable waning of empire

* “The English Language Bill demonstrated that New Zealand First was "trying to appeal to a racist fringe". Professor O'Sullivan >
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-05/new-zealand-first-pushes-to-make-english-an-official-language/106410158

* "The English-only movement...is a political movement that advocates for the exclusive use of the English language in official United States government communication through the establishment of English as the only official language in the United States." >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-only_movement

* “Australia is home to over 250 distinct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, comprising around 800 dialects, which are deeply connected to specific land, culture, and identity.” >
https://www.alt.nsw.gov.au/learn/nsw-aboriginal-languages-information

* 'Scarily diverse' people from First Nations or from a culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
https://theconversation.com/a-shadow-on-your-art-how-do-first-nations-and-culturally-diverse-authors-feel-about-representation-275446

* "Monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language." >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolingualism

#EnglishLanguage #EnglishFirst #language #LanguagePolicies #monolingualism #MonolingualMindset #diverse #polyglots #MultilingualPeople #NormativeMonolingualism #ForcedAssimilation #settlersociety #Anglophones #FirstNationsPeoples #Gumbaynggirr

'English First' policies and
the uncomfortable waning of empire

* “The English Language Bill demonstrated that New Zealand First was "trying to appeal to a racist fringe". Professor O'Sullivan >
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-05/new-zealand-first-pushes-to-make-english-an-official-language/106410158

* "The English-only movement...is a political movement that advocates for the exclusive use of the English language in official United States government communication through the establishment of English as the only official language in the United States." >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-only_movement

* “Australia is home to over 250 distinct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, comprising around 800 dialects, which are deeply connected to specific land, culture, and identity.” >
https://www.alt.nsw.gov.au/learn/nsw-aboriginal-languages-information

* 'Scarily diverse' people from First Nations or from a culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
https://theconversation.com/a-shadow-on-your-art-how-do-first-nations-and-culturally-diverse-authors-feel-about-representation-275446

* "Monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language." >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolingualism

#EnglishLanguage #EnglishFirst #language #LanguagePolicies #monolingualism #MonolingualMindset #diverse #polyglots #MultilingualPeople #NormativeMonolingualism #ForcedAssimilation #settlersociety #Anglophones #FirstNationsPeoples #Gumbaynggirr

Mapping the promised land for God’s chosen people
Imagined lands, biblical narratives and monotheistic practices and beliefs.

* First 'Bible map' published 500 years ago still influences how we think about borders, study suggests
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-bible-published-years-borders.html

* Assmann, Jan. The Invention of Religion: Faith and Covenant in the Book of Exodus. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691157085/the-invention-of-religion

#territory #maps #borders #expansion #PromisedLand #monotheism #BoundaryMaking #ReligiousAuthorisation #sovereignty #BiblicalLiteralism #GodsWill #christian #fundamentalism #theology #LandClaims #ImaginedCommunity #PlaceNames #SettlerSociety #narratives #GodZone

Mapping the promised land for God’s chosen people
Imagined lands, biblical narratives and monotheistic practices and beliefs.

* First 'Bible map' published 500 years ago still influences how we think about borders, study suggests
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-bible-published-years-borders.html

* Assmann, Jan. The Invention of Religion: Faith and Covenant in the Book of Exodus. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691157085/the-invention-of-religion

#territory #maps #borders #expansion #PromisedLand #monotheism #BoundaryMaking #ReligiousAuthorisation #sovereignty #BiblicalLiteralism #GodsWill #christian #fundamentalism #theology #LandClaims #ImaginedCommunity #PlaceNames #SettlerSociety #narratives #GodZone

Mapping the promised land for God’s chosen people
Imagined lands, biblical narratives and monotheistic practices and beliefs.

* First 'Bible map' published 500 years ago still influences how we think about borders, study suggests
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-bible-published-years-borders.html

* Assmann, Jan. The Invention of Religion: Faith and Covenant in the Book of Exodus. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691157085/the-invention-of-religion

#territory #maps #borders #expansion #PromisedLand #monotheism #BoundaryMaking #ReligiousAuthorisation #sovereignty #BiblicalLiteralism #GodsWill #christian #fundamentalism #theology #LandClaims #ImaginedCommunity #PlaceNames #SettlerSociety #narratives #GodZone

Mapping the promised land for God’s chosen people
Imagined lands, biblical narratives and monotheistic practices and beliefs.

