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In her 16th July 2008 media release, GREEN PAPER ON CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME RELEASED, Senator, the Hon. Penny Wong, Minister for Climate Change and Water, stated that:
“Climate change threatens … icons like the Great Barrier Reef, the Kakadu wetlands and the multi billion dollar tourism industries they support.”
The land valuation of our property in the Daintree rainforest has recently jumped by 250%. This may well reflect market activity over the last few years, but then again, government intervention has largely influenced these changes, with broad scale expropriation of development rights, including the right to construct dwelling homes on freehold land. It is unsurprising that properties with established homes would become more valuable, because of their administratively increased exclusivity, but these are not unimproved values. It is equally evident that those properties that were compulsorily stripped of development rights lost market value and for obvious reasons.
About two months ago, this magnificent adult female cassowary (above) traversed alongside our house with a dreadful limp. At the time, cassowaries had been fighting, so I assumed this one had suffered an injury in such conflict.
However, the big bird was not seen again for about two months and this was remarkable for this well-known inhabitant. She re-emerged late last week with no improvement in her gait, but with a dramatic loss of weight and this has presented an awkward dilemma for the land-manager.