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Untitled: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 21 March 2013
"...the happiness, the echoing, endless, irreplaceable happiness..."
from Vladimir Nabokov: The Wood-Sprite (1921)
Marsupial in her palm. Carer with endangered Leadbeter's Possum, faunal emblem of the state of Victoria, rescued from forest fire: photo by RubyGoes, 6 May 2009
There are fears the Leadbeater's Possum, also known as the Fairy Possum, may become extinct within a decade if its habitat is not conserved: photographer unknown, via The Guardian. 2 June 2013
If you go down to the woods today... #2: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 12 February 2013
85% of the timber taken from this site was used for paper: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 11 November 2012
Logging at Toolangi State Forest: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 11 November 2012
Logging at Toolangi State Forest: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 11 November 2012
Habitat: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 11 November 2012
The dark side of the hill this morning: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 27 November 2012
Why would you want to turn a tree like this into wood chips?: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 29 March 2012
Untitled: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 13 July 2012
Morning fog: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 29 July 2012
Black forest: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 15 October 2012
Black forest: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 17 October 2012
Black forest: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 17 October 2012
A gallery of tree ferns at the feet of Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans), Tanbryn, Victoria: photo by ccdoh1, 30 November 2009
Otway Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans), Tanbryn, Victoria: photo by ccdoh1, 10 June 2010
Untitled: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 21 March 2013
Possum. This possum walked past our door this afternoon, probably loves to eat my roses: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 24 March 2008
Toolangi: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 11 November 2012
Requiem: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 27 March 2012
Untitled: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 29 September 2013
Video: Dan Harley, Threatened Species Biologist: Leadbeter's Possum: have you ever seen a forest fairy? (a second chance to save an animal that had been considered lost)
ReplyDeleteThe Story of the Little Red Treehouse (Guardian, 14 November 2013)
Hannah Patchett: "I am holding a vigil in a tree house" (Guardian 12 November 2013)
Amendments in state logging laws doom the Leadbeter's Possum (Guardian, 27 June 2013)
Hannah Patchett: notes from the Toolangi Little Red Treehouse
Leadbeter's Possum habitat range map
Help save Leadbeter's Possum, Victoria's endangered state faunal emblem
Prof. David Lindenmeyer: Sending Leadbeter’s Possum down the road to extinction
Those Karena Goldfinch photos are astounding. Poor Leadbeter's Possum. Here's hoping we save it before we have to clone it.
ReplyDeleteI've been carrying this around in my head all day long and it's the best thing I've had in my thoughts. Ditto Nora's comment. Curtis
ReplyDeleteWhen one takes the time to let the information sink in, this story takes on an eerie parabolic quality.
ReplyDeleteThe state of Victoria sold state forest logging rights, with a provision that some share of the dividends go to the people of the state. But the people didn't get the dividends, and the logging goes on anyway, and trees that took two millennia to grow to maturity are being swept away by "clear-felling", and the forests are meanwhile intermittently ravaged by wildfires, and all of this is simply a matter of human intervention -- the trees lost to manufacture toilet paper, the planet overheating due in no small part to the intensive carbon emissions of the Australian coal fired power generating plants; the electricity will go to China, the toilet paper will provide the perfect drafting-tablet upon which to inscribe the willful and negligent destruction of natural habitats.
That in the course of all this the tiny but tough Fairy Possum which lived in those old tree hollows should be extinguished forever as a species is a significant embarrassment for the state of which the animal is used as an emblem.
But of course emblematic status alone never got a threatened creature through the Long Night of the Bipeds.
People are so creepy and arrogant. I love how we have all these so-called moral principles, like the most obvious, thou shalt not kill, and we go around killing the animals and forests and sea and air and . . .
ReplyDeleteEverything else, sum and substance aside, you post all the good pictures. Curtis
ReplyDeleteMany thanks, Nin and Curtis.
ReplyDeleteIt seemed to me this was one of those rare cases where the good principles and the good pictures converged, more or less by accident. The already very good photographer could not help but be outraged at what was happening in her own neighborhood, and decided to try to do something about it, by keeping on taking pictures.
And the pictures got even better for that.
The elegiac and tragic dimensions of the struggle for life to continue on this planet would have to be seen now as the central remaining subject matter of art... as the shades of evening come down.
Plant Hemp, it grows quicker than trees makes everything trees can produce is renewable yearly and much lower impact on the environment!
ReplyDelete