‘Tarkine Tasmania: wild, unique, diverse’
(A photographic essay of exploration into this unique wilderness)
Images and text courtesy of Jenny Archer and Jen Evans
Purchase book: ^http://www.tarkineimages.com.au/purchase.html
[$5 from every copy sold will be donated to the Tarkine National Coalition – an organisation committed to protecting the Tarkine]
.
The unique Tarkine
.
Tasmania’s Tarkine Wilderness is one of the few remaining wild temperate rainforest regions left on the planet!
‘The Tarkine‘ is named after the Tarkiner people who traditionally inhabited the region from 30,000 years ago. It stretches from Tasmania’s wild coastline to the west, the Arthur River to the north, the Pieman River to the south, and the Murchison Highway to the east.
The Tarkine contains remarkable natural and cultural values, including one of the world’s most significant remaining tracts of temperate rainforest. The Tarkine covers an expansive 447,000 hectare (4,470 km2) wilderness region of recognised World Heritage significance up in the North-West corner of Tasmania, containing the largest temperate (Myrtle-Beech) rainforest in Australia.
Tasmania’ Tarkine Wilderness is indeed ‘wild, unique and diverse‘.
Myrtle Beech (Nothofagus cunninghamii)
An evergreen tree native to Victoria and Tasmania, but hardly any now left in Victoria.Typically grow to 30–40 metres (98–130 feet) tall
.
The Tarkine is the largest surviving region of Nothofagus Forest left on the planet
.
The Tarkine compared internationally
.
‘The Tarkine‘ is the same size as internationally well-respected national parks:
New Zealand’s Kahurangi National Park (4,520 km2)
United States’ Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona (4,927 km2)
Indonesia’s Tanjung Puting National Park in southern Borneo (4,150 km2)
Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park (4,528 km2) …per map below:
Scotland has a Tarkine wilderness equivalent – ‘Cairngorms’ .. respected as a National Park
.
Rare ancient Caledonian Forest in Cairngorms National Park, Scotland
(the same size as Tasmania’s Tarkine)
The Cairngorms National Park is special because it contains the best arctic-alpine landforms, habitats and species in Britain. This is one of the few places where wild nature is so easy to see and many of the plants and animals living here are at the extreme edges of their geographical ranges.
Compare TheCairngorms with The Tarkine of a similar size. The Tarkine is a relict from the ancient super-continent, Gondwanaland, characterised by highly diverse ecosystems from giant ancient forests to huge sand-dunes, sweeping beaches, rugged mountains and pristine river systems. [Sources: ^http://tarkine.org/, ^http://www.corinna.com.au/Story/Tarkine.aspx]
The Tarkine has more than 400 species of diverse flora, including a range of native orchids and many rare and threatened species. There are more than 250 vertebrate species of fauna, 50 of which are rare, threatened and vulnerable.
These include:
Spotted-tailed Quoll
Tasmanian Devil
Eastern Pygmy Possum
Wedge-tailed Eagle
White-breasted Sea Eagle
Grey Goshawk (white morph)
Giant Freshwater Lobster
Orange-bellied Parrot (on the brink of extinction)
.
A now ‘Endangered‘ Tasmanian Devil captured on motion-sensitive camera
Walkers join forces with conservationists through Tasmania’s remote Tarkine rainforest to help bring the Tasmanian Devil back from the brink of extinction.
[Source: ‘Tourists to use cameras to help save Tasmanian Devil’ by Dominic Bates, The Guardian (UK), guardian.co.uk, 20120203, Read More: ^http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/03/tourist-cameras-save-tasmanian-devil]
(Photo courtesy of Tarkine Trails, Feb 2012)
.
The Cairngorms are similarly ancient, a glacial landscape formed 40 million years before the last Ice Age. The area also features a rare ancient woodland, the Caledonian Forest, as well as unique alpine semi-tundra moorland habitat.
The moorland provides important habitat to many rare plants, birds including Ospreys, breeding Ptarmigan, Dotterel, Snow Bunting, Golden Eagle, Ring Ouzel, and Red Grouse, with Snowy Owl, Twite, Purple Sandpiper and Lapland Bunting seen on occasion. The Caledonian Forest supports rare birds such as the endangered Capercaillie and endemic Scottish Crossbill (found nowhere else on the planet), the Parrot Crossbill and the Crested Tit.
The Scottish Crossbill..unique to the Cairngorms
.
The Cairngorms is also home to:
Red Deer
Roe Deer
Mountain Hare
Pine Marten
Red Squirrel
Wild Cat
Otter
as well as the only herd of Reindeer in the British Isles..
Meanwhile, The Tarkine is home to more than 130 different species of birds during the seasons throughout its variety of habitat types and landscapes. This includes eleven of Tasmania’s twelve endemic birds. The two migratory species that breed only in Tasmania, the ‘Endangered‘ Swift Parrot, and the ‘Critically Endangered‘ Orange-bellied Parrot, forage in the Tarkine.
Orange–bellied Parrot (Neophema chrysogaster)
critically dependent upon The Tarkine
In 2010 it was ranked by the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Services as one of the world’s rarest and most endangered species and “on the brink of extinction“
.
Orange-bellied Parrot numbers down to about 20 individuals in existence!
Watch ABC News ^Video (February 2012)
The Orange-bellied Parrot breeds in south-west Tasmania and migrates along the west coast (The Tarkine) and forages on coastal plants. Consequently the Tarkine’s coastal vegetation is extremely important habitat. The endangered Swift Parrot breeds predominantly in south-east Tasmania and feeds on the nectar from the Tasmanian Blue Gum, and in the Tarkine, the Swift Parrot forages on these trees during the post-breeding dispersal and migration season.
The Tarkine’s bird species richness is correlated to the Tarkine’s rich habitat diversity; the sea, coastal shores, freshwater wetlands, streams and estuaries, heathland-moorland mosaic of the coastal plains, woodland and open forests, wet eucalypt forests, mixed forest and extensive rainforest.’
The Cairngorms ecological values were recognised and protected as a National Park (NP) by the new Scottish Parliament in 2003. [Read More: ^www.cairngormscampaign.org]
But unlike the Cairngorms NP, Kahurangi NP, Grand Canyon NP and Tanjung Puting NP, just less than 5% of The Tarkine is protected as a National Park. Within the Tarkine region’s 4,470 km2, recognised as bounded by the coast to the west, the Arthur River to the north, the Pieman River to the south, and the Murchison Highway to the east, only Savage River National Park (180km2) , less than 5% of The Tarkine, provides any formal ecological protection.
The ‘Donaldson River Nature Recreational Reserve’, the ‘Meredith Range Recreational Reserve’ and the Arthur Pieman Conservation Area within The Tarkine offer no formal ecological protection and are open to mechanised recreational abuse. See map below. Propaganda by vested interests would have many believe that these reserves offer sufficient ecological protection, but such reserves permit multiple uses – motorised vehicular access including off-road, as well as road making, logging, burning, mining, poaching of wildlife, fishing, farming and tourism development – so effectively offering no ecological protection.
[Read the propaganda in The (Launceston) Examiner newspaper: ‘Mining heritage’, 20110320, ^http://www.examiner.com.au/news/local/news/environment/mining-heritage/2108235.aspx?storypage=0]. The Examiner threatened: “If successful the campaign of the Tarkine National Coalition will perpetrate an injustice on local people leading to negative impacts on both the Tasmanian economy and the quality of life of its people.”
What scaremongering crock! But then who are the readership and who are the sources of advertising revenue of The Examiner?
Savage River National Park is described by the Tasmanian Government’s Parks and Wildlife Service as follows:
.
‘Savage River National Park is a wilderness region in the north west of Tasmania. The park protects the largest contiguous area of cool temperate rainforest surviving in Australia and acts as a refuge for a rich primitive flora, undisturbed river catchments, high quality wilderness, old growth forests, geodiversity and natural landscape values.
The western portion of the park includes the most extensive basalt plateaux in Tasmania that still retains a wholly intact forest ecosystem. The upper Savage River, which lends the park its name, runs through a pristine, rainforested river gorge system. The park contains habitat for a diverse rainforest fauna and is a stronghold for a number of vertebrate species which have suffered population declines elsewhere in Tasmania and mainland Australia.
The parks remoteness from human settlement and mechanised access, its undisturbed hinterland rivers and extensive rainforest, pristine blanket bog peat soils and isolated, elevated buttongrass moorlands ensure the wilderness character of the park. Like the vast World Heritage listed Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area to its south, the area is one of the few remaining temperate wilderness areas left on Earth.
Unlike other national parks, Savage River National Park remains inaccessible. In keeping with its wilderness character, there are no facilities and no roads or mechanised access to the park. However, the park is surrounded by the Savage River Regional Reserve, in which a number of rough 4WD tracks provide limited access. To the north of the reserve, a number of State Forest Reserves can be accessed by standard vehicles. They offer an insight into the magnificent rainforest ecosystem that lies to the southeast within the Savage River National Park.’
But the above description is only a tiny snapshot of The Tarkine
The Tarkine still is undoubtedly one of the World’s great wild places
Giant Eucalyptus regnans of The Tarkine (click image to enlarge)
.
The Tarkine’s World Heritage significance
.
The Tarkine is a region of recognised World Heritage significance. It’s wilderness, vast rainforests, wildlife, landscapes and unique Aboriginal values are outstanding on a world scale.
However, the Tarkine is not protected as a National Park nor listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Only a fraction, less than 5%, of the Tarkine region is fully protected as a National Park. This means that many of the Tarkine’s outstanding natural and cultural values, are in dire peril due to repeated exploitation demands from industrial logging and more recently industrial mining.
These industrial threats mean that The Tarkine ecology could be lost forever!
Logging legacy in The Tarkine
.
Attempts have been made to have The Tarkine listed not only as a National Park, but also as a World Heritage Listed Area.
Local conservation champions of The Tarkine, the Tarkine National Coalition (TNC) have produced an extensive proposal that would protect the Tarkine and its unique values as a National Park and World Heritage area, for all people, for all time, just like Kakadu NP and Cairngorms NP.
The Tarkine would become recognised as one of Australia’s great iconic wild places, allowing locals, visitors, walkers, photographers, scientists, the Aboriginal community and tourists alike to see, visit and experience this unique place.
A number of prominent bodies have recognised the World Heritage significance of the Tarkine:
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (1990)
The Tasmanian Department of Parks, Wildlife & Heritage (1990)
The Australian government recognised the Tarkine’s outstanding national significance through listing the Tarkine on the register of the National Estate Leading Tasmanian & Australian environment groups (including The Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation, amongst a wide range of others)
The Australian Senate formally and unanimously recognised the World Heritage significance of the Tarkine (2007).
For the Tarkine to be inscribed on the World Heritage list, it would need to be formally put forward to UNESCO (the United Nations Body) by the Australian Government. Yet, there has been a failure by successive Environment Minister’s to instruct the Australian Heritage Council to commence assessment of the World Heritage values contained within the Tarkine.
The natural ecological wealth of Tasmania’s Tarkine Wilderness
(Arthur River rainforest, Photo by Ted Mead)
.
On 11 December 2009, Australia’s Environment Minister (then Peter Garrett MP) entered The Tarkine in Australia’s National Heritage List under the emergency listing provisions of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. This emergency listing lapsed in December 2010.
The Australian Heritage Council has since completed a preliminary assessment of The Tarkine and found that The Tarkine might have one or more National Heritage values. It is now up to Australia’s Environment Minister (currently Tony Burke MP) to decide whether The Tarkine, or areas within it, should be listed of Australia’s National Heritage List. So, the fate of this magnificent wild region, effectively Australia’s Amazon, rests with one man, Tony Burke MP.
Despite The Tarkine’s many unique ecological values, there are some who chose to ignore and dismiss The Tarkine for their own self-serving gain. Industrial Miners are seeking to plunder The Tarkine for minerals below ground. If these miners get their way, they will open cut The Tarkine and irreversibly destroy it. The Tarkine’s natural future as a wild region and its dependent wildlife hang in the balance.
Currently limited mining occurs within parts of the Tarkine. The most significant mining operations within the Tarkine region is the Savage River Iron Ore Mine, which is currently managed by Grange Resources, and the Hellyer Mine managed by Bass Metals.
Now there are another 10 new mines proposed to destroy The Tarkine!
.
Tasmanian Government’s mining leases (Dec, 2012) threaten to destroy most of The Tarkine
.
Nine of the planned ten mines are nearby Savage River ‘open-cut’ style mines. The Tasmanian Government under the watch of Labor’s Bryan Green MP has overseen its Tasmanian Mineral Council grant some 56 exploration licences over the Tarkine to 27 different industrial mining companies.
Savage River Mine location map..already in The Tarkine
.
Savage River Open Cut Mine..a harbinger for The Tarkine… landscape absolute anhiliation
.
Savage River – a savage scar in The Tarkine..courtesy of industrial miner Grange Resources
(Google Earth – click image to enlarge)
.
Venture Minerals‘ proposed Tin Mine at Mount Lindsay (2011)
.
West Australian headquartered Venture Minerals has submitted mining permits to the Tasmanian Government to allow it to develop a tin/tungsten open cut mine at Mount Lindsay, so it can sell Tasmanian resource wealth to China. It will extend over 36,000 hectares (360 km2), creating a permanent scar through The Tarkine, roughly an area the size of the Tamar Valley from Launceston to Georgetown.
Mount Lindsay Tin Mine Plans (Venture Minerals)
.
“The Mount Lindsay mine is a Pilbara style open cut super pit that will devastate a large area of the Tarkine rainforest wilderness within an existing reserve. The 3.5 x 3km disturbance area is the equivalent of 420 Melbourne Cricket Grounds and a 220m depth being over twice the height of the Sydney Harbour Bridge,” said Tarkine National Coalition spokesperson Scott Jordan.
“It is completely inconsistent with the protection of the Tarkine, and Minister Burke must act immediately to ensure that the Tarkine has the highest level of protection going into this assessment.”
Venture Minerals plans to rely on Tasmanian hydro power (probably at a government subsidised discount and so further reducing the power available to Tasmanian residents). Tasmania’s precious natural heritage is pillaged to make West Australian and foreign corporate investors richer.
Shree Minerals proposed open-cut mine at Nelson Bay River (2011)
.
Shree Minerals wants an open cut mine on the upper reaches of Nelson Bay River. According to the Tasmanian Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), Shree Minerals Ltd has proposed to develop an open pit magnetitie/hematite mine and processing plant near Nelson Bay River, approximatley 7 kilometres east of Temma in northwest Tasmania. The proposed mine will target 4 million tonnes of the resource over a 10 year period producing 150,000 tonnes of product per year.
