Benoit, my friend , a ten month old Crow (Mt Warning Caldera Region) says ".......

This Crow Poem reminds us about our personal responsibility to the beautiful life on this planet, and how we need to reign in our wasteful lifestyles and clean up our waste that we have already left all over the planet.

Cryptic Moth Productions :    ”ADDICTED TO PLASTIC  the Rise and Demise of a Modern Miracle” – a film by Ian Connacher.

Product Stewardship Bill 2011  C20011B00048 :- “ A Bill for an Act to provide a framework for reducing the environmental and other impacts of products, and for related purposes( Administered by: Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities)”  http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2011B00048

Environ. Sci. Technol., 2005, 39 (12), pp 4421–4430  Bioaccumulation of Organochlorines in Crows from an Indian Open Waste Dumping Site:  Evidence for Direct Transfer of Dioxin-Like Congeners from the Contaminated Soil

National Toxics Network:

http://www.ephc.gov.au/ : COAG Standing Council on Environment and Water – PRODUCT STEWARDSHIP :- including Australian Packaging Covenant, Beverage Containers, Televisions and Computers, Packaging Impacts and Plastic Bags. You will also find information on Industrial Residues, Movement of Controlled Waste, National Waste Policy.

• 2010 National Waste Report for Australia (http://www.ephc.gov.au/taxonomy/term/89).
• Guidelines for the Assessment and Remediation of Contaminated Sites :- more information about these guidelines for the  assessment, management and containment can be found at http://www.ephc.gov.au/taxonomy/term/43

Australia’s National Waste Policy at the Australian Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage & the Arts . The Draft National Waste Policy Framework – opened for comment on 8 July 2009 & closed on 31 July 2009 with the Department receiving over 60 comments.

The Environment Protection & Heritage Council : The EPHC  addresses “broad national policy issues relating to environmental protection, particularly in regard to air, water, and waste matters“, as well as  natural, Indigenous and historic heritage issues.

National Environment Protection Council : a National outcome of the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment (May 1st, 1992) made between the Australian Local Government Association, the Commonwealth of Australia, the six State Governments, the Northern and Australian Capital Territories. The NEPC was incorporated into the above EPHC in 2001.

Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal

Riki Ott’s website : author of “Not one Drop”, Riki Ott  is a community activist, a former commercial salmon “fisherm’am,” and has a degree in marine toxicology with a specialty in oil pollution. She understands (first hand) the Exxon Valdez oil spill and has some valuable resources on her website, especially relating to oil spills and the issues of  “Corporate Personhood,” which can be defined simply as “the illegitimate notion that a corporation can claim political and civil rights to overturn democratically enacted laws”

Boomerang Alliance :

Michael Reynolds and Earthship Biotecture Green Buildings and Garbage Warrior , a film by Oliver Hodge

Gyrating Crow at phansythat.blogspot

Crows : info and photos about the Torresian Crow – an Australian native bird.

There is  plenty of info, on the internet for and about CROWS.

If you want to find out more about my friend, BENOIT, have a look at my “Wisdom in the Land” Bluecray blogspot .

I have known Benoit for over nine months now. He is a wild Crow, and his parents and siblings are also all wild.   He chose come to visit me, when he first flew from his nest, in the Crow’s Ash Tree beside my home.  Gradually, over time, he and I have become “friends” and he will now fly onto my arm, and talk with me. He also likes to sit on my head and yell very loudly!!! He is extremely bright, and his parents have their work cut out for them, in raising him, with his two other siblings, Baba (the elder, very brave crow) and Lucy (the youngest, who everyone loves.!)

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Benoit and his father, with some Spangled Drongos (migratory species) and little Litoria sp. frog : some of the Australian Native Wildlife affected by clearfelling of Habitat for Green Fuel on the east coast of Australia.

I have added the above environmental advocacy collage of Benoit(photo taken just before he left the nursery) and his Father (taken in October 2010).

Benoit has been gone from the crow “nursery” for over a year now. His father and mother have since raised two more youngsters (fledged 2009), who have also left, after spending ten months in the nursery. These two young crows can sometimes be seen flying overhead, at a respectful distance from the nursery, occassionally with Benoit.

