Aussie Enviro
An Australian community for everything from your backyard to beyond the black stump.
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Topics may include Aussie plants and animals, environmental, farming, energy, and climate news and stories (mostly Aus specific), etc.
🐧 Want a news or information source? Try one of these links below!
News
The New Daily
(Life, Sci, Envt)
John Menadue
(Pub Pcy/Climate)
National Indigenous Times
(Envt)
Science
Online Library.Wiley
(Srch Earliest)
Conservation
Australian Conservation Foundation ACF
Biodiversity Council
(Stories)
WWF, World-Wide Fund for Nature
WWF, World-Wide Fund for Nature
(Blogs)
Nature Conservation Council for NSW
Queensland Conservation Council
(Blog)
Environmental Defenders Office
Education Institutions
Australia National University
(News)
University of Queensland
(News)
University of the Sunshine Coast
(News)
University of Technology, Sydney
(News)
Queensland University of Technology
(News)
University of Southern Queensland
(News)
University of Melbourne
(News)
University of Adelaide
(Envt News)
University of Newcastle
(News)
University of New England
(Connect)
University of Western Australia
(News)
University of Western Sydney
(News Centre)
University of Tasmania
(News and Stories)
University of South Australia
(News)
Misc
Takvera (J,Englart)
(Climate Citizen Blog)
Australian Youth Climate Coalition
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Trigger Warning: Community contains mostly bad environmental news (not by choice!). Community may also feature stories about animal agriculture and/or meat. Until tagging is available, please be aware and click accordingly.
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Aussie Zone Rules.
- Golden rule - be nice. If you wouldn’t say it in front of your ~~grandmother~~ favourite tree, don’t post it.
- No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. You are allowed to denigrate invasive plants or animals.
- Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here. Except invasive plants or animals.
- No porn. Except photos of plants. Definitely not animals.
- No Ads / Spamming. Except for photos or stories about plants and animals.
- Nothing illegal in Australia. Like invasive plants or animals. Exotic microbes and invasive fungi also not welcome.
- Make post titles descriptive with no swear words. Comments are a free for all using the above rules as a guide. Fuck invasive plants and animals.
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/c/Aussie Environment acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land, sea and waters, of the area that we live and work on across Australia. We acknowledge their continuing connection to their culture and pay our respects to their Elders past and present.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The smell of freshly cut lawn and dry grass lies deep in the sense memory of many of us, as does the heavy thrum of the sprinklers that pump water on to the sleepy spaces of school ovals and parks in the summer.
After all, while grasses are one of the most successful types of plant on Earth, growing on every continent, and covering around 40% of the planet’s land surface, lawns are monocultures made up of a handful of species that require frequent watering, fertiliser and – often – pesticides.
Andrea Gaynor, professor of history at the University of Western Australia, argues that while some settlers appreciated the beauty of Australian landscape from early on, that “didn’t override the necessity to provide a civilised veneer that meant the colony could project an image of itself as stable, settled and prosperous, and therefore an attractive field for investment.
As the vast, manicured sports fields that surround the most expensive private schools or the sprawling golf courses that occupy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of land in the inner suburbs of Australia’s cities eloquently demonstrate, lawns continue to act as powerful signifiers of wealth and social status.
In Perth, where rainfall has declined about 20% over the past half a century, and inflow to dams has dropped even more substantially, the city’s love affair with its lawns and gardens means per capita water consumption remains far higher than in other Australian capitals.
Instead, as Scott leads me through the space she points out humped masses of wallaby and weeping grass, the green, juicy leaves of tiny dichondras, and the darker stems of trefoils sprouting among the leaf litter, all remnants of the now-critically endangered Sydney turpentine ironbark forest ecosystem that existed here before European invasion.
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