Join us for an online forum with community leaders, transport specialists and a representative from our Sustainable Cities campaign to discuss the future of Public Transport in Victoria post Covid-19, and the benefits of Melbourne Metro 2 (MM2).

Friends of the Earth podcast history series made in collaboration with 3CR 855 AM community radio show Acting Up!    Monday 2.00pm.  Ratbags, peaceniks and agents of change, resistance radio that explores the movements that made us. 

45 years of Acting Up!  Climate action to climate justice audio episode

Listen up mp3
Presenters: Em Gayfer and Megan Williams.
Guests: Stephanie Long, Wendy Flannery, Tristy Fairfield, Anna Langford, Emma Sanford.

Since the 1970s Friends of the Earth has promoted renewable energy options for Australia.  In the 1980s, we campaigned on global warming and carbon debt, working with Carteret Islanders and hosting tours for speakers from Nigeria, Nepal, and the Pacific talking about fossil fuels and the impacts of climate change in their regions.  From the 1990s onwards, Friends of the Earth campaigns to reduce carbon emissions, stops coal and gas expansion and calls for a just transition towards renewable energy.  In 2020, Friends of the Earth continues to lobby government and business, support communities and collaborate with environment groups to act on climate change, resist new fossil fuel projects and promote renewables.  Keep reading to find out how you can win climate justice.

You might be forgiven for thinking that once an area of forest has been burnt, it is essentially a dead zone, a pile of charred remains, devoid of life or possibility. You’d be wrong.

Research performed by David Lindenmayer, a researcher at the Australian National University and one of the world’s most cited forest ecologists, and colleagues over the past three decades has mapped regeneration and growth in areas of forest up the east coast of Australia - areas that have been badly damaged in horrific bushfires.

This research has shown incredible rates of recovery in areas of forest that appeared decimated by fires - but only if that forest is left alone in the aftermath. The worst thing that we can do post-bushfire is allow the logging of these burned areas, known as salvage logging. 

This practice can set forest regeneration back by decades, and for about 40 years these areas of forest carry an increased risk of canopy burns (setting the regeneration back repeatedly). According to Lindenmayer, animals that miraculously escaped the fires, if they are not killed in the logging process, are unlikely to return to logged areas for up to 180 years, if ever.

Can you make a tax-deductible donation today?

Friends of the Earth podcast history series made in collaboration with 3CR 855 AM community radio show Acting Up!    Monday 2.00pm.  Ratbags, peaceniks and agents of change, resistance radio that explores the movements that made us.

45 years of Acting Up!  Friends of the Earth Barmah-Millewa Collective audio episode

Listen up mp3
Presenter: Megan Williams.
Guests: Aunty Monica Morgan (Yorta Yorta), Jono La Nauze, Indira Narayan.

River Red Gum forest and wetlands (photo: Environment Victoria)

Follow the mighty Murray River 200km north of Melbourne to where the Barmah-Millewa forest grows.  This ancient expanse of woodlands and vital wetlands is the largest River Red Gum forest in the world.  In 1998 Yorta Yorta leaders, the Indigenous custodians, asked Friends of the Earth to join them in a campaign to protect Barmah-Millewa and re-establish their right to manage their river country, forming the Barmah-Millewa Collective in 2000.  Listen and learn how 12 years of resistance, resilience and activist alliances led to the creation of Barmah-Millewa National Parks and Protected Areas in Victoria and NSW, to be returned and co-managed by Traditional Owners.  Read on to find out how you can help Friends of the Earth to protect rivers and forests in 2020 into the future.

Can you donate to Friends of the Earth to help interrupt business as usual?

While we have been putting our communities first, staying inside and physically distancing, governments and corporations continue to put profit before people. Industries like coal, gas and logging have been deemed “essential”, and for them it’s Business As Usual.  Did you know that the Andrews government will soon announce which companies have won exploration rights to drill for gas and oil in State waters from Cape Otway to the South Australian border?  Meanwhile, the Victorian government has allowed salvage logging in devastated native forests, as rivers run dry. Together we can protect the places we love, and continue to campaign for climate justice. 

