'[University of Oregon] findings indicate that commercial agriculture — which is currently dominated by farms that grow one crop type — has the potential to harm bee health. Installing strips of diverse vegetation alongside crops can serve as alternative resources that protect pollinators from infectious diseases, the researchers said.'
The Clarence Valley council considered a report lobbying for an end to native forestry logging.
"The report called for the council to write to the NSW government demanding the urgent development of a transition plan that would see native timber harvesting in state-owned forests move towards a sustainable plantation-based industry."
"The logs are getting smaller and smaller, the number of logs coming out of state forests is less and less every year and biodiversity is just going out the window."
"The debate comes as Victoria and Western Australia are set to ban logging in native forests in 2024."
"The motion was defeated as councillors spoke of their support for the timber industry"
Lawn is “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.
Lawn is “nature under totalitarian rule”. Michael Pollan
"At a larger scale they also suggested a permanence and control that assuaged anxieties about the fragility of colonial control. 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. So the cultural aspect is deeply entwined with the economics of the whole enterprise.” Simultaneously lawns helped encode and reinforce racial and social hierarchies. “Lawns were understood by Perth’s white residents as the antithesis of, and vastly superior to, Indigenous landscapes and cultures,” says Gaynor."
“Even in a drying climate we’d rather run desal[ination] plants than do away with lawn. It really shows how deeply ingrained lawn is in Australian culture as a symbol of civilisation and environmental control.”
Please feel welcome, especially if you're looking forward to leave prejudice and self-centredness behind. We've all had our share of that on social media and a lot of us are just trying to be better—and build something better—in this space. If this sounds like something you'd like, then give us a follow and enjoy.
One thing I've learned is that #Fedi still has quite a bit of unsavory conduct. Much has been said about Mastodon's #monoculture problem and its poor reception of black and indigenous people. That's one reason why you may want to explore different servers. Look through my follows if you'd like to find a few good folks to follow, and look into #BIPOC-run servers like wibblur.social, blacktwitter.io, woodpecker.social, or indg.club. They're working to build good spaces.
Realized that my tinkering with #GoToSocial, #Takahe, #CalcKey and #Snac2, continuing to use #Pixelfed, #Lemmy and #Bookwyrm, and looking for compatibility problems are part of the same impulse that had me trying out every web browser I could find in the early 2000s and deliberately using Firefox and Opera on Linux as my daily drivers instead of IE on Windows.
It's a drop in the ocean, but it's my push for interoperability over #monoculture.