The campaign kicks off with an advertisement in today’s NT News, and will be followed up with advertisements, billboards, letter boxing and other publicity targeting all political parties in the lead up to the August 25 2012 NT election.
The first advertisement, ‘C’mon Hendo, Keep Labor’s Promises’ calls on Chief Minister Paul Henderson to honour Labor’s election and policy commitments to:
“Since their election in 2001, NT Labor has promised to introduce land clearing laws, river protection laws and create marine parks. With just nine months until the next Territory election, the Henderson government scores zero out of three on protecting the environment,” said The Wilderness Society’s Northern Australia Campaigner Gavan McFadzean.
“It’s time they delivered on their promises.”
“Labor has been promising for over a decade to safeguard Territory waters in a world-class network of marine parks” said Jess Abrahams, Northern Marine Campaigner with the Australian Marine Conservation Society. “With destructive seabed mining now threatening critical feeding and breeding grounds around the coast, now more than ever we need marine sanctuaries to safeguard our tropical sealife, including our turtles, dolphins and dugongs.”
Director of the Environment Centre NT Stuart Blanch said, “It’s not good enough to promise to protect the environment during an election campaign and then not deliver once you’re elected. How can we trust Labor’s policy commitments in the lead up to next year’s election if they haven’t delivered on their promises so far?”
“The advertising campaign is designed to raise the profile amongst the community of these three key environmental issues, urge NT Labor to deliver on their existing election and policy commitments and the CLP to lift their environmental policy credentials between now and next year’s poll.”
Further comment: Gavan McFadzean m: 0414 754 023 Stuart Blanch m: 0448 887 303
]]>WA Conservation groups today welcomed the release of the draft plan for the new Eighty Mile Beach Marine Park but warned that large scale industrialisation of the region still threatened marine life of the Pilbara and Kimberley.
"With three large marine sanctuaries within the new Eighty Mile Beach Marine Park it brings improved marine protection to important near shore habitats in the Pilbara including the breeding beaches of the threatened Flatback turtle and internationally significant Ramsar wetlands. It is critical this level of protection be maintained or strengthened in the final plan,” said Jenita Enevoldsen, Marine Campaigner for The Wilderness Society WA
“We commend the Barnett Government for hearing the calls of marine scientists and the broader community for larger marine sanctuaries to protect our unique and precious marine life, said Tim Nicol, Marine Coordinator at Conservation Council of WA. Marine sanctuaries have been shown by science to protect threatened marine life and help fish stocks to recover. Less than 1% of WA’s State and Federal waters are currently protected in marine sanctuaries.”
However, the new marine park plan comes just days after the announcement of another major LNG development for the Pilbara and amid the continuing campaign against industrialization of the Kimberley Coast.
Conservation groups are also still waiting to hear if the proposed Camden Sound marine park will be improved to provide adequate marine sanctuary protection and are concerned at the lack of protection offered to near shore waters in the Commonwealth Government’s plans for new marine parks in the North West.
“This draft plan is a step forward for the future of marine parks in WA. However, with several large-scale industrial developments on the horizon- including recent oil and gas releases just off 80 Mile Beach -much more needs to be done to protect our precious North-Western marine environment,” said Emma Belfield, Acting Director of Environs Kimberley
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Futher comment:
Tim Nicol - 0422 235 774
Jenita Enevoldsen - 0405 941 500
Nearly 30 000 hectares of forest will be wiped out, a pristine river will be destroyed, and a new species of crab will be severely threatened if Rio Tinto’s massive new bauxite mine is approved on Cape York Peninsula. The Wilderness Society has highlighted these outcomes in a submission into Rio Tinto’s “South of Embley Project” Environmental Impact Statement.
In publicly releasing its submission today, The Wilderness Society has pinpointed the significant threats the mine poses to the environment, and calls on Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke to reject approval of the mine.
“Bauxite mining is one of the most destructive forms of mining in the world, and this new Rio Tinto mine will be no different,” said Gavan McFadzean, spokesperson for The Wilderness Society.
“The mining process involves completely bulldozing vast areas of native forest, piling up the carnage and burning it, before digging out up to ten metres of the ground layer to ship away for off-site processing. The result is environmental annihilation, with forests and wildlife habitat incinerated, and local water flows significantly altered. The damage is so great that restoration of the site after mining is always a complete failure.”
