By Tenaya Duncan. Linear clearings are everywhere. We use them every day, to get to work, take the dog for a walk, get to our office or the shops or even to go on a road trip. Roads, footpaths and hallways, free of obstruction, make our travel more efficient. And we aren’t the only ones…
Category: Disturbance Ecology
Give an Easter Bilby, because they give back!
By Stuart Dawson. Easter is upon us, the holy grail of long weekends (especially when so close to ANZAC Day). Every year in Australia we celebrate this time with chocolate bunnies, inadvertently popularising an invasive and destructive species, the European Rabbit. The reason we use rabbits appears to be due to their famously fecund nature,…
Follow the road – bilbies and cats use access tracks
By Stuart Dawson. As humans, we follow linear clearings all day. Every road, footpath, and hallway is a clearly defined, linear opening that allows us to move easily, quickly, and (excluding some beautiful European cities) reduces the likelihood of becoming lost. When these roads and tracks are within undisturbed vegetation, such as across much of…
Bobtails and dugites – reptiles in the city
By Ashleigh Wolfe. The study of urban ecology is a rising topic within the ecological research community, and as urban sprawl increases across the globe, and more and more people are moving to urbanised areas, the need to understand how we as humans impact wildlife is growing. Urbanisation presents novel challenges for wildlife in many…
Island paradises: Are tourism and conservation compatible for ‘island tame’ species?
By Bill Bateman. Living on an island can have an effect on your behaviour. You might have noticed this yourself if you associate islands with holidays and relaxation. On an evolutionary scale something analogous happens. Darwin said: “At the Galapagos Islands, I pushed a hawk off a tree with the muzzle of my gun, and…
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