Добірка наукової літератури з теми "Wetlands Victoria Public opinion"

In early 1831, the novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton contributed a comparative essay to the Edinburgh Review on “the spirit of society” in England and France. A key issue for discussion, of course, was that of fashion. “Our fashion,” stated Bulwer-Lytton, “may indeed be considered the aggregate of the opinions of our women.” The fundamental dichotomy which ran through these pages was that between public and private: “the proper sphere of woman,” Bulwer-Lytton continued, “is private life, and the proper limit to her virtues, the private affections.” And in antithesis to the aggregate opinions of “the domestic class of women”—in his view, the only virtuous kind of women—which constituted fashion, stood “public opinion”; that exclusive masculine realm, that should remain free of “feminine influence.”Some two years later, in his two-volume England and the English, Bulwer-Lytton restated the antithesis between fashion and public opinion, both repeating his earlier formulation and at the same time significantly modifying it. By 1833, his definitions of fashion and opinion ran as follows: “The middle classes interest themselves in grave matters: the aggregate of their sentiments is called OPINION. The great interest themselves in frivolities, and the aggregate of their sentiments is termed FASHION.” Here, Bulwer-Lytton no longer designated fashion as the aggregate of the opinions of women but, instead, as the aggregate of the opinions of the upper classes; and public opinion was no longer the domain of men but, instead, the aggregate of the opinions of the “middle class.”

Abstract In Mexico, 142 sites covering almost nine million hectares are listed as Ramsar wetlands. Given the complaints of local inhabitants regarding water quality, and the interest of the federal government for setting up a plan for wetlands protection, we evaluated the ecological condition of a wetland in rural Oaxaca, Mexico. Existing water quality data were compiled and analyzed. Among the parameters of interest were temperature, pH, DO, N, P, and fecal contamination. Even though microbial contamination was a primary concern, a more important worry to local users was the presence of pesticides in water due to inadequate disposal of empty containers and runoff from upstream farmlands. Public meetings with water users, researchers, and local and federal personnel were held to get the opinion about strategies for protection of the wetlands. Outcomes of the decision meetings using a decision-support system highlighted that to preserve the wetlands, the implementation of riparian vegetation (buffer zone) and the management of surface water should be considered as conservation practices. Law enforcement would improve the watershed and wetlands' health for preventing further deterioration. Because of the success in getting public participation and input, the approach will likely be replicated in other parts of the country.

The goal of this research is to analyse the role played by social media, the periodicals library and access to public information when revisiting collective memory on the Spanish Transition. The analysis is carried out based on an unpublished interview to Adolfo Suarez in 1995. During the interview, and off-the-record, former Spanish president Adolfo Suarez confessed to journalist Victoria Prego that the monarchy was not subjected to referendum because the opinion polls suggested they would lose. Those statements came to light 20 years later, after a special TV program broadcast by La Sexta Columna that turned Adolfo Suarez into a trending topic for several days. Between 1955 and 1972 at least six opinion polls were carried out - perfectly documented and censored or silenced at the time - asking Spaniards about their preferences on the best government system for Spain.

The determination of retention efficiencies of halogenated and non-halogenated hydrocarbon in selected wetland ecosystems in Lake Victoria basin was carried out. Qualitative and quantitative determination of the presence of residual hydrocarbons in Kigwal/Kimondi, Nyando and Nzoia wetland ecosystems using Gas Chromatography - Mass Spectrometer (GC-MS) instrument indicated the presence of residual organochlorines, organophosphorus, carbamates and synthetic pyrethroid hydrocarbons in water, sediment and plant materials. In order to compare the retention efficiencies of the wetlands, the wetland ecosystems were divided into three different sections, namely: inlet, mid and outlet. Calculations of mass balances of residual halogenated and non-halogenated hydrocarbons at the respective sections was done taking into account the partition of the studied compounds in samples of water, sediments and papyrus reed plant materials and analyzed using validated Gas Chromatography - Mass Spectrometer (GC-MS) method. From the analysis, several residual hydrocarbons namely: bendiocarb, benzene hexachloride (BHC), carbaryl, cypermethrin, decis, deltamethrin, diazinon, dieldrin, DDT, DDD, DDE, malathion, propoxur, sumithion, 5-phenylrhodanine, 1,3,5-trichlorobenzene, 1-(2-phenoxybenzyl)hydrazine were detected and quantified. The levels of the selected residual hydrocarbons in water samples were used to calculate the retention efficiencies of a specific hydrocarbon and the values recorded. Generally, River Nyando wetland recorded mean percentage retention efficiencies of 76 and 94% for dry and rainy seasons respectively; Kigwal/Kimondi wetland had seasonal mean percentage retention efficiencies of 63 to 78%. River Nzoia also had calculated seasonal mean percentage retention efficiencies of between 56 to 88%. Dry season had lower mean percentages retention efficiencies as compared to rainy season in the three wetlands of interest during the period of study. The study observed that retention efficiencies of tropical wetland ecosystems is greatly affected by its concentration within the wetland tank systems, anthropogenic activities, physical properties of the hydrocarbon, and environmental conditions among others. There are several anthropogenic activities which contributed to the presence of hydrocarbons in the wetlands and they included: agricultural, municipal, industrial and public health activities. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ije.v4i2.12623 International Journal of Environment Vol.4(2) 2015: 38-52

