Campaigning
About Habitat Campaigning
The Habitat Advocate’s motto is ‘a voice for native habitat‘.
Consistent with our philosophies, aspirations and advocacies, this website is about native habitat activism. We term it ‘Habitat Campaigning‘.
Habitat Campaigning is not just about conservation campaigning nor environmental campaigning. It is not for human benefit, rather it is fundamentally about saving wildlife (fauna and flora) and protecting wildlife from human-caused harm and rehabilitating those now remnant wilderness islands as sanctuaries to safeguard the viability of species.
It is about fighting extinctions in the wild, including local extinctions, regional extinctions and global extinctions. It is not about zoos. Hunans can choose to live in concrete jungles, but wildlife doesn’t.
Methodology
Our Habitat Campaigning methodology involved firstly identifying the type of threat to given native habitat area and allocating that threat type to our list of Habitat Threats (caused by humans). We recognise that many areas of native habitat are indeed subject to multiple types of such threats. Our aim is to first publicise these threats and hold the perpetrators to account via this website.
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Immature Responses:
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- Do nothing – like most busy people, who self-justify other priorities?
- Presume that the environmental department of government will act appropriately to mitigate the threat?
- Protest to the perpetrators, who defend, demean and greenwash?
- Write to a local paper, which attracts local interest for a few days, until supplanted by another issue, then is soon forgotten?
- Protest to a local politician, who smiles and adds it to their wishlist, below their personal wishlist?
- Join or form an action group, which lasts as long as the leader’s stamina, then which typically fades into disenchantment?
- Seethe in frustration, like most?
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…so what is the resultant on-ground outcome experienced from having adopted any of these options?
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Mature Responses:
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Be realistic and pragmatic. Taking on any of these threats is a significant undertaking in cultural change. So it presents a ‘David and Goliath’ struggle, which likely will endure many battle losses over a lifetime.
Yet, with hope, determination, respect, empathy, and with an effective methodology, overcoming such threats is feasible. Overcoming such threats and reversing species extinction is possibly the most ethically noble and selfless cause. Success is serene justice.
To be effective, one should reside in the comfort that the task of challenging such threats does not require a millionaire or one with astute political training. Historically, the task of challenging such threats is typically lead by ordinary (yet passionate) people who realise the injustice must be stopped, who are persistent and who get organised and become effective advocates.
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‘Habitat Threat Analysis’
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Our methodology in tackling habitat threats involves a number of approaches (‘methodologies‘) which stem from our philosophies and aspirations for habitat conservation.
A key methodology we use is what we term ‘Habitat Threat Analysis’. Habitat Threat Analysis is a logical investigative methodology that captures information relating to an issue (e.g. Deforestation of Brown Moutain) and integrates that information to enable efficient and effective insight, analysis, problem solving and to develop reform initatives.
To facilitate Habitat Threat Analysis, we recognise that the realm of habitat conservation is broad reaching, complex and involves a matrix inter-relationship between:
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Habitat Threats (Level 5)
Habitat Causes (Level 4)
Habitat Issues (Level 3)
Habitat Campaigns (Level 2)
Campaign Episodes (Level 1)
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Without a logical organised dichotomy of these ‘levels’ of conservation subject matter, the organisation, retrieval and analysis of the captured information can quickly become inefficient, chaotic and overwhelming.
This demands that we organise the scope of Habitat Threat Analysis into a ‘Threat Response Framework‘. This is a simple hierarchy of these five dimensions.
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Threat Response Framework:
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Level 5: Habitat Threats [human culture-based activity which threatens, or causes actual harm to, wildlife habitat]
(e.g human activities such as deforestation, road making, poaching, etc.)
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Level 4: Habitat Causes [species/ecosystem-based conservation focus]
(e.g. saving Redgum forest ecosystems)
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Level 3: Habitat Issues [problematic impact of a habitat threat associated with a habitat cause]
(e.g. logging of old growth forests)
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Level 2: Habitat Campaigns [place-based environmental activism over a period of time, usually involving multiple episodes of activism.]
(e.g. Protesting to save Upper Florentine old growth forests from logging)
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Level 1: Campaign Episodes [a time-specific event, associated with specific habitat campaign. Similar events reoccur, like episodes.]
(e.g. VicForests in Environment East Gippsland in Australia onground protesting in November 2009 at Brown Mountain in East Gippsland against VicForests attempt to log old growth forests).
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‘Resource Modules’
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For each Habitat Campaign, we organise information into Resource Modules in order to facilitate efficient retrieval of information, to utilise for greater insight, analysis, problem solving, campaigning and to develop reform initiatives.
- Campaigns
- Impacts and Issues
- History and Similar Campaigns
- Industry, Law Structure and Policies
- Conservation Groups’s Approaches
- Research and Reviews
- Problem Solving
- Reform Initiatives
- Reference
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The Habitat Advocate is thus organised along this Threat Response Framework.
Articles covering Habitat Threats are accessible on the right hand column, under the heading: ‘Habitat Threats – all articles’
Our aims is secondly to mitigate these threats and ultimately to eliminate them.
We recognise that this methodology is just one approach to tackle human threats to wildlife habitat.
> Our Habitat Campaigning in The Blue Mountains
These are the current focus of our habitat campaigning locally in the Blue Mountains here we are based:
1. Ending The Gully’s Abuse and Neglect
2. Trucking Expressway
3. Broadscale Hazard Reduction
4. Contamination of Creeks
5. Fox and Feral Cat Predation
6. Council Greenwashing
7. Deforestation from Housing
8. Wildlife Ignored by Parks Management
9. Invasive Tourism and Recreation
10. Weed Infestations
11. Groundwater Tampering
12. Destructive Mining
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