Australia's roads are "killing corridors" for biodiversity
Mobility design for extinction records
"Appin Road is known as Australia's 'killing corridor' because of the large number of endangered koalas killed on the stretch. Increased traffic on south-west Sydney's Appin Road has resulted in 32 of the endangered marsupials being killed on the notorious stretch since July 2022 – roughly half of all deaths in the district over the same period. Wildlife advocates have long referred to it as Australia's "killing corridor".
>> https://au.news.yahoo.com/developer-responds-as-aussie-road-upgrade-near-killing-corridor-labelled-pretty-horrific-030233495.html
There will be a review of the 5 year management plan of the Gleniffer Reserves. A meeting will be held at the Gleniffer Hall on Tuesday 23rd January from 9.30am to 12 noon.
Once residents and visitors have frequented the local watering holes in Bellingen, the swimming holes at Gleniffer are the main thing to do on a hot day. The mass tourism is funneled via ' the tourist drive'. The scenic country road has just been reconstructed into a highway-like infrastructure. Motorists are now enticed to race from the watering hole to the swimming hole. Cars park as close as possible to the small creeks and unload dogs and gear. The unwanted waste is commonly left behind for the local wildlife and the next load of visitors.
The reserves have a lot of car parking infrastructure and educational signage about settler explorers now.
A "Go before you go” campaign urges visitors to go to a public toilet before leaving the township. Many motorists/swimmers forget and the dogs can't read.
The 'upgrade' of Gleniffer road channeled the flow of visitors into local waterways that have no toilets.
Car dependency in Australia is unquestioned. The 'road toll' is a sacrifice to private mobility in sprawling sub-urbia. The present 'mobility design' gives people no options to travel on (fossil fuel free) public transport, walk or cycle without fear of being maimed or squashed by a SUV.
They call for more data on the "death Toll", money and more (killer) roads, but never for a radical infrastructure redesign. No data on "roadkill" of native animals either.
The impacts of the road 'renewal' projects in the Bellingen/ Gleniffer area
The stated rationale given for the $5.3 Million 'Road Renewal Program' was to boost tourism and businesses of the Promised Land and the Never Never River. The clearing of vegetation and lining the soil with bitumen and cement incidentally also eased access for the government's logging corporation (Tuckers Nob State Forests).
The year long road construction alone caused air pollution, noise, erosion, habitat loss, and greenhouse gas emissions.
The long term effects for wildlife and residents have been the loss of a livable habitat: Intensification of traffic on Gleniffer Road and Roses Road. Speeding, night time noise from traffic. More garbage in the 'gutter'.
Many fossil fuel enthusiasts are going for their ritualistic 'Sunday drive' on The Loop Drive to the Promised Land. Hoards of wanna be 'bikies' are now attracted to cruise the loop with their souped up machines. No, 'bikie gangs' are the others, here we have the fat grey nomads that finally can afford the 'Easy Rider' Harley-thingy-toy.
The area is also a niche for many local motorbike riders that are exceeding the 94 decibels limit in the age of electric motorcycles. People actually move to the countryside to enjoy the freedom of lawlessness in under-policed areas.
"Living landscapes are a form of infrastructure in the sense that forests, for example, clean our water and our air."
"...It is not enough simply to restore natural systems to their former condition. “There is no ‘pure nature’ that’s outside of us, untouched up there in the foothills somewhere...We’ve ‘made’ the world what it is already, so now we need to take a very, very strong hand in the remaking. … A big part of climate adaptation may simply be unbuilding what we’ve already built.”
"A big part of climate adaptation may simply be unbuilding what we’ve already built. Rather than thinking of design as something merely additive or “beautifying,” we need to think about undoing our environmental mistakes, like damming rivers, bulkheading our shorelines, and concretizing streams. We need to start making room for rivers and floods."