The habitat value of Gorse Ulex europaeus L. and Hawthorn Crataegus monogyna Jacq. for birds in Quarry Hills Bushland Park, Victoria

Weeds are one of the primary threats to biodiversity; however, their impacts on wildlife can vary. This research investigated the habitat value of Gorse Ulex europaeus L. and Hawthorn Crataegus monogyna Jacq. and the impacts of its removal on birds in a bushland park in Victoria. The area search method was used to survey birds in vegetation dominated by these two weeds, in native vegetation and in areas where a weed removal program was undertaken; this included revegetated areas. The highest bird species richness and abundance was found in sites dominated by the weeds. At sites where the weed removal program was in the early stages, a much lower species richness and abundance occurred. The final stage of the weed removal program, where revegetated areas were older than five years, supported high richness and abundance of birds, but not as high as that of sites dominated by the weeds; nor was the composition the same. Thus, even after five years, revegetation may not provide for the bird community that was originally supported by weeds. This is an important weed management consideration in this park, and should be for weed removal projects elsewhere

A cloud of smug over outdoor education : South Park, hybrid cars and environmental morality

In an episode of South Park titled ‘Hey, People, You’ve Gotta Drive Hybrids Already’, Stan convinces townsfolk to buy hybrid cars. This reduces the rate of smog but creates a toxic cloud of ‘smug’. In this paper, I use this parody of eco-correctness to interrogate some of Outdoor Education’s environmental aims. Michel Foucault’s later work on the self, morality and governmentality is used to analyse the production of the [neo- iberal] ‘environmentally responsible citizen’. The possibilities and problems of contemporary citizenship discourse are explored in relation to findings from a longitudinal study of students undertaking a tertiary outdoor and environmental education course.

Green planning heritage/industrial nature : the park lands or 'regeneration reserves' of Broken Hill

Freestone (1989+) has extensively surveyed town planning visions and model communities for Australia, but one settlement has been forgotten. The significant mining settlement of Broken Hill in far western New South Wales does not figure in his thematic and historical analyses yet its park lands are so integral to its physical cultural legacy and human health that it warrants enhanced standing. In the last 2 years the Commonwealth has been considering the potential nomination of the municipality of Broken Hill for inclusion onto the National Heritage List principally due to its mining, social and economic contributions to Australia’s heritage and identity. A component in their deliberations is the Park Lands, or ‘Regeneration Reserves’, that encompass this urban settlement and its mine leaseholds. Within these Regeneration Reserves, international arid zone ecological restoration theory and practice was pioneered by Albert and Margaret Morris in the 1930s that serves as the method for all mining revegetation practice in Australia today. This paper reviews the theory and evolution of the Broken Hill Regeneration Reserves, having regard to the Adelaide Park Lands and Garden City discourses of the 1920s-30s, arguing that the Broken Hill Regeneration Reserves have a valid and instrumental position in the planning and landscape architectural histories of Australia.

Foraging behaviour of two rodent species inhabiting a kopje (rocky outcrop) in Tsavo West National Park, Kenya

We employed patch use theory to evaluate how several environmental factors influence the foraging behaviour of two rodent species: Grammomys dolichurus and Acomys cahirinus. Foraging efficiency was determined by measuring the remaining food in artificial food patches (giving-up densities: GUDs) from two experiments. In the first experiment, we placed patches in different microhabitat types (cover vs open) and at varying distances from cover. This experiment was conducted during three moon stages (waxing, full, waning). We found that the rodents had higher GUDs (lower foraging efficiency) in the open microhabitat. The distance from nearest shelter had a marginally significant positive effect on GUDs. GUDs were higher in both microhabitat types during the waxing and full phases, but decreased sharply once the moon began to rise after sunset. These results are likely due to higher predation risk away from cover and in more illuminated environments. In the second experiment, we examined mouse responses to seeds impregnated with plant toxins. Seeds impregnated with oxalic acid were avoided by the rodents, while seeds soaked in tannic acid did not differ significantly from control seeds. Our results highlight important ecological factors affecting the foraging behaviour of these rodents.

RGB Wattle Park chalet

New technologies have arguably displaced the hegemony of painting within the hierarchies of contemporary art. Projectors and other digital imaging technologies in particular continue to expand the contemporary artist’s aesthetic and conceptual possibilities beyond canvas, paper, and stone. Yet painting - the practice of smearing coloured mud about - far from being superseded, simply continues to cannibalise these powerful technologies extruding them into its own analogue processes. Whether intentionally or as an by-product of this cannibalisation, painting tends to create a critical distance in which the tacit aspects of these technologies – their representational language and ‘special effects’ - are made fully visible. Of course 'easel' painting practices persist not only to critique new technologies. Rather new technologies inevitably fold back into the now souped-up vocabularies of contemporary painting, expanding the medium’s physical boundaries, formal strategies, and modes of display.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park : an architectural consignation

Like many major urban developments designed by modernist architects. Kenzo Tange's Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is considered by some to be founded upon tabula rasa- a blank site and/or architectural approach unconstrained by historic and aesthetic precedents. Tabula rasa is associated with a tendency to 'forget' or repress the past in order to opportunistically move on with the future. Constructed near 'ground zero' - on the site of just part of the established urban environment obliterated by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945- the tabula rasa here, however, is not achieved simply due to a conscious or critical urban design decision to move away from past urban forms and practices but through an unforseen trauma. This paper questions the application of an unqualified label of tabula rasa to Tange's Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Focusing on Tange's writing about the Peace Park - a 1954 article entitled "Hiroshima Plan 1946-1953" in particular - and reflecting on the repeated architectural returns of Kenzo Tange and Associates to the site, this paper raises Freud's "Mystic Writing Pad" as an alternative model. It argues for a more complex consideration of the memory-work of Tange's written practice and the light it may bring to a reconsideration of this foundational architectural project within his oeuvre.