13.3.25

Explosive Growth of Secondary Roads from Industrial Logging

Forest loss - (Secondary) roads from industrial logging fragment ecosystems (ChatGPT)
New roads in forest frontiers enable secondary roads that amplify human impacts. Roads are key proximate drivers of environmental impacts, including forest fragmentation.

"Tropical forests face widespread environmental threats from road expansion. Previous research established that roads enable human incursion, break up ecosystems, and intensify deforestation through land clearing, fires, and illegal resource extraction. The role of secondary roads in amplifying these effects has remained poorly quantified, leading to gaps in environmental impact assessments and conservation strategies.
Environmental impact assessments failed to account for the full scale of road-induced deforestation. " (source)

"In the tropics and beyond, roads are key proximate drivers of environmental impacts, including forest fragmentation. These secondary roads in turn can dramatically elevate forest and biodiversity losses."

Jayden E. Engert et al, Explosive growth of secondary roads is linked to widespread tropical deforestation, Current Biology (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.017

10.3.25

Floods and the Perilous March of Australian Sprawl

Australia’s urban sprawl into flood-prone regions presents a profound case of civilisation’s unchecked expansion colliding with the very processes of nature. In the philosophy of organism the world is not a static entity but an unfolding process, a constant interplay of forces. The spread of human habitation into precarious landscapes—buoyed by a reliance on fossil fuels that further intensify climatic volatility—is a prime example of what I have termed the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”: the tendency to treat abstracted human aspirations as if they exist apart from the living, shifting reality of nature.

Cities and suburbs stretch outward in search of economic growth and comfortable living, yet the land itself is not a passive receptacle for human will. The dynamism of rivers, floodplains, and weather systems does not submit to the rigid grids of development. The increasing frequency and severity of floods, driven in part by the very fossil-fuel-intensive activities that enable this expansion, illustrate the failure to integrate our urban ambitions within the deeper rhythms of an evolving planet.

There is an irony here—a civilisation that prizes rational planning is, in fact, perpetuating a chaotic and unsustainable trajectory. This is a problem of abstraction divorced from process. The concrete realities of atmospheric instability, rising sea levels, and the saturation of flood-prone soils are ignored in favor of a narrow economic calculus that sees only the immediate, not the emergent.

What, then, is the remedy? It is not merely a technical fix but a reorientation of thought. True wisdom does not impose an artificial stasis upon a dynamic world but seeks harmony with its processes. A city that respects the patterns of water, that adapts rather than resists, is one that aligns itself with the creative advance of nature rather than standing in opposition to it. If we are to avoid catastrophe, we must cease treating the world as an inert backdrop to human activity and recognize it as the active, evolving reality in which our own future is enmeshed.

(Curated text by Alfred North Whitehead, Process & Reality, Cyclone Alfred, Bellingen Area and ChatGPT.)

9.3.25

At the museum...

Stone tools,
Bellinger Valley Historical Society Museum

"At the museum, 

this means seeing the objects where they are, and simultaneously seeing them where they no longer are, that is to say, in the regions from which they were taken. It means enjoying the beauty and the knowledge that have been accumulated in our cities over centuries, but enjoying them with full awareness of the conditions in which these objects were collected, in asymmetrical economic, military and epistemological contexts. It means rendering visible, in order to master them better, the internal contradictions and the glaring tensions that have been at work in the very idea of museums since its origin. It means paying close attention, in this context, to the gazes and voices of the dispossessed."   Bénédicte Savoy

Bénédicte Savoy, Objects of Desire, Desire for Objects: Inaugural lecture delivered at the Collège de France on Thursday 30 March 2017

Bénédicte Savoy, Objects of Desire, Desire for Objects, Inaugural lecture, Open Edition

Sandy Beach, NSW artefacts display in the Yarrila Arts and Museum (YAM)

16.2.25

Social Acceleration in Bellingen/ Gleniffer Suburbia

After logging machinery has denuded the forest and ploughed up Gleniffer Rd. more fossil fuel monstrosities are widening the road again. This degraded landscape of Bellingen/ Geniffer now attracts high-speed burnouts with boomboxes.

This 'production of space' opened up the space for burning some tyres throughout the night. Far away from civilisation and enforcement the drivers are racing though the denuded koala habitat and residential areas.

It is futile to deliberate whether the suicides of young men are unintentional or intentional. The mobility infrastructure design demands automobility and speed. The active transport desert repels pedestrians and slow (e)mobility. The traffic jam spurs rage and violence.

