Land-clearing national issue

Two of our more serious environmental issues affecting land-management in Australia, are land-clearing and weeds (both listed ie declared and environmental - not yet declared).   Some might even go so far as to say that Outdoor Rooms are a type of land-clearing, on the domestic scale. Perhaps this is a tad extreme, and we greenies have to avoid being too extreme.

But on the technical level, we can be mindful of what potentially gets cleared or disturbed when you build an outdoor room:

1. Top-soil -  see post of 31st October
2. Trees and plants
3. Biodiversity 
4. Potential for a carbon sink - see post of 7th September
5. Potential for cleaning of ground-water and storm-water - see post of 16th September
6. Rain-forests if imported illegal timber is used - see post of 8th October. 

Also, building outdoors can sit oddly with ol'fashioned gardening principles for biodiversity and 'martha gardner' (pardon the pun) type remedies.  I can't see antidotes against pests, snail and slugs such as crushed up eggshells, beer traps, coffee grains, twigs for small reptiles being used around the  built up garden.  But maybe, I stand to be corrected.

Outdoor rooms are definitely all about being tidy, and minimalist to match the latest stream-lined architectural style.