Home, home on the mange

[old man emu]

In its constant efforts to promote and support aviation, Camden Airport Limited, which holds the head lease for Camden Airport , has poured money from the rents it charges for sites and premises, and from landing fees for the use of the infrastructure into eradicating the scourge of mange from the wombat population resident on the site. The elimination of this disease will improve the overall health of the wombats , no doubt leading to an increase in numbers. It may become necessary to erect "Wombat Crossing" signs near the "numbers" at each end of the available runways.

 

 [Click to enlarge]

 

Camden Airports Limited has not commented on what it intends to do to assists the galahs who wish to operate from Camden Airport. Said Cocky Bennett, "If I had another feather, I'd fly."

 

 

 

[onetrack]

So, we can expect the next development, in the vital uses to which the Camden Airport funds are being allocated, to be towards the eradication of the huge number of wombat burrows, that have undermined the main runway??

 

This is like a Monty Python skit.

 

 

[M61A1]

"Clever country" 

 

 

[old man emu]

Actually, I'm happy with the involvement of CAL in regenerating the riparian environment of the Nepean River which forms one of the boundaries of the airport. CAL and community bodies have been rooting out the olive trees and replanting the cleared areas with environmentally appropriate native vegetation. Apart from returning the near-bank areas of the Nepean to their pre-European condition, clearing the olives will reduce the numbers of Bell Birds in the area.

 

"Whoa!", you say. "You can't destroy the habitat of Native birds!" Well, in this case you can - to a degree. It seems that one type of Bell Bird, the Crested Bell Bird [ Oreoica gutturalis ] [ http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Oreoica-gutturalis ] is driving out the birds who eat the sap-sucking parasites of eucalyptus trees, such as the Bell Bird Miner [ http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Manorina-melanophrys ] As a result, eucalyptus forests are suffering from 'die-back' which is a result of the death of the trees' upper canopy leaves due to the sap-sucking insects increasing in number because the Bell Bird Minor is one of the birds being driven off.

 

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1200578.htm

 

John Macarthur and Family introduced the African Olive [ Olea europaea subsp. cuspidata ] [https://weeds.dpi.nsw.gov.au/Weeds/Details/4 ] as a plant to create field boundaries as they existed in England. The plant had no competitors or attackers. Its small edible fruits are eaten by birds and animals and the seeds are spread in excreta. The plant thrives in the local climate and, because of its dense foliage, shades out native plants and grasses. This plant, left to grow unchecked, has smothered large areas of Sydney's Cumberland Plain vegetation. It has met its Waterloo, however, in the wholesale denuding of the Cumberland Plain by those bent on the creation of residential utopias. Ironically, if Macarthur had brought the European Olive  [ Olea europaea ] from the Mediterranean, instead of the African Olive, The Sydney Region would have become a major producer of olive oil. In some parts of the hills surrounding Camden, orchardists are growing European olives successfully and producing world class oils.