Entries are officially open for the 2025 Australian Event Awards, marking the start of the nation’s most prestigious celebration of excellence in the events industry. #eventprofsau #AustralianEventAwards #CoffsHarbour

https://www.specialevents.com.au/entries-now-open-for-the-2025-australian-event-awards/

Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred sparks call to cyclone-proof homes as far south as northern NSW

"The research is really clear that cyclones and severe weather events are coming south along the Queensland and Australian coastline, and that our severe weather events will become more severe... Professor Steve Turton, a climate change expert with Central Queensland University, said homes and buildings outside traditional cyclone zones should now be subject to cyclone ratings, including in south-east Queensland and even northern New South Wales. I would suggest it needs to go down to at least Coffs Harbour." >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-23/ex-tropical-cyclone-alfred-weather-preparation-storm-resilience/105074460
#FossilFuels #plasterboard #housing #cyclone #climate #infrastructure #NSW #storms #floods #disaster #CoffsHarbour #MidNorthCoast

Highway expansions and road widening
How America (Australia) Can Break Its Highway Addiction

"After a century of rampant roadbuilding, the U.S. highway network is ubiquitous, dominating the American landscape in bucolic rural settings as well as dense urban ones. Rather than being a tool for mobility, it has become a monument to an auto-centric lifestyle that fouls the air and depletes the public coffers. Neither the country nor the planet can afford to keep expanding it."

"At the federal level, even asking questions about the collective climate impact of highway building appears verboten."
>>
https://slate.com/business/2024/08/construction-traffic-cars-driving-transportation-highway.html
#Sprawl #roads #highways #expansion #cars #automobility #industry #asphalt #Motordom #MobilityDesign #ClimateBreakdown #pollution #NSW #CoffsHarbour #bellingen #GlenifferRoad

Forestry Corporation NSW logs 1.44 hectares within Bindarri National Park

"Bindarri National Park is home to birds, wallabies, possums, quolls, koalas, platypus, owls and bats. It lies next to Orara West State Forest, which Forestry Corporation manages and it claims the error was made because a timber plantation that sits on the border was rezoned and split between the two parks in 1999."

A "penalty will likely further hit the beleaguered state-owned company’s bottom line – on Friday, it revealed its native forestry business has lost $29 million over a single year. It said a key reason for its woes was legal action and protests against its operations. Although Victoria and Western Australia have shut down their state-owned logging companies, the Minns government has backed Forestry Corporation, which controversially logs endangered koala and greater glider habitat."
>>
https://au.news.yahoo.com/calls-to-shut-down-controversial-business-after-illegal-act-in-national-park-061722075.html
https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/visit-a-park/parks/bindarri-national-park/map
#NSWLogging #crime #FCNSW #breaches #NSW #CoffsHarbour #ResourceFrontiers #NationalParks #Bindarri #koalas #biodiversity #climate #governance

Measles confirmed case visited the following locations:

Monday December 16:

- - Byron Bay Beach, between 9.00am and 12.00pm
- - United Petroleum, 2910 Pacific Highway, Mullaway
- - Coffs Central Shopping Centre, Harbour Drive, Coffs Harbour
- - Woolworths, 7 Park Avenue, Coffs Harbour, between 4.40 and 5.15pm
- - Wingham Riverside Reserve camping site, from 5.30pm

Tuesday December 17:

- - Newcastle Bogey Hole pool
- - The Grand Hotel, 32 Church St, Newcastle
- - Woolworths, 23 Steel St, Newcastle West
- - McDonalds Liverpool Mega Centre, Orange Grove Rd, Liverpool
- - BP Truck stop, 155 Pennant Hills Rd, Normanhurst
- - Bungonia Campground, Bungonia Access Rd, Bungonia, from 5.00pm

Wednesday 18 December:

- - Coles Express, corner of Mount St and Middle St, Gundagai

#Medical #Measles #RegionalAustralia #NSW #Australia #NewCastle #Gundagai #Liverpool #Normanhurst #Mullaway #CoffsHarbour #Bungonia #Wingham

https://7news.com.au/news/health-alert-issued-on-christmas-eve-after-second-measles-case-visits-multiple-locations-across-nsw-c-17184457?fbclid=IwY2xjawHX_3VleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHTxXAuCg26xZEJgYXJwDJzfyHKbGH9-olKeBBgwNtsTXImihhnSenY2PeA_aem_7GVEeouAQiyxuSIWK5v5fw

Koala habitat and roads

"A research project to compile the first genome map of koalas across eastern Australia has exposed areas where the species is most at risk.The most surprising results were in coastal pockets of NSW, where koala populations are increasingly hemmed between sprawling coastal communities, and the Pacific Highway."

