Gerard:
Queensland has now produced a landmark report that shows 20 years of
satellite monitoring of tree clearing. If you look at the average, 91%
of all tree clearing has been clearing for livestock.
HOST:
Greetings, eco-conscious viewers, and welcome to Planet Earth: Our
Loving Home. On this week’s program Australian scientists Gerard Bisshop
and Dr. Clive McAlpine will discuss the severe environmental damage
inflicted by livestock raising on our world, most notably deforestation
and climate change.
Mr. Bisshop recently retired from a position
as a remote-sensing scientist with the Statewide Land-cover and Trees
Study (SLATS) group mapping vegetation cover and tree-clearing rates
across the state of Queensland, Australia.
The group has
published a landmark report tracing 20 years of deforestation in
Queensland. In addition to his work on the SLATS report, Mr. Bisshop
recently co-wrote a paper on the extremely harmful environmental and
climatic effects of livestock grazing.
The study will be
presented at the Biennial Conference of the Australian Association of
Environmental Education in September 2010.
What we looked at was
the common cause for land degradation, soil degradation, soil loss,
biodiversity loss; that is trees and plants and animals being extinct.
And loss of forests; that is deforestation. The common cause, in fact
causing 91% of that is land clearing for raising livestock.
HOST:
Dr. McAlpine, an Associate Professor in the School of Geography,
Planning and Environmental Management at The University of Queensland,
Australia is lead author of a paper that concludes that beef consumption
is the cause of serious environmental injury to the planet and a driver
of climate change.
The study was published last year in the interdisciplinary journal 『Global Environmental Change: Human and Policy Dimensions.』
For more details on Dr. McAlpine, please visit
www.GPEM.UQ.edu.au/Clive-McAlpine