Past Programs
Forests and Forestry - 2005
Wielangta Forest
03/09/2005
The Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle, the swift parrot and a stag beetle are the subject of an important environmental test case currently before the federal court.
All three endangered species are nationally listed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. But when these rare and threatened species occur in a logging coupe, the national legislation doesn't apply. It's overridden by the state-based Regional Forest Agreements, and this is the point to be challenged.
Greens Senator Bob Brown is testing the laws governing endangered species in the Wielangta Forest on the East coast of Tasmania.
Dr Peter McQuillan is an entomologist and lecturer in ecology at the University of Tasmania.
Bioenergy and Oil Mallees
06/08/2005
We don't usually associate trees with electricity. But in Narrogin in Western Australia a 10 million dollar integrated wood processing plant is about to start business.
It's all part of the solution to dryland salinity which threatens to engulf thirty per cent of the wheat belt. Already farmers have planted more than 20 million mallee trees which will be crushed and burned in the Narrogin plant to produce electricity, activated carbon and eucalyptus oil.
These hardy eucalypts resprout when cut and the trunks and branches will be harvested regularly.
Green Coffee in El Salvador
14/05/2005
When you brew up your next espresso or latte, you may just be helping to save the blue-crowned motmot or long-tailed manakin. The survival of these birds is being helped El Salvador through the production of eco-label coffee grown under the Rain Forest Alliance's coffee certification scheme.
