by: Rural Editor Nigel Austin

• From:The Advertiser
• April 13, 201211:00PM

South Australia is in danger of losing the battle against dingoes as they move further south each year with a rapidly increasing economic cost. Source: Supplied

A DINGO population explosion is threatening the state’s livestock industry as the dogs move south and pose a rapidly increasing economic threat.

Wool growers fear the dingo problem will became as bad as it is in Queensland, where fewer than three million sheep remain.

Dingoes have reached near-plague proportions in the pastoral zone, after several good seasons and numerous breaches of the dog fence as a result of rain and flooding in the Outback this year.

Pastoralists are fighting for their futures as dingoes kill 15 to 20 sheep and more on some nights, while marauding dogs have forced some stations to switch from sheep to cattle.

Concerned pastoralists warned this week that dingoes were increasingly being seen south of the 5614km dog fence, built to keep dingoes out of the sheep country, stretching from the Great Australian Bight in SA to Jimbour in southeastern Queensland.

Dingoes have been seen as far south as Burra Gorge. One was recently shot near Blanchetown, on the River Murray, and others have been spotted near Whyalla and Port Augusta, at Darke Peak on Eyre Peninsula and in much of the pastoral country including the Flinders, Olary and Gawler ranges.

Invasive Animals CRC national wild dog facilitator Greg Mifsud said dingoes and wild dogs were increasing across Australia.

It was becoming almost impossible to differentiate between the two without DNA tests. “They are turning up in areas where they have been absent and causing great impacts in many areas of the country,” Mr Mifsud said.

“In other areas, we are seeing a huge increase in wild dog attacks in coastal and urban areas in eastern Australia,” he said.

Wild dogs are also causing a problem in outer urban areas in SA including a serious issue near Roseworthy, while 1200 dogs were killed in the Victorian High Country last year.

“The dog fence is still working very well, but if they get inside the fence and people don’t control them they can keep moving and breed-up,” Mr Mifsud said.

Wool Producers Australia president Geoff Power said he feared SA would lose the battle against dingoes and doubted the SA sheep population would climb back to where it was.

“I can’t stress enough that we have to make it the number one priority or they will be in the parklands in Adelaide,” he said.

Kevin Dawes, from Farina station near Lyndhurst, said everyone was having problems. He shot, trapped or poisoned nine dingoes between Christmas and early March when 3-4km of the dog fence north of him washed away.

Mr Power is chairman of a steering committee organising an aerial baiting trial in pastoral country, with baits laid along a 6000km path covering 71 properties: “We have some good initiatives in SA with the Biteback program and this aerial baiting trial, with landholders also being encouraged to participate in ground-baiting programs to achieve consistently high levels of control.”

Fossils to fuel Flinders’ tourism industry

Arkaroola manager Doug Sprigg holding a mould of the Spriggina fossil, which was named after his father. Picture: Matt Turner Source: The Advertiser

 

 

 

FLINDERS Ranges tourism operators are seeking new life for the future of their businesses, through the oldest known life-forms of earth.

The Ediacaran fossils, increasingly gaining world fame, date back 542 to 635 million years.

“The Flinders Ranges is home to the earliest forms of life on the planet and this is a huge selling point for our region’s tourism industry,” said Rawnsley Park Station owner Tony Smith.

“There’s still work to be done in ensuring that visitors have access to high-quality geotourism experiences and that the sector is marketed effectively.” Mr Smith was speaking at yesterday’s announcement of co-ordinated strategies to cater for such tourists.

He said the projects were a good step forward. They are:

A FOSSIL interpretive facility in the town square at Parachilna;

CREATING an Arkaroola Education and Research Trust;

4WD tours at Rawnsley Park Station to focus on the region’s fossils and geology;

TRAINING programs for tourism operators on the Flinders Ranges natural history, in conjunction with the South Australian Museum and the SA Tourism Commission.