* First 'Bible map' published 500 years ago still influences how we think about borders, study suggests
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-bible-published-years-borders.html

* Assmann, Jan. The Invention of Religion: Faith and Covenant in the Book of Exodus. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691157085/the-invention-of-religion

#territory #maps #borders #expansion #PromisedLand #monotheism #BoundaryMaking #ReligiousAuthorisation #sovereignty #BiblicalLiteralism #GodsWill #christian #fundamentalism #theology #LandClaims #ImaginedCommunity #PlaceNames #SettlerSociety #narratives #GodZone

Mapping the promised land for God’s chosen people
Imagined lands, biblical narratives and monotheistic practices and beliefs.

* First 'Bible map' published 500 years ago still influences how we think about borders, study suggests
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-bible-published-years-borders.html

* Assmann, Jan. The Invention of Religion: Faith and Covenant in the Book of Exodus. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691157085/the-invention-of-religion

#territory #maps #borders #expansion #PromisedLand #monotheism #BoundaryMaking #ReligiousAuthorisation #sovereignty #BiblicalLiteralism #GodsWill #christian #fundamentalism #theology #LandClaims #ImaginedCommunity #PlaceNames #SettlerSociety #narratives #GodZone

The uneasiness of small town narratives in unfamiliar landscapes

"But there are negative consequences to this construction of the detective as outsider when the outback setting is presented as something unfamiliar, something to be feared. These arise from the origins of Australian Gothic, which scholars have long recognised as an expression of settler-colonial anxiety about the violent dispossession of the country’s Indigenous people."
>>
https://theconversation.com/why-jane-harpers-outback-noir-novels-make-for-comfortable-and-uncomfortable-reading-266228
#unsettling #SettlerSociety #SettlerColonialAnxiety #SettlerGothic #HauntedSpaces #noir #unease #anxiety #WillfulIgnorance #comfort #landscape #outsiders #narrative #HeteroglossicSpaceMaking #culture

Cattle swallows the landscape of the earth
Bellingen mural
>
Cattle swallows Australian landscape and biodiversity
https://mastodon.au/@Bellingen/115409346256515323
#biodiversity #wildlife #pastoralism #culture #ungulates #IntroducedSpecies #meat #SettlerSociety #landscape

Cattle swallows Australian landscape and biodiversity

Time for a Big Cow sculpture of gargantuan size? >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-21/agricultural-livestock-big-cow-art-popular-genre-paintings/105858568
#biodiversity #wildlife #pastoralism #culture #ungulates #IntroducedSpecies #meat #SettlerSociety

Are 'ordinary mums and dads' making 'bad apples' ?
Caught up in tight-knit webs of hate

“There was a range of grievances on display about perceived immigration rates on Sunday, but it was clear for many that the return to an imagined white Australia was a central theme...It’s not that white supremacy, which was present clearly yesterday, is something that the neo-Nazis in some evil, secretive fashion introduced into the political mainstream. It is something that has always been present in parts of the mainstream." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/sep/02/how-neo-nazis-used-the-shield-of-ordinary-mums-and-dads-at-australia-anti-immigration-rallies-to-sell-white-supremacy-ntwnfb

"The March for Australia’s racism can’t just be blamed on far-right ‘extremists’ - it has been enabled by the mainstream." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/01/understanding-anti-immigration-march-protest-australian-mainstream-society-ntwnfb
#HateCrime #violence #FarRight #HyperNormalisation #BatWieldingGangs #Nazism #IndigenousPeoples #dehumanisation #Australia #mainstream #ImaginedCommunity #decline #ressentiment #WhiteSupremacy #EthnoNationalism #EnablingSystems #SettlerSociety #grievances #WhiteEntitlement #RottenAppleTheory

"Indigenous leaders have called for Sunday's attack on Aboriginal protest site Camp Sovereignty to be investigated as a hate crime."

