The Wilderness Society Update

Amelia Young from The Wilderness Society came into the JOY studios to give an update on happenings over the last two months.

The update includes:

• The success of the Warburton Rally


• How logging affects our Water Storage Areas


• The East Gippsland Forest Campaign


• Brown Mountain


• Successful Action on the steps of Parliament


• Long-footed potoroo – endangered species


• Old-growth forests are our richest and safest carbon banks – but only if we don’t log them


• International work – Their campaign delegation has just returned from Posnan, Poland, latest round of climate talks


• A chat with Gavan McFadzean, The Wilderness Society’s Victorian Campaigns Manager who has just returned from the climate negotiations in Posnan.


• TWS Christmas Gifts online
  

Click here to listen to the interview.

For more information, please visit http://www.wilderness.org.au/

Kevin Rudd announces Australia's Carbon Emissions Reduction Target

Kevin Rudd's announcement of just 5% Carbon Emissions Reduction Target seems to have shocked everyone as too low considering the scientific community is looking for a 40% reduction.

Green's leader Bob Brown described the 5 per cent target as "a global embarrassment". The Greens are calling for a 40 per cent reduction by 2020 to save the planet from a climate catastrophe, what we are being offered is in effect surrender to climate change and in breach of Rudd’s election promises.

Rudd argues it is more ambitious than European goals and will allow Australia to pursue deeper cuts if a global climate change agreement is struck.

The Australian Industry Group warned meeting the 2020 targets would "not be easy", while the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said business and the community would be hit with high costs of industry restructuring.

Click here to listen to what John Hepburn from Greenpeace's Climate & Energy Campaign feels about the target.

For more information please visit http://www.climatesummit.org.au/ and http://www.greenpeace.org.au/

John Assaraf - What is a Vision Board?

John Assaraf is an international best-selling author, speaker as well as an entrepreneur. As a teenager plagued by low self-esteem, John risked the potentially fatal consequences of a turbulent lifestyle—a lifestyle which could have easily led either to jail or to the morgue. In his quest to overcome his challenges and fulfill his desire to live a purposeful and meaningful life, he discovered a unique passion for brain research and quantum physics as it related to achieving success in business and in life.

His expertise in helping organizations and individuals achieve success has landed him on Larry King Live, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, ABC, CBS and NBC television worldwide. In addition, John recently made his cameo appearance in the new hit movie The Secret, which can be viewed at www.onecoach.com/secret.
In the last 20 years, he has built four multi-million dollar companies including growing RE/MAX of Indiana to over 1500 sales associates, who collectively generate over $5 billion a year in sales and are paid over $120 million in com¬missions yearly.

With Bamboo, a recent start-up that raised $25 million in financing, John developed the marketing strategy and sales team that generated over $30 million in revenues within12 months. Bamboo then merged with Ipix and went on to become the world’s leading provider of imaging infrastructure for the Internet, including managing the scaled imaging infrastructure for companies such as eBay.

John is now putting his experience and knowledge to use as the Founder of OneCoach, a company committed to helping entrepreneurs and professionals grow their small business revenues so they can achieve financial freedom and live extraordinary lives. (http://www.onecoach.com/).

His personal passions are his family, spirituality, exercise, cooking, travel, and helping entrepreneurs understand how to incorporate the psychological and strategic sides of building a successful business and life.

John is well known for his Vision Board (see picture below) story.

Click here to listen to it during the interview.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.johnassaraf.com/

http://www.onecoach.com/

http://www.thevisionboardkit.com/

The Cairns Birdwing Butterfly

The Cairns Birdwing Butterfly is Australia's largest butterfly.

The wingspan of the female can measure 180mm. The smaller male butterfly has green wings with black markings, while the female has black wings with yellow and white markings. The abdomen of both the male and the female is yellow and the thorax is red.

The caterpillar or ‘larva’, is black and features short spines along the upper surface of the thorax and abdomen. The spines are red or pink in the intermediate sections. The head of the larva has a white mark. A full-grown caterpillar may have a purple tinge in its colouring and can grow to a length of 90mm.The pupa or ‘chrysalis’, is typically grey-yellow or golden.

The Cairns Birdwing Butterfly is one of 14 subspecies of Birdwing. Birdwing Butterflies are found in north-east Australia, the Moluccas Islands, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. New Guinea is home to the largest known butterfly on Earth, the Queen Alexandra's Birdwing (Troides alexandrae) whose wingspan can reach 280 mm.

After mating the female Cairns Birdwing seeks a suitable plant on which to lay her eggs. Hatching may occur within 5 -10 days, depending on the temperature. As the caterpillar grows it passes through a series of moults in which the outer skin or ‘cuticula’, is shed. Before commencing the final moult (usually the fifth) the caterpillar uses saliva to form a silk pad on the underside of a branch, and a 'girdle' that supports its head as it hangs below the branch. The lower portion of the abdomen is fixed to the silk pad by a network of tiny hooks called the 'cremaster'. The final moult commences the pupal stage.The butterfly emerges from the chrysalis approximately one month after pupation has commenced, although this period is quite variable.The adult Cairns Birdwing Butterfly lives for 4-5 weeks, during which mating may occur. The coupling of the male and female can last for up to 36 hours.
Habitat and distribution.

The destruction of tropical rain forest has led to a decline in the population of the Cairns Birdwing Butterfly and it is now a protected species.

Click here to listen to the interview with Norman Dowsett of Melbourne Zoo about ht eBirdwing Butterfly as well as how to attract more butterflies to your garden.