"Those koala populations are really quite constrained genetically because you've got ocean on one side, highway on another and a town to the north and a town to the south.The fracturing of habitat makes it hard for koalas to mix and diversify the genes of their offspring, putting the species at risk of extinction from environmental shocks, and serious diseases like chlamydia."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-03/koalas-genome-map-university-of-sydney/104647824
#koalas #wildlife #habitat #MidNorthCoast #NSW #roads #cars #sprawl #extinction #GlenifferRoad #Bellingen #CoffsHarbour #PacificHighway

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.

The number of species recognised as threatened with extinction rises by 13 and now stands at 2,224

"It increases the number of species recognised as threatened with extinction in Australia to 2,224. The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) said each of the new animal additions had been affected by habitat destruction or degradation, and the climate crisis was worsening their plight."

"The Coffs Harbour Fontainea tree was found in only two pockets of bushland owned by Transport for NSW, and one of the sites was earmarked to be cleared to make way for a Coffs Harbour road bypass."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/07/pig-nosed-turtle-among-over-a-dozen-new-species-added-to-australias-list-of-endangered-species
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-21/rare-plant-species-found-near-highway-coffs-harbour-nsw/100149038
#EndangeredSpecies #biodiversity #rainforest #degradation #destruction #roads #car #infrastructure #CoffsHarbour #NSW #Fontainea #extinction #ExtinctionCrisis #laws #EPBCAct #governance

Australian biodiversity conservation and 'fighting the government.'

"A rare legal win for an ecologist over a violent confrontation with NSW loggers exposed years of intimidation from corporate forestry representatives and law enforcement ."

"In environmental science circles, state surveillance and persecution of an ecologist whose findings refute or debunk state land management practices surprises no one. Last year, the International Science Council, a body representing more than 250 organisations, summarised that “the findings of environmental scientists … have long triggered censorship, intimidation, harassment and even violence when these challenge economic interests, political agendas, or ideologies”. It reported that scientists “have been physically attacked, wrongfully detained, and killed for their research and advocacy … threats and attacks are widespread in virtually all fields examining human impact on the environment”.

"A 2021 joint university study of Australian environmental scientists found more than half employed in industry or government “are routinely constrained in communicating scientific evidence on threatened species, mining, logging and other threats to the environment”. In some cases, “scientists self-censor information for fear of damaging their careers, losing funding or being misrepresented in the media. In others, senior managers or ministers’ officers prevented researchers from speaking truthfully on scientific matters...In all logged states, time spent fighting the government has overtaken the fieldwork time of ecologists and forest researchers."
>>
https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2024/june/katherine-wilson/combative-nature#mtr
#NSWForestry #NSWLogging #LoggingImpacts #breaches #violence #GumbainggirCountry #activism #ecology #conservation #science #researchers #Koalas #ThreatenedSpecies #extractivism #mining #logging #defamation #surveillance #CoffsHarbour #Gondwana #TheGreatKoalaNationalPark #ExtinctionCrisis #BiodiversityCrisis #democracy #governance #Australia

#Bathrooms We’ve Been To. A lot of steel in #CoffsHarbour, #Australia. - https://goo.gl/maps/b8RAX5NjQi9WgmC7A #travel #toilet

Extraction and violence go hand in hand

How a fight to save the bush became a battlefield

"In Coffs Harbour Local Court the forestry contractors Michael Luigi Vitali and Rodney James Hearfield were found guilty of assaulting Graham and his companion Andre Johnston that afternoon on the road on the Dorrigo Plateaux three and a half years ago. No conviction was recorded."