"Counterterrorism police will help investigate the attack, according to the Victorian government. About 40 men dressed in black, some armed with flagpoles and sticks and led by known Neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell, violently attacked Camp Sovereignty following Sunday's anti-immigration March for Australia rally. "
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-02/iat-camp-sovereignty-follow/105722830
#HateCrime #violence #FarRight #HyperNormalisation #BatWieldingGangs #Nazism #Weimar #IndigenousPeoples #dehumanisation #Australia #decline #WhiteSupremacy #EthnoNationalism #SettlerSociety #grievances #WhiteEntitlement #ressentiment

Human-mediated extirpation of wildlife through logging

"Before industrial logging in south-west British Columbia, there were nearly 1,000 spotted owls in the old-growth forests. But they have vanished in recent decades, victims of habitat destruction. Activists have tried in vain to hold the government to account, alleging protected species laws have failed to prevent the extirpation of the owls."

"Efforts to revive the population have failed, with a pair of owls released from the breeding program dying within months. The lone female in the wild is also believed to have died."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/12/canada-owl-rats-valentines-day

What happened to the Northern Spotted Owl? >>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_spotted_owl
#LoggingImpacts #harm #birds #biodiversity #NativeForests #LoggingIndustry #Wildlife #habitat #destruction #degradation #extirpation #NSWLogging #SaveTuckersNob #koalas #BellingenLogging #SettlerSociety #governance #ecocide

Reversing Australia’s trajectory of biodiversity decline

"Australia has ... lost at least 100 species since European colonisation."

"To undo all the human-induced damage and bring nature roaring back across their viable continental range would come with a staggering cost – A$583 billion per year, every year, for at least 30 years. That’s 25% of our GDP. "

"The most cost-effective action is to avoid further damage."
>>
https://theconversation.com/fully-recovering-australias-threatened-species-would-cost-25-of-gdp-we-cant-do-it-all-at-once-so-lets-start-here-245669
#biodiversity #destruction #harm #australia #SettlerSociety #weeds #lantana #IntroducedSpecies #restoration #conservation #repair

How can one get lost on a closed summit track?

"A large-scale search was launched on Sunday for Queensland doctor Csaba Varga, 54, at Wollumbin/Mount Warning." The search "focused on a steep, overgrown track that leads to the summit of the mountain, which has been closed to the public since 2020." The "summit track, is regarded as sacred to the Aboriginal community and remains closed to the public."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-11/queensland-doctor-hiker-wollumbin-mount-warning-found-nsw/104713108
#MountainClimbing #climbing #mountains #summit #respect #Wollumbin #MountWarning #NSW #RescueMe #Queensland #SettlerSociety #sacred #IndigenousPeoples #BundjalungNation #NationalParks #conservation #biodiversity

Urban sprawl is destroying wildlife habitats

The sub-urban package of houses, cars, roads and introduced pets drives Australian native animals out of their habitat. Their homes become eliminated or fragmented by roads which become extinction zones for wildlife. Unleashed cats and dogs maul the remaining homeless survivors.

The absolute priority is given to fossil fuel vehicles to fly from a to b at maximum speed. This entails a mobility design that declares any living body an obstacle on 'their path'. Some of the maimed crash survivors get scraped off the roads by volunteers. In some places wildlife admissions at the vet hospital had risen by 400 per cent in the last decade. It's a mono-cultural housing and infrastructure design where bio-diversity is non-existent in minds and policies.

"More wildlife was being forced into urban areas, leading to collisions with vehicles, attacks by domestic animals, and entanglements in fruit netting. Experts say behavioural changes need to be made and urban sprawl contained to reduce the harm to wildlife."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-24/werribee-zoo-injured-wildlife-urban-sprawl-melb-geelong/104614358
#sprawl #ecocide #cars #crashes #roads #BiodiversityCrisis #wildlife #coexist #extinction #SacrificeZone #harm #MobilityDesign #RescueService #volunteers #SettlerSociety #biodiversity

The tyranny of automobility and sprawl

While the Bellingen /Gleniffer area is transitioning from an ‘idyllic tourist town’ into a ‘normal Aussie suburb’ (of Coffs Harbour), road congestion gets everyone stuck in traffic.