Shree Minerals is an Indian company based in Madhya Pradesh in central India [Read More: ^http://www.shreemineralsandfuels.com/] So Tasmania’s precious natural heritage is pillaged to make Indian billionaires richer.
It has found to give scant regard to protecting fragile ecology in The Tarkine. Shree Minerals’ Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Nelson Bay River open cut iron ore mine as a mismatch of omissions, flawed assumptions and misrepresentations, according to the Tarkine National Coalition.
Key data on endangered orchids is missing
Projections on impacts on Tasmanian devil and Spotted tailed quoll are based on flawed and fanciful data
The EIS produced by the company as part of the Commonwealth environmental assessments has failed to produce a report relating to endangered and critically endangered orchid populations in the vicinity of the proposed open cut mine. The soil borne Mychorizza fungus is highly succeptible to changes in hydrology, and is essential to the germination of the area’s native orchids which cannot exist without Mychorizza. Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke included this report as a requirement in the project’s EIS guidelines issued in June 2011.
Shree Minerals have avoided producing scientific claiming that its proposed 220 metre deep hole extending 1km long will have no impact on hydrologyor on cthe adjacent Nelson Bay River.
Data relating to projections of Tasmanian devil roadkill from mine related traffic are flawed. The company has used a January-February traffic surveys as a current traffic baseline which skews the data due to the higher level of tourist, campers and shackowner during the traditional summer holiday season. DIER data indicates that there is a doubling of vehicles on these road sections between October and January. The company also asserted an assumed level of mine related traffic that is substantially lower than their own expert produced Traffic Impact Assessment. The roadkill assumptions were made on an additional 82 vehicles per day in year one, and 34 vehicles per day in years 2-10, while the figures the Traffic Impact Assessment specify 122 vehicles per day in year one, and 89 vehicles per day in ongoing years.“When you apply the expert Traffic Impact Assessment data and the DIER’s data for current road use, the increase in traffic is 329% in year one and 240% in years 2-10 which contradicts the company’s flawed projections of 89% and 34%”. “This increase of traffic will, on the company’s formulae, result in up to 32 devil deaths per year, not the 3 per year in presented in the EIS.”
“Shree Minerals either is too incompetent to understand it’s own expert reports, or they have set out to deliberately mislead the Commonwealth and State environmental assessors.”
Nelson Bay River flows through pristine wildernessIndustrial Miners just don’t get it!
[Source: http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au (Nelson Bay Report on water quality monitoring – >Read Report]
.
In 2011, a visit to the Shree Minerals’ Nelson Bay River proposed mine site in the Arthur Pieman Conservation Area has discovered that the mining company has failed to cap at least nine drill holes, creating risks to the resident population of disease free Tasmanian devils.
Failing to cap drill holes is a serious breach of both the Mineral Exploration Code of Practice and the operating conditions of their Exploration License. If Tasmanian devils are found to have perished in the holes, the company may be in breach of the Threatened Species Protection Act 1995.
Shree Minerals carving up wilderness across The Tarkine, even before mining commences
.
Even before actual mining commences, mineral exploration causes its own destructive impacts upon fragile ecosystems:
New access roads are bulldozed through pristine wilderness to multiple exploration and drilling sites.
Native vegetation and dependent ecology is destroyed as gridlines are bulldozed
Fragile top soils are removed
Soil erosion occurs at drills sites as soon as it rains, and rainfall is particularly intense across western Tasmania
The eroded soil becomes sediment and chokes and pollutes nearby watercourses and further downstream
Exposed soils also erode into watercourses, and without topsoil the native vegetation is unable to recover
Rubbish is dumped
Spills of chemicals and pollutants from drilling contaminate crystal pure watercourses and permeate into ground water and aquifers
Spread of pests including plant diseases such as myrtle wilt is exacerbated
Drill holes into ground water disturb and alter aquifers causing unknown impacts particularly in karst areas, which are prevalent across The Tarkine
.
These impacts are ignored by industrial miners.
Industrial Miners eco-raping the fragile Tarkine
Wam, bam thank you mam!
.
Tasmania’s Minerals Council – one eyed to pillage
.
The Tasmanian Minerals Council exists so that Tasmania may be mined. Irrespective of what values are on the surface, the Tasmanian Minerals Council sees Tasmania as a quarry to be exploited. If it is not mining Tasmania, or talking about current and planned mines, or encouraging more mining of Tasmania, then it simply isn’t doing its job putting its very existence into question. Its mandate is one eyed.
Just as Forestry Tasmania is the industry driver of logging of Tasmania’s native forests, the Tasmanian Minerals Council is the industry driver of mining Tasmania’s native forests – same destructive outcome, just different type of industrial exploitation. Both are tacit Tasmanian government departments only with corporatised names and structures. See a map of Tasmania through the eyes of the Tasmanian Minerals Council below:
Quarry Map of Tasmania
.
Tasmanian Minerals Council describes itself as “the representative organisation for the exploration, mining and mineral processing industries in Tasmania“. It counts among its members all of the main mines and mineral processing operations. So basically it is the Tasmanian Government’s Department of Mining, but named a ‘council‘ in order to convey a public impression of being an industry body, whereas it is just a policy arm of government.
And the board of directors are all executives employed by industrial miners. They each have vested interests in mining Tasmania for their own company benefits, and collectively to maximise the exploitation of Tasmania for mining. It is cosy chronyism, and accountable to the broader Tasmanian community.
Terry LongTasmanian Minerals Council current CEO
Capable of seeing Tasmania only through miner’s subterranean eyes
“You wouldn’t want to contemplate a Northern Tasmania economy without Temco (an industrial manganese-alloy smelter operation) and Bell Bay Aluminium”
To justify its existence the Tasmanian Minerals Council thinks it and mining Tasmania is very important.
“The minerals industry is the cornerstone of Tasmania’s economy. It is important to the lives of every Tasmanian and brings with it a rich economic and cultural heritage and a capacity to ensure a prosperous future for Tasmania.”
.
The Tasmanian Labor Party (currently in government) and the Tasmanian Liberal Party both see mining as important to Tasmania because of the mining royalty revenue derived by the Tasmanian Government. Of course it is about money.
To be politically correct, the Tasmanian Minerals Council professes a catchphrase: “promoting the development of safe, profitable and sustainable mineral sector operating within Tasmania“. It may be sustainable, but sustainable for industrial miners, not Tasmania’s ecology.
It sees itself playing a role in developing the world’s natural resources to supply the demands of modern society, by digging up more of Tasmania. It says that it recognises modern societal expectations of good environmental management and claims that it is ensuring environmental impacts are minimised. It promises that ongoing problems from old mining operations in Tasmania will be rectified if possible. It talks about following a ‘Code for Environmental Management‘ and about observing a set of principles and encourages continual improvement for environmental performance, and indeed broadened the Code to encompass goals and actions that are more representative of a sustainable development framework.
Wonderful motherhood stuff, except the mining reality across Tasmania is completely different.
2011: Sludge from the Aberfoyle Mine runs into the river at Luina (Savage River National Park)..in The Tarkine
(Photo by Peter Sims, Fairfax)
Queenstown’s sulphuric acid legacy of copper mining
..no plans to rehabilitate the moonscape.
.
The confluence of the King River and Queen River, a few years ago.
Orange-coloured heavy metal toxins from Queenstown and Mt Lyell copper mining continue to flow into Macquarie Harbour.
No effort is made by the Tasmanian Minerals Council to rehabilitate these wild rivers.
Says the Council: “It was established well before the understandings and knowledge we have now, and the practice we expect today. The legacy from the old surface workings will be carried for a long time..”
And this council want more mines in The Tarkine?
‘Past damage caused from mining around Queenstown was a product of its times, although present and future generations live with its legacy. Historical practice is not modern practice. Mt Lyell Mine’s holocaust landscape legacy is testament to a past that did not have the technological knowledge or environmental vision we have today. The economic imperative was the main consideration.’
[Source: A mining propaganda brochure produced by The Tasmanian Mineral Council in 2004 entitled ‘Wilderness, Rivers and Mines – The West Coast Experience‘, ^http://www.tasminerals.com.au/west-coast.pdf]
What has changed? Nothing.
.
Tasmanian Minerals Council – ‘Group-Serving Bias’ Syndrome
.
Head in the ground, the Tasmanian Minerals Council is functionally fixed on the view that Tasmania exists so that it man be mined for profit.
The Tasmanian Minerals Council and its mining fraternity suffer from Group-Serving Bias – the tendency to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to the interests of miners, while auto-dismissing conservationists’ ecological concerns. They see themselves as unaccountable to the Tasmanian public – only to the government and mining vested interests.
The plethora of evidence showing the mining industries destructive impacts on the natural landscape and irreversible harm caused to wildlife and its habitat are ignored by industrial miners and the Tasmanian Minerals Council. The devastating moonscape and dead river legacies of mining across Tasmania are conveniently dismissed by the Tasmanian Minerals Council as ‘history’.
Those careered into the exploitative cultures of Industrial Logging and Industrial Mining, ignorant of Ecology, fail to respect vital and rare natural values even when immersed in a pristine and rare region like The Tarkine.
Why?
Industrialists during their working lives culturally learn a perception bias to dismiss Nature not as integrated Natural Assets, but as untapped Resources waiting to be exploited and profited for industrial gain.
This is an Industrial World View that emanated out of the Industrial Revolution in early 18th Century Britain. Industrialism has become synonymous with Human Progress and has exponentially grown into what has become known as 20th Century global multinational industrialism. Multinational Industrialism is all about large scale efficient exploitation of resources – Natural or Human in order to maximise self-serving interests. On a local level, this translates into exploitation. The Industrial World View is locally destructive, selfish, arrogant and short-sighted. The Tasmanian Minerals Council continues as a legacy of that time..
Scott Jordan of Tarkine National Coalition at the so-called “rehabilitated” tailings dam at a tin mine in The Tarkine.
.. would mining executives drink this brown toxic, acidic, heavy metal water?
This is the Tasmanian Mineral Council being ‘sustainable‘ – they just don’t get it!
.
Tasmanian Mineral Council’s public image spin-doctoring claims that the Tasmanian mining industry did not have a good history when it came to good environmental management. Environmental awareness began to rise around the world in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Until then, the environmental performance of both industry and individuals was often poor, when measured against today’s standards.
Crap!
The Tasmanian Minerals Council does not recognise The Tarkine. Instead, it sees the west coast of Tasmania being “world famous for its geology and mineralisation and world class mineral deposits lie in an arc of volcanic lavas from Low Rocky Point in Tasmania’s South West, northwards through the great mining areas of Mt Lyell, the Dundas mineral field, Henty, Zeehan mineral field, Renison Bell, Rosebery, Tullah, Que River and Hellyer then eastwards to the Moina mineral field near SheffieldSuper…”
What Tarkine? What forests, where?
This year, the Tasmanian Minerals Council encouraged by the Labor Party’s pro-industrialist, Bryan Green MP, is ramping up mining activity, particularly in The Tarkine. Bryan Green is currently Tasmania’s Deputy Premier and Minister for Primary Industries, Water, Energy, Resources, Local Government, Planning, and Racing.
Bryan Green and Tasmanian Minerals Council are in a froth at present with ‘almost 80 companies spending a record $38.7 million last year looking for the mines of tomorrow’. Drill rigs are humming on many of the 194 exploration licences held by these companies and another 15 licences are pending approval’ – reports the Hobart Mercury newspaper.
Spending on exploration has now rebounded to above pre-global financial crisis levels and several projects have progressed to the point where new mining jobs are on the horizon.
Mining hopefuls are shoring up iron and tin deposits on the West Coast, while others are looking deeper into coal proposals at Fingal and silica projects at Maydena.
Venture Minerals is progressing its iron and iron, tungsten and tin mine at Mount Lindsay outside Burnie and Shree Minerals is working to get its iron ore mine running at Nelson Bay River, in the Tarkine.
Shree Minerals is one of about 20 companies with their eyes set firmly on the mining potential in the Tarkine, as conservationists are working to have the area protected through a Natural Heritage listing. Ultimately, green groups want the area to become a national park, which would stop mining development in its tracks.
At Zeehan, Melbourne-based company Stellar Resources is spending $6 million on a year-long drilling program as it progresses its plans to construct a $108-million tin mine and processing plant.
Stellar Resources chief executive Peter Blight said the company hoped to move into construction in 2014 and start producing tin concentrate in 2015. He said the company was excited by its Heemskirk Tin project which it took on as a solo venture last year.
The area has been investigated for its mineral potential before first by the West Coast’s mining pioneers and more recently by Aberfoyle. When Western Metals took over Aberfoyle, the Zeehan tin project sat in the bottom of a drawer.
But Mr Blight said early drilling and scoping studies looked promising and he expected to be working on financing the project by the end of next year.
Demand for tin continues to increase as the world shuns lead solder. Right now, there is a 70,000-tonne gap between global tin demand and supply.
When developed, the Heemskirk project would produce almost 4000 tonnes of tin concentrate a year and be only the second tin mine in Australia.
The other, Renison Bell, is just 18km away from Zeehan.’
African Elephant at Franklin Zoo & Wildlife Sanctuary
situated outside the town of Tuakau near Auckland, New Zealand.
Its wildlife veterinarian surgeon (the late) Dr. Helen Schofield stands in front.
[Ed. Note elephant’s tusks have been previously sawn off by a circus] (Photo by Associated Press, 20091220)
[Source: ^http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/ca-sanctuary-says-killer-elephant-still-welcome-1.3684690]
.
Last Wednesday afternoon (20120425) New Zealand wildlife veterinarian surgeon, Dr. Helen Schofield, was tragically crushed to death by an African Elephant who sat on her at Franklin Zoo & Wildlife Sanctuary near Auckland, according to emergency officials and reports.
Reports say the female elephant was trying to protect the vet after the elephant got a fright and wrapped her trunk around the vet, before going down, killing the vet. [Ed. This suggests that it was an accident caused by fright, and not the intention of the elephant to kill the vet]. Emergency services say the woman died at the zoo/sanctuary at around 4.30pm local time.
What is significant is that this 39-year-old African elephant was formerly used and abused in circus entertainment (Loritz as well as Webers), where she had lived shackled for 28 years with no other elephants. The circus had not surprisingly named the elephant ‘Jumbo‘.
