scholarly journals Evolution of the system of protected areas in Western Australia

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
ODILE POULIQUEN-YOUNG

The Western Australian system of protected areas (PAs) covers more than 15 million ha and is the second largest conservation estate of the Australian continent. An analysis of the history of the creation of PAs in Western Australia shows that the concept of nature conservation through reserves was slow to emerge. During the early decades of the century, reserves were mainly created for their recreation values. The lack of governmental interest in nature conservation led to a belated development of reserve coverage up to the 1950s, while vast areas of land were opened to farming and pastoralism. Following two scientifically-based reviews of the PA system, the number and coverage of PAs increased dramatically up to the late 1970s. The rationalization of the vesting and managerial responsibilities for PAs was only finalized in the 1980s. Since then, there has not been any large increase in PA area but a consolidation of the PA coverage. The development of the system of PAs has been impeded by the belated response of Western Australian governments to conservation concerns and a 'worthless' land approach to conservation as a land use. While large-scale land alienation for agriculture has now stopped, other types of land uses such as mining and other aspirations over land management and vesting, such as Aboriginal land claims and forestry are now constraining any large expansion of the PA system. Only an approach embracing the whole landscape can overcome the political and social limitations of the concept of PAs and the further degradation of developed land in Western Australia.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Özlem Sert

<p>Humid weather conditions of the sixteenth century enabled the introduction of aqua crops to Southeastern European landscapes. The Ottoman government employed a group of experts for the cultivation of rice to implement and rehabilitate rice production. Rice plantations, as an anthropogenic intrusion in the region between Tigris to the Danube, had a fundamental social and environmental impact. Organization of human resources on a large scale; land reclamations, deforestation, and kilometres-long irrigation work changed the landscape, produced seasonal miasma and aquatic pests. Ottoman rice plantations transformed the Southeastern European socio-ecological landscapes in early modern times. Historical data about the Ottoman rice plantations open new insights for improving our knowledge about climate history, the history of riverbeds and the history of malaria in this landscape. The study presents a monography of the plantations with historical drawings and maps, showing the farms on river beds, delineates the responsiveness of the rice harvest to precipitation and temperature changes and maps the triggered aquatic pests due to climate change and deforestation. The presentation aims at opening a historical perspective to today's questions on climate change, hydrology and vector caused diseases.</p>


2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. Kinnear ◽  
C. J. Krebs ◽  
C. Pentland ◽  
P. Orell ◽  
C. Holme ◽  
...  

Predation is widely believed to be the main threatening process for many native vertebrates in Australia. For 25 years, predator-baiting experiments have been used in the Western Australian Central Wheatbelt to control red fox predation on rock-wallabies and other endangered marsupial prey elsewhere. We review here the history of a series of baiting experiments designed to protect rock-wallaby colonies by controlling red foxes with 1080 poison baits. We continue to support the conclusion that red foxes can reduce or exterminate rock-wallaby populations in Western Australia. Research trials from 1990 to 2008 have uniformly shown a dramatic recovery of rock-wallaby populations once red foxes are baited. Baiting experiments are often black boxes and their success should not blind us to their weaknesses. Ideally, what we would like to measure are the functional responses of predators to prey abundance directly. As a contribution towards this goal, we describe new technology that enables one to determine which predator killed which prey, at exactly what time, with improved research and management outcomes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Burns-Dans ◽  
Alexandra Wallis ◽  
Deborah Gare

An economic and population boom in the 1890s created opportunities for architects to find work and fame in Western Australia. Architecture, therefore, became a viable profession for the first time, and the number of practicing architects in the colony (and then state) quickly grew. Associations such as the Western Australian Institute of Architects were established to organise the profession, but as the number of architects grew and Western Australian society matured, it became evident that a role for government was required to ensure practice standards and consumer protection. In 1921, therefore, the Architects Act was passed, and, in the following year, the Architects Board of Western Australia was launched. This report traces the evolution and transformation of professional architectural practice since then, and evaluates the role and impact of the Board in its first century.


2016 ◽  
Vol 74 (6) ◽  
pp. 1797-1811 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Gallego ◽  
Fiona M. Gibb ◽  
David Tullet ◽  
Peter J. Wright

Abstract Connectivity is a key consideration in the development of networks of marine protected areas (MPAs). However, little is known about the early life history of many of the epi-benthic animals that these spatial measures try to conserve. Here, a pragmatic approach to consider connectivity in such organisms is adopted, as part of the Scottish nature conservation MPA designation process. The primary tool for the study was a basic bio-physical model, forced by a circulation climatology. In the general absence of comprehensive ecological information, the model accounted for the main biological characteristics of the benthic organisms under consideration of relevance to connectivity, namely, presence, spawning season and pelagic larval duration (PLD). The results showed that some degree of connectivity between MPAs is possible even for species with short PLD although those organisms are more likely to be vulnerable to local pressures, particularly in the case of less widely distributed species and those inhabiting less dispersive inshore locations. For MPAs further offshore and species with longer PLD, our simulations suggested large-scale advection patterns crossing large-scale environmental management boundaries. Although the study was an appropriate contribution to the MPA designation process, further refinements encompassing better basic ecological information, enhanced oceanographic resolution, more realistic representation of biological processes (e.g. spawning, larval behaviour) in the model, species presence within and outside MPAs and substrate suitability maps would provide future useful confidence boundaries around the general patterns derived from our study.