Ediacaran fossils were discovered in the Flinders Ranges by geologist Reg Sprigg in 1946. His son, Doug, who runs Arkaroola, said yesterday the trust would help manage the privately-owned Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary to help educate visitors, academics and students about its unique geology and natural history – a passion of his father’s.

The Arkaroola Protection Act, proclaimed a month ago, would help achieve that goal.

Mr Smith said at yesterday’s announcement at the Museum that tourism in the Flinders had come a long way since Sir Douglas Mawson visited the region almost a century ago. “But we can’t rest on our laurels,” he said.

“Marketing efforts that ensure we are top-of-mind choice for prospective travellers and appropriate product development and infrastructure projects such as those outlined today are vital to the continued success of the region.”

The South Australian Government is using helicopters to help pastoralists muster goats on their properties.

Feral goats are a significant problem on pastoral land in the Flinders Ranges in the north of the state.

The Department of Environment has agreed to work with landowners to muster the animal on the condition that they can then go in and shoot the remainder.

District ranger Danny Doyle says it’s the most effective way to control them.

“It’s a step forward because while the densities are quite high, we’re able to take the goats off and they’re able to reap some benefits of those animals and then come in and then destroy the remaining ones once it becomes economically not viable to muster any more.”

But graziers, including Paul Finlay, say shooting the animal is wasteful and the government should be spending more time mustering them.

“I reckon it’s wrong, give us a week mustering and then come back in a fortnight and give us another week’s mustering and we’ll clean them up, instead of just shooting them and leaving them.”

Rosslyn Beeby

April 10, 2012

Back to basics … Chris Jordan, of Mount Gambier, helps daughter Elise, 6,  while Erin, 8, rides her bike at the Queanbeyan Riverside Tourist Park. Photo: Jeffrey Chan

Forget the hype about luxury tourism, designer tents and ‘glamping’. New  statistics from Tourism Australia show we are, quite literally, a nation of  happy campers spending $5.4 billion a year on back-to-basics holidays in caravan  parks and camping grounds.

And no, it’s not grey nomads driving this trend. More than half of our  campers are young families, like Chris and Angela Jordan, who relish the freedom  a caravan offers when planning a holiday.

The Jordans, both primary school teachers from South Australia, are staying  at the Queanbeyan Riverside Tourist Park with daughters Erin and Elise. They  drove from Mount Gambier, towing their much-loved 1980s Jayco caravan, so Mr  Jordan could do a glassblowing course at the Canberra Glassworks.

He jokes that, as teachers, holidays tend to coincide with peak season rates  for motels.   ”A caravan is a cheaper option, and more fun for the kids. Most  caravan parks have playgrounds and plenty of space for kids to ride bikes,” he  says.

Mrs Jordan says the caravan also helps the family avoid the inevitable – and  expensive – junk food traps of road travel.

When one of her daughters developed a food allergy, it was easy to prepare  meals in the caravan.  ”You can pull over in a picnic area and make something  healthy [to eat]. You have more control over how much you spend on food,” she  says.

Queanbeyan Riverside Tourist Park owner Kevin Pritzler recently commissioned  a report on the  park’s contribution to the NSW regional town’s economy. The  estimate is upwards of $4 million a year, possibly as high as $8 million.

”We’re seeing a new generation of family campers, and also a younger grey  nomad – a lot of these are public servants who can work anywhere around  Australia on their laptops. There’s no need for them to be tied to an  office.”

According to the Tourism Australia snapshot report, Australia has more than  1600 caravan parks, employing 10,600 people and injecting $50 million into the  economy.

Last year, domestic campers spent slightly more overall per trip ($667) than  other domestic visitors ($656), but this was ”not surprising given that their  average length of stay was two nights longer than for other visitors,” the  report said.

Overseas campers – chiefly the British, Germans and Kiwis – spent  significantly more ($7507 each) than other international visitors ($4776).