Using past measures of consumer feedback, the aim of the present study was to construct a consumer opinion survey for use in community health centre settings; to pilot the survey instrument across a number of community health centres; and to validate the instrument. A total of 950 consumers attending one of six targeted services (physiotherapy, dental, podiatry, counselling/social work, dietetics, and speech pathology) across four northern metropolitan community health centres in Victoria were invited to participate. Returned surveys were analysed using principal component analysis and the extracted scales were tested for internal consistency and validity. Out of the 950 surveys distributed 471 were returned (response rate of 50%). The survey instrument was found to measure consumer opinion regarding satisfaction with centre environment and satisfaction with service provision. The centre environment scale consisted of one factor, with a Cronbach alpha of .80. The service provision scale consisted of two factors: 'aspects of the service provider' and 'benefits of the visit'. Reliability for the total scale was .93. The two scales correlated moderately with a validity item measuring overall satisfaction. The Primary Health Care Consumer Opinion Survey is a reliable and valid measure, which provides the potential for the establishment of norms to assess consumer opinion.

The growing recognition of recreational and amenity demands on water systems introduces a multitude of issues, many of them complex, to the established tasks of water quality management and water management generally. Victorian case studies are presented. They (1) illustrate the range and diversity of situations that can arise in managing competition and enhancing compatibility between traditional water supply objectives and recreational demands. (2) Fluctuation of storage levels, essential to storage operations, detract from recreational value. Recreational and tourism demands upon Lake Hume have grown to threaten traditional operating flexibility. (3) Mokoan is another such instance, but with its supply function in a state of flux, Lake Mokoan provides more scope for a shift in the balance. (4) Salinity management has become an issue in the management of lakes and wetlands when water supply interests and environmental/recreation interests respectively have different perspectives on salt disposal. (5) Recreational use of town supply sources has long been a vexed issue, although marked shifts in the attitudues of many supply authorities have occurred in recent years. (6) Eutrophication of lakes and estuaries raises difficult issues of responsibility and scientific uncertainty, and the water management connection may be tenuous but will attract public attention. (7) The water body attributes valued by specialised recreational interests require definition in terms that water managers can deal with using routine techniques of systems analysis and evaluation. (8) The demands of the fish population and anglers introduce a new perspective in river management and perceptions of instream values are changing markedly. (9) Direct costs of recreational services supplied by water authorities are not fully accounted: allocation choices and fiscal incidence will emerge as issues of significance. (10) These case studies raise only a fraction of the total range of matters that will, in the years to come, tax the technology and political skills of governments and management.

This paper presents the results of the Victorian Jury Sentencing Study which aimed to measure jurors’ views on sentencing. The study asked jurors who had returned a guilty verdict to propose a sentence for the offender, to comment on the sentence given by the judge in their case and to give their opinions on general sentencing levels for different offence types. A total of 987 jurors from 124 criminal trials in the County Court of Victoria participated in this mixed-method and multi-phased study in 2013–2015. The results are based on juror responses to the Stage One and Stage Two surveys and show that the views of judges and jurors are much more closely aligned than mass public opinion surveys would suggest.