Same elephant back in 2009, named ‘Jumbo’, tethered to Loritz Circus trailer for 28 years
African elephants in the wild live up to 70 years, but in captivity only to 50, not surprisingly.
[Watch Video at Webber’s Circus in 2009].
.
About three years ago, the elephant was given to the SPCA Auckland (Society for the Prevention Against Cruelty to Animals, ^http://www.spca.org.nz/) which then found a refuge for it in 2009 at the Franklin Zoo and Wildlife Sanctuary just outside Auckland. The elephant has for the past three years been under the care and rehabilitation at the zoo/sanctuary.
Dr Schofield at Franklin had previously stated that the elephant (renamed by the zoo ‘Mila‘) had settled in well and developed close and affectionate relationships with her team of keepers. She wrote: “Our dream for Jumbo is to get her in a situation where she can have other African elephants for company.”
A woman who lives in a property neighbouring the zoo, who declined to be named, said she had seen the activity at the zoo when the ambulances arrived.
“We look out and see the elephant every day,” she said. “I don’t think it’s very friendly. It hasn’t had a very happy life.”
Same elephant in 2009
SAFE (Save Animals from Exploitation, NZ) animal rights protest group stage a protest outside the circus at Avalon Park, Lower Hutt, New Zealand
[Source: ‘Loritz Circus Jumbo the Elephant’, YouTube, ^http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5c00551DUw]
.
Sad circus scenes only three years ago (different elephants)
[Source: ‘Jumbo Stars: Elephants in Carson & Barnes Circus’, YouTube,
^http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=jX58pNwWcRY]
.
New Zealand Police have stated that if the death is confirmed as an accident it is unlikely the elephant will be put down, but a final decision will be made in 24 hours. At the time of writing six days hence, the elephant is still alive and under care at the nearby Auckland Zoo (^http://www.aucklandzoo.co.nz/) awaiting her fate.
Same African Elephant, renamed ‘Mila’
Elephants are social creatures and there was concern Mila had been lonely.
Mila was the only elephant at the Franklin Zoo, which built a new enclosure for her in 2010.
(Photo Franklin Zoo/Sanctuary)
Franklin Zoo and Wildlife Sanctuary was nearing the end of a two year preparatory re-adjustment process for the elephant to have her ultimately crate shipped to California (USA) to Pat Derby’s Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) ^http://www.pawsweb.org/ in San Andreas outside Sacramento. Since 1984, The Performing Animal Welfare Society has provided a sanctuary for animals that have been the victims of the exotic and performing animal trades. PAWS also investigates reports of abused performing and exotic animals, documents cruelty and assists in investigations and prosecutions by regulatory agencies to alleviate the suffering of captive wildlife.
Despite the tragic accidental killing of Dr Schofield, Pat Derby has confirmed that it remains committed to receiving the elephant into its Californian sanctuary.
Hans Kriek, executive director of New Zealand based Save Animals from Exploitation ^http://www.safe.org.nz/, said he had talked to Dr Schofield the day before she died and that she told him she believed Mila was ready to ship.
.
Pat Derby advised her experience with elephants rescued from circuses:
“All elephants, particularly Africans, suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Ed. like humans).
“They’re captured from the wild. The capture usually involves killing their whole family unit, which is a terrible drama.
They all suffer horrendous physical and psychological problems. You just never know when it will express itself.”
In addition, Derby said she is sure the stress of circus life contributed to the trauma of adjusting for Mila.
.
In San Andreas, near Sacramento in Northern California, where Mila was headed, three African elephants are kept separate from other elephants, Derby said.
“We always keep safe distances and safety barriers between the elephants and the people so there’s no opportunity for accidents to happen“, she said.
.
Elephant Shipment Trauma
.
Transporting an elephant halfway around the world is extremely tricky, Derby said. Flying is the fastest way but also the most expensive and “I don’t know what the funding issue is there,” Derby said.
If a ship and truck are used, it’s a “long, long journey,” she said. Once an elephant leaves on such a trip, it is stuck in the crate until it arrives, she said.
“When children see animals in a circus, they learn that animals exist for our amusement. Quite apart from the cruelty involved in training and confining these animals, the whole idea that we should enjoy the humiliating spectacle of an elephant or lion made to perform circus tricks shows a lack of respect for the animals as individuals”
~ Peter Singer, Author/Philosopher, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, USA
.
Animal abuse and cruelty is immoral. Most modern civilized societies have outlawed animal cruelty, making it a crime.
Entertainment involving animals is a form of animal abuse. Circuses and zoos conceived for human entertainment are primitive and barbaric, dating back to 18th Century Georgian times when human slavery was cultiraly acceptable. The first modern zoo evolved out of an aristocratic menagerie in Vienna in 1765.
Although many circuses have been banned from using wildlife in their entertainment, disgustingly it has only been in recent years. But still, organisations such as Sea World (^http://www.sea-world.com.au/) still entertain the public using dolphins, seals and orcas.
Jumbo was the last of New Zealand’s circus elephants, retired in 2009 after a concerted pressure campaign by Save Animals from Exploitation (SAFE), and there are no more circuses that use wild animals in this country. But the practice has still not been banned outright. This puts it in the category of anachronistic laws which should be repealed at the earliest opportunity.
In New Zealand, Dunedin and Wellington City Councils have local bans on the use of wild animals in circuses. There is a Circus Welfare Code, but like many of the codes under the Animal Welfare Act 1999 appears to contravene the Act under which it was created, particularly section 4(c) which stipulates that animals must have the ‘opportunity to display normal patterns of behaviour.’ A requirement that is by definition outside the performance expected of a circus animal.
The plight of elephants in circuses is particularly troubling. Elephants are majestic creatures who are intelligent and self-aware. They are among the most socially- bonded animals on the planet, and display a complex array of emotions, including expressions of grief and compassion. They mourn their dead, use tools, and communicate with each other over vast distances through sound. They are biologically designed to browse, constantly on the move for 18 or more hours out of the day, even where food is readily available…
But enslaved in circuses, far removed from conditions they need to thrive, elephants:
Spend days at a time chained in cramped train cars or trucks, eating and sleeping in their own excrement, exposed to temperature extremes, for much of their lives. When not in transit, they are chained or confined in tiny pens, usually on concrete.
Perform unnatural tricks that are often damaging to their bodies. Wild elephants do not stand on their heads or on two legs.
Often display neurotic behavior, such as swaying and head-bobbing, from boredom and severe stress (Ed. like Jumbo in the video above).
Suffer from painful foot and joint disease, a leading cause of premature death in captive elephants, from standing too long on hard surfaces and in their own waste.
.
Circuses Tear Families Apart
.
Elephants have intense, strong family bonds. Wild females stay with their mothers, aunts and cousins for life. Males do not leave the herd until their teens. The entire extended elephant family helps nurture and care for the young.
Most of the elephants performing in circuses today were captured from the wild, violently separated from their mothers, and shipped to the U.S. when they were very young. Every Asian elephant taken from the wild has endured a brutal breaking process (“the crush”), which involves beating with nail-studded sticks, sleep-deprivation, hunger, and thirst to break the animals’ spirits.
Elephants born into captivity in circuses are routinely torn from their mothers as infants younger than two years old, for training and performance.
For anyone who knows about elephants, seeing these complex, family-centered individuals chained and broken, performing demeaning tricks is simply heartbreaking…
There’s no family fun to be had at an event that involves such cruelty and suffering. Let’s teach our children to respect animals by seeing them in their natural states, not as captives forced and beaten into unnatural displays for our entertainment.
.
“We can see quite plainly that our present civilization is built on the exploitation of animals, just as past civilisations were built on the exploitation of slaves”
As of 1 July 2010, the use of any animal in a circus has been banned in Bolivia. A handful of other countries have banned the use of wild animals in circuses but only Bolivia has banned exploitation of domestic animals in circuses as well.
The Bolivian law, which states that the use of all animals in circuses ‘constitutes an act of cruelty’ was enacted on 1 July 2009, with operators given a year to comply.
The bill took two years to pass through both chambers of the Plurinational Assembly, meeting stiff opposition from the eastern states of Bolivia where there was concern that the law would be expanded to include bullfighting, which is popular in rural villages. Bullfighting remains legal in Bolivia.
The legislature were eventually won over by a screening of videos shot by undercover circus infiltrators in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia co-ordinated and funded by Animal Defence International (ADI), a London-based NGO which found that ill-treatment and violence against animals in circuses is commonplace.
The harsh Bolivian climate alone claimed has claimed many victims. Just last year, a hippopotamus died in his sleep when the circus pool froze over in the Andean city of Potosí, 4000 metres above sea level. A dwarf elephant died of exposure in La Paz’s dry winter of 2007.
The follow-up to this law change is also important; with a number of wild animals no longer economically useful to their owners, many will be either killed or turned loose. Animals released from captivity generally do not re-integrate and are likely to die from starvation or attack from other animals. To avoid this, Ximena Flores, sponsor of the law, has said that “[a]bout 50 animals are circulating in national and international circuses at the moment [in Bolivia] and we want to negotiate to make sure that the animals aren’t eliminated.”
Austria, Costa Rica, Hungary, Finland, India, Israel, Singapore and most recently China have banned the use of wild circus animals while Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and the Czech Republic have limited the use of certain species. The State of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and the cities of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Porto Alegre (Brazil) have implemented full bans on both wild and domesticated species. Nationwide bans on all animals in traveling circuses are under consideration in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, where legislation is expected in the near future. Several major European towns and cities have either banned all circus animal acts or wild animal acts, including Thessaloniki (Greece), Barcelona (Spain), Cork (Ireland) and Venice (Italy). In Croatia, most major cities have bans.
.
Australia
.
In Australia, Ipswich Council (Queensland) and Parramatta (Sydney, NSW) have local bans of wild animals in circuses.
Around the world, the plight of animals in circuses is increasingly heard. National, regional and local governments in at least 30 countries have already banned the use of exotic or all animals in circuses. But the Australian Federal and State Government policies are failing these animals. The requirements in the — mostly voluntary — guidelines for the keeping of animals in circuses in Australia are far below what is generally required for the same species kept in zoos and are totally inadequate to protect their welfare. Thankfully an increasing number of Australian councils are taking an ethical stance by adopting a ban on exotic animal circuses on council land.
For Animals Australia, entertainment stops where animal suffering begins. Circuses can not recreate a natural environment nor can animals in circuses perform much natural behaviour. A non-domesticated animal’s life is consequently impoverished and the keeping of exotic animals in circuses should therefore be banned. The animals currently being kept by circuses need to be re-homed in a quality sanctuary or zoo.
.
Britain
.
Currently, Britain appears to be at at a critical juncture with regard to banning the use of performing wild animals. A ban in the UK would affect around 40 animals owned by four circus companies. On 25 March 2010, Labour’s environment minister, Jim Fitzpatrick, said he was “minded” to ban performing wild animals after research showed that 94 per cent of the public supported a ban. A survey by the Animals Defenders International (^http://www.ad-international.org/adi_uk/) of 310 local authorities (town and county councils) showed that 39% had already banned all animal acts and 17% had banned wild animal acts.
However, while the new Coalition government has said it is considering whether or not to proceed with the ban, 143 politicians have now signed a parliamentary Early Day Motion, (EDM) 403, calling for the wild animal ban to finally be implemented.
Exotic animals in circuses are routinely subjected to months on the road confined in small, barren cages. These animals are forced to live in enclosures denying them every opportunity to express their natural behaviour and their training is often based on fear and punishment as revealed by numerous undercover investigations.
As circuses play no meaningful role in education or conservation, the lifelong suffering of these animals continues only for the sake of a few minutes of entertainment.
Below: How do you get a wild animal to perform unnatural circus tricks?
This shocking undercover footage from the U.S. shows Carson & Barnes ‘trainers’ using bull hooks, electric prods, and even blowtorches on their elephants. Footage thanks to PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, ^http://www.peta.org/). ^http://www.animalsaustralia.org/issues/circuses.php
Saved by the Mail: Anne the elephant, pictured with former owner Bobby Roberts, who along with his wife Moira has been charged with causing the animal suffering
.
Circuses will be banned from keeping wild animals within two years. Ministers will today announce the U-turn after coming under intense pressure from MPs and celebrities to implement the crackdown. The Department for the Environment will confirm plans to introduce a law within this Parliament.
Last year, MPs inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Government by backing a backbench motion by Tory MP Mark Pritchard, which called for a ban.
Until this is introduced, ministers will bring in a tough licensing regime for the few circus owners still using wild animals.
An estimated 150 to 200 animals are currently held in circuses, 37 of which are wild. They include zebras, lions, tigers, camels, a kangaroo and crocodiles.
Sir Paul McCartney, comedian Ricky Gervais and actor Brian Blessed are among the celebrities who have called for a ban, which 94 per cent of the public supports.
The Daily Mail has been at the forefront of the campaign after highlighting the plight of Anne, Britain’s last circus elephant.
Former owners Moira and Bobby Roberts have been charged with causing Anne suffering by failing to prevent her groom beating her.
The 59-year-old elephant now lives at Longleat safari park in Wiltshire thanks to our readers, who donated £340,000 for her care.
The prosecution is believed to be the first of a circus owner for animal cruelty under the Animal Welfare Act 2006.
An estimated 150-200 animals are currently held in circuses, and an estimated 37 of these are wild animals. These include zebras, lions, snakes, tigers, camels, a kangaroo and crocodiles.
Prime Minister David Cameron has previously signalled his support for the crackdown by acknowledging that it was ‘not right’ to still have lions and tigers performing in the big top.
A Defra spokesman said: ‘We always said we were minded to ban wild animals performing in travelling circus, the only issue being that we have to be sure that it cannot be overturned legally. ‘Therefore in the meantime we are proposing a tough new licensing regime which can be introduced quickly, to ensure high welfare standards.’
.
Entertainment Zoos or Wildlife Sanctuaries?
.
Removal of wild animals from their habitat is wrong. They should be left in their natural surroundings and not exploited as objects for human entertainment.
In situ wildlife refuges or wildlife sanctuaries play a critical role in habouring wildlife at risk from poaching and from the many human drivers of extinction. Wildlife refuges or wildlife sanctuaries situated in the native country of origin are best placed to enable wildlife to survive naturally. Zoological captive breeding programmes that facilitate wildlife reintroduction into the wild in safe sanctuaries are to be commended. This is where the resourcing, efforts and research need to be channelled globally.
