Newsletter February 2024

‘We are nature’ – what it means to Brian

I am nature – whatever I do to nature, I do to myself.
If I harm nature, I harm myself. If I poison nature, I poison myself.
If I make nature unstable, I become unstable.
If I destroy nature, I ultimately destroy myself, my family and my community. For every 10 cells I lug around that make me, only one is human.
The rest are bacteria, fungi, and virus. Without them we die.
We are nature.

Brian Wehlburg: Father, Farmer, Educator advocates for mental health and teaches holistic management.

The Glossy Black Cockatoo project

The Beats’ John Carroll and Tommy Viljoen caught up with Victor Ostrowsky in the Clarence Valley earlier this year. The Valley is rated internationally as one of the most biodiverse in the world. As a passionate environmentalist & ecologist, Victor was determined to find out more. Close to his home there are six acres of private land with nesting sites for the S.E. Glossy Black Cockatoo. But there are only 11 left! They only lay one egg every two years.

The owner needs to sell urgently. Victor is raising funds to buy it through the Wildlife Preservation Clarence Valley charity. wildlifepreservationcv@gmail.com

Can you help protect the land and the cockatoos from urban development?

A rusty Black Cockatoo by Vinod Ralh and hear the poem by Louise Denver

And there’s more… Trees4Nature

John and Tommy also caught up with the acknowledged Local Hero (and more to come). Along with Jane Beattie, a high school teacher and nature lover, Barbara and a committed team planted 1000 trees for koalas near Tullymorgan.

Our Trees4Nature campaign is helping to tend them. See Tommy and Barbara opposite.

Barbara also won a local Clarence Valley Award for the Environment with her work for endangered emus to help them cross to safety in the bush with an Emus Crossing green sign

Some useful links and stuff to share …

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act – EPBC

In our December/January newsletter we linked to EPBC. The public submissions to fix these laws to ensure they better protect the environment and nature close on 30 March 2024.

Our co-founder Tommy Viljoen has written a submission personally and is in the process of developing one on behalf of theBeats.org. And by all means copy and/or use as a guide the World Wildlife Fund’s submission.

We urge you to make your submission here.

Rewilding the Aussie way

What happens when you let a predator loose in a conservation area?

These quolls were put to the task and guess what instead of just hunting the small threatened species to extinction as the feral predators do, they help the endangered species in the area regain their predator awareness to enable them to be reintroduced back into the wild!