Annual Lecture 2005

Preventing the globalisation of Australian landscapes

One of the nation's foremost environmental scientists George Seddon AM considered how we might initiate cultural change to ensure the uniqueness of the Australian environment is preserved, rather than globalised. The man who gave us the concept of "sense of place" had just launched a new book The Old Country: Australian Landscapes, Plants and People, in which he considers the uniqueness of our natural landscapes and why they are worth preserving.

The second speaker, urban ecologist Mark McDonnell, believes it is critical to preserve biodiversity in the cities and towns where the majority of human beings increasingly accumulate. By seeking to create greater biodiversity within urban systems, the inhabitants of cities could come to appreciate how ecosystems work. The Director of the Australian Research Centre for Urban Ecology, Assoc. Prof. McDonnell believes we ought to be rewarding urban areas (via councils, in particular) where their efforts enhance biodiversity through, for instance, retaining understorey and old, hollow trees - in other words, he suggests we should spurn 'urban sanitation' and instead celebrate the litter and dead trees as important components of the natural living environment.