But shipping wildlife over long distances to foreign and typically urban zoos, benefits human entertainment not the wildlife. Elephants belong in Africa or Asia according to their supbspecies, not in New Zealand. Petting zoos that encourage the public to get up and close with the animals are a mere extension of circuses – wildlife for human entertainment and as tourist drawcards/attractions.
.
Compare the Old Urban Entertainment Zoos:
.
Example 1: Auckland Zoo
The Tourist child spiel:
‘Auckland Zoo is home to the largest collection of native and exotic animals in New Zealand, set in 17 hectares of lush parkland and just five minutes from central Auckland. There is lots to see and do all year, including events, animal encounters, Zoom (behind the scenes) tours and more! Our Zoom (behind-the-scenes) Tours offer you an exclusive backstage pass to go behind the scenes. Imagine helping a keeper wash down an elephant, coming eye to eye with New Zealand fauna, a tiger, or one of Africa’s big five.’
‘Function and Venue Hire:
‘With 180 degree, uninterrupted views of Sydney Harbour, Taronga Zoo provides a picturesque backdrop and unique setting that is guaranteed to make any event truly memorable. With a wide a variety of venue options available, both in and outdoors,Taronga Zoo is an ideal setting for all occasions ranging from gala dinners, conferences, Christmas and cocktail parties as well as boasting a truly stunning venue for Weddings.The Taronga were the proud winners of the 2010 Restaurant and Catering Awards for Excellence -Wedding Caterer in a Function Centre AND voted in the Vogue Top 3 wedding locations 2012. With both these outstanding recognitions for excellence, the Taronga centre combining their passion and enthusiasm for food and their excellence in service and events is certainly an ideal choice to host your next event.’
Example 3: Orokonui Ecosanctuary (Waitati, Dunedin, New Zealand)
‘What began as a mere dream to restore an entire forest ecosystem to its pre-human state, is now a reality.
In less than 10 years, the Orokonui Ecosanctuary has become the only place on mainland South Island of New Zealand where native birds, animals and insects can live a life safe from predators. They are free to fly, feed, mate and nest wherever they wish, exactly as they would in the wild.
Since the $2.2 million, 8.7km pest-proof fence was erected around our 307 hectares of protected habitat in 2007, pests have been almost entirely eradicated. This has allowed us to reintroduce a number of endangered species and there are encouraging signs they are adapting well to their new home. In fact, it is becoming increasingly common for native birds to find their own way to the ecosanctuary and take up residence.
To support the Ecosanctuary, a multi-million dollar eco-friendly visitor and ODT education centre has been built into the hillside above Blueskin Bay. Here, visitors can learn about the Ecosanctuary and the native species it contains, take a guided tour through the Ecosanctuary, purchase gifts and educational material from the souvenir shop, or simply have a coffee and enjoy the view. All of the funds generated from visitors contribute to the ongoing conservation work at Orokonui Ecosanctuary.’
Example 4: Enkosini Wildlife Sanctuary (Northern Provence, South Africa
‘The Enkosini Wildlife Reserve was formed in 2001 to protect and preserve Africa’s wildlife and habitat. Enkosini (derived from the Zulu word meaning “place of kings”) was established as a conservancy, by purchasing and joining together large South African farms with the aim of restoring the environment back to its natural state and establishing a larger reserve for the benefit of African wildlife. Enkosini is a unique conservation initiative that will re-introduce indigenous wildlife onto land they once naturally roamed, ultimately re-establishing all of the original flora and fauna to the area. Enkosini will also continue to acquire habitat for the long-term survival of the wildlife and the preservation of their eco-systems.
Enkosini’s goal is to create a self-sustaining model of responsible conservation that preserves Africa’s natural heritage (habitat and wildlife); enhances the South African economy through overseas capital infusion, local and international eco-tourism, and job creation; and promotes education and awareness of conservation issues.’
Pure Dingo
(Canis lupus ssp. dingo)
Rare and ‘Vulnerable’ on Fraser Island, Queensland
.
The Dingo is possibly as old as the last Ice Age
.
The earliest archaeological evidence for dingoes in Australia, indicates that the arrival of dingoes in Australia can be dated back to about 18, 000 years BP (before present), based upon mitochondrial DNA data collected by scientists from The Royal Society. [Source: ^http://savefraserislanddingoes.com/pdf/Evolution%20of%20the%20Dingo.pdf, [>Read Report(512kb) ]
Significantly, 18,000 BP was when the last Ice Age ended in Australia, referred to as the Last Glacial Period (Glacial Maximum) when much of the world was cold, dry, and inhospitable. It is the geological epoch in world evolution known as the Pleistocene Epoch, which in archaeology corresponds to the end of the human Paleolithic Age. At this time, Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania were one land mass called Sahulland. Note, this is not to be confused with ‘Gondwanaland‘, which existed between about 510 to 180 million years ago (Mya).
.
Sahulland or just ‘Sahul‘ was the name chosen by archaeologists at a conference in 1975 [Allen, J.; J. Golson and R. Jones (eds) (1977). Sunda and Sahul: Prehistorical studies in Southeast Asia, Melanesia and Australia’]. Other names offered include ‘Australasia‘ and ‘Greater Australia‘, and this larger land mass forms the basis of Australia’s Continental Shelf, half of which is less than 50 metres deep under the Torres Strait to New Guinea and Bass Strait to Tasmania.
Evolutionary global warming melted the glacias and so rose sea levels, which overflowed the interconnecting lowlands and separated the continent into today’s low-lying arid to semi-arid mainland and the two mountainous islands of New Guinea and Tasmania. Not surprisingly, flora and fauna across these long separate lands have a comparable biota. Since Papua New Guinea and Australia were connected via a land-bridge until 6,000 years ago, travelling from one to the other would have been possible.
DNA-analysis has shown that New Guinea Singing Dogs have a genetic line back to Australian dingos. Genetic analysis reported in March 2010 by Australian Geneticist Dr. Alan Wilton (1953-2011), from the UNSW School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences found the mtDNA-type A29 among Australian dingoes concluded overwhelmingly that genetically, the Australian Dingo and the New Guinea Singing Dog are closely related to each other.
Australian Geneticist Dr. Alan Wilton (1953-2011)
an expert on Australian Pure Dingos
.
Dr Alan Wilton’s study paper published in the journal Nature suggests that those two breeds are the most closely related to wolves and may be most like the original domesticated dog as it was across Asia and the Middle East thousands of years ago, according to one of the 37 authors of the study, making both Australia’s dingo and the New Guinea Singing Dog possibly the world’s oldest dog breeds.
“This paper examines the domestication of the dog from the wild wolf using genetic differences,” Dr Wilton says. “48,000 sites in the dog genome were examined in hundreds of wolves, almost a thousand dogs from 85 modern breeds of dog and several ancient dog breeds. “The data suggest most dogs were domesticated in the Middle East, which was the cradle of agriculture 10,000 of years ago, rather than in Asia as had been suggested previously.
“It also shows dingoes, which have been separated from other breeds of dog in Australia for the past 5,000 years, are the most distinct dog group with most similarity to wolves.”
The dingo and New Guinea Singing Dog stand out as being most different from all other breeds of dogs and closer to wolves than other breeds.
To gather all of the results from many dog breeds and wolves from many locations, a worldwide effort was mounted. Dr Wilton and Jeremy Shearman – from the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences and the Ramaciotti Centre for Gene Function Analysis at UNSW – have been working on dingoes and methods to differentiate between pure dingoes and crosses between domestic dogs and dingoes. They contributed the genetic data from seven dingoes, which is a small amount of data but makes a large contribution to the paper. The data from all samples was analysed together at Cornell University and UCLA.
New Guinea Singing Dog
(Canis lupus familiaris hallstomi)
An ancient genetically pure dog breed with links to the Australian Dingo
.
Further biotechnical research published in September 2011 by The Royal Society (UK) has found direct genetic links between ancient Polynesian dogs of South China, Mainland Southeast Asia and Indonesia to the extent that the Dingo has been found to be a direct descendant species dating back to 18,000 BP. The oldest dog remains found in the world are fragments of a dog’s skull and teeth discovered in a cave in Switzerland dating back more than 14,000 years BP, so the dingo is 4000 years older that this.
Genetic study by Klutsch and Savolainen in 2011 concluded that South China was the probable source population for Dingoes and Singing Dogs dating the arrival of dingoes in Australia between 4,640 years ago and as far back as 18,100 years ago. They find “a clear indication that Polynesian dogs as well as dingoes and NGSDs trace their ancestry back to South China through Mainland Southeast Asia and Indonesia.
Yet after 18,000 years, the Australia Pure Dingo has evolved into a pure unique subspecies in its own right – ‘Canis lupus ssp. dingo’[ssp. = subspecies]
.
The Dingo is not a breed of dog, but a distinct subspecies of ancient wolf (Canid lupus).
.
Domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) are a separate subpecies of wolf, and of course domestic dogs have multiple breeds mainly due to human interference, referred to as ‘selective breeding‘. Other modern subspecies of the ancient wolf is the Eurasian wolf (Canis lupus lupus), the Coyote (Canis latrans) and the Black-backed jackal (Canis mesomelas) as well as many other subspecies globally.
The Dingo for thousands of years has been Australia’s largest mammalian predator. It has evolved to become an integral part of the native Australian ecology, as apex (top order) predators at the top of the natural food chain and highly adaptive and naturally distributed across every habitat and region of Australia, except Tasmania.
The Dingo’s natural prey consists of small native mammals and ground-dwelling birds, as well as small kangaroos and similar ‘macropods‘ (kangaroo botanical family ‘Macropodidae‘). In this way, naturally occurring population of dingoes has played a key role in maintaining the populations and diversity of these native species.
Unlike domestic dogs, the Dingo yelps and howls, but generally does not bark. It has a different gait to domestic dogs with almost with a cat-like agile habit. Its ears are always erect and it uses its paws like hands. In its natural state the Dingo lives either alone or in a small group unlike many other wild dog species which may form packs. Dingoes tends to survey their surroundings from a height.
Whereas traditional Aboriginal occupation of Australia evolved over thousands of years with harmonious ecological interaction and respect, European colonial invasion of Australia and the widespread deforestation and introduced species that came with it, has destroyed or otherwise perverted Australia’s natural ecology. Dingos and Colonist-introduced domestic dogs interbreed freely resulting in very few pure-bred dingos in southern or eastern Australia. This is seriously threatening the dingo’s ability to survive as a pure species. Public hostility is another threat to the dingo.
Australian Aboriginal peoples commonly refer to the dingo as the ‘Warragul‘. This name has been used for a town 100km south-east of Melbourne, reflective of the traditional presence of the dingo as far south as southern Victoria. Other Aboriginal names for Dingo across Australia include include ‘binure‘ and ‘mirragang‘ (Gundungurra language), ‘mirri‘ (Darug language), ‘nurragee‘ and ‘mirragang‘ (Tharawal language).
.
Pure Dingo at Risk of Extinction
.
Pure-bred Dingo numbers in the Australian wild are declining as Colonists and their decendants continue to encroach deeper into wilderness areas, releasing feral dogs that inevitably compete, socialise and breed with pure Dingoes.
Professor Bill Ballard of the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at the University of New South Wales has conducted research showing that there are few remaining pure dingoes are left in wild. [Read More].
According to Dr. Alan Wilton’s mitochondrial DNA testing of Dingoes from 2000, most Dingo populations throughout Australia are 80% hybrids, with some 100% hybrids. Only a few populations remain ‘Pure Dingo‘. One area isolated from colonial incursion is the southern Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, which has been designated a Dingo Conservation Area, supposedly to control wild dogs in this area in order to prevent cross-breeding with pure Dingoes and the hybridisation of the Dingo species. [>Read More (480kb) ]
In 2005, the Dingo was listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as ‘Vulnerable‘ due to a 30% decrease in numbers (IUCN = ‘International Union for Conservation of Nature’). [^Read More]
However, the IUCN wrongly groups the Australian Dingo (Canis lupis ssp. dingo) with the New Guinea Singing Dog (Canis lupus familiaris hallstomi) and with other South East Asian dogs under its Red List classification ‘Canis lupus ssp. dingo‘. This fails to assign proper genetic distriction of the Pure Australian Dingo as a discrete subspecies, which has evolved in Australia over thjousands of years quite separately from these other South East Asian subspecies. The IUCN contradictorily uses the term ‘dingo’ to refer to the Australian Pure Dingo and at the same time in a generic sense as a common name to describe the wild dogs of Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and New Guinea. The IUCN interpretation is contradictory and wrong.
.
The ‘Australian Pure Dingo’ is not a Polynesian domestic dog!
.
On the one hand , the IUCN explains the difficulty of distinguishing pure dingoes from hybrids and states that the “pure form may now be locally extinct (Corbett 2001)” and that “such quantitative data is not available for countries other than Australia, Thailand and Papua New Guinea“. Yet the IUCN website shows only two known mapped locations of this subspecies – both being on Fraser Island (Aboriginal: K’Gari).
The IUCN concludes that where the most genetically intact populations live is where conservation efforts should be focused.
Fraser Island (K’Gari)
Showing possibly the last of the planet’s Australian Pure Dingo distribution,
according to the IUCN in 2011
[Source: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, version 2011.2, ^http://maps.iucnredlist.org/map.html?id=41585]
.
Given the severely restricted distribution of the Pure Australian Dingo, this subspecies deserves discrete classification and listing by the IUCN as ‘Critically Endangered‘. Clearly more intensive research by the IUCN is warranted, particularly recognising the recent and expert studies in this specific field by Professor Bill Ballard, Dr Alan Wilton and Jeremy Shearman, amongst others.
Recognition of the Pure Australian Dingo as at risk is given inconsistent hotch-potch protection by Australian jurisdictions. In New South Wales (NSW), Dingo populations from Sturt National Park, the coastal ranges and some coastal parks have been nominated as endangered populations under the NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995. At Australian national level and under the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974, the Dingo remains unprotected despite being considered a native species. Under the Rural Lands Protection Act 1998 (NSW), Dingoes are still declared a pest species, a throwback to the colonial mindset.
Dr Wilton predicts that within 100 years, the pure dingo will be extinct in the wild.
.
‘Dingo’s are going away the Thylacine unfortunately, unless somebody does something about it soon we won’t have any dingo’s left.’
The Thylacene
Persecuted by misguided Colonists until its extinction in the 1930s
.