Caravan Industry Australia estimates there are over 100 local caravan  manufacturers, 160 pop-up camper manufacturers and 15 motorhome manufacturers,  rolling out 18,000 camper vehicles a year.

Speaking of their second-hand caravan, Mr Jordan says: ”We love it. You can  be at home anywhere, and when you want to leave, you just pull the lid down and  drive off.”

Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/happy-campers-opting-for-humble-holidays-20120409-1wlhp.html#ixzz1sBZ0iAiP

South Australia’s peak tourism body, the South Australian Tourism Industry Council (SATIC), has recognised the need for industry-specific training for tourism businesses in the Southern Flinders.

South Australia’s peak tourism body, the South Australian Tourism Industry Council (SATIC), has recognised the need for industry-specific training for tourism businesses in the Southern Flinders.

Ward Tilbrook, Chief Executive of the South Australian Tourism Industry Council says after a recent survey of our members has given us clear direction as to the areas of training the tourism industry requires.

“Courses include Chinese cultural awareness, the fundamentals of running a small business, detailed business planning, and building a tourism website that works, with more workshops in the pipeline,” Mr Tilbrook says.

“It is important that we deliver these training sessions in the region and are working in conjunction with Regional Development Australia – Yorke and Mid-North to coordinate our training program.

“Tourism is a $4.5 billion economic sector for this State and the Southern Flinders is a key contributor to South Australia’s tourism success and growth.”

Kelly Anne Saffin, Chief Executive of Regional Development Australia – Yorke and Mid North says tourism is a key part of the Southern Flinders’ prosperity.

“It is essential that local businesses have access to the best possible training to improve their own business performance and ensure the continued development of our region,” Ms Saffin says.

SATIC represents more than 550 members across the State and its role is to engage in all of the processes that shape our State’s tourism future. SATIC provides a range of support services, resources and assistance to its members such as training, accreditation, certification, awards and business to business networks, communication and information.

TRAINING SCHEDULE:

The Business of Running a Small Business, 11 April, Port Pirie

Chinese Cultural Awareness, 5 September, Port Pirie

Business Planning, 29 August, Port Pirie

Building & Managing a Tourism Website That Works – exact date TBA

For more information visit: www.satic.com.au/index.php/events/calendar/

For further information contact Bianca Borrett, Communications & Business Development Manager, South Australian Tourism Industry Council on 0401 998 247.

