Catalyst, 4Wd and beaches.

Yeh....I seen that, killing millions eh , Hmmmm I thought about the trillions that will replace the lost millions.

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You're thread is 57403, check out thread 57402.

Cheers Steve.

Just be very aware... the same people that are calling for an end to beach driving are also calling for an end to any (including foot) tracks through dunes, now depending on your definition of a 'dune' that would close our beaches completely.

IMHO there aren't many beaches that we can drive on, in the grand scheme of things, and there is an awful lot of 'beach' below the low water mark even on the beaches that we can drive on.

To me, the benefit of being able to 'connect' our children with the environment, out weighs the loss (remember that this is just one, incomplete study) of some mini critters on a very small percentage of our coastline.

If our kids aren't immersed in the environment, they won't defend it in the fuure

Did Harrold Scrubbing brush have anything to do with the study?

Duncs

There is a lot of unknowns in this story and I believe all stories like this are very short sighted to say the very least. I didnt catch how quickly the animals recover, eg if we stop driving on the beach will they all be back in 2 months? if its a short time then bugger it, use the beach. We dont really drive on beaches at all. Look at the %ages, do we use 0.1% of beaches to drive on? (any one know?) Do these guys live in houses, our houses, tips and cities & roads kill a lot more creatures in the soil. I am all for green technology and environment but I say its all about priorities. We currrently build new coal powered power stations by the thousands around the world, pump millions of tonnes of green house gasses every day, we are screwing the earth faster than we know what is happening. Global warming is set to kill thousands of species of animals and a lot of the worlds population will ultimately die. So I say attack the big problems, get oil powered cars off the road, use less coal and all the rest. Compared to all this I dont really care about digging up a dirt track in the bush which will be overgorwn in 6 months, making bog holes which wont exsist in 12 months and a few million tiny sand animals which are uneffected just 3 metres away and after we stop driving will be back in action as if we had never been there. To stop sand driving to me is very much a deck chair straightening excercise on the titanic.

I have to confess I drove on that Beach Twice this week.

I had an important Mission ..................................................we didn't have any memorable memories of this summer. - We'd been far too busy this year.

My family had been working far too much, Kids have part time jobs, and are in final years of school. My wife works Sundays and Mondays We hadnt been out on a day trip as a whole family for ages best we could do was 2 kids and I on Monday (Labour Day holiday in Qld) escaped up the beach for part of the day.
It was the last of that magic summery weather,
On Wednesday Morning My son jumped on our Bed and said "We have to get mum out of the house or she will go crazy"

"Lets take her where we went on Monday". (Oh and hang school!)


What is a guy to do? It was the last chance to enjoy a day together at the end of autumn. It was a magic day you know you will remember forever.

Do we Let her do the banking and the shopping or...........
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Off Up the Noosa North Shore to Rainbow Beach
Luckily we Australians have the freedom to go and spend some time and enjoy one of the most beautiful places in the World.

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But back to the Topic and the Invertibrates we ran over. (Dont want my post deleted for being off topic)
We actually discussed on the day if pippies were hurt by 4wds but we couldnt find any empty shells to suggest they were killed.

But we didnt think about the smaller critters.

We are far more concerned with the lack of wildlife generally, Cane toads Foxes and Feral Cats have wiped out most of the wild life in Cooloola.

The Sunshine Coast has a very poor environmental record to date. A far more relevant issue is the visible loss of habitat and wildlife because of over development in the region. The researchers would be far more productive in looking for all the possums, echidnas, platypuses wallabies, qualls, bandicoots, frogs spiders, snakes and native birds, that have gone missing in the last 30 years.
As they say, "there are billions of sand critters on the beach" they are not endangered.
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I was also shocked to see on Monday Telstra ripping a swathe through the Cooloola National Park (Beside the Cooloola Way) to lay a cable to Rainbow Beach. Shocking mess.

So we need to keep these things in perspective.Image Could Not Be Found

And Yes if we take our kids to these places Like I did on Monday and Wednesday they will become far more proactive in protecting what little natural environment THEY have left - instead of hanging around shopping centres and computers.

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Ok Im off my soapbox and heres some pictures of what 19 million Aussie Kids and Adults Missed out on, Looking at Rainbow Beach on Wednesday 7th May 2008 A day I will never forget - this is what dreams are made of.

Lets not lose the freedom to do it when we need to.

Kerry W

Oh Cripes ..and If Michelle and David read this (I was supposed to be working on ExplorOz stuff all Day Wed....you see) at least I did some hands on road conditions reports and... I took the GPS to start putting together some trek notes Ive been promising to do.. ah what the heck . ...:-) Perth is miles away...

Yes, emotive stuff.

One can get carried away by the implications

BUT......Did you know?

THAT....each human body harbours around 30,000 little life forms (mites) which crawl in and around the particles of our skin(these are the the creatures that make your skin itch). Every time you scratch yourself or wash yourself you are killing a few thousand of these mites. Inherently they are good creatures that keep your skin healthy by eating the dead flaky bits

SHOULD we stop Scratching or better still stop Washing?

There, I have made myself itch!!!!! LOL

There are millions of ants getting killed every day by our actions here on this planet. Should we stop moving around alltogether?



I do sincerely wish that these programs(and perpetuated by others) desist from calling creatures 'critters'.



Cheers

I'll try just one reply.
Thank you Kerry for that superb post. All the things that we all really love about bush and beaches and the things we want our kids and their kids to have as well.
The real problem is that there are just too may of us (humans that is, not 4WDers.) We are throwing the system out of wack. Anyone want to suggest that we can all just continue having more and more cars ripping up and down beaches and bush tracks and we can keep building more and more roads and all the other infrastructure we keep putting in and nothing will ever change? Would anyone like to nominate a figure on how many vehicles can run up and down beaches and how often they can do this before the beaches and life systems suffer real damage. One reply noted how quickly bush tracks etc can recover. True. But we keep increasing the traffic and the recovery times get shorter and shorter. Somewhere, we have to cap all sorts of human activities if we want to keep all those bush/beach things we love.
The catalyst program admitted it was a preliminary study and needed more work and confirmation, but what they had was pretty alarming, I'd suggest, if you really like those beaches and want them to stay that way.
My much loved 4WD is what I use to get to the places I want to be, the places are not an excuse to run around in my favourite toy. So if the data starts to show that my 4WD is damaging the places, I will modify my use of the toy.

PS, As I saw the segment, it wasn't the little critters that were the problem, it was the impact on the rest of the foodchain that eat them.

I think the Professor has a credibility problem. He's using "4wds" purely to create publicity to raise his own profile. Bit like our friend Howard Scrubby.

He made reference to beaches not being "marine deserts". This suggests that he knows nothing about desert ecosystems.

He said the two beaches were identical, but if they sampled from the two beaches in the footage, they had vastly different profiles.

He fails to exclude the human factor. Perhaps he could use a swimming beach (lots of humans and no 4wds) as one of his controls.

And to put it in perspective, what percentage of Australian coastline beaches experience heavy 4wd traffic?