Dr Wilton has identified that there remains only one genetically confirmed population of pure dingoes – those on Queensland’s Fraser Island – perhaps as few as 120 individuals left. This clan was long isolated from early colonial invasion and disturbance, but in recent times has increasingly been threatened by growing tourism incursions (400,000 tourists annually) and mismanagement and persecution by Queensland wildlife rangers. Yet despite the precarious viability of this precious pure Dingo population, in 2001 Queensland Labor Premier Peter Beattie ordered a mass slaughter of forty dingoes in retribution for a boy tourist being killed that year by Dingoes on the island. [>Read More]
Clearly the Queensland Labor Party and the delegated custodian, the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) (or whatever its latest rebranded name) values Fraser Island for anthopocentric tourism more than the survival of the Australian Dingo as a species. Fraser Island is World Heritage Listed, but the Queensland Government has always interpreted this as a tourism branding strategy.
‘Dingoes are often in headlines for all the wrong reasons – agressive behaviour to tourists, culls by national park authorities – but behind the scenes, conservationists hold concerns that dingoes may be interbred into extinction.
Fears for the dingo’s future are proliferating. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) upgraded the dingo’s conservation status to vulnerable in 2004 and dingo experts such as Dr Ricky Spencer from the University of Western Sydney, have predicted Australia’s native canine will go extinct within the next twenty years.
But it’s not just their white socks that are changing though. One recent study found that average dingo weight and size has risen by 20 per cent over the past two decades, probably because of hybridisation. This change could alter the way dingoes hunt, allowing them to attack livestock and wildlife they’ve previously found an unmanageable size.
Behavioural changes also cause ecological problems. There is some evidence, for instance, that the dingo breeding season has grown longer under the influence of domestic dog genes; dogs breed twice a year, in contrast to the dingo’s single season. This might be one reason for the explosion in dingo and wild dog numbers across the country.
Another might be the breakdown in the pack structure of dingo societies. In the wild, dingo packs sometimes centre around a breeding alpha pair which suppress the breeding of subordinate members – a possible natural population control measure. Domestic dogs, however, seem to form larger packs with uncontrolled breeding, again possibly contributing to the current population explosion.
Hybridisation with domestic doges is the Dingo’s greatest threat. Dingoes and domestic dogs, both subspecies of Canis lupus, can interbreed with ease and this has led to a massive influx of domestic dog genes into the dingo gene pool.
In many places around Australia (some experts say ‘most‘) dingoes have been almost totally replaced by dog-dingo hybrids. Even those animals that appear to be dingoes are often now, in reality, mostly domestic dogs. “The only way to tell for sure,” says Dr Guy Ballard, a dingo researcher with the NSW government’s vertebrate pest unit, “is by analysing their skulls, or taking DNA samples”.
But it’s not just their white socks that are changing though. One recent study found that average dingo weight and size has risen by 20% over the past two decades, probably because of hybridisation. This change could alter the way dingoes hunt, allowing them to attack livestock and wildlife they’ve previously found an unmanageable size..
.
Saving the Purebred Dingo
.
This inexorable tide of hybridisation has lent new urgency to the question of how best to save the dingo. Most experts are pessimistic about the chances of preventing interbreeding, pointing out that contact between dog and dingo populations is only going to increase.
Some proponents advocate the establishment of refuges where remnant populations of pure dingoes could be maintained. The best known of these is Fraser Island, where the Great Sandy National Park protects what is regarded as the purest population of dingoes left in Australia. However, the culling of problem dingoes on the popular tourist island has led to fears that the dingo population there is now too small to be genetically viable.
Such concerns have led some conservationists to opt for a different strategy: establishing their own private breeding refuges on the mainland instead. One such is the Australian Dingo Conservation Association’s (ADCA) 92 ha compound at Colong station in the Blue Mountains National Park.
There the ADCA maintains a breeding population of 31 purebred dingoes.
“We try hard to maintain that genetic purity,” says ADCA vice-president Gavan McDowell. “We even separate our breeding packs into sub-types, like mountain, desert and tropical dingoes.”
The Association’s ultimate aim is to breed a number of pure dingoes that can be released into the wild to recolonise areas, cleared of feral dogs.
Silver Lining
.
Other researchers, like Guy, are more optimistic of the dingo’s plight.
His research includes several field projects looking at dingo purity around Australia. While Guy acknowledges that hybridisation is a major threat, he says that wherever his group tests dingoes, even in heavily hybridised areas of NSW, they still find good numbers of purebred dingoes.
“People often don’t realise that the environmental factors that lead to large numbers of hybrids also mean large numbers of pure dingoes,” Guy says. “It’s impossible to prove, but I suspect there are actually more purebred dingoes around today than at any other time in history.”
Best of all, says Guy, is the fact that his team has identified several hotspots where pure dingo numbers are consistently high. One is the Tanami Desert, where the dingo population is 90 per cent pure, apparently due to the area’s remoteness. Two others, however, lie on the heavily settled NSW coast: at Myall Lakes National Park and Limeburners Creek Nature Reserve.
Quirks of geography – Limeburners Creek is on a peninsula, and Myall Lakes is connected by green belts to the wilder lands out to Sydney’s west – have apparently allowed both areas to sustain populations of pure dingoes, despite their proximity to settled areas with large populations of domestic dogs.
Guy also believes that with careful management – such as continual DNA tests to identify and euthanise hybridised dogs – the populations at Limeburners Creek and Myall Lakes can maintain their purity for some time to come.
“Dingoes have survived two hundred years of interbreeding already,” he says.
“I don’t see why, with a little help, they can’t survive for another two hundred.”
.
Aboriginal Respect for Dingoes
.
‘Following its arrival into Australia, the dingo was readily accepted into Aboriginal life, both practically and spiritually. Dingoes have long been valued companion animals to Aboriginal peoples, serving as hunting companions, camp guard dogs, camp cleaners and as bed warmers on cold nights.
Spiritually, dingoes have been regarded as a protector (particularly by traditional Fraser Island tribes) and representing ancestral spirits – able to perceive the presence of evil spirits undetectable by humans. Mythological or Dreamtime stories about the Dingo in Aboriginal cultures across Australia are for Aboriginal people to convey.
Dingoes are valued companion animals to traditional Aboriginal peoples
Dingoes are as Australian as Aboriginal peoples.
“It’s the Dingo’s environment, WE are the ones who should be monitored. Please leave them alone, let them live their lives how they should be lived, NOT HALF STARVED. Please go to Fraser Island and look for yourself, then feel what your conscience tells you.” ~ Australia.
[4] ‘Genetic diversity in the Dingo‘, by Professor Bill Ballard [Head of School], School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences -Faculty of Science, University of New South Wales, ^http://www.dingosanctuary.com.au/dna.htm
“Fraser Island (K’gari) lies off the coast of Queensland, Australia, approx. 200k (120miles) north of Brisbane. It is the largest sand Island in the world. In 1992 it was World Heritage listed by UNESCO because of its natural beauty and unique flora and fauna. The apex predator on the Island is the dingo (canis lupus dingo) and may well be one of the last pure strains of dingo remaining in Australia. The conservation of this gene pool is of national significance.”
“Australia’s only wild dog, the iconic dingo, has survived a couple of hundred years of persecution – from shooting, trapping and poisoning. Ironically, it is now at grave risk of disappearing. The greatest threat isn’t so much over-hunting or the usual culprit, habitat destruction; it’s the friendly domestic dog.” [>Read article(1140kb)]
This article was initially written by this editor and published in the Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper on 20051005 as a letter to the editor, entitled ‘RFS strategy misguided‘.
.19th Century heritage-listed ‘Six Foot Track’
..bulldozed by the Rural Fire Service in July 2005, widened into a convenient Fire Trail for its fire truck crews.
.
It has been revealed that the June bulldozing or grading of the Six Foot Track near Megalong Creek (Blue Mountains, New South Wales) was a mere drop in the Rural Fire Service (RFS) Bushfire Mitigation Programme.
Across the Blue Mountains, some twenty natural reserves including the Six Foot Track were targeted under the RFS 2004-05 Fire Trail Strategy:
Edith Falls
McMahons Point
Back Creek
Cripple Creek
Plus some 95 hectares inside the Blue Mountains National Park.
According to the Australian Government’s (then) Department of Transport and Regional Services (DOTARS) website, some $151,195 was granted to the RFS in the Blue Mountains alone, for it to bulldoze and burn 144 hectares of native bushland under the euphemism of “addressing bushfire mitigation risk priorities” (Ed: Read ‘bush arson‘)
‘The Six Foot Track Conservation and Management Plan 1997, Vol II’ lists numerous vulnerable species of fauna recorded near Megalong Creek – the Glossy Black-Cockatoo (Clyptorhynchus lathami), Giant Burrowing Frog (Heleioporus australiacus), Spotted-tailed Quoll (Dasyurus maculatus).
Spotted-tailed Quoll
(Dasyurus maculatus)
Blue Mountains top order predator, competing with the Dingo
.
The RFS contractors wouldn’t have had a clue if they were within 100 metres or 1 metre of rare, vulnerable or threatened species.
The RFS is not exempt from destroying important ecological habitat; rather it is required to have regard to the principles of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD).
The ‘Rationale‘ of this RFS ESD policy states at Clause 1.2:
‘The Bush Fire Coordinating Committee, under the Rural Fires Act 1997 Sec 3 (d), is required to have regard to ESD as outlined in the Protection of the Environment Administration Act 1991, which sets out the following principles:
a) The precautionary principle namely, that if there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation. In the application of the precautionary principle, public and private decisions should be guided by:
i. careful evaluation to avoid, wherever practicable, serious or irreversible damage to the environment, and ii. an assessment of the risk-weighted consequences of various options.
.
b) Inter-generational equity namely, that the present generation should ensure that the health, diversity and productivity of the environment are maintained or enhanced for the benefit of future generations
.
.
c) Conservation of biological diversity and ecological integrity should be a fundamental consideration in all decisions.
.
d) Recognising the economic values that the natural environment provides. The natural environment has values that are often hard to quantify but provide a benefit to the entire community. By recognising that the natural environment does have significant economic and social values we can improve decision making for the present and future generations.’
.
.
Yet the RFS policy on hazard reduction is woefully loose in the ‘Bushfire Co-ordinating Committee Policy 2 /03 on ESD‘ – which (on paper) advocates protecting environmental values and ensuring that ESD commitments are adopted and adhered to by contractors.
Experience now confirms this policy is nothing more than ‘greenwashing’. The RFS wouldn’t know what environmental values were if they drove their fire truck into a Blkue Mountains upland swamp. There is not one ecologist among them.
While the critical value of dedicated RFS volunteer fire-fighters fighting fires is without question, what deserves questioning is the unsustainable response of the RFS ‘old guard’ to fire trails and hazard reduction with token regard for sensitive habitat. Repeated bushfire research confirms that bushfires are mostly now caused by:
Bush arson (hazard reduction included, escaped or otherwise)
More residential communities encroaching upon bushland.
.
Under the ‘Blue Mountains Bushfire Management Committee Bushfire Risk Management Plan’(Ed: their bureaucratic name), key objectives are patently ignored:
‘Ensure that public and private land owners and occupiers understand their bushfire management responsibilities’
‘Ensure that the community is well informed about bushfire protection measures and prepared for bushfire events through Community Fireguard programs’
‘Manage bushfires for the protection and conservation of the natural, cultural, scenic and recreational features , including tourism values, of the area’.
.
Instead, the Rural Fire Service is content to look busy by burning and bulldozing native bushland. The RFS actively demonises native vegetation as a ‘fuel hazard‘, in the much the same way that ignorant colonists of the 18th and 19th centuries demonised Australia’s unique wildlife as ‘vermin‘ and ‘game‘.
.
Further Reading:
.
[1] Previous article on The Habitat Advocate: ‘RFS Bulldozes Six Foot Track‘ (published 20101220): [>Read Article]
.
[2] Tip of the Bush-Arson Iceberg
What these government funded and State-sanctioned bush-arsonists get up to, deliberately setting fire to wildlife habitat, is an ecological disgrace.
The following list is from just 2005 of the vast areas of native vegetation deliberately burnt across New South Wales in just this one year. [Source: DOTARS].
Not surprisingly, this State-sanctioned bush-arson information is no longer published by government each year for obvious clandestine reasons, as the bush-arson continues out of the public eye.
The hazard reduction cult is similarly perpetuated across other Australian states – Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, West Australia as well as Northern Territory and the ACT. No wonder Australia’s record of wildlife extinctions tragically leads the world! There is little precious rich wildlife habitat left.
.
