When spin goes wrong.
Close up of flowers and flower bud of a River Red Gum, (E. camaldulensis). Such a tiny flower and even smaller seeds for such a might tree.
Last week an email arrived in my inbox. I started to read it which means it came from an organization that I normally trust with their information. Buy the time I got through the first paragraph however, I’m starting to think, what is this crap? Bottom line is that they were trying to issue a call to arms to protect River Red Gum trees from logging. Again protection and survival of our native tree populations is a subject near to my heart but they’d lost me.
In an attempt to sell the sizzle they painted a word picture of all these massive trees lining our inland rivers. Describing to perfection an ancient (E. camaldulensis) with twisted and tormented limbs drooping majestically to the ground, the scars, and hollows formed over sometimes hundreds of years all very romantic stuff, but and it is a big but, no pun intended there, loggers wouldn’t touch a tree like that for any money. Simply because there is very little usable timber in a tree of that nature. Drooping and twisted limbs, plus hollows make for a mostly useless tree for milling.
The second point raised was that closing forests to loggers and creating national parks would be job positive, because of the extra park ranger and management positions that would spring from new parks. Firstly they cited a very small number of jobs would be lost. Simple accounting really, only count numbers from one side of a state border, including jobs lost from the other side of the border over doubles the job losses. Also only counting numbers of workers in the industry and not the forest workers and management whose jobs will disappear into the job loss equation, but counting management and staff teams from the park side is a sneaky way of inflating numbers to strengthen your point.
Sorry I’m all for protecting forests, and promoting replanting of new areas and for farming trees as one of the only renewable construction materials we have at our disposal, but I’m not going to simply follow along with incorrect and misleading spin whatever the cause.
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Tour of the Murray 2010
Stock photos of the 2010 Tour of the Murray bike race. this annual road race for cyclists runs over a number of days, with competition legs taken place in a number of towns along the Murray River. The action pictures in this gallery of the 2010 Tour of the Murray road race were taken in the towns of Merbein, Cardross and Mildura.
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Aerial photos of Lake Eyre, largest salt lake, Australia.
Series of stock pictures of Lake Eyre, outback South Australia. Photos include harsh dry landscape, Lake Eyre, salt flats and salt pans around Lake Eyre.
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Balloon flight over Lake Eyre
Low level aerial stock photos of Lake Eyre, South Australia, plus air to air images of balloons flying over the largest salt lake in Australia. Action portraits of balloon pilot Kiff Saunders taken during the flight.
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Stock photos which include water as their main feature. From waves rolling into shore, to abstracts of water, waterfalls, rivers and streams around Australia.
