“Don’t ask children what they want to be when they grow up. Ask them what problems they wish to solve. This changes the conversation from “Who do I want to work for?” to “What do I need to learn in order to be able to do that?”"
With April came Easter. In the northern hemisphere this coincides with spring and the flourishing of new life. In the southern hemisphere Easter sheds some of the connotations that relate to biology and ecology, however the deeper message of Easter remains.
(It is a claim of Catholicism to embrace the “whole”, thus the connection above between the ecological and things spiritual. At the heart of every human culture lies a quest to make meaning of life and all that it has in store for us. For those who wish to further explore this greater context, we let others more qualified than us expand: Is Church Really that Important?
Letter to a Suffering Church: A Bishop Speaks on the Sexual Abuse Crisis)
Here on Kachana, an April without rain meant that much of nature began to fall asleep. Warm days and wind sped up dehydration in those areas where ground is bare. Meanwhile in areas where we were in the position to implement desired management, vigorous growth continues. This appears to support our suspicion that (in our latitude and with the rainfall we get) temperatures should be our limiting factor rather than dehydration!
Therefore, with each year our management challenge continues.
We cannot control what drops out of the sky:
Each season we do what we can to hang onto a little more moisture for a little longer…
And so it is that we now adjust for the dry months ahead of us.
Greetings from Kachana
Photos of the Month
News & Views
In high-rainfall seasonal environments, it is a really bad idea to be replacing herbivores with fire.
(At least, that is what the land seems to be telling us here in Australia’s dry tropics.)
Every now and again the conversation turns to donkeys!
Some want to kill them, others want to save them, we want to put them to work, others aim to exploit them, others ignore them and others again would not know what to do if they were given one.
In the wild, donkeys as a species remain threatened. But they are not yet extinct.
Questions remain.
Here, some links for those who are interested in the Kachana perspective:
- On ABC-Radio - Listen in at “Minute”: 02:06:50: Dr Arian Wallach and Chris Henggeler challenge some common ASSumptions!
- Does Australia need more herbivores? Chris Henggeler outlines the challenge at the ‘Farming Matters Conference’. (2021)
- International attention: WITHOUT A VOICE: The Eradication of Australia's Wild Donkeys (2020)
- At a State level: “Biosecurity threat” or contributors to genuine biosecurity? Chris Henggeler presents to members of the ministerial advisory committee in Perth (2018)