The Wilderness Society was alarmed to find that in addition to the serious landscape-wide destruction proposed for Rio Tinto’s new bauxite mine, a new freshwater crab species (Austrothelphusa sp.) was discovered in a creek on the project site, yet Rio Tinto still plans to mine very close to its habitat.
“The EIS reveals that a freshwater crab species new to western science has been discovered in the Winda Winda Creek catchment. Incredibly, Rio Tinto still plans to mine in this area and threaten this new species, so greedy are they to make an extra buck. The crab hasn’t even yet been assessed for protection under federal environment laws, which would likely list the species as endangered and potentially stall the approval of the mine,” said Mr McFadzean.
The Wilderness Society also strongly criticised Rio Tinto’s plans to dam Norman Creek, starving the river system of up to 50% of its natural flows.
“Rio Tinto already has water supply from their existing dam and groundwater bores at their Weipa mine. The only reason they are proposing a dam for this new mine further south is to avoid the extra costs of transporting the bauxite a mere 50km to Weipa. This is the company that posted a $14.25 billion profit in the 2010 calendar year – it is ridiculous that our environment will be destroyed to continue to fill the pockets of this mega-corporation,” said Mr McFadzean.
Rio Tinto wants to begin mining in about 2014 and mine the area for 40 years.
A copy of The Wilderness Society's submission into the EIS can be viewed here.
]]>Some of the most vulnerable marine life in Australia, including dugongs and the newly recognised Australian snubfin dolphin, are at risk of being killed by fishing nets, oil and gas drilling and mining operations, following the Federal Government’s failure to propose large sanctuaries for marine life across Australia’s north.
Conservation groups from the recently formed Save Our Tropical Sealife campaign said today that the Federal Government also risked letting its biggest ever conservation victory slip through its fingers if it failed to create large sanctuary areas for marine life.
The Federal Government today released draft marine reserves for the north and north-west waters of Australia, which covers a vast area of Commonwealth waters between Kalbarri on Western Australia’s mid-north coast to the tip of Cape York Peninsula.
The Wilderness Society’s Felicity Wishart said the Government’s proposal failed to fully protect iconic sites including the shallow waters of the Ningaloo-Pilbara, the humpback whale breeding grounds of the Kimberley, the coral reefs and canyons of the Top End and the sea grass meadows of the Gulf from oil and gas drilling, sea-bed mining and overfishing.
“This means that less than 12 per cent of the Commonwealth’s north-west and 3 per cent of northern waters will be fully protected - still far less than what we have protected on land.”
The Save our Tropical Sealife Alliance (including The Wilderness Society, Australian Marine Conservation Society, Environment Centre NT, Environs Kimberley, WWF Australia and Pew Environment Group) is calling for critical feeding and breeding areas to be protected in a network of large marine sanctuaries.
“With increasing human pressure on the world’s tropical marine environments, the science is clear about what is needed to save our marine life and fish stocks – a scientifically based network of large marine sanctuaries,” said Jess Abrahams from the Australian Marine Conservation Society.
“Australia’s tropical seas are among the most biologically significant on the planet and are some of the last remaining healthy, large tropical marine ecosystems left on Earth.”
Stuart Blanch from the Environment Centre NT said, “Effectively protected in sanctuaries, the region could become an important refuge for six of the world’s seven species of threatened sea turtles, globally vulnerable dugongs, the Australian Snubfin dolphin as well as migratory humpback whales.”
“During the 90 day consultation period we will be urging Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke to reconsider the strong scientific case for marine protection and significantly increase the number and size of sanctuaries for our tropical sea life.”
Emma Belfield from Environs Kimberley said, “The reef systems off the Kimberley coast are akin to the Great Barrier Reef and are in better condition.”
“This proposal does a better job of protecting the oil and gas industry in the Kimberley than it does our vulnerable marine life. On top of that, the tropical sea life of vast swathes of ocean including Ningaloo, the Pilbara, the Kimberley, Top End and Gulf of Carpentaria remain exposed to destructive fishing practices".
Paul Gamblin from WWF-Australia said, “We are calling on supporters from across the country to take a stand for our tropical marine environment. The oil and gas industry has already claimed huge parts of the region’s wildlife habitat in exploration and production leases, pushing into deeper water and riskier operations, like off Ningaloo Reef. This is the last chance we have of stopping Australia’s tropical marine environment becoming almost entirely an industrial park.”
Further comment contact:
Felicity Wishart m: 0408 222 746
Jess Abrahams m: 0407 043 457
Paul Gamblin m: 0410 221 508
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