Help save marine wildlife in Darwin Harbour!

Darwin Harbour is home to amazing marine wildlife that other Australian capital cities can only dream about. Where else can you spot three species of coastal dolphins as you cycle around the foreshore,

Indo Pacific Humpback Dolphin - Darwin Harbour, photo: Jim Smith

kayak quietly behind a mother dugong with calf, or spot four species of threatened marine turtles from the ferry on your way to work? No where!

Now these attributes are under threat from a massive gas plant planned for the middle of the harbour – and the Northern Territory Government is doing everything it can to make sure it gets built.

INPEX impacts

Japanese oil & gas giant INPEX wants to blast a rock bar for its shipping channel three times a day for over a year. By its own admission these blasts would create a kill zone that would kill dolphins within a 500m radius, and injure any within 1250m.

LNG plant in Darwin Harbour – from INPEX EIS

INPEX arrogantly says the dolphins, dugong and turtles occur across much of Northern Australia, so even if it killed some in Darwin Harbour, or permanently excluded them due to underwater noise pollution, the impacts would only by minor.

Unsustainable

The gas plant will also increase Australia’s carbon emissions by 1.2%, clear hundreds of hectares of rainforest, mangroves and woodland on the harbour’s edge, and smother coral reefs and mangroves by dredging 17 million cubic metres of mud.

How you can help

Email a submission on the EIS and say the project should not be approved by the Commonwealth Environment Minister and Northern Territory Government until INPEX agrees to change the course of its shipping channel to avoid blasting Darwin’s dolphins, build a longer jetty to cut the volume of dredging, fund the creation of new National Parks around the harbour, and fund a multi-hundred-million dollar carbon fund to offset 100% of the 7 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions it will produce.

Make a submission

Email your submission by COB Friday 10th September 2010 to inpex_eis@inpex.com.au

More information

For more information on the project and issues to raise in your submission, please visit the Environment Centre NT to download a 2-page summary document or view a PowerPoint presentation.  The draft environmental impact statement (EIS) can also be downloaded here.