Goodbye Baird, Koalas, Leonard Cohen….?

We wanted to ask Mike Baird if he could imagine Australia without koalas? But he made a tactical retreat from politics this week by resigning – some would say NSW just got too hot for the Premier whose popularity has been severely dinted in the past 12 months by community opposition to his government’s controversial public works projects, such as WestConnex and the Eastern Suburbs Light Rail.  Thousands of trees have been lost on Baird’s watch, taking with them countless owls, bats, possoms, sugar gliders, birds, insect pollinators and other unique Australian fauna and flora.  This has upset the electorate. So it’s back to banking for Mr Baird…

But concerning koalas specifically – we whacked on a bit of Leonard Cohen (The Future from the album named the same) and called Dr Oisin Sweeney, the senior ecologist from National Parks Association of NSW.  While Leonard intoned these rather pessimistic lyrics – “Take the only tree that’s left, And stuff it up the hole, In your culture…” Oisin said he is hopeful that these unique Australian mammals will be around in another 50 years, but only if we stop destroying their habitat.  “Australia is one of the worst performing countries” in terms of protecting its ecosystems, he told us, and the temperate forests which house koalas are disappearing. In 1924 over 2 million koala pelts were exported from Eastern Australia to the world. Today we don’t skin them, but the koala population in NSW has plummeted to about 36,000 as their eucalyptus homes are razed to make way for more housing estates, roads and coal mines, leaving them prey to dogs, cars and disease.

Many facebook feeds this week showed pics of thirsty koalas being watered by garden hoses as temperatures hit the 40s across the state. If you want to do more to help them,  listen to Oisin’s update on the Monday Drive program page about what can be done to save the koalas and all their friends, and sign this petition.

While we were thinking about endangered species we spared a thought for the community over at Manly Vale where a unique outdoor bushland classroom in the War Memorial Park is about to be flattened for the expansion of the public school, despite the vociferous protests of locals. New research released last week showed that in Finland, which has the best primary school system in the world, children are guaranteed 15-minute outdoor free-play breaks in forest classrooms every hour of every single school day (regardless of the weather) because it makes them concentrate better in class, and become more successful at “negotiating, socialising, building teams and friendships together”. Meanwhile in Australia more and more child care centres are creating fake outdoor play spaces with astro turf, murals of trees, and sandpits in plastic shells. And in Manly Vale, a unique outdoor classroom, home to countless endangered species such as the super cute pygmy possom, and scarlet crowned toadlet, is about to be covered in concrete.  You can still tell Mike Baird what you think of that here. And watch this video here

To round off an afternoon spent mulling over our beautiful country, we had a chat to professor Richard Kingsford about the Botany wetlands and why tens of thousands of migratory birds touch base here every year as they journey round the globe in search of food and breeding grounds – or they used to before urban development started eating into their sanctuaries. If the word “wetlands” seems un-inspiring, think simmering fecundity – Sydney’s remaining wetlands are verdant wellsprings of fertility, and we need them to cleanse and nourish the ecosystems that support all the life on the planet. That includes us. Read more here.

The playlist this week included some new albums we love – Kadhja Bonet’s The Visitor with its ravishing honey tones (the LA-based soul singer claims to have been “born in 1784 in the backseat of a sea-foam green space pinto”);  In The Service of Spring from Sydney folk poets Dusken Lights; and an exquisite track from Laure Brise’s Leaving Room (a French harpist who also sings and plays “machines”).

Next Monday? Riley Lavelle Long returns with a swag of film reviews, and we’ll be talking dolphins, turtles and shark nets.