Feral donkey concern after herd spotted in Victoria's Big Desert State Forest
The animals were seen in Big Desert State Forest by a dingo research group last week.
The group tracked at least six donkeys more than 13 kilometres into the park.
Deakin University ecologist Euan Ritchie said there were large populations of feral donkeys in other parts of Australia, but not in Victoria.
Donkeys were first brought to Australia as a hardy pack animal in 1866.
Once recognised for their prized resilience and adaptability, it is estimated there are now up to five million feral donkeys across the country.
They are considered a pest as they cause ongoing ecological problems in western and central Australian areas in particular.
"Feral donkeys have the ability to breed up in quite high numbers and eat a lot of the vegetation," Mr Ritchie said.
The ABC contacted the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action regarding the donkeys.
A spokesperson said there was "no established feral donkey population within Big Desert State Forest".
But the spokesperson did say the department was aware that a small number of donkeys had escaped from a neighbouring property into the park.
The department said it had contacted the landowner.
"[The department informed] them the donkeys are roaming beyond their property and to request they take measures to address the issue," the spokesperson said.
Dr Ritchie said the Big Desert region is already under pressure from drought and he was concerned about water access for other animals if donkeys were there.
"Other wildlife that relies on that water may potentially have to compete with donkeys for access to water," he said.
"So along with the sort of the impacts of grazing and potentially spreading weeds, donkeys could have a whole range of impacts on the ecosystem."
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ABC News
4 hours ago
- ABC News
China has reasons beyond the climate to turn into the world's first electrostate
The superpower is dominating the global clean technology sector. It's not all about climate change. 中文版 In April this year, China installed more solar power than Australia has in all its history. In one month. This isn't a story about Australia's poor track record on solar either, Australia is a global leader. Rather, this shows the astonishing rate at which China is embracing renewable technologies across every aspect of its society. But don't be mistaken by thinking this transformation is driven by a moral obligation to act on climate change. China's reasons for this are less about arresting rising temperatures than its desire to stop relying on imported fossil fuels and to fix the pollution caused by them. The superpower has put its economic might and willpower behind renewable technologies, and by doing so, is accelerating the end of the fossil fuel era and bringing about the age of the electro-state. "The whole modern industrial economy is built around fossil fuels. Now the whole world is moving away from that and that means that we are rebuilding our economy around emerging clean tech sectors," said Muyi Yang, the lead China analyst at energy thinktank, Ember. "Once the new direction is set, the momentum will become self-sustaining. It will make reversal impossible. I think China now has set its direction towards a clean energy future. "Can you imagine that the Chinese government will say that, oh, we will go back to fossil car, not the electric cars? That won't happen. That's not possible … this momentum is becoming so strong." Maintenance work on wind turbines at a wind farm on East Lvhua Island in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province. ( Getty Images: VCG ) The beginning of the end of fossil fuels It's hard to communicate the scale of China's clean technology rollout but it helps to look back to recent history to appreciate the transformation. China became the world's factory at the end of the 20th century, manufacturing cheap, low-quality products. This industrialisation modernised the country but also caused widespread environmental damage and drastic air pollution. The factories were powered by fossil fuels, causing China's emissions to skyrocket and it to become the largest polluter in the world. China overtook the United States for top place in 2006, but the US is still responsible for the most emissions historically, at one-quarter of all emissions. Still, China's pivot to renewables wasn't just about addressing these rising emissions. With polluted waterways and acrid city smog long ago becoming their own crises, China had to act. Part of that response, starting a decade ago, was a plan called Made in China 2025, which outlined how it would reshape its manufacturing capability to focus on high-tech products, including the ones needed to address climate change. The authoritarian regime put the heft of the state behind clean technologies at a scale and pace difficult to imagine in most democracies. A worker inspects solar panels at a solar farm in Dunhuang, 950km north-west of Lanzhou, in China's Gansu Province. ( Reuters: Carlos Barria ) It began to invest in all components for renewables, especially wind, solar, electric cars, and batteries that are used for both transport and energy storage. To do this, it used significant government-funded subsidies, said Ember's Muyi Yang. "We all understand that young sectors and technologies need some protection for them to grow. It's like helping a baby to learn how to work, initially, you need to support them. "But I think the logic behind China's policy support is always clear — this support is not meant to be pumped up indefinitely." When China rose to industrial dominance in the 1990s, it realised that it could maximise output by developing hubs where all parts of a supply chain for a product are built in the same region. The same approach was applied to renewables, meaning battery factories were established near car