chemfreegarden

Me and chain-saws just do not seem to get along.  Now its conked and I have more to do.

Paulo felled this large flooded gum last week.  A lot of wood and foilage from the collateral damage as it fell.

Luckily the wood splitter comes Saturday next to remove as much as we can for seasoning and future fire wood.

Getting the ground ready for the arrival of the demountable on the 28th August.

And they are heavy to move.

The caravan, ready to be dismantled. Now to pick up all its ply, metal, broken glass and all the makes up a 70s caravan.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-07/australian-native-bees-help-worlds-plastic-pollution/10025664

After  the ECHOs full page of articles 2 weeks ago, covering the Monsanto/Bayer product,(Round-up, glyphosate) and the class actions underway in the US,  I was disappointed to see a worker spraying the garden beds at 7 am on a Friday morning. To get rid of the wandering dew he told me, and it is round-up.

Why can’t a community group look after these gardens? Most town residents I talk to are totally against herbicides being used in public spaces.

Later compost and mulch were applied and I asked the young woman who was spreading the mulch with her gloved hand, whether she was aware the soil had been sprayed with a herbicide. She said she wasn’t aware and we asked her supervisor.

From the East London garden group.
We the undersigned petition the council to ban the use of Glyphosate/Roundup within parks and gardens of Tower Hamlets. Glyphosate/Roundup is being banned in many countries around the world. France being the last country to ban this toxic herbicide, Glyphosate/Roundup being a known cancer inducing agent.
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, is the most heavily used agricultural chemical of all time. It’s a mind-boggling amount of usage for one agricultural chemical, and it was only a matter of time before the wide-reaching environmental and public health implications became apparent.
Monsanto advertised Roundup as “biodegradable” and “environmentally friendly,” even going so far as to claim it “left the soil clean” — until they were found guilty of false advertising. Now It’s showing up in people, at alarming levels, with unknown effects on human health.
Researchers tested urine levels of glyphosate and its metabolite aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) among 100 people living in Southern California over a period of 23 years — from 1993 to 2016. The prevalence of human exposure to glyphosate increased by 500 percent during the study period while actual levels of the chemical, in ug/ml, increased by a shocking 1,208 percent.
It’s unknown what this means for human health but, in 2017, separate research revealed that daily exposure to ultra-low levels of glyphosate for two years led to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in rats. Researchers stated that the glyphosate levels revealed by their JAMA study were 100-fold greater than those detected in the rat study.
More information on its affect on health can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEjpkx3KBAc
GM campaigners have stated:
“This is the first study to longitudinally track urine levels of glyphosate over a period before and after the introduction of GM glyphosate-tolerant crops. It is yet another example illustrating that the vast majority of present-day Americans have readily detectable levels of glyphosate in their urine, ranging from 0.3 parts per billion, as in this study, to ten times higher – 3 or more parts per billion – detected by others.
These results are worrying because there is increasing evidence to show that exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides below regulatory safety limits can be harmful.”
Concerns over glyphosate’s toxicity have been mounting since the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) 2015 determination that glyphosate is a “probable carcinogen.” As of July 2017, California’s Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment also listed glyphosate as a chemical known to cause cancer.

© Tower Hamlets | Legal notices

http://www.theworldin.com/edition/2018/article/14595/rem-koolhaas-sees-future-countryside

Greater Glider. (ABC News: Michael Slezak)

VicForests logging and burning forest where threatened species lives for research
The government-owned company knows the experiment is likely to kill greater gliders
Expert compares project to Japan’s scientific whaling

VicForests is owned by the Victorian Government and logs native forests for profit under exemptions to federal environment law.
It is now logging parts of East Gippsland forest at different intensities to measure survival rates of the threatened greater gliders that call it home.
VicForests argued the research would assist the conservation of the species, but acknowledged it was likely to kill some of them.
In an email seen by the ABC that addressed similar logging nearby, VicForests’ staff acknowledged deaths were likely.
“It is unfortunate that some individuals have to die in the process, but we really need to look at the big picture here,” a VicForests ecologist wrote.
And when asked if gliders that survived the initial logging would die when VicForests burnt the leftover wood, the company’s manager of biodiversity conservation Tim McBride said: “Yep, that’s a very likely outcome.”
Greater gliders — also known as “clumsy possums” — are the world’s second-largest gliding mammal. Until recently they were common in forests across eastern Australia from north Queensland all the way to Victoria.
In the last couple of decades, their populations have crashed, declining by at least 30 per cent across their range and completely disappearing from some areas where they previously thrived.
Logging company unhappy with existing research.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-29/vicforests-says-experiment-very-likely-to-kill-greater-glider/10025588

https://www.echo.net.au/2018/07/land-clearing-laws-licence-kill/

Unfortunately my co- tree planters could not make it to my tree plant morning. Unusually warm suddenly, I carried 10 seedlings up to what I thought a bare patch not only to find numerous rain forest tree seedlings already sprouted. Soon found other spots so now hope for a shower of rain during the next week.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/29/santos-response-on-endangered-species-not-good-enough-conservationists-say

Congratulations Phillipa. My beautiful niece.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/105794405/Review-Les-Miserables-world-class-entertainment-in-Taranaki