"What she (Higginson) still believes to have been collusion between police, loggers and the FCNSW reflected a dangerous culture in which protesters are perceived by the government to be suspect automatically, while those who profit from resource extraction were above suspicion."
>>
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/how-a-fight-to-save-the-bush-became-a-battlefield-20240117-p5exxc.html
#FCNSW #violence #loggers #ForestryCorporation #ethics #NativeForests #NSWLogging #CoffsHarbour #GreatKoalaNationalPark #WildCattleCreek #RiotSquad #environmentalists #protests #climate #BiodiversityCrisis

130 people have been forced out of their homes to ease congestion for motorists

”The Queensland government has continued to acquire properties for a major road project on the Sunshine Coast, despite the Commonwealth pulling funding and a projected $424 million cost blowout.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-08/properties-resumed-acquired-for-axed-mooloolah-interchange/103282138
#MobilityDesign 4 #cars #roads #congestion #bulldozing #homes #HousingCrisis #noise #CoffsHarbour #wildlife #koalas

Outrage as endangered species living in forest goes unnoticed by loggers chopping it down. 'Nothing to see here': Greater gliders, yellow-bellied gliders, koalas and powerful owls.

“Forestry Corporation admitted that they don’t do surveys for the nocturnal greater gliders at night! No wonder they aren’t finding any — they don’t want to find them, as it would seriously restrict their operations,” CEO Jacqui Mumford

"Endangered marsupials have been discovered inside a forest that was being chopped down by the NSW government, prompting calls for its operations to be suspended across dozens of sites across the state."

"After the Environmental Protection Agency was asked to intervene this week, NSW Forestry Corporation voluntarily asked its contractors to cease operations at the Styx River State Forest which borders the Cathedral Rock National Park, west of Coffs Harbour. It’s the second time since August the state-owned agency has been forced to down chainsaws because of the discovery of greater gliders."

https://au.news.yahoo.com/outrage-as-endangered-species-living-in-forest-goes-unnoticed-by-loggers-chopping-it-down-063558748.html
#MoonparSF #CoffsHarbour #NativeForests #NSWForestry #NSWLogging #gliders #Koalas #wildlife #biodiversity #surveys #ExtinctionCrisis #StopLogging

A growing number of Australian households are ditching cars for e-bikes but there are hardly any bike lanes.
"Cycling groups criticised the investment in active transport in the recent New South Wales budget, noting it was dwarfed by the broader infrastructure spend and under Climate Council recommendations."

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/08/its-also-just-fun-why-a-growing-number-of-australia-families-are-ditching-cars-for-e-bikes
#cycling #infrastructure #NSW #CoffsHarbour #FossilFuel free #mobility #ActiveTransport #ClimateEmergency

Would rare glossy black cockatoo nests in the proposed Great Koala National Park on the NSW Mid North Coast?

Conservationists are celebrating the rare discovery of nests of one of Australia's most-threatened cockatoos.

The bird is one of the most-threatened species of cockatoos in Australia
For the first time in more than 20 years, glossy black cockatoo nests have been discovered on the New South Wales' Mid North Coast.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-03/rare-glossy-black-cockatoo-nests-found-in-northern-nsw/102795868

Glossy Black-Cockatoo (Biliirrgan) listed as vulnerable under federal environmental law
https://glossyblack.org.au/glossy-squad-northern-rivers/

The Great Koala National Park misunderstood
A letter by Grahame Douglas, President, National Parks Association of NSW, Korora.

Excerpt:
"...The current Government committed to the establishment of a GKNP comprising existing national parks (135,000 Ha) as well as areas of native forest (approximately 175,000 Ha).

Currently, native forest harvesting is neither economically or environmentally sustainable, which is why there is a need to invest in genuine plantation forests.

Forestry Corporation currently cross subsidizes native forest logging through its profitable Softwoods Division and direct Government subsidies on the public purse.

Haulers will need to go back to their original areas (hopefully not native forests) rather than the accelerated harvesting occurring around Kempsey, Nambucca and Coffs Harbour.

Clearly the impacts of national parks management are far less than that of FCNSW contractors, which have been fined for breaching logging conditions and even harvesting illegally on adjoining neighbours’ land.

Nearly 90 percent of the NSW timber market is currently supplied from profitable softwood plantations (including Forest Corporation NSW) and would be closer to 95 percent if export woodchips from the Southern Forests ceased.

Pallets, fencing and garden stakes do not need to use native forest timbers from the Mid North Coast. What a waste.

The GKNP is our main hope for the conservation of koala and other native species which is why the public and local businesses support its early establishment."

> Read the letter in full:
https://www.newsofthearea.com.au/opinion-great-koala-national-park-misunderstood
#MidNorthCoast #Kempsey #Nambucca #CoffsHarbour #Bellingen #FCNSW #logging #StopLogging #SaveTuckersNob #extinction #koalas #biodiversity

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