plants, as an example. "It's not about subsidies. It's about sound planning, sustained commitment, and targeted support," Yang said. As the Made In China plan unfolded, more and more power was needed to fuel these energy-hungry factories and the lifestyles of the burgeoning middle class. To keep up, China built new coal-fired power stations, even as it was installing more wind and solar. This "dissonance" between China's booming renewables and coal has meant China is painted both as a climate hero and a villain. It's also meant that emissions kept rising. More than 60,000 solar photovoltaic panels cover a mountain in Jinhua, in China's Zhejiang province. ( AFP: Yuan Xinyu ) Renewables boom A decade after the Made in China plan began, the country's clean energy transformation is staggering. "It's a really interesting policy because it's a 10-year plan to become a world-leading clean tech manufacturer, which they've outright achieved," said Caroline Wang, the China engagement lead at the thinktank Climate Energy Finance. "They've made themselves indispensable in the new kind of global economy." China is home to half of the world's solar, half of the world's wind power, and half of the world's electric cars. "In the month of April alone, 45.2GW of solar was added, more than Australia's total cumulative solar power capacity," Caroline Wang said. "China's renewable capacity has exponentially increased and that has also contributed to the drop in coal, in coal use and emissions. There is now a structural kind of decline of coal." That's already having an impact on emissions. Recent analysis from Carbon Brief found the country's emissions dropped in the first quarter of 2025 by 1.6 per cent. China produces 30 per cent of the world's emissions, making this a critical milestone for climate action. With its unmatched economies of scale, this dramatic acceleration has also brought down the cost of electrification across the world and made China the world leader in clean technologies. Chinese-made electric cars are becoming more dominant on Australian roads — something that's already happened for the solar panels and batteries installed across Australian homes. "China has successfully helped the rest of the world lower the bar for them to embark on the transition. This makes it easier for many other countries to jump on board," Ember's Muyi Yang said. "The transition has to be affordable, otherwise it will be extremely difficult for many developing countries." China's clean energy exports in 2024 alone have already shaved 1 per cent off global emissions outside of China, according to Carbon Brief, and will continue to do so for next 30 years. Caroline Wang points out that this green era has also brought major economic benefits. "It drove 10 per cent of their GDP last year, just the one industry, clean energy. It's overtaken real estate, and that says a lot because real estate was the driving force of their economy until a few years ago. But now it's been overtaken by clean energy," she said. Photovoltaic modules for solar panels in a factory in Suqian, east China's Jiangsu province. ( AFP ) A wind power equipment manufacturing company in Binzhou, in China's Shandong Province. ( AFP/Costfoto/NurPhoto ) The Shichengzi photovoltaic power station in Hami City, north-west China's Xinjiang Uyghur region. ( AFP/Xinhua/Hu Huhu ) Energy security as an electrostate China's renewables expansion is also striking because it could not be more different to the direction of another world superpower, the United States, under the leadership of President Donald Trump. Casting aside the climate damage it will wreak, the US is in a position to return to its "drill, baby, drill" roots because the country produces more than enough fossil fuels to cover its own needs. That's not the case for China. One of the key reasons it has pivoted to electrification is to get away from its dependence on imported fossil fuels. A giant oil and gas field in Saudi Arabia's Rub' Al-Khali (Empty Quarter) desert, operated by Aramco. ( Reuters: Hamad I Mohammed ) "I think there's some deep strategic thinking … it's not only about the environmental obligation or international commitment, and it can also not be fully explained by economic benefit in terms of jobs and investment," Yang said. "Energy is a basic input for economic activities. Energy security is critical because it's critical for supporting a functioning economy." "China sees the old, the conventional fossil fuel growth model as not sustainable. And it is becoming increasingly unable to sustain long-term prosperity." When the world's economies became hooked on fossil fuels, they became dependent on the countries that could supply them, and the price of fossil fuels increasingly dictated global markets. "This dates back to issues in the 1970s with the [oil] crisis," said Jorrit Gosens, a fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy Policy at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the ANU. "That's really when people start to think about energy security, especially when we talk about China. "China typically is described as very rich in coal, but very poor in natural gas and oil." BYD electric cars for export are waiting to be loaded onto a ship at a port in Yantai, in eastern China's Shandong province. ( STR/AFP ) New electric vehicles disembark from a BYD vessel. ( Reuters: Anderson Cohelo ) Electrification is changing that, and China — the world's biggest oil importer — is already weaning itself off with electric cars. "If you go to Beijing today, you can honestly stand at intersections with four lanes going every way and it'll be quiet as a mouse. The noisiest thing coming past will be a creaky bicycle," Dr Gosens remarked. Last year, crude oil imports to China fell for the first time in two decades, with the exception of the recent pandemic. China is now expected to hit peak oil in 2027, according to the International Energy