- BRISBANE (AFP) -- Australia
is killing off its koalas at the rate of 20,000 a year through land-clearing,
more than 400 scientists warned in an appeal to its political leaders on
Tuesday.
-
- The much-loved arboreal marsupial, Australia's best known
wildlife symbol after the kangaroo, is dependent for its survival on the
leaves of native gum trees which environmentalists say are being felled
at an alarming rate.
-
- An open letter to Prime Minister John Howard and Queensland
state Premier Peter Beattie, signed by more than 400 scientists from around
Australia, has called for a rapid solution to the issue of land-clearing
in the eastern state.
-
- For every 100 hectares of native woodland that was cleared,
about 2,000 birds, 15 00 reptiles and 500 native mammals would die either
immediately or soon afterwards, the letter said.
-
- The Queensland government froze land-clearing permits
in May pending agreement on a A$150 million compensation plan that was
still to be finalised.
-
- "Most people think when you clear a plot of land,
whether it's small or large, the animals simply move off it and go somewhere
else," said professor Hal Cogger, a biodiversity scientist at the
Australian Museum.
-
- "The vast majority don't. They die either on the
spot or they die shortly afterwards."
-
- Cogger said research in the Brigalow area, which covered
15 million hectares from central Queensland to the neighbouring eastern
state of New South Wales, revealed 100 million birds, animals and reptiles
were killed every year by land-clearing.
-
- "That includes things like 19,000 koalas a year
just simply being killed by land-clearing," Cogger said.
-
- Prof Hugh Possingham, director of the ecology centre
at the University of Queensland, said it was cheaper to compensate land
owners for not clearing land than to have to restore it later.
-
- He said that at present Australia was spending up to
two billion dollars a year on land restoration.
-
- "At the moment the repair bill for Queensland is
really quite small. But why destroy something if you are going to have
to put it back," Possingham said.
-
- "It costs roughly 100 times as much to revegetate
an area than to compensate somebody to not clear it in the first place."
-
- He said the open letter, entitled The Brigalow Declaration,
meant there was no excuse for politicians to say they were unaware of the
problem.
-
- The letter said rapid and decisive action was needed
on the issue to clear up uncertainty, particularly among land owners who
had been left dangling on the question of compensation.
-
- copyright Media24 Ltd. All rights reserved.
-
- http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_1450378,00.html
|