National Park and Wildlife Service (NSW) Bush Arson:
(Note: ‘NR’ = Nature Reserve, ‘NP’ = National Park, ‘SCA’ = State Conservation Area… as if these bastards care)
Reserve / Activity Name
Treatment Area (km2)
Baalingen NR
5
Baalingen NR
6
Bald Rock NP
7
Banyabba NR
0.5
BANYABBA NR
3
BANYABBA NR
24
BANYABBA NR
8
Barakee NP
6
Barool NP
20
Barool NP
6
Barool NP
5
Barool NP
4
Barool NP
2
Barool NP
5
Barrington Tops NP
2.5
Barrington Tops NP
2
Barrington Tops NP
6
Barrington Tops NP
18
Barrington Tops NP
6
Barrington Tops NP
16
Barrington Tops NP
11
Barrington Tops NP
1
Barrington Tops NP
4
Barrington Tops NP
2
Barrington Tops NP
1
Barrington Tops NP
3
Basket Swamp NP
1
Basket Swamp NP
12
Basket Swamp NP
2
Basket Swamp NP
4
Bellinger River NP
1
Ben Boyd NP
0.8
Ben Boyd NP
3
Ben Boyd NP
0.9
Ben Boyd NP
0.9
Ben Boyd NP
5
Ben Boyd NP
13
Ben Boyd NP
5
Ben Boyd NP
0.4
Ben Boyd NP
1
Ben Boyd NP
2
Ben Boyd NP
3
Ben Boyd NP
5
Ben Boyd NP
3.6
Ben Boyd NP
1.9
Ben Boyd NP
1.6
Ben Halls Gap NP
3
Bindarri NP
2
Black Bulga SCA
8
Black Bulga SCA
12
Black Bulga SCA
21
Blue Mountains NP
42
Blue Mountains NP
8.3
Blue Mountains NP
23
Blue Mountains NP
10
Blue Mountains NP
12
Bogendyra NR
Bolivia NR
1
BOLLONOLLA NR
2
Bondi Gulf NR
8
Bondi Gulf NR
6
Bondi Gulf NR
10
BONGIL BONGIL NP
0.3
BONGIL BONGIL NP
0.5
Boonoo Boonoo NP
9
Boonoo Boonoo NP
10
Booti Booti NP
0.5
Booti Booti NP
0.3
Booti Booti NP
3
Booti Booti NP
0.3
Booti Booti NP
3
Border Range NP
6
Border Ranges NP
4
Border Ranges NP
3
Border Ranges NP
4
Border Ranges NP
2.8
Bouddi NP
0.5
Bouddi NP
0.3
Bouddi NP
0.9
Bouddi NP
0.9
Bouddi NP
0.5
Bouddi NP
1.1
Bouddi NP
0.5
Bouddi NP
1.9
Bouddi NP
1.1
Bouddi NP
0.6
Bouddi NP
2.3
Bournda NR
10
Bournda NR
5
Bournda NR
0.5
Bournda NR
0.5
Bournda NR
0.5
Brindabella NP
20
Brisbane Water NP
4.4
Brisbane Water NP
2.4
Brisbane Water NP
3.7
Brisbane Water NP
3.6
Brisbane Water NP
0.3
Brisbane Water NP
3.1
Brisbane Water NP
0.6
Budawang NP
4.8
Budderoo NP
10
Bugong NP
3.1
Bundgalung NP
2
BUNDJALUNG NP
7
BUNDJALUNG NP
4.5
BUNDJALUNG NP
8
BUNDJALUNG NP
1.5
BUNDJALUNG NP
0.5
BUNDJALUNG NP
6
BUNDJALUNG NP
3
BUNDJALUNG NP
3
BUNDJALUNG NP
4
BUNDJALUNG NP
2
BUNDJALUNG NP
1
Bundundah Reserve
1.94
Bundundah Reserve/Morton NP
4.7
Bungawalbyn NP
2
Bungawalbyn NP
2.25
Bungawalbyn NP
4
Bungawalbyn NP
5
Bungawalbyn NP
3
Bungawalbyn NP
4.5
Bungawalbyn NP
6.5
Bungawalbyn NP
5
Bungawalbyn NP
1.65
Bungawalbyn NP
1.5
Burnt Down Scrub NR
2
Burnt School NR
2
Burrinjuck NR
8
Burrinjuck NR
15
Burrinjuck NR
3
Butterleaf NP
Butterleaf NP
3
Butterleaf NP
3.2
Butterleaf NP
1.2
Butterleaf NP
1.6
Butterleaf NP
1.2
Butterleaf NP
2
Butterleaf NP
1.8
Butterleaf NP
1.4
Butterleaf NP
0.5
Butterleaf NP
2.3
Butterleaf NP
3.3
Butterleaf NP
3.9
Butterleaf NP
5.3
Butterleaf NP
0.4
Butterleaf NP
0.5
Butterleaf NP
1.5
Butterleaf NP
2.9
Butterleaf NP
5.3
Butterleaf NP
4
Butterleaf NP
3.3
Butterleaf NP
3.6
Butterleaf NP
1.5
Butterleaf NP
8.8
Butterleaf NP
0.5
Capoompeta NP
10
Cataract NP
Cataract NP
1.5
Cataract NP
2
Cataract NP
2
Cataract NP
1.5
Cataract NP
2
Cataract NP
1
Clayton Chase
5
Clayton Chase
10
Clayton Chase
3.5
Clayton Chase
4
Clayton Chase
3
Clayton Chase
3
Clayton Chase
4
Conjola NP
5.7
Conjola NP
1.8
Conjola NP
8.3
Conjola NP
4.8
Conjola NP
2.9
Conjola NP
4.5
Conjola NP
6.5
Coolah Tops NR
28
Coolah Tops NR
1
Coolah Tops NR
6
Copeland Tops SCA
3
Copeland Tops SCA
3.5
Corramy SCA
0.7
Cottan-bimbang NP
6
Cottan-bimbang NP
16
Cottan-bimbang NP
15
Culgoa NP
30
Curramore NP
Curramore NP
8
Curramore NP
8.9
Curramore NP
11
Curramore NP
5.5
Dapper NR
10
Deua NP
15.2
Deua NP
1.4
Deua NP
1
Deua NP
4
Deua NP
21.5
Deua NP
2.1
Deua NP
1.4
Deua NP
3.3
Deua NP
8.5
Deua NP
20.8
Deua NP
5.3
Deua NP
6.6
Deua NP
28.2
Deua NP
5.65
DUNGGIR NP
4
Eurobodalla NP
0.8
Eurobodalla NP
2.5
Eurobodalla NP
0.8
Eurobodalla NP
2.4
Eurobodalla NP
2
Flaggy creekNR
3
Flaggy creekNR
1.8
GANAY NR
2
GANAY NR
2
Garawarra SCA
Garby NR
2
Gardens of Stone NP
18
Gibraltar NP
14
Goobang NP
5
Goobang NP
25
GUMBAYNGIR SCA
12
GUMBAYNGIR SCA
7
GUMBAYNGIR SCA
6
Ironbark NR
13.5
Jerrawangala NP
6.83
Jervis Bay NP
2.37
Jervis Bay NP
5.42
Jervis Bay NP
0.56
Jervis Bay NP
0.82
Jervis Bay NP
1.45
Jervis Bay NP
1.72
Jervis Bay NP
0.21
Jervis Bay NP
0.32
Jervis Bay NP
0.7
Jervis Bay NP
0.4
Jervis Bay NP
0.35
Jervis Bay NP
0.35
Jervis Bay NP
0.48
Jervis Bay NP
1.03
Jervis Bay NP
0.65
Jervis Bay NP
1.91
Jervis Bay NP
0.34
Jervis Bay NP
0.95
Jervis Bay NP
1.46
Jervis Bay NP
0.71
Jervis Bay NP
1.07
Jingellic NR
20
Karuah NR
10
Karuah NR
28
Karuah NR
10
Karuah NR
12
Karuah NR
1
Kings Plains NP
7
Kings Plains NP
0
Kings Plains NP
4
Koreelah NP
6
Kosciuszko NP
30
Kosciuszko NP
9.5
Kosciuszko NP
22
Kosciuszko NP
22
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
12
Kosciuszko NP
12
Kosciuszko NP
17
Kosciuszko NP
5
Kosciuszko NP
28
Kosciuszko NP
9
Kosciuszko NP
6
Kosciuszko NP
6
Kosciuszko NP
26
Kosciuszko NP
8.9
Kosciuszko NP
15
Kosciuszko NP
15
Kosciuszko NP
2.5
Kosciuszko NP
8.9
Kosciuszko NP
10
Kosciuszko NP
11
Kosciuszko NP
4.8
Kosciuszko NP
18
Kosciuszko NP
19
Kosciuszko NP
7.2
Kosciuszko NP
7.2
Kosciuszko NP
13
Kosciuszko NP
18
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
18
Kosciuszko NP
18
Kosciuszko NP
15
Kosciuszko NP
12
Kwiambal NP
7
Kwiambal NP
3
Kwiambal NP
2
Kwiambal NP
2.25
Lake Macquarie SCA
0.3
Lake Macquarie SCA
0.4
Lake Macquarie SCA
0.4
Lake Macquarie SCA
0.4
Ledknapper NR
15
Linton NR
12.5
Meroo NP
2.4
Meroo NP
0.9
Meroo NP
0.6
Meroo NP
3.3
Meroo NP
3.9
Meroo NP
3.5
Meroo NP
0.5
Morton NP
5.9
Morton NP
8.3
Morton NP
3.8
Morton NP
6
Morton NP
13
Morton NP
0.4
Morton NP
4.5
Morton NP
5
Morton NP
2.7
Morton NP
0.7
Morton NP
2.1
Morton NP
1
Morton NP
6
Mt Canobolas SCA
1
Mt Clunnie NP
6.5
Mt Dowling NR
2
MT NEVILLE NR
11
MT NEVILLE NR
1
MT NEVILLE NR
1.5
MT NEVILLE NR
11
MT NEVILLE NR
1.5
MT NEVILLE NR
3.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
4
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
1.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
1.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
4
MT PIKAPENE NP
7
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
6
MT PIKAPENE NP
3
MT PIKAPENE NP
0.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
0.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
1
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
6
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
1
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
1.5
Mummell Gulf NP
3
Mummell Gulf NP
7
Mummell Gulf NP
5
Munmorah SRA
0.7
Munmorah SRA
0.8
Munmorah SRA
0.45
Munmorah SRA
1
Munmorah SRA
2
Munmorah SRA
0.9
Munmorah SRA
1.6
Muogamarra NR
1
Murramarang NP
0.9
Murramarang NP
8
Murramarang NP
1
Murramarang NP
5.1
Murramarang NP
8.2
Murramarang NP
3.1
Murramarang NP
6.8
Murramarang NP
16
Murramarang NP
4.3
Murramarang NP
4
Myall Lakes NP
5
Myall Lakes NP
5
Myall Lakes NP
1.5
Myall Lakes NP
2
Myall Lakes NP
1
Myall Lakes NP
5
NGAMBAA NR
2
NGAMBAA NR
5
Nombinnie NR
10
Nymboida NP
6
Nymboida NP
12
Nymboida NP
3
Nymboida NP
4
Nymboida NP
1
Nymboida NP
4
Nymboida NP
4
Nymboida NP
3.2
Nymboida NP
4.5
Nymboida NP
2
Nymboida NP
4
Nymboida NP
2.8
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
7
Nymboida NP
6
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
10.7
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
19.1
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
13.4
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
18
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
18
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
15
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
33
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
33
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
5
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
5
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
4
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
3
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
7
Parma Creek NR
0.21
Parma Creek NR
0.07
Parma Creek NR
0.3
Parma Creek NR
0.01
Parma Creek NR
0.29
Parma Creek NR
5
Paroo Darling NP
60
Policemans Cap
10
Razorback NR
17
Richmond Range NP
3.9
Richmond Range NP
6.5
Richmond Range NP
3.8
Richmond Range NP
4.5
Richmond Range NP
5.5
Richmond Range NP
9
Royal NP
1
Seven Mile Beach NP
1.09
Seven Mile Beach NP
1.79
Seven Mile Beach NP
2.24
Seven Mile Beach NP
0.74
Seven Mile Beach NP
2.03
Severn River NR
6
Single NP
21
South East Forest NP
5
South East Forest NP
1.2
South East Forest NP
1.2
South East Forest NP
2.6
South East Forest NP
3
South East Forest NP
10.9
South East Forest NP
1.3
South East Forest NP
1
South East Forest NP
1.2
South East Forest NP
2.8
South East Forest NP
2
South East Forest NP
1.2
South East Forest NP
2
South East Forest NP
5.1
South East Forest NP
3.5
South East Forest NP
0.5
South East Forest NP
6
South East Forest NP
3
South East Forest NP
1
South East Forest NP
5.5
South East Forest NP
0.8
Stoney Batter NR
6
Tapitallee NR
0.52
Tapitallee NR
0.33
Tapitallee NR
0.36
Tapitallee NR
0.32
Tarlo River NP
3.8
Tarlo River NP
2.1
Tarlo River NP
2.9
Tarlo River NP
5.9
Tarlo River NP
6.5
Tarlo River NP
2.7
Tarlo River NP
2.1
Tarlo River NP
6
Tollingo NR
150
Tomaree NP
1.8
Tooloom NP
3
Toonumbar NP
31.9
Toonumbar NP
8.5
Toonumbar NP
17
Toonumbar NP
21.5
Triplarina NR
0.71
Triplarina NR
0.32
Triplarina NR
0.66
Triplarina NR
0.75
Triplarina NR
1.34
Triplarina NR
0.31
Triplarina NR
1.24
Triplarina NR
1.35
Ungazetted (Kalyarr NP)
48
Ungazetted (Kalyarr NP)
26
Unknown
7
Wa Hou NR
10
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
7
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
11
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
7
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
1
Wallaroo NR
3
Wallaroo NR
1.5
Wallaroo NR
8
Wallaroo NR
5
Wallaroo NR
11
Wallaroo NR
7
Wallaroo NR
7
Wallaroo NR
16
Wallaroo NR
6
Wallingat NP
2
Wallingat NP
1.3
Wallingat NP
3.6
Wallingat NP
3.3
Washpool Np
18
Washpool NP
5.3
Washpool NP
5.6
Washpool NP
7.1
Washpool NP
6.4
Washpool NP
1.6
Washpool NP
7
Washpool NP
2.8
Watson’s Creek NR
5
Wereboldera SCA
9
Woggoon NR
144
Wollemi NP
21
Wollemi NP
12
Wollemi NP
10
Wollemi NP
30
Wollemi NP
7
Wollemi NP
11
Wollemi NP
7
Wollemi NP
16
Wollemi NP
2
Wollemi NP
8
Wollemi NP
5
Woodford Island NR
1.5
Woodford Island NR
2
Woodford Island NR
3
Woodford Island NR
3
Woollamia NR
1.51
Woollamia NR
0.77
Woollamia NR
1.95
Woollamia NR
1.88
Woollamia NR
0.74
Woomargama NP
15
Yabbra NP
8
Yabbra NP
45
Yango NP
0.45
Yanununbeyan NP
11
YARRIABINNI NP
2
YARRIABINNI NP
3
YARRIABINNI NP
5
YARRIABINNI NP
6
YARRIABINNI NP
4
Yuraygir NP
4
Yuraygir NP
3.5
Yuraygir NP
1
Yuraygir NP
1
YURAYGIR NP
0.03
Yuraygir NP
1
Yuraygir NP
3.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
28
Yuraygir NP
10
Yuraygir NP
12
Yuraygir NP
1
Yuraygir NP
1
Yuraygir NP
4
Yuraygir NP
3.5
3,785.10 Ha
i.e. An area 6km x 6km
.
