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