Society demands the acceleration of the pace of life. Commercial combustion racing events encourage all petrolheads in petrotopia.

Driving always entails a latent ‘suicide risk' in this given system. The ‘integral accident’ is inherently woven into this mode of transport and technological acceleration. It is the 'collateral damage’ tolerated by all.

Mainstream media bombards us with ‘news’ of ‘accidents’. The overexposure to the daily slaughter on the roads leads to its normalisation. Only spectacles and superlatives can demand any attention now.

Daily reporting of a house that has 'collided' with a speeding car. A group of people without armouring that 'collided' with a flying car. Just another hit-and-run. Just another normal hit-and-run. A few walking school kids ploughed off the footpath while mounting the kerb. No road is ever wide enough or has enough bollards to protect living beings from these machine operators on autopilot mode.

The concepts of the all-terrain vehicle (ATV) and the 'Sports Utility Vehicle’ (SUV) destroyed all mental guardrails for the motorist. Roads became 'so yesterday'. The 4x4 combustion machine was liberated to conquer the rugged terrain (car ads) of all non road spaces. A mindscape of ‘without any limits’ was born.

This allocation of space/time means that humans and other animals now have to dodge these ubiquitous flying bullets. Living beings are literally out of a habitat, considering how many cars end up on top of their homes.

Cars doing burnouts at night are just a matter of degree to the ‘normal’ daytime traffic of a commercialised and heavily industrialised sub-urban Bellingen/Gleniffer area now.

Links:

Suicide or accident? The hidden complexities of intentional road crashes in Australia
https://theconversation.com/suicide-or-accident-the-hidden-complexities-of-intentional-road-crashes-in-australia-248673

The Original Accident, Paul Virilio, 2007
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Original+Accident-p-9780745636146

12.1.25

"The Vermin of the Street: The Politics of Violence and the Nomos of Automobility"

 
"The authors of "The Vermin of the Street: The Politics of Violence and the Nomos of Automobility" analyze how the dominance of automobiles has transformed the world into a space of exception. They argue that, since the rise of the automobile, road violence has become normalized, reducing humans to "bare life" who can be killed without consequence. Drawing on Carl Schmitt's concept of the "nomos," they argue that the road functions as a "bracketed space" where laws and ethics are suspended, similar to the "state of exception" found in concentration camps. The authors ultimately conclude that the automobile has not simply changed the landscape, but our very way of being-in-the-world, transforming the entire globe into a "global nomos" governed by the constant threat of automobility violence."
(NotebookLM summary)

Robert Braun & Richard Randell (2022) The vermin of the street: the politics of violence and the nomos of automobility, Mobilities, 17:1, 53-68

https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S1745010122007299#ks0010

12.9.24

Bellingen Koalas and Suburbia

After the logging and clear felling of Bellingen's forests, koalas find themselves wandering around homeless. Desperate to find suitable (private) land that has not been cleared, they have to cross an array of roads with speeding trucks and cars. Navigating this terrain they find that most '5 acre kingdoms' are sprouting monocultures of lawns and exotic weeds. The majority of local landowners keep introduced canines that keep their places wildlife free. Additionally, these pet owners walk their dogs unleashed through the 'bush' to be emptied. Delighted to spot a koala they take snapshots of the horrified marsupials clinging to a tree by the roadside. They are then tagged and spread around on proprietary platforms.

Data from the South-East Queensland Wildlife Hospital Network could be an indication about the main mechanisms that are making koalas in 'the wild' extinct. Although there is a sparsity of data for the Bellingen/Gleniffer area, one could assume similar trends for this area. Industrial logging of 'The Great Koala park' is a rapid disruption to all forest biodiversity. Unrestrained sprawling human settlements with their associated roads/cars and dogs are also making Australian species extinct.

"After European colonization in 1788, more species have become extinct in Australia than in any other country on Earth (Australian Government Department of Agriculture Water and the Environment, 2022)."

VEHICLES
The wildlife around Gleniffer Rd. and Roses Rd. have experienced a 'massacre' after the 'upgrades'  (for logging machinery and tourist access). Australian wildlife are smeared along the asphalt on a daily basis. The externality of this mobility form is called 'roadkill'.