Contribute to campaign costs with a tax-deductible donation before June 30 here.

On June 16, the Victorian Upper House voted on legislation to lift the moratorium on onshore gas development from June 30, 2021.

This is a heartbreaking outcome as the moratorium was the only protection communities and the natural world had from conventional onshore gas drilling.

But the fight is far from over.

Companies will not be able to apply for exploration licences until July 1, 2021. Then there is the approvals process, which takes time. We are likely at least two years away from any serious activity happening.

Community opposition will not go away.

It was the community of Seaspray that forced the Napthine government to enact the moratorium in 2014. This is because they were resolute in the face of attempts to drill for tight gas in their area, and they threatened peaceful protests and even a horse ride up Bourke Street to parliament.

Community members in Gippsland are still reeling from a delayed consultation process which took place just two weeks ago, and two months after the official report from the Victorian Gas Program was released. In Western Victoria the Protect the West Alliance, made up of farming communities, environmental groups, and locals concerned about the disruption of land water and communities recently released this statement in opposition to the lifting of the moratorium.

With all we know about climate science, the prospect of drilling new sources of gas looks like a worse decision than it was back in 2014.
Community resistance will happen when and where companies seek to develop onshore gas reserves. Friends of the Earth will be there to support them.

It's been a year like no other, pandemics and uprisings dominate the news, but River Country is hard at work adapting to keep up the fight for our rivers.

See this year's news on community events, protests, and how we're collaborating with allies to have an impact in 2020. 

Your continuing support has enabled the Sustainable Cities collective to keep working towards a more liveable and connected Victoria.  

Today, we're launching our initial view of what an economic rescue package should include for the transport sector so as to strengthen the transport sector while protecting people whose livelihoods are being disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whilst the Andrews government continues to frame our economic recovery on the Big Build, we must ensure that these major transport infrastructure projects are ones that will benefit our communities, not destroy them. 

Sustainable Cities is working with locals to hold the North East Link Project accountable and calling on the Victorian Government to stop all early works. 

Projects like the $16 billion North East Link toll road will lock Melbourne into a future of car dependency and decimate precious parkland.

Friends of the Earth podcast history series made in collaboration with 3CR 855 AM community radio show Acting Up!    Monday 2.00pm.  Ratbags, peaceniks and agents of change, resistance radio that explores the movements that made us. 

45 years of Acting Up!  Friends of the Earth the early years audio episode

Listen up mp3
Presenters: Megan Williams and Em Gayfer.
Guests: Richard Nankin, Neil Barrett, Pat Jessen, and Bro Sheffield-Brotherton.

It’s back to the 1970s we go to where it all began to revisit the early years of Friends of the Earth in Australia.  Founded by radical activists concerned with ecological and social justice, Friends of the Earth and allied groups mobilised around the issues of Aboriginal land rights, anti-nuclear and uranium mining, whaling, protecting the Antarctic and leaded petrol.  In this episode we’re joined by guests involved in the first national Friends of the Earth meeting held on French Island, the Ride Against Uranium, our first petition and database, and lobbying and protesting.  Keep reading to discover the wild history of our coordinated campaign wins, and find out how to join Friends of the Earth today.

Friends of the Earths work to survey the habitat of the Strzelecki Koala is ongoing. We anticipate that 200 koala surveys will be completed by the end of July. We still have a long way to go though, to get a better understanding of the range and population size of the Strzelecki/South Gippsland Koala. That is why we want to increase the surveys from 200 to 300 by the end of 2020.

The Strzelecki/South Gippsland koala populations are unique. They are genetically significant, as they are the only koalas in Victoria and South Australia that are not from translocated populations. They consist of animals from the original diverse gene pool. More information can be found here.

Donate here to help us get to 300 surveys of this critical habitat