This is an Australian track.
This is a local artist.
A coral fertility treatment designed to help heal damaged parts of Australia's Great Barrier Reef is showing signs of success, and now needs to be scaled up to create a bigger impact, says lead scientist Peter Harrison, a professor at Southern Cross University. Professor Harrison says he is excited by the results, which show the experimental process known as "coral IVF" is working on a small scale. Having recently returned from a trip to the Great Barrier Reef, Professor Harrison said his team has managed to significantly increase the numbers of baby coral on reefs at Heron Island and One Tree Island, where they had laid millions of coral larvae 18 months ago.
The 2,300km-long Great Barrier Reef has lost around half of its coral in the past few years after two mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, a pattern repeated on coral reefs around the world. Bleaching occurs when the marine algae that live inside corals die. Of the reefs surveyed in the northern third of the Great Barrier Reef, 81% are characterized as "severely bleached".
Professor Harrison says that his fertility treatment shows a very clear positive outcome, and that the pilot studies at small scales are giving hope that they will be able to replicate the project for much larger reef scales.
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Tokyo has plans to build eco-friendly 'solar roads' ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games. The roads will be made up of a system of solar panels painted with a special resin to enhance durability, and will collect energy from the sun via solar panels installed beneath the surface of the roads. The effort is aimed at promoting Tokyo as an eco-friendly city, both domestically and abroad, ahead of the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics. The new technologies are expected to be introduced on a trial basis at facilities owned by the Tokyo government and other locations as early as the next fiscal year.
In May a solar road was installed in a car park of a Seven-Eleven store in Sagamihara, in the Kanagawa Prefecture. A manager at the Seven-Eleven store said that the solar road system can generate over16 thousand kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, covering about nine per cent of the entire electricity that the store consumes.
Tokyo's government has focused on the new technologies as potential renewable energy sources, and has set a goal of having renewable energy account for about 30 per cent of Tokyo's power consumption by 2030, compared to a similar target of about 12 per cent in 2016. The government said there are no restrictions in terms of locations for installing the 'solar road' system, which increases the possibilities for expanding renewable energy.
Tokyo's government plans to introduce solar roads on government-owned facilities such as car parks, where the amount of electricity generated by installing the system would justify the cost.The government hopes that by Tokyo being at the forefront of introducing the technology ahead of the 2020 Games, they will help spread solar roads across the rest of the country. Solar roads have already been introduced on motorways in France and on cycling roads in the Netherlands.
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New South Wales National Parks are set to receive 50 million dollars for new and improved walking tracks in locations such as Sydney, Port Stephens, the Macleay Valley Coast and the Tweed-Byron region. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian says the funding is part of a $630 million dollar investment in the state's national parks estate, and that the funding will ensure our national parks continue to grow and be accessible to everyone. Premier Berejiklian also says the funding will help protect threatened species and preserve habitats for native wildlife.
The walking tracks across New South Wales will be improved with new facilities such as barbecues and picnic areas, new tracks,elevated boardwalks and in some cases, stone steps and staircases.
In the Tweed-Byron hinterland, 50 kilometres of new walking tracks and infrastructure will be built on the doorstep of the Gondwana World Heritage Area rainforest, costing approximately $7 million dollars.
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And last but not least, members of the Castle Drive Fig Protectors in Lennox Head are quietly celebrating a small win after Ballina Council’s planned removal of the tree has been put on hold following a claim of Aboriginal cultural significance. Group spokesperson Sherrie Yeomans says that the fig was placed into a register of items of Aboriginal cultural significance, overseen by the Office of Environment and Heritage in 2012. Ballina Council has now paused its plans to remove the tree until the claims have been fully investigated.
Ms Yeomans said that the Office of Environment and Heritage has confirmed that no request has been made from council to cut down the fig nor permission given, and that according to the legislation there is a $1 million dollar fine if anyone attempts to cut down a tree on the register.
In a response to an email from Ms Yeomans to the Ballina Shire Council, Deputy mayor Keith Williams wrote to the protesters on Sunday, saying, ‘I can confirm that Council will not proceed with removal of the fig tree until the issues raised in your email are resolved with the Office of Environment and Heritage.'
Ballina council staff told ABC radio yesterday morning that a check of its Aboriginal Information System has so far turned up ‘no data about the tree’. However, Ms Yeomans says that the council needs to 'look harder'.
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Today's good news headlines have been sourced from the Echonet Daily, the Sydney Morning Herald, the UK Independent and CNN Online
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