When koalas are hit by motor vehicles they are predisposed to head trauma and fractures to the skull and jaw. "Koalas who had been attacked by a dog, fallen from a tree, and/or been hit by a motor vehicle were more likely to be euthanized or found deceased than released."

DOGS
For koalas, the main complications of a dog bite injury often include infection, torso fractures and zoonotic organisms carried by dogs. "Despite almost 50% of households in Australia having a pet dog, there is limited research on the human management of pet dog and wild koala interactions." The system is also lacking management strategies to prevent dog attacks on koalas.

This area has no wildlife hospital nearby and no data/ studies have been conducted on the impacts of sprawl ( logging, settlements, roads, cars and dogs).

In 2020, the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Koalas found that koalas will become extinct before 2050 with the present regime of 'business as usual'. First the thylacine, then the koala, then... 

Charalambous, R., Descovich, K. A., & Narayan, E. J. (2024). Identifying Trends in Admission and Release of Wild Koalas in Veterinary Clinics Throughout Queensland, Australia. Society & Animals (published online ahead of print 2024).  https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10220

 

Road and dog density contribute to the extinction of koalas

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-40827-w

Dissanayake, R.B., Stevenson, M., Astudillo, V.G. et al. Anthropogenic and environmental factors associated with koala deaths due to dog attacks and vehicle collisions in South-East Queensland, Australia, 2009–2013. Sci Rep 13, 14275 (2023).

11.7.24

An Environmental History of the Timber Industry: The Social Constructions of Forest and Identity

Some remarks on the Social Constructions of Forest and Identity: An Environmental History of Timber Industry Authorities in the Forests of Southeast Victoria, Australia,  Claire Waddell-Wood, La Trobe University, Victoria, 2024 (source)

 

One wonders why the degradation of Australia seems unstoppable.
Why are the forests and biodiversity being wiped out, eradicating a future for complex living beings?
What is the nexus between settler society and the extractive relationship to their surrounding country?


Claire Waddell-Wood, is an environmental historian who investigates the Victorian timber industry. Light is thrown on the extractive relationships of settler-colonial interactions with the landscapes they colonise. The conceptual framing foregrounds resource extraction/forestry labour and masculinity constructions against the background of a more-than-human world. 


The metabolism between European modes of production/ consumption took the form of “rape and pillage disasters.”  The resulting ecological crisis does not only take place in the timber industry alone, but is a way of life and work in all the extractive industries.


Victoria officially ceased logging operations recently. But in other states such as NSW (The proposed Great Koala Park) forests and their remaining biodiversity are still being denuded and erased. Elsewhere in the Big Quarry, “dualistic ontologies still guide human behaviour.” 

An acknowledgment and a change of ways of the mainstream structures, institutions and mindsets, as well as in environmental movements could harbour the possibilities for a fundamental transition of socio-ecological relations.


The ‘history of degradation’ traces the (southeast Victorian) forest industry’s  extractive work, masculinities and landscape degradation. p. 202


A “deep time forest culture (which) shaped and was shaped by long histories of interactions” (by Wurundjeri, Boonwurrung, Taungurung, Gunnai Kurnai, Jaitmatang, Bidwell, and Ngarigo people) encountered male dominated European settler culture that conceptualises “those forests through the resource imaginary”.

“The social metabolisms of invasion clashed with deep time forest cultures, and ecosystems became disturbed and damaged. The interactions between settlers and forests led to the escalation of fire frequency in forests.” p. 200


European agricultural ideals of plantation monocultures and short term crop yields constitutes a violent othering of Nature. Ancient Indigenous knowledges about forest ecology and ‘the region’s deep time fire culture’ were ignored. The result were intensified extraction and megafires.


From now on “the only true forest knowledge-holders were those trained in the forestry sciences.”  A move from bare rural masculinity in primary industries with boots on the ground to a ‘technoscience of colonial forestry’ operated at arms length via assemblages of machinery and from a top floor of a distant city.

The administration of the ‘stuff’ becomes ‘spatially alienated from the forests’. Hierarchies of (male) staff control the ‘output’ of the biophysical forest factory. Forestry and science experts with exclusionary language and procedures take control from head office over the landscape. Here “the construction masculinity through work” and the production of “wasted landscape" and “waste peoples” takes place.  p.197 


Waddell-Wood's thesis “can aid in untangling the myths of capitalism and colonialism from our everyday lives and help us to live with the biophysical world rather than against it.” p 203

Yet another stepping stone on the path to truth telling.