Public opinion in Australia has been divided on the question of whether private prisons are welcome and one of the issues in dispute has been the question of whether or not private prisons are associated with proportionately more or fewer deaths of prisoners, particularly suicides, than public prisons. The available evidence is examined, and when the number of deaths, or suicides, per 1000 prisoner years served for all private and public prisons are calculated it is found that the rate for all deaths is significantly lower in private prisons at the 0.05 level of confidence. However, the difference in the suicide rates is not statistically significant.The lower overall death rate is particularly surprising as private prisons in Australia hold proportionately more unconvicted remandees,who are at higher risk, than public prisons. A close examination of the data for three relatively new remand and reception prisons, two private and one public, shows that all have much higher rates for both all deaths and for suicides than the national averages. This is an updated and expanded version of a paper by the same authors published by the Australian Institute of Criminology in June 1999. That paper was admitted into evidence at a coronial inquiry that was held into five deaths that occurred in the Port Phillip Prison in Victoria. Address for correspondence: D. Biles, 25 Kidston Cres, Curtin ACT 2605, Australia.

This study determines opinions of two Indiana communities concerning the proposed Patoka River National Wildlife Refuge. Surveys were mailed to residents of Pike County and Noblesville, Indiana. The response rate was 38%. Differences in attitudes were measured between residents of the two areas regarding ten issues of concern. The issues respondents were most concerned with were those focusing on the loss of county tax base, road closings and access, and a possible increase in the mosquito population. Surprisingly, the issues concerning avian diseases and land acquisition/ condemnation were not major concerns. It was originally thought that these issues of employment and property would have been of primary concern to respondents. Residents of Pike County in the affected refuge area were more aware of the refuge and the issues of concern. However, of the respondents who were aware of the refuge in both Pike county and Noblesville, few differences in their perceptions of the issues were noted.
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management

Increased residential and commercial development threatens wetland functions, particularly near urban centers. This research explores the values and attitudes of residents concerning wetlands, wetland restoration, and development near Fort Wayne and Huntington, Indiana, the location of a large wetland restoration project. Key Informant interviews were conducted to contextualize issues on wetlands, stormwater management, development, and community involvement. Interviews results were used to generate a random sample, multi-county mail survey. Results show that residents find protecting groundwater, green space, and access to clean drinking water very important. Environmental concern is high regarding flooding, development, and water quality. KI’s underestimate resident’s awareness of water quality issues. A proposed model of significant factors in explaining resident’s attitudes towards wetlands includes whether or not they are a farmer, wetland knowledge, well-being, and positive attitudes towards green space and development. This research is unique because the respondents have exposure to wetland areas on a regular basis. Wetlands are highly appreciated and are an important part of the community. There is a fine balance of property rights and pro-conservation attitudes among residents. Future research can explore whatconservation specifically means to people and how their views on property rights shape that meaning. Results from this research can aid management decisions that can be either beneficial or detrimental to the wetland and those who depend on it for a variety of needs.
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management

This study talks about the barriers people with disabilities face today and outlines recent developments aimed at breaking down these barriers. The research was undertaken to determine the attitudes of hospitality and tourism students of the Victoria University of Technology, Footscray Campus, towards people with didsabilities. The research was undertaken before graduation to determine whether these attitudes are any different from other business students of the University. As future managers and industry leaders in tourism and hospitality, their attitudes are important.

It is the aim of this thesis to identify existing gambling trends prior to the establishment of a local casino, and to then assess the consequential effects upon the community. The three communities which comprise the sample population for this study are Keilor, Kew and Geelong. Each of the aforementioned had proposed a casino development for their respective community, and were selected on the basis of their geographic and demographic differences.

This chapter sketches the development of Victoria’s liberal Protestant commitment to lived lay religion, which overlooked conventional distinctions between the sacred and the secular. Victoria and Albert regarded family and the home rather than the church as the locus of religious faith and practice, and sought to advance the identification of God with the laws of His creation. This chapter accordingly discusses Victoria’s relationship to the Christian sacraments, her creation and use of sacred space within royal homes, and her views of God and the natural world. It highlights the appeal of her and Albert’s godly domesticity to a broad Protestant public, while also indicating that Victoria’s hostility to Sabbatarianism and disdain for efforts to avert disease and war through prayer could set her at odds with religious, and particularly with evangelical, opinion.

