From now until 19 June Oatley Flora and Fauna Conservation Society would like to share with you photos of the biodiversity that makes our bushland so rich and special - the beautiful, unusual and often overlooked plants and animals that live around the Georges River.
The exhibition is free and all are welcome.
On Saturday 25 June, between 10am - 3pm the Bundeena Maianbar Sustainability Expo will showcase how individuals and a local community are striving to live more sustainably and protect our beautiful natural environment. There will be talks, demonstrations, and hands-on activities on everything sustainable.
Quite a few Sutherland Shire Environment Centre members will be participating in this events, giving talks, and we'll be having a stall there. We hope you can come along!
Off the beautiful beaches, and amongst breathtaking coral reefs of Australia lurks a deadly and indiscriminate killer.
Its thirst for blood kills 1000s each and every year. It lies in wait day after day for innocent victims to swim right into its mouth. It’s not sharks.
It’s the Government Shark Control Program.
Please join us at Hazelhurst Gallery at Gymea on Saturday, 10 September to watch this important documentary about why we need deep water mesh shark nets in NSW removed.
The screening is free and all are welcome.
Friday 16 September, 7:15am.
Explore the birds of our coastal heath amid one of the finest flowering events on Earth. The beauty and diversity of early spring flowers on Curra Moors is intoxicating. This walk, led by bird expert and educator Ricki Coughlan, will begin through a dry sclerophyll ridge-top woodland with heathy understorey before entering the vast expanse of complex heath on Curra Moors in the Royal National Park. Our target birds are Southern Emu-wren, Chestnut-rumped Heathwren, Variegated Fairy-wren, Beautiful Firetail and Tawny-crowned Honeyeater. On the way we’ll meet many other favourites and make new friends too!
We're delighted to announce that Dr Ian Wright will be our guest speaker at this year's Sutherland Shire Environment Centre AGM. Ian is a lecturer at Western Sydney University, and a recognised expert in the field of freshwater ecology, water quality, water policy and the science and management of water pollution. He has a long-standing research interest in the impact of coal mining activities on streams and rivers.
Dr Wright was also one of the team who was allowed to visit Woronora Reservoir in 2019, and he saw first hand the damage from the mining operation there.
After Ian's talk there'll be a screening of the 25min documentary Mining in the Blue Mountains, followed by a Q&A.
Friday 7 October, 7:15am.
The dune ecology of Greenhills Reserve is one of the great environmental gems of Cronulla. Join bird expert and educator, Ricki Coughlan, to explore and be astounded by the fascinating bird life, plants and reptiles which thrive in this scrubby heath right on our doorstep.
Sutherland Shire Environment Centre is teaming up with the Nature Conservation Council to support a Statewide Picnic for Nature!
Our picnic is being held at Fig Tree Flat at Audley in the Royal National Park, and this will be a great opportunity for our members to catch up. Everyone is welcome, so if you are keen this is a good chance to find out more about our campaigns and advocacy.
We'd like to continue to build a community which supports better environmental outcomes and a sustainable future for all of us.
If you're up for some exciting nature encounters you're also welcome to join our respected local field ornithologist and nature educator Ricki Coughlan for a bird watching tour along beautiful Lady Carrington Drive.
The Royal National Park is an extraordinarily beautiful natural area. It also has a coal mine as a neighbour, an American multinational, Peabody Energy. The mine surface facilities are located at Helensburgh, directly adjacent to a stream that flows into the Royal National Park. Coal sludge waste from that mine has been allowed to escape into the Hacking River, which flows for over 10kms through the length and heart of the Royal National Park.
Come along to this public forum to learn more about what happened, and how effective the cleanup has been. Help advocate for Peabody’s Environment Protection Licence to be changed, and consider what needs to be done to ensure this sort of environmentally destructive pollution never happens again.
If you're keen to do something positive for the environment, please join this local group for hands on activities aiming to make a difference. We visit Boat Harbour on the south side of the Kurnell Peninsula every month, counting and recording the shorebirds roosting on the reef during high tide. All the data is shared with BirdLife Australia, The Australasian Wader Study Group, and eBird, making the results available to the entire birding and avian research community worldwide.
The climate crisis is already here. One third of Pakistan is under water, NSW is facing more flooding, Europe is seeing its worst drought in 500 years and China the worst drought in human history.
We need an urgent program of publicly-funded and owned renewable energy and funding for jobs and a just transition to rapidly cut emissions.
Join us to protest during COP27 on 12 November to demand an end to Australia’s fossil fuel expansion and the urgent action on climate change we need.
The COP27 global climate summit in November will see renewed scrutiny of the Australian government’s climate policies. The Albanese government has increased the country’s emissions reduction target to 43 per cent by 2030, but this is still far below that needed to keep warming to safe levels.
Friday 18 November, 7:15am.
Deep dive into nature’s year, or the seasons of the rainforest. We’ll meet the beautiful and fascinating butterflies and birds which express the changing of the seasons in our local rainforests and ponder the relevance of the seasons on a calendar based on astronomical observations made by humans in Europe. This tour, led by bird expert and educator Ricki Coughlan, will be timed with the courtship of Satin Bowerbirds and nesting of the migratory Black-faced Monarch and sedentary Brown Gerygones, Yellow-throated Scrubwrens and Green Catbirds along with the fruiting of the forest and emergence of the beautiful male Wonder Brown butterflies.
It’s the Sutherland Shire Environment Centre catch up picnic, Sunday 4 December – please save the date! It'd be so nice to just see people, catch up in person for a change, chat, relax and picnic. Everyone is welcome, especially new members, and your friends.
There are bbq's, picnic tables, and toilets.
If you're concerned about development across Sydney this Better Planning Network AGM presentation will be worth checking out.
There are two exceptional speakers: Kirsty Ruddock from the Environmental Defenders Office, on greenwashing; and James Ryan, local government and planning lawyer, on Planning Law Issues.
Sutherland Shire Environment Centre is a member of the Better Planning Network with around 100 community groups. We values the forum this network offers and its important contribution to debates about planning and development concerns.
This coming Monday evening 27 February, please join Sutherland Shire Environment Centre together with the Nature Conservation Council, Total Environment Centre, BirdLife Australia, and POWA - Protect Our Water Alliance for a local Heathcote candidates forum. You'll hear the Heathcote candidates speak briefly about their party's environmental policies, and respond to questions about what are their plans for our local environment.
The forum will be online, via zoom. If you'd like to come along, please register prior to get a zoom link for the meeting.
Sutherland Shire Environment Centre and Shire Climate Action Network members will be having a stall at the Engadine Community Markets on Sunday the 5th March, 8am-1pm.
Please drop by and say hi if you are in the area. If you'd like to volunteer on the day you'd be very welcome! There'll be plenty of resources and support. Our focus will be on a Renewable Energy Survey, the Peabody Pollution License, and the coal waste in the Royal National Park.
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