For more information, please visit http://www.zoo.org.au/

The Cassowary

The Cassowary is a beautiful, large, flightless bird which is found in PNG and far northern Queensland. Cassowaries feed on the fruits of several hundred rainforest species and usually pass viable seeds in large dense scats. They are known to disperse seeds over distances greater than a kilometre, and thus probably play an important role in the ecosystem. Germination rates for seeds of the rare Australian rainforest tree Ryparosa were found to be much higher after passing through a cassowary's gut (92% versus 4%).

However there are many factors contributing to their decline:

· Hand feeding of Cassowaries poses a big threat to their survival. Contact with humans encourages Cassowaries to take most unsuitable food from picnic tables.
· In suburban areas the birds are more susceptible to vehicles
· Dogs - chase the birds away from potential food sources in suburban areas.
· Feral pigs are a huge problem. They probably destroy nests and eggs; but their worst effect is as competitors for food, which could be catastrophic for the Cassowaries during lean times. Pigs also contaminate water sources.

Click here to listen to the interview with Melbourne Zoo's Angelo Foresio.

For further information, please visit http://www.zoo.org.au/

Tuna is becoming endangered

Tuna is one of the world’s most popular fish found in many a restaurant, sushi roll and even cat bowl but there is a growing threat of extinction to Tuna.

Most people probably don't realise that Tuna is on the verge of extinction in many parts of the world. Huge growth in demand has been disastrous for the fish (it's beginning to disappear from sushi plates world over).

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), meeting in
Marrakech, Morocco, for the past week, brushed aside its own review’s description of its
management of the bluefin fishery as “an international disgrace” to endorse a total allowable catch (TAC) of 22,000 tonnes for next year.

ICCAT’s own scientists had recommended a TAC ranging 8,500 to 15,000 tonnes per year, warning there were real risks of the fishery collapsing otherwise. The scientists also urged a seasonal closure during the fragile spawning months of May and June, while today’s outcome allows industrial fishing in practice up to 20 June.

Click here to listen to the interview with WWF Oceans Program Leader, Gilly Lwellyn.

For more information, please visit http://www.panda.org/

Happiness with Marci Shimoff

Marci Shimoff is the author of the new instant runaway bestseller, Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out, which offers a revolutionary approach to experiencing deep and lasting happiness. It has immediately soared to #1 on many national bestseller lists including Amazon and Barnes and Noble.com, and has debuted at #2 on The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. Fedex/Kinkos selected Happy for No Reason as their featured book for April, May and June of 2008. In addition, she’s featured in the international film and book sensation, The Secret

Marci is also the woman's face of the biggest self-help book phenomenon in history, Chicken Soup for the Soul. Her six bestselling titles in the series, including Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul and Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul, have met with stunning success, selling more than 13 million copies worldwide in 33 languages and have been on the New York Times bestseller list for a total of 108 weeks.

Marci is one of the best selling female nonfiction authors of all time. A celebrated transformational leader and one of the nation's leading experts on happiness, success, and the law of attraction, Marci has inspired millions of people around the world, sharing her breakthrough methods for personal fulfillment and professional success. President and co-founder of the Esteem Group, she delivers keynote addresses and seminars on self-esteem, self-empowerment, and peak performance to corporations, professional and non-profit organizations, and women's associations. She has been a top-rated trainer for numerous Fortune 500 companies, including AT&T, GM, Sears, Kaiser Permanente, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Click here to listen to the interview.

For more information, please visit: http://www.marcishimoff.com/ and http://www.marcishimoff.com/

Genetically Engineered Food

To meet the increasing food needs of a growing world population, science has discovered the technique of genetically modifying plants and crops to enhance crop yield and create superior and stronger varieties of crops and fruits.

The main method is to genetically modify the DNA structure of the crop or plant. These genetically-modified plants are used as medicines and vaccines, foods and food ingredients, feeds, and fibres.

Controversies surrounding GM foods and crops commonly focus on human and environmental safety, labeling and consumer choice, intellectual property rights, ethics, food security, poverty reduction, and environmental conservation.

Click here to listen to the interview with Michelle Sheather of Greenpeace.

For more information, please visit http://www.greenpeace.org.au/

Sick ‘Murray the Cod’ seeks emergency life support from Labor’s Bronwyn Pike

Wilderness Society conservationists rushed a sick ‘Murray the Cod’ to the office of several inner city Labor M.P’s including Melbourne’s Bronwyn Pike, Northcote’s Fiona Richardson and Albert Parks’ Martin Foly.

Dressed as Doctors and Nurses and travelling by Ambulance, they sought emergency life support for ‘Murray’ - in the form of new Red Gum National Parks.

Watch the short, one and half minute video they made - it's very funny, and has a catchy soundtrack.



With the health of the Murray in crisis and up to 75% of Red Gums stressed, dead or dying, urgent action is clearly needed to ensure the on-going survival of the river, it’s iconic wildlife and it’s wetlands.Precious Red Gum forests and wetlands are currently being degraded by unsustainable logging, cattle grazing and lack of flooding. If this is allowed to continue, the health of the already stressed Murray will deteriorate rapidly, especially in the face of climate change.The Brumby government must fulfill it’s 2006 election promise to create new Red Gum National Parks if recommended by VEAC, the Victorian Environment Assessment Council. With VEAC wisely recommending over 100,000 hectares of new National Parks along the Murray and it’s tributaries, improved environmental water flows and Indigenous Co-management, It is clearly now time for Labor to act

Click here to listen to the live cross to Adam Barralet's All Natural.