Tourism Goes Indigenous By Neena Bhandari

SYDNEY, Apr 4, 2012 (IPS) – As today’s conscientious travellers seek authentic experiences with the people of the lands they visit, tourism can be a vehicle for preserving ancient cultures, while socially and economically empowering marginalised or remote indigenous communities.
At the first Pacific Asia Indigenous Tourism Conference (PAITC) held on the traditional land of the Larrakia people in Darwin, Australia from Mar. 28-30, participants noted the rising demand for indigenous tourism and the need to ensure sustainable and equitable business partnerships that respect indigenous intellectual property rights, cultures, traditional practices and the environment while simultaneously enriching visitor experiences.
With one billion people expected to cross international borders in 2012, tourism will create 1 in 12 jobs worldwide and generate trillions of dollars in exchange and investment, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO).
As Anita Mendiratta, managing director of the international tourism and economic development consultant firm CACHET Consulting said, “Tourism increases understanding, destination competitiveness and creates an incredible sense of local pride as, ultimately, people are inviting the world to visit their home. (Thus) it is an incredibly powerful form of diplomacy.
“But the tourism industry with its incredible rate of growth and opportunity also has a massive responsibility to make sure that it is a healthy growth,” she added.
Mendiratta warns that tourists can unwittingly cause grave damage during their travels; sometimes this could be a simple ‘cultural offence’, at other times a complex disruption of the entire value system of a destination, where locals are literally forced to sell their “souls”.
“We should be sure that the indigenous communities we are trying to promote need or want this and not just from the point of generating revenue,” Mendiratta, author of ‘Come Closer: How Tourism is Changing the Future of Nations’, told IPS.
“It needs to elevate their sense of worth. They need to feel respect and dignity and know that their involvement will help to build the indigenous culture even further.”
She said projects with the Maasai in Kenya and the Bushman in South Africa are some of the ‘best practice’ examples of indigenous tourism being brought to life in ways that not only build global tourism but also indigenous communities.
Including indigenous voices
The conference, attended by 191 participants from 16 countries, issued the Larrakia Declaration on the Development of Indigenous Tourism, which recognises that whilst tourism provides the strongest driver to restore, protect and promote indigenous cultures, it has the potential to diminish and destroy those cultures when improperly developed.
“In some ethnic communities in China and in other countries, it is the non-indigenous parties that promote indigenous tourism and utilise the attractiveness of indigenous people to achieve their own interests, normally for economic profits. A balance of interests between stakeholders needs to be addressed as otherwise (there might be) tensions between indigenous people and the non-indigenous parties”, Jingjing Yang, an international doctoral student at New Zealand’s Waikato University, told IPS.
Her ethnographic research focuses on the impact of tourism on ethnic (indigenous) communities, specifically the Kanas’s Tuva and Kazakh peoples’ settlements in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
New Zealand is perhaps a world leader in indigenous tourism, where the industry has acted as a catalyst for preserving Māori culture and engendering a sense of pride in the youth, who are learning history, legends, language, music and arts.
For example, the well-known Māori haka is a fierce dance-chant that has become internationally recognised among sports fans that follow New Zealand’s national rugby team, the All Blacks.
Many countries across the Pacific region are learning from New Zealand’s successful model in taking indigenous tourism from the margins to the mainstream.
“For the first time, the indigenous people have a traveller genuinely interested in hearing their story and willing to pay for it. People want to have an authentic local experience and the greatest challenge for indigenous tourism is how to gear itself for that kind of demand,” Mike Tamaki, director of Global Storytellers, told IPS.
Tamaki got involved in indigenous tourism 30 years ago. He claims that, though his people (Māori) have great ideas and extend exceptional hospitality, they have no money.
“This has been a disadvantage in terms of development of indigenous experiences worldwide, as indigenous people find it difficult to market their ideas into a product.”
Over a century ago, the tangata whenua or the indigenous Māoris, began guiding visitors to snow- capped peaks, across lush-green undulating terrain, to crystal clear waters of the rivers and geothermal hot spots.
Today, a new generation of Maori are leading overseas travellers through Aotearoa or Land of the Long White Cloud, the Māori name for New Zealand, as forest, rafting and fishing guides, entertainers and artists, transport operators and Marae (meeting place) hosts.
A leading academic in the field of traditional medicine, Gerry Bodeker, a professor at Oxford University, suggests expanding the scope of indigenous tourism. He says indigenous people have preserved thousands of years of generational knowledge about plants and natural ingredients, which can be a treasure trove for the global wellness industry.
“In 2011, the global wellness economy was valued at 1.9 trillion dollars. This money can go back into the development of indigenous communities and it is happening where corporate ethics are aligned with indigenous priorities and development. Asia is in the forefront of this kind of approach.”
“It is also happening in Africa, Latin America, the Pacific and Australia”, Bodeker, chair of the Global Initiative For Traditional Systems (GIFTS) of Health, Oxford, told IPS.
He elucidated his comment with examples of wellness resorts such as the Six Senses Spa in Hua Hin, Thailand, which is committed to investing back into local village communities that provide the herbs, local produce and workforce for the spa; The Farm in San Benito in the Philippines, where each doctor volunteers a day each week to provide healthcare services to rural low-income communities and train local healthcare workers; and the Sambunyi Spa in Malaysia, which buys its products from a local women’s cooperative supporting single mothers and commissions them to cultivate and supply spa products.

