Environmental reporting

Reporting of environmental issues is as old as the Australian press itself. In November 1804, a correspondent to the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser proposed establishing a subscription fund that would assist in ridding the country of ‘noxious vermin’—dingoes, in this case—while a detailed description of the natural dispersal of seeds appeared under the heading ‘Striking and Curious Phenomena in Botany’. Readers of the Hobart Town Gazette and Southern Reporter, published from 1816, were told that, ‘A great number of Whales have already made their appearance in Frederic Henry Bay; some have even been seen as high as Sullivan’s Cove’, and that ‘some evil disposed Person or Persons have to the injury of the Crown cut down and drawn away many of the most beautiful Trees on the Water-side of the Government Domain at New Town’. These early reports reflect the breadth of issues and concerns, as well as the physical, legal, political and social events and activities that now fall under the environmental umbrella.