Car dependent motorists in their SUVs and bloated oversized trucks demand more and wider roads, larger car parking and a right to pothole-free roads for their 'sports utility vehicles’.

Extreme commuting for the necessaries of life are conducted in big private vehicles powered by fossil fuel. An aggregate of ugly big-box stores (large format retail, Coffs) with hostile giant car parks deliver what consumers desire. These consumption hubs are mostly inaccessible to pedestrians and can be dangerous ‘non-places’ (Marc Augé).

The mobility design of old school traffic engineers responds to the sprawling expansion with more of the same: more roads, wider roads and bypassing the last bypass. They call it ‘upgrades’.

As the latest $2.2 billion highway or forest road ‘upgrade/s’ are blasting their way through the landscape, they are silent about the ‘public bads’: the destroyed biodiversity habitat, the downgraded neighbourhoods, the violence and the polluted biosphere.

The ‘normality’ of automobility, or the 'car in the head' in petromodernity together with regulatory inertia make a transition to alternative land uses, energy systems, mobilities and ways of being a challenge.

#sprawl #suburbia #mobility #cars #roads #JevonsParadox #externalities #automobility #pollution #biodiversity #ClimateExtremes #FossilFuels #Petromodernity #GlenifferRoad #CoffsHarbour #Bellingen #SettlerSociety #liveability

Koalas

"After European colonization in 1788, more species have become extinct in Australia than in any other country on Earth (Australian Government Department of Agriculture Water and the Environment, 2022)."

In 2020, the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Koalas found that koalas will become extinct before 2050. Why?

Habitat grab, cars and dogs
"Koalas who had been attacked by a dog, fallen from a tree, and/or been hit by a motor vehicle were more likely to be euthanized or found deceased than released."
>>
Charalambous, R., Descovich, K. A., & Narayan, E. J. (2024). Identifying Trends in Admission and Release of Wild Koalas in Veterinary Clinics Throughout Queensland, Australia. Society & Animals (published online ahead of print 2024).
https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10220
#koalas #Bellingen #Gleniffer #roads #dogs #pets #GlenifferRoad #RosesRoad #loggingIndustry #LoggingImpacts #SettlerSociety #BiodiversityCrisis #Ecocide #ExtinctionCrisis #EPBCAct

"Between 2000 and 2022, NSW logged approximately 435,000 ha of native forest and woodland, all of which overlapped with the distributions of at least one threatened forest-dependent taxon."

"While logging in NSW has degraded 435,000 ha of native forest across 143 threatened taxa distributions, logging is still legal under current legislation."
>>
https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/csp2.13185
#biodiversity #ShiftingBaselines #ThreatenedSpecies #NSWLogging #FCNSW #LoggingIndustry #deforestation #degradation #harm #fires #roads #SettlerSociety #BellingenLogging #TheGreatKoalaNationalPark #SaveTuckersNob #ExtinctionCrisis #EPBCAct #EUDR

Save Tuckers Nob forests
Save the Bellingen koala habitat.
Save the biodiversity habitat of the promised Great Koala Park.
Save the habitable climate niche.
#StopNativeForestLogging #SaveTuckersNob #BellingenLogging #NSWlogging #FCNSW #ClimateEmergency #ExtremeHeat #BiodiversityCrisis #destruction #governance #SettlerSociety #extractivism

One man’s pilgrimage navigating on foot along the Brisbane River
Everything is Water by Simon Cleary

"The shadow a city can cast upon its river before it is no longer a river”.

"He asks whether our urges to categorise and organise might be “unhelpful” and “prevent us from other ways of seeing”."

"It’s something deeper; a bodily recognition and lament at how swiftly white settlement has desecrated and altered a landscape which Indigenous people have cared for so intimately. One of Cleary’s refrains is that what used to be “kangaroo and emu country” is now considered “cattle country”."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jun/06/everything-is-water-by-simon-cleary-review-one-mans-pilgrimage-along-brisbane-river
#rivers #FootTraffic #walking #Australia #Brisbane #Bellingen #SettlerSociety #livestock #Bellinger #water #cattle #Biodiversity #wildlife #platypus