Offer of Placement - Activist Exchange Program

The Wilderness Society would like to invite dedicated volunteers and activists from across Australia to apply for a 3 week activist exchange program in South Australia for the period of 22nd February to 14th March 2012.

This exchange program has been timed to cover Adelaide’s major festival events including the renowned Fringe festival and the world music festival WOMADelaide.

The Exchange Program aims to increase the integration between different parts of The Wilderness Society and the environment movement. Participants will benefit from opportunities to learn new skills, undertake personal growth and develop confidence in campaigning and activism. The program is also a great way to reward people for their ongoing dedication and achievements within The Wilderness Society.

Travel costs will be paid for by The Wilderness Society, an accommodation allowance of up to $150 and a volunteer allowance of $200 will be allocated weekly for the duration of the program placement.

Where: Adelaide, South Australia
When: 22 February – 14 March
Duration: 3 weeks

The Position: Community Campaigns Assistant.
Responsible to: Community Outreach Coordinator

Tasks Involved:
various community campaigning activities including;

• Participate in the Fringe Opening Night Parade
• Prop making and banner painting
• Assist in creation and implementation of media actions
• Assist with logistics, organisation and implementation of the community campaign outreach stalls at WOMADelaide and other events as in the community outreach strategic plan
• Engage with the community communicating key campaign messages
• Assist with coordination of the volunteer action group

Skills required:

• Drivers license essential
• Basis Computer skills essential (excel, word, internet)
• Good communication skills essential
• Innovative, creative and artistic ability highly desirable
• Experience coordinating volunteers desirable

The successful applicant will also:

• have an ability to quickly grasp the essentials of the TWS SA campaigns.
• have good organisational skills
• work well under direction and within a team environment
• be self-motivated and adaptive
• be energetic, passionate and outgoing
• be aligned with TWS values and possess a high level of personal integrity
• have an understanding of and practice peaceful non-violent action principles

What you will learn:

• About TWS SA campaigns particularly our Marine Sanctuaries and Murray River campaign
• Event / action planning and coordination
• Broad community campaign skills including public communication
• Campaign strategy

Application process

Simply fill in the application form (word doc) - Your application doesn't need to be overly lengthy or detailed so long as you do answer the questions and provide the information requested.

Send completed form to exchange panelist coordinator Di.Horsburgh@wilderness.org.au by 6th February. A member of the exchange program will be in contact with you in regards to your application for the activist exchange program.

Download application form Applications close 6th February 2012.

this offer is on short notice so we apologise to anyone who would like to apply but can not make arrangements within the time frame. There will however be other opportunities through the next 12 months to apply for other placements with the organisation.

For more information about the program:
Contact host centre’s Community Outreach Coordinator
Tammy-Jo Sutton via Tammy-Jo.Sutton@wilderness.org.au or (08) 82316586

or Exchange program panlist coordinator
Di Horsburgh via di.horsburgh@wilderness.org.au

Members of the national alliance Voices for the Murray-Darling kicked off their fight-back against a dismal, draft Basin Plan in Adelaide on Thursday 1st December 2011.

Farmer John Pettigrew from Shepparton, the Southern Fishermen’s Association, the Australian  Conservation Foundation (ACF), the Wilderness Society (TWS) and the Conservation Council SA are concerned that the draft plan fails the river, regional communities and our national interest.

“Groups will be holding public meetings and letter-boxing to highlight the gross inadequacies in the draft Plan and to urge Federal Water Minister Burke to send the plan back to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to be strengthened”, said ACF CEO Don Henry.

The CSIRO science review released this Monday showed that only 55 per cent of environmental targets are likely to be met by returning 2750 gigalitres of water.

Alliance members are calling on Minister Burke to instruct the MDBA to act on the science and model
returning at least 4000 gigalitres of water to the environment.

“The floods brought some relief to the environment near the mouth of the Murray, and right now the
remaining businesses and communities are benefitting. But the river will continue to die from the mouth up if we do not act now” said SFA Executive Officer Neil MacDonald.

"The failure to end the over-use by big irrigation means the mouth of the Murray will continue to close, it won't remove the two million tonnes of salt that gets deposited every year, and it will destroy internationally recognised RAMSAR wetlands," said Peter Owen, The Wilderness Society's South Australian Campaign Manager.

“I am very concerned that the majority of socio-economic assessments have not taken into account the ability of farmers and irrigators to adapt to change. We cannot operate in conflict with our rivers and we need to change the way we use water”, said John Pettigrew from Shepparton.

“The CSIRO review shows that climate change was not factored into determining diversion limits. How can this draft be considered the ‘best available science’ required by the Water Act 2007 in establishing environmentally sustainable limits on water diversions when it fails to confront the reality of climate change and the greater extreme events that are likely, ” asked Professor Diane Bell, Chair of the Water ESC, Conservation Council SA.

Alliance members want Minister Burke to direct the Authority to return more than 2750 gigalitres of water to the Murray-Darling and assess all the benefits of returning higher volumes.

Lifeblood is an alliance between The Wilderness Society, Australian Conservation Foundation and Conservation Council of SA and others.

Environmentalists, fishers, farmers and traditional owners unite to call for more water to be returned to the Murray.