Author(s):  
Renny Rueda Castañeda

This chapter analyzes how, historically, normative interventions on the idea of “development” at the Bretton Woods Institutions have defined a theoretical bias from which land and land acquisition have been represented. On the one hand, the chapter proposes a framework from which representations of land, land acquisition, and land ownership can be contextualized within scholarly literature on the concept of development. The second part of the chapter carries out an empirical case study on linguistic analysis to highlight how increasing levels of land concentration go hand in hand with normative interventions built at the top of the executive bodies of an international architecture. The chapter reveals that rather than a coincidence, policies and recommendations on large-scale land acquisition have made part of a highly institutionalized and ideologically defined discourse that has evolved semantically within selected periods of the history of these institutions.


1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Meyer

In this contribution I propose to examine an aspect of Sri Lankan agrarian history which is often alluded to but rarely studied in depth: the process of high land appropriation for the development of coffee, tea, rubber and coconut plantations. The development of a land market in the Indian subcontinent is becoming a promising field of research for the study of imperial impact as a process at work in specific contexts.The Sri Lankan case differs from the Indian one in that land appropriation was originally meant for and followed by large scale land alienation to outsiders–the planters. This process has attracted the interest of most historians writing on the history of the Raj in Ceylon, but usually the only aspect stressed has been the appropriation by the Colonial State of forest and chena(land devoted to slash-and-burn cultivation) for sale to British planters.


Museum Worlds ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-111
Author(s):  
Andrea Witcomb ◽  
Alistair Patterson

The discovery of five photographs in 2018 in the State Library of Western Australia led us to the existence of a forgotten private museum housing the collection of Captain Matthew McVicker Smyth in early-twentieth-century Perth. Captain Smyth was responsible for the selling of Nobel explosives used in the agriculture and mining industries. The museum contained mineral specimens in cases alongside extensive, aesthetically organized displays of Australian Aboriginal artifacts amid a wide variety of ornaments and decorative paintings. The museum reflects a moment in the history of colonialism that reminds us today of forms of dispossession, of how Aboriginal people were categorized in Australia by Western worldviews, and of the ways that collectors operated. Our re-creation brings back into existence a significant Western Australian museum and opens up a new discussion about how such private collections came into existence and indeed, in this instance, about how they eventually end.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Campbell

Gould, Peter. Windy Wyndham and the Wagon Who Couldn’t Swim. Bassendean, Western Australia, Peter Gould and Donna Franklin, 2018. This is the sixth volume in Peter Gould’s Stories from the Engine Shed series. These books tell the stories of the train engines and cars of the Bennett Brook Railway at Whiteman Park, near Perth in Western Australia. Apart from being a fun series of children’s books, this series is important because it demonstrates that the concept of anthropomorphized train cars is generic and does not belong to any particular franchise. The series has its own cast of characters and a unique Western Australian world in which they operate. While earlier volumes have been set in Whiteman Park, this is a story told by the large diesel locomotive, Windy Wyndham that harkens back to a time when Windy worked at the harbour in the northwestern Australian coastal town of Wyndham.  The book is full of Donna Franklin’s brightly coloured pictures. The style of illustration varies significantly, even within pictures. Some of the images, particularly those with machines and people, are quite cartoonish. Drawings of people sometimes lack detail. However, when the subject is something in nature, Franklin’s work is stronger. Her rendition of a turtle, a crocodile, magpie-larks and seahorses are lovely.  Each page is a picture with text overprinted. The text includes local references, such as the Freemantle Doctor, the cooling breeze that comes from the Indian Ocean. There are also some railway-specific words, such as “buffer beam”, “shunter”, and “cow catcher.” These words are explained in the glossary, “Ashley’s Railway Words”, at the end of the book.   While not widely distributed, the series is available through the Bennett Brook Railway. This volume includes a loose single page insert that explains the history of the real Windy Wyndham engine, which has been at Whiteman Park since 1984.  Overall, this is an excellent series, which is suitable for elementary school libraries and public libraries.  Highly recommended:  4 out of 4 starsReviewer:  Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines. Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give. 


Land ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcello De Maria

In economics, land has been traditionally assumed to be a fixed production factor, both in terms of quantity supplied and mobility, as opposed to capital and labor, which are usually considered to be mobile factors, at least to some extent. Yet, in the last decade, international investors have expressed an unexpected interest in farmland and in land-related investments, with the demand for land brusquely rising at an unprecedented pace. In spite of a fast-growing literature analyzing the variety of “spaces” affected by large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs), the contemporary process of “commodification” of land embedded in this phenomenon has taken present day economists by surprise. This paper reviews the evolution over time of the concept of land in economics and it suggests how different aspects of this evolution are relevant to the understanding of contemporary LSLAs. Rather than presuming to analyze in a systematic and comprehensive manner the immense literature in land economics, this article investigates what makes land a peculiar and complex commodity. Indeed, different branches of economic thought, at different moments in time, pointed out that the location of land in space matters; that land is a living and fundamental component of the ecosystem; that it is a valuable economic asset, and yet, it is often hard to value it in pure monetary terms; eventually, that land is intrinsically connected to societies, cultural and spiritual identities, mores, and institutions. Through a brief history of the evolution of the concept of land in economics, this paper identifies four broad categories—namely, space, economics, environment, and institutions—that help understanding land as a peculiar good. These four elements characterize land as a commodity, as well as its peculiarities, and constitute the prerequisites of a conceptual framework for the analysis and the understanding of the forces at play in the contemporary wave of large-scale land acquisitions.


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