NSW Local Government Areas (LGAs)
Bush Fire Management Committee / LGA
Reserve / Activity Name
Treatment Area (km2)
Blue Mountains
Northern Strategic Line -Primary
8
Blue Mountains
De Faurs Trail – Mt Wilson -Primary
2.8
Blue Mountains
Mitchell’s Creek Fire Trail – Primary
3.5
Blue Mountains
Nellies Glen Fire Trail
2.8
Blue Mountains
Back Creek Fire Trail – Primary
3.2
Blue Mountains
Mt Piddington Trail – Hornes Point
N/A
Bombala
Gibraltar Ridge Fire Trail (2) (PT)
20
Bombala
Mt Rixs Fire Trail (PT)
6
Bombala
Roaring Camp Fire Trail (PT)
12
Cooma-Monaro
Brest Fire Trail (2) (PT)
15
Cooma-Monaro
Calabash Fire Trail (2) (PT)
22
Cooma-Monaro
Murrumbucca Fire Trail (2) (ST)
15
Cooma-Monaro
Bridge Fire Trail (2) (PT)
6
Cooma-Monaro
Log In Hole Fire Trail (2) (PT)
5
Gloucester
Upper Avon Fire Trail
11
Greater Argyle
Mountain Ash Fire Trail
10
Greater Argyle
Mootwingee Fire Trail
6
Greater Hume
Murphy’s Fire Trail
0.2
Greater Hume
Mandaring Fire Trail
1
Greater Queanbeyan City
Queanbeyan River Fire Trail
5.5
Greater Queanbeyan City
Gourock Fire Trail
5.8
Hawkesbury District
Jacks Trail
1.6
Hawkesbury District
Duffys Trail (2) ?tenure
3
Mallee
Various Fire Trails
N/A
Mallee
No 21 Fire Trail
20
Namoi/Gwydir
Warialda State Forest
6.5
Namoi/Gwydir
Zaba-Kaiwarra-Kiora Fire Trail (check)
10
Namoi/Gwydr
Blue Nobby Fire Trail (check)
8
Namoi/Gwydr
Araluen Fire Trail (check)
6
Snowy River
Snowy Plain Fire Trail (2) (PT)
18
Snowy River
Crackenback Fire Trail (PT)
10
Snowy River
Devils Hole Fire Trail (PT)
18
Snowy River
Golden Age Fire Trail (2) (PT)
8
Sutherland
Sabugal Pass Fire Trail
N/A
SW Mallee
Various Fire Trails
N/A
SW Mallee
Oberwells Fire Trail
28
SW Mallee
Mandleman Fire Trail
40
Upper Lachlan
Johnsons Creek Fire Trail
15
Warringah/Pittwater
Lovett Bay Trail (2)
2.5
Warringah/Pittwater
Elvina Bay Trail (2)
1.5
Yass Valley
Nelanglo Fire Trail
21
Yass Valley
Hayshed Fire Trail 1
7
Yass Valley
Hayshed Fire Trail 2
7
391.90 km2
i.e. An area 20km x 20km
.
Forests NSW (government’s industrial logger of NSW remnant forests).
(Forests NSW did not publish the area burnt, only the cost. As a rule of thumb use $3000/square km)
Bush Fire Management Committee
Reserve / Activity Name
NSW Allocation
Clarence Zone
Dalmorton SF
$30,000
Future Forests
Swan
$20,050
Future Forests
Tindall
$10,680
Future Forests
Tooloom
$10,425
Future Forests
Mazzer
$7,341
Future Forests
Kungurrabah
$4,435
Future Forests
Morpeth Park
$3,773
Future Forests
Loughnan
$3,155
Future Forests
Inglebar
$3,000
Future Forests
Lattimore
$2,604
Future Forests
Byrne
$1,755
Future Forests
Ziull 4
$1,677
Future Forests
Lejag
$1,670
Future Forests
Ziull 2
$1,600
Future Forests
Bates
$1,563
Future Forests
Ziull 3
$1,454
Future Forests
Envirocom
$1,410
Future Forests
Morgan
$1,361
Future Forests
McNamara
$1,279
Future Forests
Neaves
$967
Future Forests
Zuill
$872
Future Forests
Boyle
$807
Future Forests
Fitzpatrick
$791
Future Forests
Morrow
$785
Future Forests
Morrow
$785
Future Forests
Morrow
$785
Future Forests
Wallwork
$665
Future Forests
Smith
$665
Future Forests
Wilson
$622
Future Forests
Jarramarumba
$600
Future Forests
Hession
$597
Future Forests
Edwards
$563
Future Forests
Maunder
$558
Future Forests
Kuantan
$515
Future Forests
Billins
$484
Future Forests
Cox
$475
Future Forests
Paterson
$461
Future Forests
Gladys
$415
Future Forests
O’Keefe
$371
Future Forests
Woodcock
$369
Future Forests
Pratten
$346
Future Forests
Truswell
$323
Future Forests
Divine
$323
Future Forests
Hastings
$323
Future Forests
White
$300
Future Forests
Miller
$300
Future Forests
Koop
$300
Future Forests
Lacy
$277
Future Forests
Nosrac
$277
Future Forests
Tully
$277
Future Forests
Baker
$277
Future Forests
Yaganegi
$277
Future Forests
Siezowski
$254
Future Forests
Zuill
$254
Future Forests
Atcheson
$254
Future Forests
Dissevelt
$254
Future Forests
Hoy
$254
Future Forests
Woods
$254
Future Forests
Dawson
$254
Future Forests
Hagan
$254
Future Forests
Skelly
$231
Future Forests
Robards
$231
Future Forests
Maunder
$231
Future Forests
Day
$231
Future Forests
O’Connell
$231
Future Forests
Kompara
$231
Future Forests
Carmen
$231
Future Forests
Maurer
$231
Future Forests
Cunin
$208
Future Forests
GCC
$208
Future Forests
White
$208
Future Forests
Hayer
$208
Future Forests
Southgate
$208
Future Forests
Peck
$208
Greater Taree
Kiwarrak SF
$40,000
Hastings
Cowarra SF
$30,000
Hastings
Caincross SF
$4,000
Hume
Clearing fire trails
$100,000
Hume
New FT
$6,000
Hunter
Pokolbin SF
$13,600
Hunter
Myall River SF
$12,800
Hunter
Myall River SF
$12,800
Hunter
Heaton SF
$12,400
Hunter
Bulahdelah SF
$6,100
Hunter
Watagan SF
$3,200
Hunter
Awaba SF
$3,200
Hunter
Myall River SF
$3,100
Macquarie
Warrengong
$16,250
Macquarie
Vulcan & Gurnang
$11,519
Macquarie
Kinross SF
$8,800
Macquarie
Mount David
$6,101
Macquarie
Newnes SF
$5,199
Macquarie
Printing 25 fire atlas’
$2,048
Macquarie
Black Rock Ridge
$447
Mid-Nth Coast – Taree
Knorrit SF
$36,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Taree
Yarratt SF
$16,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Wauchope
Boonanghi SF
$37,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Wauchope
Northern Break
$9,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Wauchope
Caincross SF
$3,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Wauchope
Western Break
$2,000
Monaro
Clearing fire trails
$114,685
North East
Thumb Creek SF
$46,000
North East
Candole SF
$29,535
North East
Various State Forests
$20,000
North East
Mt Belmore SF
$12,115
North East
Candole SF
$8,900
North East
Lower Bucca SF
$5,500
North East
All North Region
$3,300
North East
Wild Cattle SF
$3,000
North East
Orara East SF
$1,900
Northern -Casino
Barragunda
$11,522
Northern -Casino
Yaraldi 2003
$8,847
Northern -Casino
Yaraldi 2004
$3,207
Richmond Valley
Bates
$20,000
Richmond Valley
Whiporie SF
$13,154
Richmond Valley
Swanson
$12,000
Richmond Valley
McNamara
$10,180
Richmond Valley
Whiporie SF
$9,582
Southern
Pollwombra FT
$6,360
Southern-Eden
Various – whole district
$112,019
Tamworth
Nundle SF
$40,000
Walcha
Nowendoc SF
$30,000
Walcha
Styx River SF
$20,000
$1,073,482
i.e. Approximately an area 20km x 20km
.
NSW Department of Lands (what native vegetation’s left).
Bush Fire Management Committee
Reserve / Activity Name
Treatment Area Ha / Other
Treatment Area (km2)
Baulkham Hills
Porters Rd / Cranstons Rd
5
Baulkham Hills
Porters Rd / Cranstons Rd (2)
4
Baulkham Hills
Pauls Road Trail
5
Baulkham Hills
Mount View Trail
1
Baulkham Hills
Idlewild
2
Baulkham Hills
Maroota Tracks Trail
7
Baulkham Hills
Yoothamurra Trail
1
Baulkham Hills
Kellys Arm Trail
3
Baulkham Hills
Dargle Ridge Trail
5
Baulkham Hills
Dargle Trail
3
Baulkham Hills
Days Road Trail
3
Baulkham Hills
Dickinsons Trail
6
Baulkham Hills
Fingerboard Trail
3
Baulkham Hills
Floyds Road Trail
8
Baulkham Hills
Neichs Road Trail
4
Bega
Eden Strategic Fire Trail
3
Bega
Illawambera Fire Trail
1
Bega
Merimbula/Turu Beach Strategic Protection
2
Bega
Yankees Gap
2
Bega
Millingandi Special Protection (Trail)
1
Bega
Wallagoot Strategic Protection (Trail)
1.2
Bega
South Eden Strategic Protection (Trail)
1
Bega
Merimbula/Pambula Strategic Protection (APZ)
1
Bega
Pacific St Tathra
0.5
Bland
Bland Villages (FTM)
2
Bland
Water Tower Reserve FTM
3
Blue Mountains
Cripple Creek Fire Trail Stage 2
5
Blue Mountains
Cripple Creek Fire Trail Complex
5
Blue Mountains
Caves Creek Trail
0.4
Blue Mountains
Edith Falls Trail
2
Blue Mountains
Boronia Rd – Albert Rd Trails
1
Blue Mountains
Perimeter Trail – North Hazelbrook
1.5
Blue Mountains
McMahons Point Trail – Kings Tableland
7
Blue Mountains
Back Creek Fire Trail
3.2
Blue Mountains
Mitchell’s Creek Fire Trail
3.5
Bombala
Gibraltar Ridge Fire Trail
11
Bombala
Burnt Hut Fire Trail
5
Bombala
Merriangah East Fire Trail
12
Bombala
Bombala Towns & Villages (Trails)
10
Campbelltown
St Helens Park – Wedderburn Rd (Barriers)
0.3
Campbelltown
Barrier / Gate
Campbelltown
Riverview Rd Fire Trail
0.65
Canobolas
Calula Range FTM
Canobolas
Spring Glen Estate FTM
Cessnock
Neath South West Fire Trail
2
Cessnock
Neath South East Fire Trail
1.5
Cessnock
Neath North Fire Trail (2)
1
Cessnock
Gates – Asset Protection Zones
Cessnock
Signs – Asset Protection Zones
Cessnock
Signs – Fire Trails
Cessnock
Kearsley Fire Trail
0.5
Cessnock
Neath – South (Trail)
4
Cessnock
Neath – North (Trail)
2
Clarence Valley
Bowling Club Fire Trail
1
Clarence Valley
Brooms Head Fire Trail
0.2
Clarence Valley
Ilarwill Village
0.3
Cooma-Monaro
Chakola Fire Trail
21
Cooma-Monaro
Good Good Fire Trail
12
Cooma-Monaro
Inaloy Fire Trail
19
Cooma-Monaro
Cowra Creek Fire Trail
4
Cooma-Monaro
David’s Fire Trail
2.1
Cooma-Monaro
Clear Hills Fire Trail
5
Cooma-Monaro
Mt Dowling Fire Trail
16
Cooma-Monaro
Towneys Ridge Fire Trail
6
Cunningham
Warialda Periphery 2
20
Cunningham
Upper Bingara Fire Trail
Dungog
Dungog Fire Trail Signs
Far North Coast
Byrangary Fire Trail
1
Far North Coast
Main Arm Fire Trail (NC67)
2
Far North Coast
Burringbar Fire Trail (NC69)
1
Far North Coast
Mill Rd Fire Trail (NC95)
1
Far North Coast
Broken Head Fire Trail (NC68)
0.5
Far North Coast
New Brighton Fire Trail (NC44)
0.5
Far North Coast
Mooball Spur Fire Trail
1
Far North Coast
Palmwoods Fire Trail (NC06)
0.5
Gloucester
Coneac Trail
6
Gloucester
Moores Trail
6
Gloucester
Mt Mooney Fire Trail
6
Gosford District
Signs – Fire Trails
Great Lakes
Ebsworth Fire Trail
1
Great Lakes
Tuncurry High Fire Trail
0.6
Great Lakes
Monterra Ave Trail – Hawks Nest
0.7
Greater Argyle
Browns Rd Komungla
12
Greater Argyle
Greater Argyle Fire Trail Maintenance
Greater Argyle
Cookbundoon Fire Trail
2
Greater Taree District
Tinonee St Road Reserve
0.25
Greater Taree District
Beach St SFAZ – Wallabi Point
0.35
Greater Taree District
Sth Woodlands Dr – SFAZ
1.3
Greater Taree District
Cedar Party Rd – Taree
2
Hawkesbury District
Sargents Road (2)?tenure
0.75
Hawkesbury District
Parallel Trail (2)
2.5
Hawkesbury District
Parallel Trail (1)
1.1
Hornsby/Ku-ring-gai
Tunks Ridge, Dural
1
Hornsby/Ku-ring-gai
Radnor & Cairnes Fire Trail
0.5
Hornsby/Ku-ring-gai
Binya Cl, Hornsby Heights
1.5
Shellharbour District
Saddleback – Hoddles Trail
3
Shellharbour District
Rough Range Trail
1
Lake Macquarie District
Kilaben Bay Fire Trail
1.5
Lake Macquarie District
Gates – Access Management
Lake Macquarie District
Signs – APZ
Lake Macquarie District
Signs – Fire Trails
Lithgow
Wilsons Glen Trail
6.1
Lithgow
Kanimbla Fire Trail No 314
7.8
Lithgow
Camels Back Trail No 312
4.5
Lithgow
Crown Creek Trail No 206
7
Lithgow
Capertee Common Trail No 203
3
Lower Hunter Zone
Access Infrastructure – All Districts
Lower North Coast
Cabbage Tree Lane Fire Trail, Kempsey
1.5
Lower North Coast
Bullocks Quarry Fire Trail
0.66
Lower North Coast
Perimeter Protection, Main St, Eungai Creek, Nambucca
Click above icon to play Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’
..first turn speakers on, then while playing scroll slowly through this article…
.
..So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell?
Blue skies from pain?
.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
.
Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
.
Cold comfortable change?
Did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage? …
.
(Lyrics extract from Pink Floyd’s legendary song ‘Wish You Were Here‘ off their 1975 album of the same name)
.
These photos, as you scroll through them, are of Tasmania’s wild old growth forest heritage, which is currently being destroyed in 2012, driven by the Premier Lara Giddings Labor Government of Tasmania.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who on 7th August 2011 personally promised the protection of Tasmania’s old growth forests.
