Articles
PS Update
-
Climate Policy In The Spotlight
While PlantingSeeds focuses on biodiversity issues, the issue of climate change has enormous implications for all species’ welfare and survival. Of significance is the recent Australian deal to strengthen a key climate policy, the safeguard mechanism (SGM), by introducing a hard cap on industrial sector emissions. With the Labor/Greens’ deal not implementing a touted ban on new coal and gas projects, various political commentators offer helpful information and commentary: From The Sydney Morning Herald (March 29th 2023) ‘The SGM is the government’s policy to force down greenhouse gas emissions from Australian industry. Under the policy the nation’s biggest polluters are…
-
UN Biodiversity Summit Update
As we previously wrote about, the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15), held in December 2022 in Montreal Canada, passed with a landmark agreement across a total of 188 governments (including Australia). It was labelled a “once-in-a-decade agreement” on biodiversity and stated its aim to pave the way for humanity and nature to live in harmony by 2050. Nations across the globe agreed on four goals, and twenty-three targets. The four goals are centred around conservation, sustainable biodiversity, cost sharing, and equitable accessibility to and among all parties. Additionally, the 23 targets agreed upon span diverse issues that contribute to biodiversity and…
-
B&B Highway Making An Impact In The City Of Melbourne
PlantingSeeds and its flagship program, the B&B Highway (Bed and Breakfasts for Bees, Birds and Biodiversity), which received funding from the City of Melbourne for the 2022 Connected Communities Grant, allowed PlantingSeeds to work with three diverse school communities to create habitats to foster regenerative corridors of biodiversity, learnings and social connections. Habitats for birds, insects and plants were established and practical learning educational sessions engaged and empowered the students to become biodiversity and citizen science champions. Translated resources were distributed to students and families catering to Arabic, Vietnamese and Chinese residents. The program not only established special plantings of…
-
A Healthy Bee Diet From Your Garden
January is a great time to start implementing healthy wholesome eating plans – for our bees! Just like us, native bees thrive on a range of colourful natural plants. Creating a happy and healthy garden for pollinators can be simply a matter of selecting a few choice plants. Here are a few to help ensure your yard or balcony is buzzing! We have featured some with long flowering periods, helping to provide a year-round supply of pollen and nectar: Dianella Dianella is widely found in Australia and grows in highly variable conditions, mainly in sclerophyll, woodland, and mallee forests. This…
-
Mega And Microbats
Like rainforests? Thank bats! Zac Albert gives us the mega and micro on bats. Bats could be described as the ‘bohemians’ of flying animals – they love the night life, are wanderers and the pollinators are definitely flower children. Because they are nocturnal, we notice them less than birds and bugs, but there is a lot to love and the varied bat species are absolutely integral to our biodiversity and environmental systems. PlantingSeeds is supporting the less understood and observed microbat through the construction and implementation of microbat roosting boxes. Even though microbats aren’t pollinators, they eat a lot of…
-
UN Biodiversity COP15 Summit Update
As you read this, the UN Biodiversity COP15 summit brings together nearly 200 countries to, in the words of the chair of the UK government nature agency, Natural England, ‘help sustain the web of life upon which humankind ultimately depends, for food, water, health and climate regulation’. In other sobering words, the summit is described as the ‘best and last chance’ to halt and reverse the decline of nature. One in four species are at risk of extinction. The COP15 UN summit is seen as a chance to do for biodiversity what the Paris agreement has done for the fight…