There are now more young crow babies in the nest(August 2010), and they shall probably leave the nest and take their first flight in a matter of days from now. Unfortunately, the BIOFUEL industry has clear felled much of their nursery area for “green fuel”, leaving much bare and degraded land. However, the parents and 3rd lot of youngsters appear to be OK. I have been helping them out with some extra food and daily clean water, which they very much appreciate. Many of the local birds and other wildlife, however, including at least two endangered Rufous Bettongs have lost their homes and habitats, to this most dishonourable clear felling.

February 2011. Only one baby crow survived the nesting period in 2010. The goannas, many of them, came through the Crow nursery during early spring. The mother and father CROWS spent three weeks, fighting off the goannas, but eventually, a goanna took three babies from the nest, and left only one survivor, a little crow baby who I named  Neo Jack.

Neo Jack’s photo is below:-

Neo two weeks fledged, and some local clearing for biofuel near Burringbar, NE NSW, Australia.

shop till you drop bop till you pop
the Bluesfest of Byron is near
the Belongil site’s ready
and Tyagarah looks steady

The Byron Bay Bluesfest 2009 clearly illustrates that the  dichotomy of human rational, ignorance and self-gratuitous environmental belief systems is alive and well in Byron Bay, 2009. The Byron Bay Bluesfest has a long history within the Mt Warning Caldera Region and beyond.
And the slow subtle degradation of habitats and environmental health in the Byron Shire also has a long history.  Players in this field (Belongil Fields and beyond) can pat themselves on the back, preen their egos and shuffle their heads back into the sand. I just wonder how many cigarette butts, bottle tops and pieces of plastic they will find there, after the Byron Bay Bluesfest 2009 is gone and the animals that have survived the trauma of forced relocation come back to their homes to continue their lives.
I love music, I love the land, I love the animals and the human spirits that live in this beautiful Mt Warning Caldera Region.  I pray with all my might that some mass consciousness shift occurs at the Byron Bay Bluesfest at Belongil Fields (or is it Tyagarah?) this year (2009), so that the coming years of Bluesfest “mania” (Tyagarah ?)become directly, immediately and thoroughly accountable to the authentic spiritual land guardians of the Mt Warning Caldera Region.
I say this, because it is clear to me that the Byron Shire is incapable of taking care of this beautiful part of the world – one only has to walk along the shoreline at Byron and through the parklands to see just how much plastic, rubbish, cigarette butts, bottle tops, batteries and god know’s how much unseen waste and toxins have infiltrated the habitats that they proclaim to protect.
The Arakwal people are the historical custodians of the land in this area. Their land stewardship preserved a unique and diverse environmental heritage, much of which has now been swallowed up by inappropriate 19th, 20th and now 21st century development.  Today, more and more people have an increasing  impact on this area and region, and from what I can see, the heritage and rights for the native animals that live in the Habitats of the Byron Shire have been severely compromised.
Words like “precautionary principle”, “environmental sustainability”, “caring for country” and “global crisis” mean nothing, when the current dichotomy of human words and actions are let loose on the planet. Please don’t let the “vision fade”.

2009 Spendour in the Grass Festival Yelgun

Byron Shire Council and the Splendour in the Grass Festival – article in Byron Shire Echo 27th January 2009

Environmental Defender’s Office NSW

EDO Compliance Portal – a tool to assist citizens in enforcing environmental law

Byron Flora and Fauna Study 1999 (google HTML) or at Byron Shire Council publications website

1. The general lack of appreciation and educational understanding by the people of Australia concerning Uranium Mining and it’s impact on the environment and the future of the earth’s health.

2. The beaurocratic “it’s our party and you’ll cry if we want you to” tendency to railroad people into submission and passive acceptance of this whole Uranium issue.

How many more decades will we humans blunder along with our mistaken belief that we can “handle it”  when it comes to nuclear power, waste,  weapons, chemical and biochemical engineering and habitat destruction? (ie greed, disrespect and lack of precautionary care for future life on earth)

Unless we take a little time out,  slow down, face our own individual ego and the world ego with some due care and concern for the outcome on future generations of life on earth – well things will just keep rocketing away.  

Watch this ACF video, and email it to a friend, have a think about how your lifestyle, in the long term supports Uranium Mining and above all pray for peace and love.

Some other LINKS :

Australian Government Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts .

Australia 2020 . 

Geoscience Australia . 

Notes from a nuclear power plant at greenz.jp : Kashiwazaki-Kariwa the Nuclear Power Plant

R. J. Lifton – Psychohistorian, “Global Psychologist/Psychiatrist” and Visionary

Some  books by R.J. Lifton .

Nobel Peace Prize Laureates .