On Monday 28th November the Wilderness Society SA along with local fishers, farmers and environmentalists gathered at the Murray Mouth to call for more water to be returned to the river system.

Monday's release of the draft Murray-Darling Basin Plan was a slap in the face for South  Australian  communities, said Peter Owen, Campaign Manager of the Wilderness Society SA,

"The failure to address over-allocation from upstream irrigators will devastate communities, the environment and the economic viability of downstream communities.

"We need a Basin Plan that restores between 4,000GL and 7,600GL to the environment to ensure the health of Australia’s food bowl and South Australian basin communities. This is the scientific advice.

"To achieve this, we need the Federal Government to stand up to the big irrigators
who have been taking too much for too long.

Take action! Sign our online cyberaction, write letters to the editor, and lobby your local members for more water to be returned to the River Murray.

Join our team. Be a part of the action and get active by volunteering with the Wilderness Society SA.

A large irrigation channel on the Murray River in Southern NSW. Photograph: Dean Sewell.

Yesterday's release of the Murray Darling Basin draft plan has unleashed the usual round of tit-for-tat comment. Only real political leadership will save the river now.

The Murray Darling, Australia’s biggest river system, has been used as a political football for more than a century, and the game looks set to continue with yesterday’s release of a draft management plan by the Murray Darling Basin Authority.

The basin’s ongoing mismanagement reflects Australia’s inability to reconcile the needs of the environment and of rural communities. Debates about its future pit the city against the bush, upstream against downstream users, and graziers against irrigators.

The latest round in this never-ending stoush will play out over the next few months following the release of the draft plan for public comment. The plan recommends just 2750 gigalitres be returned to the ailing river system — less than the 3000 to 7600 gigalitres the authority said was necessary to rescue river last year. That announcement was met with an angry response from farmers which led to public burnings of the draft plan guide.

While not on par with last year’s antics, yesterday’s release triggered the expected frenzy of comment. But once the outrage has died down and once Barnaby Joyce has moved on to his next sound bite, the critical question will be whether this plan will do anything to restore the ecological health of the ailing river.

One thing that everyone — including Joyce — agrees on is that the river is sick and has been for years. The headwaters of the Murray, fed by the snow melt of the Snowy Mountains, have been tamed and diverted by the monumental Snowy Mountain Scheme. The headwaters of the Darling, which fall westward from the Great Diving Range, have been degraded by huge, thirsty cotton farms — the most infamous being Cubbie Station.

The original forests, woodlands and native grasslands of the floodplains of the Darling have been cleared and wildlife has disappeared. The problems that confront the basin are widespread and systemic, not localised to one or two trouble spots. According to the 2008 Sustainable Rivers Audit, commissioned for the Murray Darling Basin Ministerial Council, the ecological health of 20 out of 23 river valleys within the basin were rated poor or very poor. This is mismanagement at an epic scale.

Irrigated agriculture is responsible for 95 per cent of the water extracted from the basin. Decades of over allocation have seen the loss of 90 per cent of floodplain wetlands, 80 per cent of waterbird populations, 80 per cent of river red gum forests and 90 per cent of native fish populations. The system is in crisis.

In the place of native fish, the river is now choked with carp

In short, the river is stuffed — and its ability to sustain biodiversity is now in extreme doubt. Our most famous river has become, in many sections, a lifeless drain. The last drought, the longest recorded in the basin since European colonisation, dealt the system another series of ecological blows with extensive documented "black-water" events killing off adolescent Murray Cod.

For too long, too many have taken too much out of the river — helped by governments that dished out allocations based on years when there was plenty of rainfall and ignored the fact that Australia faces increasingly long periods of drought between the good years.

As a result, the environment, the wetlands and the river red gums, the lower lakes and the native fish have suffered. The soils have become ruined with salinity, with 80 per cent of NSW’s irrigated farmland suffering from rising water tables. The mouth has closed, only opening in the extreme seasons of flooding.

So the river needs help, urgently and dramatically. But will we as a nation fail again, as we have done many times before? The jury is still out but the prospects don’t look great in light of the low figure the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has set for water to be returned to the river. Even the basin’s own scientific review by CSIRO said the 2750 gigalitres would not save the ailing river system.

A pessimist would ask whether the embattled and unstable national government is capable of decisive action and whether the policy gulf that exists between the polarised position of the Nationals and the Greens will kill the plan before it makes it through Parliament.

Many fear that Water Minister Tony Burke, already rattled by the angry backlash of irrigators 12 months ago, has already lost the will to fight for the river and instead will pursue a path of least political resistance — a path taken by his predecessors from both sides of politics on every previous occasion.

A pessimist would also suspect that the states, particularly the conservative governments of Victoria and New South Wales, will ultimately put political expediency first and sell out the river by falling into line with Tony Abbott’s relentless campaign to undermine and wreck every major policy initiative for his own political benefit.

On this prognosis, the people of South Australia will once again be sold down the river. So the river and its communities need inspired political leadership. The river needs an end to point scoring and humbug. It needs our political class to at last put the national interest front and centre and demonstrate they can lead and can be trusted.

Without this leadership, the river will die and with the river will die the communities that have grown along its banks. A dead river will make food production untenable and we will, in a little over a century, have delivered a lose-lose outcome on a monumental scale.

The original article can be seen on the newmatilda website.

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