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Lyrebird Dreaming Pty Ltd
Blog
I write about climate, human rights, biodiversity, and uncomfortable truths. From the wisdom of First Nations caring for Country to the global action needed to protect ecosystems and ensure intergenerational equity, these stories are personal, political, and urgent. They aim to inspire hope.
Explore my Yeah But... series for sharp takes on deflection, denial, and double standards. And scroll through Climate Conscious Man's reflections on what it means to live responsibly on a heating planet.
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Australia's Wild Heart: The Dingo
#FloraAndFaunaFriday: A national icon with a real ecological job to do If you’ve never met a Dingo, you need to. The Australian Dingo Foundation introduced me to these two back in 2016, and the memory has never left me. Not because they were “wild” in the movie sense, but because they felt Australian in a way that’s almost impossible to explain: alert, intelligent, confident, self-possessed. There was warmth there too, but not submission. Dingoes don’t do “obedient” the way

Gregory Andrews
6 days ago4 min read


Life Support in the Wild
#FloraAndFaunaFriday and the uncomfortable truth about Australia's Orange-bellied-parrot I first met the Orange-bellied Parrot when I was Australia’s Threatened Species Commissioner. Impossibly small. A small green and blue bird, with an almost defiant splash of orange on its belly. I could feel how close it was to the edge - not just as an individual, but as a species. Back in 2015, there were only about 50 left in the wild. I remember doing the maths back then. If you added

Gregory Andrews
Feb 203 min read


Apex, But Not Above The Law
Power, perspective and the wedge-tailed eagle - #FloraAndFaunaFriday There are few, if any, birds in Australia that command the sky like the Wedge-tailed Eagle. With a wingspan stretching close to three metres. Eyes that can read a paddock from kilometres away. And a presence that doesn’t flap and fuss - wedgies soar, steady and sovereign. And here’s something I’ve always loved: the female is larger than the male. As with most raptors, female wedgies outweigh and outspan thei

Gregory Andrews
Feb 132 min read


Australia’s “Ice-Age” Eucalypt
I first met this rather innocuous looking tree on Yuin and Walbunja Country near Mongarlowe when I was Threatened Species Commissioner. I’d listed it as one of 30 endangered plants for urgent recovery. Why? Because it was alive before the pyramids were built! And I’m not talking about the species, I’m talking about this actual tree! There are only about six wild Mongarlowe Mallee trees left in the wild, each a multi-stemmed mallee growing out of a giant and ancient undergroun

Gregory Andrews
Jan 302 min read


Canberra's Tiny Earless Reptile that Lives In Wolf-Spider Burrows
This week's #FloraAndFaunaFriday favourite I first met the Grassland Earless Dragon on Ngunnawal Country in 2015 when I was Australia’s Threatened Species Commissioner. It sat like a tiny sculpture in my palm - calm, perfect, impossibly delicate - and then vanished down into a wolf-spider burrow. That’s home for these dragons: they borrow the architecture of invertebrates, living and sheltering in spider and insect tunnels across natural temperate grasslands. And true to the

Gregory Andrews
Dec 19, 20252 min read


Competing with Kim Kardashian: Golden Bandicoots for #BlackFriday
It’s #FloraAndFaunaFriday but also #BlackFriday, another day of marketing gimmickry when the algorithms shout louder than our wildlife. Today, Australia will spend millions chasing celebrity perfumes and cut-price jewellery. Meanwhile, the living things that actually define us - our native plants and animals - are slipping further and further from view. Back in 2014 on Matuwa Country in the Gibson Desert of Western Australia, I was lucky enough to hold this Golden Bandicoot.

Gregory Andrews
Nov 28, 20252 min read


Cars As the New Megafauna
#FloraAndFaunaFriday: how Australia has swapped wombats for Hiluxes Saul Griffith shared a graphic this week that makes the biodiversity crisis uncomfortably concrete. He riffed on a 2018 paper The biomass distribution on Earth that famously estimated the weight all the living animals and plants on Earth. That paper showed that wild animals now make up less than four per cent of the biomass of all mammals on Earth - humans, their pets and livestock comprise the rest! Saul’s

Gregory Andrews
Oct 31, 20252 min read


The Hollow Cliff: Australia’s Paddock Trees Are Dying Out
Why we must grow the next century. #FloraAndFaunaFriday Cycling through the wheat–sheep belt between Canberra and Melbourne to #CitSciOz25 last week, something hit me harder than any of the headwinds. The big, old trees dotting the paddocks are the last elders of a pre-clearing world - they’re sentinels holding space for Nature. But they’re reaching the end of their lives. These paddock trees aren’t just scenery. They’re habitat pillars. Their hollows shelter parrots and cock

Gregory Andrews
Oct 17, 20253 min read
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