Milestones and stepping stones in Western Australia's nature conservation history

摘要

Conserving biodiversity and protecting our environment is widely regarded as a priority taday. This attitude has develloped over many decades of conservation history. The early Europeans settled a land that had been occupied by Indigenous people for perhaps 60,000 years and was a living museum of plants and animals that had evolved and persisted in virtual isolation from other continents. Life for the early pioneers was difficult. In order to survive they had to do battle with the bush—the Australian fauna and flora became the enemy. Early European settlers identified with their former country and many came to denigrate things Australian: the plants were useless for fodder (in fact many were poisonous) and the few large animals could not be domesticated. People who have to work hard clearing the bush in order to live are rarely able to relate to the environment they are destroying and homesick pioneers tried to'Europeanise' the countryside, an attitude that lead to the introduction of the mammalsand birds that have had a devastating effect on the Australian environment. In a place where the indigenous flora and fauna were considered an impediment to development, and land in its virgin state seemed unlimited, preservation of nature was far from people's minds.