Sober in the Country: Rural health advocate Shanna Whan fights to save farmers from self-medicating with alcohol

The drought is pushing more farmers to drink, but one woman has campaigned tirelessly to raise awareness of the unspoken costs of alcohol abuse and misuse in the outback.

Shanna Whan has been campaigning for more
support for people in the bush who want to go sober.

Shanna Whan is a rural advocate, a finalist in the NSW Rural Woman of the Year Awards, and the founder of a volunteer-led support group called Sober in the Country, which supports more than 250 people.

Ms Whan believes the escalating drought, financial hardship, as well as the uncertainty and isolation of rural life is driving more people to drink.

Read the story from ABC Rural by David Claughton - “Sober in the Country: Rural health advocate Shanna Whan fights to save farmers from self-medicating with alcohol.”

Will Queensland embrace the future or stick with its shocking land clearing past?

If a tree falls in the Queensland outback during an election, does any voter care? If you happen to be a besieged koala, you’d definitely hope so.

Land clearing in Wombinoo in Queensland, Australia. The aftermath
of land clearing in 2016 triggered intervention from the federal government. 

With the Queensland election upon us, it has become clear that the rights and wrongs of clearing Queensland’s forests and woodlands have been a polarising issue with all major players releasing dramatically different policies.

The scene was set for this debate when, only weeks before the election, shocking new independent data was released that showed that 400,000 hectares of bush were cleared in Queensland during the year 2015–16.

This is the equivalent to a Gabba cricket pitch-sized area of forest cleared every three minutes every day, all year. Experts from WWF Australia have estimated that 45 million animals were killed as a result of the clearing in 2015through 2016 alone.

Read the opinion piece on The Guardian by Lyndon Schneiders - “Will Queensland embrace the future or stick with its shocking land clearing past?”

The need to protect our 'iconic' Outback

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The Australian Outback is an iconic place,” according to Jenny Davis.

A Friend of The Conversation, the Research Professor in Wetland Ecology at University of Canberra, Professor Davis discusses on The Conversation the need for a plan to protect the Outback’s precious water.

She writes: “It is the nation’s great outdoors and represents a concept of wilderness that many Australians hold dear, and the Red Centre is at the top of many international tourists' must-see lists.

“While it covers more than 70% of the continent, this vast area is home to less than 5% of the population, and the Pew Trust describes it as one of the last extensive natural regions left on Earth.

“It is a landscape of great contrasts: it can be green, lush and bountiful but also dry, dusty, harsh and inhospitable,” she says.

Read her story - “Australia needs a plan to protect the Outback’s precious water”.

Naomi Oreskes - a 'lightning rod' in a changing climate

T

he job interviewer scrutinized the young American geology student sitting across from him. She was about to graduate from the Royal School of Mines in London, and was trying to break into a field long unwelcoming to women.

What, he wanted to know, might she have to contribute to the geology of mining? Naomi Oreskes had a simple answer: “I want to find an ore deposit!”

Naomi Oreskes - a "lightning
rod" in a changing climate.

She wound up in the Australian outback in the early 1980s — not to search for deposits, exactly, but to help work out the complex geology of one that had just been found. It would eventually become one of the world’s largest uranium mines.

Yet, in time, prospecting for ores could not hold her interest. Today, from a professorship at Harvard University, Dr. Oreskes is still in the mining business. But rather than digging for minerals, she tunnels into historical archives, and she is still finding radioactive nuggets.

Read more about what the New York Times said about the woman who is fast becoming one of the biggest names in climate science - “Naomi Oreskes, a Lightning Rod in a Changing Climate”.