Agency. This is already having an impact on projections for global oil production, as China drove two-thirds of the growth in oil demand in the decade to 2023. A new energy base in China's Tengger Desert. ( AFP: NurPhoto ) The end of the petrostate? The 20th century has been dominated by countries rich in fossil fuels, and many of the world's conflicts fought over access, power and exploitation of them. Done right, electrification could change that too, as most countries will be producing their own electricity. "Even if you have pretty poor quality natural resources, you can still squeeze quite a bit of electricity out of a solar panel. It's really changing the geopolitics," ANU's Dr Gosens said. "Renewable energy is the most secure form of energy that there is because you just eliminate the need for import. "But also the cost of it, right? It's a stable cost. You lock it in as soon as you build it. You know what the price of your electricity is going to be. You get insulated from both those risks if you have more renewable energy." For Australia, one of the world's largest exporters of coal and gas, there is plenty to take from this, with China's furious electrification paving the way for the rest of the world to follow. "Even if we have these climate wars here still … we can bicker about how quickly we should transition away from fossil fuels domestically [but] the rest of the world is ultimately going to decide how much they'll be buying of our coal, gas and iron ore," Dr Gosens said. "I think that's the biggest risk that we fail to prepare for something and that these changes will be much quicker than we currently anticipate." For Climate Energy Finance's Caroline Wang, it's in Australia's interest to be clear-eyed about what's happening in China. "I think a gap in Australia and other Western countries is knowledge and understanding. China is a complex country … it's got good and bad. For the energy transition space, which is full of complexity, there's a real need, for our strategic national interests, for Australia to understand what is happening in China." Finding hope in national self-interest and security might seem strange, but for Wang, China's transformation makes her more optimistic about the climate crisis. "This is the world's largest emitter, the largest population. If they've managed to do it in quite a short time — a decade — it's a kind of achievement that we haven't seen any other country achieve. And so it's very inspiring. Seeing that on the ground gave me hope for other countries, including Australia … there are lessons there to be learned." Wind turbines at a wind farm in Suichuan County, in China's central Jiangxi province. ( STR/AFP ) Read the story in Chinese: 阅读中文版 Reporting: Jo Lauder Design and graphics: Alex Lim Header photo illustration (clockwise from left): Getty: Kevin Frayer; STR/AFP; Reuters: Florence Lo
ABC News
12 hours ago
- ABC News
Should Books Have Age Classifications?
MICHELLE WAKIM, BTN REPORTER: We classify films and we classify video games, but should we have an age classification system for books? VOX: I definitely agree with that. I know my little sister, she was reading some books that she shouldn't have been. VOX: Hard ratings like 'you can't read this until you're 'X' age,' I think that that's limiting the, people being able to share ideas with each other. VOX: Each book is different. The way it's written is different. So the way the themes presented are different as well. So I think it would be…it's a bit nuanced. It's a bit hard to make a definitive classification. VOX: We have the young adult section, things like that, that's a great example that I think works well. VOX: It's sometimes people are reading books that they probably shouldn't be reading just for like their health and wellbeing. DR. EMMA HUSSEY, AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY: It's really important not to sanitise what we're going to be reading, it's just about increasing that awareness so that we can all be emotionally safe. With the rise of book talk Booktube and Bookstagram, some experts like Doctor Emma Hussey from the Australian Catholic University are calling for an industry wide book rating classification system. Doctor Hussey's research looked at 20 books that are popular on BookTok, analysing them for domestic violence behaviours, other violence, including torture, murder and destruction of property, and sexually explicit scenes. DR. EMMA HUSSEY: Of those books, 65% of them had these domestic violence adjacent behaviours on the page, so it really is about don't judge a book by its cover. There are cartoons on the front, doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be developmentally appropriate for a 12 to 17 year old. UPSOT: We are different nonetheless Doctor Hussey says part of the problem is the algorithm on these platforms is often based off popularity rather than reader safety, so it sometimes pushes adult fiction recommendations to young adult or YA readers. Young adult fiction is a category of its own in publishing. It's generally aimed at readers between the ages of 12 and 18, and focuses on the stuff many teenagers are going through, like themes around identity, self discovery, relationships, and the transition into adulthood. YA also has subcategories within it with lower young adult from 12 to 14 years old, which might include texts like the early Harry Potter books and upper Young Adult, which includes books like Wicked and the Fault in our Stars. DR. EMMA HUSSEY: I know that there's a system that authors use to know whether their books are marketed to a younger young adult audience or an older young adult audience that's not made explicit or clear in bookstores or libraries. In bookstores, do you find it easy to, like, differentiate between young adult fiction and adult fiction? VOX: I do, but I'm like in there all the time. TRACY GLOVER, DILLONS BOOKSHOP: Okay. So our YA collection