ICTP pushes for green global tourism development

Apr 03, 2012

In a wide-ranging presentation to the Panrotas Foundation in Sao Paolo, Brazil, the International Council of Tourism Partners (ICTP) President Geoffrey Lipman called for industry support for green growth, which he described as the “new 21st century global development paradigm.”

Professor Lipman said that “’old green’ as a simple environment movement is long gone – ‘new green’ not only included economic and social needs, but that climate had become today’s big game changer, with a timeline of 2050 to kick our global carbon habit and fix global warming.” He added that “in that time, today’s 7 billion people will become 9 billion, with longer lives, better health. and a massive increasing demand on scarce food and water resources.” Lipman said that the solution would take new inclusionary development and trade strategies that rely on renewable energy, massive digital collaboration, and biodiversity conservation. That will be the core green growth challenge world leaders will confront at Rio+20 in June of this year.

Lipman said: “When I attended the 1992 Rio Earth Summit as the first President of WTTC [World Travel & Tourism Council], we took the decision to make Agenda 21 and sustainable development part of the world’s biggest industry’s mainstreaming policies. Now we have new Green Growth dynamics, imperatives, and opportunities, and over the next decades, the travel and tourism value chain – or ‘travelism’ in next generation tweet speak – must become a core element of the paradigm shift, because we are the one economic sector that can harness mankind’s need for communication, trade, and mobility and transform it into green jobs and sustainable communities.”

He did not underestimate the challenge, but underscored the fact that we have four decades, if we start now, with huge opportunities for creativity and innovation, reminding the audience that an equivalent period of history saw empires come and go; global jet transport; 24/7 digital communications; and unimaginable science, medicine, agriculture, and lifestyle change. Travelism does not have to make the change in isolation, but as part of a new leadership shift in world consumption, production, and investment patterns.

He commended the work of the major industry leadership organizations for starting new collaborations to address the mainstreaming challenge and introduced ICTP as a new kid on the block to provide a bottom of the pyramid destination-focused contribution, based on quality green growth. ICTP will advocate for sustainable aviation growth, streamlined travel, and fair coherent taxes – it will try to bring the irreverence of youth and the operational realities of destinations to the table.

Finally he said that ICTP will support new education platforms for green growth transformation, harnessing dramatic shifts in digital and distance learning systems, drawing attention to www.greengrowth2050.com as an evolving prototype.

The author of this article, Geoffrey Lipman, is President of ICTP and visiting Professor at Victoria University Australia and Oxford Brookes University UK.

ABOUT ICTP

The International Council of Tourism Partners (ICTP) is a new grassroots travel and tourism coalition of global destinations committed to quality service and green growth. The ICTP logo represents the strength in collaboration (the block) of many small communities (the lines) committed to sustainable oceans (blue) and land (green).

ICTP engages communities and their stakeholders to share quality and green opportunities including tools and resources, access to funding, education, and marketing support. ICTP advocates sustainable aviation growth, streamlined travel formalities, and fair coherent taxation.

ICTP supports the UN Millennium Development Goals, the UN World Tourism Organization’s Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, and a range of programs that underpin them. The ICTP alliance is represented in Haleiwa, Hawaii, USA; Brussels, Belgium; Bali, Indonesia; and Victoria, Seychelles. ICTP membership is available to qualified destinations free of charge. Academy membership features a prestigious and selected group of destinations. Members of destinations currently include Anguilla; Grenada; Flores & Manggarai Baratkab County, Indonesia; La Reunion (French Indian Ocean); Malawi, Northern Mariana Islands, US Pacific Island Territory; Palestine; Rwanda; Seychelles; Sri Lanka; Johannesburg, South Africa; Oman; Zimbabwe; and from the US: California; Georgia; North Shore, Hawaii; Bangor, Maine; San Juan County & Moab, Utah; & Richmond, Virginia

For more information, go to: www.tourismpartners.org .

27 March 2012

Mountainbiking at Melrose.