In the mid-1980s, the impact of three decades of uranium processing near rural Fernald, Ohio, 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati, became the centre of national public controversy. When a series of incidents at the uranium foundry brought to light the years of contamination to the environment and surrounding farmland communities, local citizens’ groups united and demanded a role in determining the plans for cleaning up the site. One citizens’ group, Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health (FRESH), formed in 1984 following reports that nearly 300 pounds of enriched uranium oxide had been released from a dust-collector system, and three off-property wells south of the site were contaminated with uranium. For 22 years, FRESH monitored activities at Fernald and participated in the decision-making process with management and regulators. The job of FRESH ended on 19 January this year when the U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson — flanked by local, state, and national elected officials, and citizen-led environmental watchdog groups including FRESH — officially declared the Fernald Site clean of all nuclear contamination and open to public access. It marked the end of a remarkable turnaround in public confidence and trust that had attracted critical reports from around the world: the Cincinnati Enquirer; U.S. national news programs 60 Minutes, 20/20, Nightline, and 48 Hours; worldwide media outlets from the British Broadcasting Company and Canadian Broadcasting Company; Japanese newspapers; and German reporters. When personnel from Fluor arrived in 1992, the management team thought it understood the issues and concerns of each stakeholder group, and was determined to implement the decommissioning scope of work aggressively, confident that stakeholders would agree with its plans. This approach resulted in strained relationships with opinion leaders during the early months of Fluor’s contract. To forge better relationships, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who owns the site, and Fluor embarked on three new strategies based on engaging citizens and interested stakeholder groups in the decision-making process. The first strategy was opening communication channels with site leadership, technical staff, and regulators. This strategy combined a strong public-information program with two-way communications between management and the community, soliciting and encouraging stakeholder participation early in the decision-making process. Fluor’s public-participation strategy exceeded the “check-the-box” approach common within the nuclear-weapons complex, and set a national standard that stands alone today. The second stakeholder-engagement strategy sprang from mending fences with the regulators and the community. The approach for dispositioning low-level waste was a 25-year plan to ship it off the site. Working with stakeholders, DOE and Fluor were able to convince the community to accept a plan to safely store waste permanently on site, which would save 15 years of cleanup and millions of dollars in cost. The third strategy addressed the potentially long delays in finalizing remedial action plans due to formal public comment periods and State and Federal regulatory approvals. Working closely with the U.S. and Ohio Environmental Protection Agencies (EPA) and other stakeholders, DOE and Fluor were able to secure approvals of five Records of Decision on time – a first for the DOE complex. Developing open and honest relationships with union leaders, the workforce, regulators and community groups played a major role in DOE and Fluor cleaning up and closing the site. Using lessons learned at Fernald, DOE was able to resolve challenges at other sites, including worker transition, labour disputes, and damaged relationships with regulators and the community. It took significant time early in the project to convince the workforce that their future lay in cleanup, not in holding out hope for production to resume. It took more time to repair relationships with Ohio regulators and the local community. Developing these relationships over the years required constant, open communications between site decision makers and stakeholders to identify issues and to overcome potential barriers. Fluor’s open public-participation strategy resulted in stakeholder consensus of five remedial-action plans that directed Fernald cleanup. This strategy included establishing a public-participation program that emphasized a shared-decision making process and abandoned the government’s traditional, non-participatory “Decide, Announce, Defend” approach. Fernald’s program became a model within the DOE complex for effective public participation. Fluor led the formation of the first DOE site-specific advisory board dedicated to remediation and closure. The board was successful at building consensus on critical issues affecting long-term site remediation, such as cleanup levels, waste disposal and final land use. Fluor created innovative public outreach tools, such as “Cleanopoly,” based on the Monopoly game, to help illustrate complex concepts, including risk levels, remediation techniques, and associated costs. These innovative tools helped DOE and Fluor gain stakeholder consensus on all cleanup plans. To commemorate the outstanding commitment of Fernald stakeholders to this massive environmental-restoration project, Fluor donated $20,000 to build the Weapons to Wetlands Grove overlooking the former 136-acre production area. The grove contains 24 trees, each dedicated to “[a] leader(s) behind the Fernald cleanup.” Over the years, Fluor, through the Fluor Foundation, also invested in educational and humanitarian projects, contributing nearly $2 million to communities in southwestern Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Further, to help offset the economic impact of the site’s closing to the community, DOE and Fluor promoted economic development in the region by donating excess equipment and property to local schools and townships. This paper discusses the details of the public-involvement program — from inception through maturity — and presents some lessons learned that can be applied to other similar projects.