is independent of hte rest of our collection, so it's standalone. I paid a visit to a bookstore in Adelaide to chat with Tracy, who's worked in the area of children and young adult literature for decades. TRACY GLOVER: We have a couple of elements. I think within the bookshop we have a fairly clear boundary just by geographically where the books are. So I think that there's a fairly clear delineation there about where our young adult sits against, where our adults sit. Tracy says she has noticed a shift in the reading habits of young people since the rise of social media. TRACY GLOVER: And the local students from the local schools, often when they come in, they come in with a specific request. So it might be something they've talked about or someone's mentioned. It might be something that's very current on Netflix or TikTok. She also says that this bookshop, like many, has age recommendations on a lot of their YA fiction. These are based off staff discretion and databases such as common-sense media, which are designed with young people's reading and safety in mind. TRACY GLOVER: It's very rare that we have to say to a reader "we're just not sure that that's going to be suitable for your age level." But if we felt strongly enough, we would just give that warning. The 12 to 14 year olds, we're very mindful with what they choose and what we would recommend for them. Once they hit about 15, then it is their decision. They're probably doing, you know, exposed to a lot of those things already, if not in literature in often, sadly, what they're watching. DR EMMA HUSSEY: We don't actually have to look too far to see that we have implemented these sorts of classification systems across streaming websites across movies that you purchase in store. So it's not a new system. It's just about bringing that to this new medium that we've not previously considered before. If there is classification similar to movies, do you see that as being a restriction on sale or borrowing? DR EMMA HUSSEY: What I want to acknowledge is that for me, this is not about banning. VOX: If it was enforced the same way that MA 15 plus is or something like that I'm not sure how great of an idea that would be. VOX: Movies is a bit different cause it's very because obviously you're watching it play out, reading it's your imagination and you can just close the book if it's too much for you. WILL KOSTAKIS, AUTHOR: I'm against this classification system because it's slapping the classification system of games and movies onto a different medium. This is Will Kostakis, a young adult fiction author. WILL KOSTAKIS, AUTHOR: The thing about books is you can actually go into the emotions of an action. You have a character's thoughts throughout, right? You would have the character reckoning with consequences afterwards. Thinking about it living in it. Will says the way we experience books is very different to other forms of media and he's more concerned a classification system would lead to wider censorship. WILL KOSTAKIS, AUTHOR: So who would choose? Would it be parents? Would it be politicians? Would it be booksellers? Would it be, you know, publishers? The thing is, publishers and booksellers already choose and engaged parents already choose. They are talking to their kids, so we already have rules in place to protect kids, but that can be exploited and so when we talk about classifications, I'm always worried about not just the next step, but the step 4 points down the road where it's like how can this be exploited? A lot of the authors that I've been talking to in librarians, the big thing they worry about is censorship. VOX: I think it stretches, yeah, to a level of potential censorship. Whether it be unintentional or not. With films you have to pay to get it tested and see whether or not it's appropriate or not. So I think for like young independent authors that might stop them from being able to publish their books, which I don't think that's a great thing either. VOX: When you classify anything into different ages, you are almost saying that some things are inherently inappropriate for kids, which I don't agree is true. Could this lead to censorship in a way? DR EMMA HUSSEY: So I think what's really important to understand is that censorship is about the denial of access, the stopping of access. This does not push or advocate for or the removal of access to content. It's more about giving respect to young adult readers, flagging content that may not be developmentally appropriate for them at that stage, or they may not be ready for. But is the content in books causing that much harm that we need a new system of classification? DR EMMA HUSSEY: I think it's more about making sure that your young adult readers know what's in that book before they pick it up, and whether it's something that they feel ready to explore. TRACY GLOVER: I think it would be very difficult. I think it's more about educating the reader. Let's expect more of our readers here. I grew up in the era of twilight, all the teen girls in my life weren't like "wow, I can't wait for a 108 year old who's posing as a teenager to sweep me off my feet." They are getting the feels and all of the tropes and being like "cool. This is a bit romantic. This is a bit spicy," but I don't think they're looking at these books as manuals on how to live their romantic lives. VOX: I think, also parents need to play a role in that and like, okay, what are my kids actually reading? VOX: When I was like 15 16 there wasn't any books, that I felt like the content would be super like different from what you just experienced in like your daily life. You're becoming an adult, so you should be exposed to like everything.
ABC News
12 hours ago
- ABC News
Could Australia benefit from the revolution in AI?
The chair of the Tech Council of Australia, Scott Farquhar, speaks to Sarah Ferguson about the benefits of AI and the possible opportunities for Australia.