.
.
.
.
.
Click photo to enlarge
.
.
Tasmania’s disappearing wildlife wish Julia was here
This article is by Scott Jordan, Campaign Coordinator Tarkine National Coalition, initially entitled ‘Shree Minerals’ Impact Statement documentation critically non-compliant‘ dated 20120222..Shree Minerals – foreign miners pillaging Tasmania’s precious Tarkine wilderness
(Photo courtesy of Tarkine National Coalition, click photo to enlarge)
. Tarkine National Coalition has described the Shree Minerals’ Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed Nelson Bay River open cut iron ore mine as a mismatch of omissions, flawed assumptions and misrepresentations.
Key data on endangered orchids is missing,
and projections on impacts on Tasmanian Devil and Spotted-tailed Quoll
are based on flawed and fanciful data.
Spotted-tailed Quoll
.
The EIS produced by the company as part of the Commonwealth environmental assessments has failed to produce a report relating to endangered and critically endangered orchid populations in the vicinity of the proposed open cut mine. The soil borne Mychorizza fungus is highly succeptible to changes in hydrology, and is essential to the germination of the area’s native orchids which cannot exist without Mychorizza. Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke included this report as a requirement in the project’s EIS guidelines issued in June 2011.
Australia’s Minister for EnvironmentTony Burke
.
“Shree Minerals have decided that undertaking the necessary work on the proposal is likely to uncover some inconvenient truths, and so instead of producing scientific reports they are asking us to suspend common sense and accept that a 220 metre deep hole extending 1km long will have no impact on hydrology.” said Tarkine National Coalition spokesperson Scott Jordan.
Utter devastationA magnetite mine at nearby Savage River
.
“It’s a ridiculous notion when you consider that the mine depth will be some 170 metres below the level of the adjacent Nelson Bay River.”
TNC has also questioned the company’s motives in the clear contradictions and misrepresentations in the data relating to projections of Tasmanian devil roadkill from mine related traffic. The company has used a January-February traffic surveys as a current traffic baseline which skews the data due to the higher level of tourist, campers and shackowner during the traditional summer holiday season.
Department of Infrastructure, Energy and Resources (Tasmania) (DIER) data indicates that there is a doubling of vehicles on these road sections between October and January.
The company also asserted an assumed level of mine related traffic that is substantially lower than their own expert produced Traffic Impact Assessment.
The roadkill assumptions were made on an additional 82 vehicles per day in year one, and 34 vehicles per day in years 2-10, while the figures the Traffic Impact Assessment specify 122 vehicles per day in year one, and 89 vehicles per day in ongoing years.
“When you apply the expert Traffic Impact Assessment data and the DIER’s data for current road use, the increase in traffic is 329% in year one and 240% in years 2-10 which contradicts the company’s flawed projections of 89% and 34%”.
“This increase of traffic will, on the company’s formulae, result in up to 32 devil deaths per year, not the 3 per year in presented in the EIS.” “Shree Minerals either is too incompetent to understand it’s own expert reports, or they have set out to deliberately mislead the Commonwealth and State environmental assessors.” “Either way, they are unfit to be trusted with a Pilbara style iron ore mine in stronghold of threatened species like the Tarkine.”
The public comment period closed on Monday, and the company now has to compile public comments received and submit them with the EIS to the Commonwealth.
. .
Discovery of Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease in the Tarkine
Media Release 20120224
.
Tarkine National Coalition has described the discovery of Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) at Mt Lindsay in the Tarkine as a tragedy.
“The Tarkine has been for a number of years the last bastion of disease free devils, and news that the disease has been found in the south eastern zone of the Tarkine is devastating news”, said Tarkine National Coalition spokesperson Scott Jordan.
“It is now urgent that the federal and state governments step up and take immediate action to prevent any factors that may exacerbate or accelerate the transmission of this disease to the remaining healthy populations in the Tarkine”.
“The decisions made today will have a critical impact on the survival of the Devil in the wild. Delay is no longer an option – today is the day for action.”
“They should start by reinstating the Emergency National Heritage Listing and placing an immediate halt on all mineral exploration activity in the Tarkine to allow EPBC assessments.”
.
NOTE: EPBC stands for Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999
.
.
.
Proposed Mine Site Plan (Direct Shipping Ore) with flows to enter tributaries of Nelson River
(Source: Shree Minerals EIS, 2011)
.
“The Nelson Bay Iron Ore Project (ELs 41/2004 & 54/2008) covers the Nelson Bay Magnetite deposit with Inferred Mineral Resources reported to Australasian Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) guidelines. Drilling will look to enlarge the deposit and improve the quality of the resource, currently standing at 6.8 Million tonnes @ 38.2% magnetite at a 20% magnetite cut off. In addition exploration work will look follow up recent drilling of near surface iron oxide mineralisation in an attempt delineate direct shipping ore. Exploration of additional magnetic targets will also be undertaken.”
The image belows show the shocking damage caused by longwall coal mining to the Waratah Rivulet, which flows into Woronora Dam.
Longwalls have run parallel to and directly under this once pristine waterway in the Woronora Catchment Special Area. You risk an $11,000 fine if you set foot in the Catchment without permission, yet coal companies can cause irreparable damage like this and get away with it.
Waratah Rivulet is a third order stream that is located just to the west of Helensburgh and feeds into the Woronora Dam from the south. Along with its tributaries, it makes up about 29% of the Dam catchment. The Dam provides both the Sutherland Shire and Helensburgh with drinking water. The Rivulet is within the Sydney Catchment Authority managed Woronora Special Area there is no public access without the permission of the SCA. Trespassers are liable to an $11,000 fine.
.
Longwall Mining under Waratah Rivulet
Metropolitan Colliery operates under the Woronora Special Area. Excel Coal operated it until October 2006 when Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal mining corporation, purchased it. The method of coal extraction is longwall mining. Recent underground operations have taken place and still are taking place directly below the Waratah Rivulet and its catchment area.
In 2005 the NSW Scientific Committee declared longwall mining to be a key threatening process (read report below). The Waratah Rivulet was listed in the declaration along with several other rivers and creeks as being damaged by mining. No threat abatement plan was ever completed.
In September 2006, conservation groups were informed that serious damage to the Waratah Rivulet had taken place. Photographs were provided and an inspection was organised through the Sydney Catchment Authority (SCA) to take place on the 24th of November. On November 23rd, the Total Environment Centre met with Peabody Energy at the mining company’s request. They had heard of our forthcoming inspection and wanted to tell us about their operation and future mining plans. Through a PowerPoint presentation they told us we would be shocked by what we would see and that water had drained from the Rivulet but was reappearing further downstream closer to the dam.
The inspection took place on the 24th of November and was attended by officers from the SCA and the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC), the Total Environment Centre, Colong Foundation, Rivers SOS and two independent experts on upland swamps and sandstone geology. We walked the length of the Rivulet that flows over the longwall panels. Although, similar waterways in the area are flowing healthily, the riverbed was completely dry for much of its length. It had suffered some of the worst cracking we had ever seen as a result of longwall mining. The SCA officers indicated that at one series of pools, water levels had dropped about 3m. We were also told there is anecdotal evidence suggesting the Rivulet has ceased to pass over places never previously known to have stopped flowing.
It appeared that the whole watercourse had tilted to the east as a result of the subsidence and upsidence. Rock ledges that were once flat now sloped. Iron oxide pollution stains were also present. The SCA also told us that they did not know whether water flows were returning further downstream. There was also evidence of failed attempts at remediation with a distinctly different coloured sand having washed out of cracks and now sitting on the dry river bed or in pools.
Also undermined was Flat Rock Swamp at the southernmost extremity of the longwall panels. It is believed to be the main source of water recharge for the Waratah Rivulet. It is highly likely that the swamp has also been damaged and is sitting on a tilt.
TEC has applied under Freedom of Information legislation to the SCA for documents that refer to the damage to the Waratah Rivulet.
During the meeting with Peabody on 23rd November, the company stated its intentions sometime in 2007 to submit a 3A application under the EP&A Act 1974 (NSW) to mine a further 27 longwall panels that will run under the Rivulet and finish under the Woronora Dam storage area.
This is very alarming given the damage that has already occurred to a catchment that provides the Sutherland Shire & Helensburgh with 29% of their drinking water. The dry bed of Waratah Rivulet above the mining area and the stain of iron oxide pollution may be seen clearly through Google Earth.
.
The Bigger Picture
In 2005 Rivers SOS, a coalition of 30 groups, formed with the aim of campaigning for the NSW Government to mandate a safety zone of at least 1km around rivers and creeks threatened by mining in NSW.
The peak environment groups of NSW endorse this position and it forms part of their election policy document.
.
Longwall Mining under or close to Rivers and Streams:
.
Seven major rivers and numerous creeks in NSW have been permanently damaged by mining operations which have been allowed to go too close to, or under, riverbeds. Some rivers are used as channels for saline and acid wastewater pumped out from mines. Many more are under threat. The Minister for Primary Industries, Ian Macdonald, is continuing to approve operations with the Department of Planning and DEC also involved in the process, as are a range of agencies (EPA, Fisheries, DIPNR, SCA, etc.) on an Interagency Review Committee. This group gives recommendations concerning underground mine plans to Ian Macdonald, but has no further say in his final decision. A document recently obtained under FOI by Rivers SOS shows that an independent consultant to the Interagency Committee recommended that mining come no closer than 350m to the Cataract River, yet the Minister approved mining to come within 60m.
The damage involves multiple cracking of river bedrock, ranging from hairline cracks to cracks up to several centimetres wide, causing water loss and pollution as ecotoxic chemicals are leached from the fractured rocks.
.
Aquifers may often be breached.
.
Satisfactory remediation is not possible. In addition, rockfalls along mined river gorges are frequent. The high price of coal and the royalties gained from expanding mines are making it all too tempting for the Government to compromise the integrity of our water catchments and sacrifice natural heritage.
.
Longwall Mining in the Catchments
.
Longwall coal mining is taking place across the catchment areas south of Sydney and is also proposed in the Wyong catchment. Of particular concern is BHP-B’s huge Dendrobium mine which is undermining the Avon and Cordeaux catchments, part of Sydney’s water supply.
A story in the Sydney Morning Herald in January 2005 stated that the SCA were developing a policy for longwall coal mining within the catchments that would be ready by the middle of that year. This policy is yet to materialise.
The SMP approvals process invariably promises remediation and further monitoring. But damage to rivers continues and applications to mine areapproved with little or no significant conditions placed upon the licence.
Remediation involves grouting some cracks but cannot cover all of the cracks, many of which go undetected, in areas where the riverbed is sandy for example.
Sometimes the grout simply washes out of the crack, as is the case in the Waratah Rivulet.
The SCA was established as a result of the 1998 Sydney water crisis. Justice Peter McClellan, who led the subsequent inquiry, determined that a separate catchment management authority with teeth should be created because, as he said “someone should wake up in the morning owning the issue” of adequate management.
An audit of the SCA and the catchments in 1999 found multiple problems including understaffing, the need to interact with so many State agencies, and enormous pressure from developers. Developers in the catchments include mining companies. In spite of government policies such as SEPP 58, stating that development in catchments should have only a “neutral or beneficial effect” on water quality, longwall coal mining in the catchments have been, and are being, approved by the NSW government.
Overidden by the Mining Act 1992, the SCA appears powerless to halt the damage to Sydney’s water supply.
.
Alteration of habitat following subsidence due to longwall mining – key threatening process listing
[Source: ‘Alteration of habitat following subsidence due to longwall mining – key threatening process listing’, Dr Lesley Hughes, ChairpersonScientific Committee, Proposed Gazettal date: 15/07/05, Exhibition period: 15/07/05 – 09/09/05on Department of Environment (NSW) website,^http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/determinations/LongwallMiningKtp.htm]
.
NSW Scientific Committee – final determination
.
The Scientific Committee, established by the Threatened Species Conservation Act, has made a Final Determination to list Alteration of habitat following subsidence due to longwall mining as a KEY THREATENING PROCESS in Schedule 3 of the Act. Listing of key threatening processes is provided for by Part 2 of the Act.
.
The Scientific Committee has found that:
1. Longwall mining occurs in the Northern, Southern and Western Coalfields of NSW. The Northern Coalfields are centred on the Newcastle-Hunter region. The Southern Coalfield lies principally beneath the Woronora, Nepean and Georges River catchments approximately 80-120 km SSW of Sydney. Coalmines in the Western Coalfield occur along the western margin of the Sydney Basin. Virtually all coal mining in the Southern and Western Coalfields is underground mining.
2. Longwall mining involves removing a panel of coal by working a face of up to 300 m in width and up to two km long. Longwall panels are laid side by side with coal pillars, referred to as “chain pillars” separating the adjacent panels. Chain pillars generally vary in width from 20-50 m wide (Holla and Barclay 2000). The roof of the working face is temporarily held up by supports that are repositioned as the mine face advances (Karaman et al. 2001). The roof immediately above the coal seam then collapses into the void (also known as the goaf) and a collapse zone is formed above the extracted area. This zone is highly fractured and permeable and normally extends above the seam to a height of five times the extracted seam thickness (typical extracted seam thickness is approximately 2-3.5 m) (ACARP 2002). Above the collapse zone is a fractured zone where the permeability is increased to a lesser extent than in the collapse zone. The fractured zone extends to a height above the seam of approximately 20 times the seam thickness, though in weaker strata this can be as high as 30 times the seam thickness (ACARP 2002). Above this level, the surface strata will crack as a result of bending strains, with the cracks varying in size according to the level of strain, thickness of the overlying rock stratum and frequency of natural joints or planes of weakness in the strata (Holla and Barclay 2000).
3. The principal surface impact of underground coal mining is subsidence (lowering of the surface above areas that are mined) (Booth et al. 1998, Holla and Barclay 2000). The total subsidence of a surface point consists of two components, active and residual. Active subsidence, which forms 90 to 95% of the total subsidence in most cases, follows the advance of the working face and usually occurs immediately. Residual subsidence is time-dependent and is due to readjustment and compaction within the goaf (Holla and Barclay 2000). Trough-shaped subsidence profiles associated with longwall mining develop tilt between adjacent points that have subsided different amounts.
Maximum ground tilts are developed above the edges of the area of extraction and may be cumulative if more than one seam is worked up to a common boundary. The surface area affected by ground movement is greater than the area worked in the seam (Bell et al. 2000). In the NSW Southern Coalfield, horizontal displacements can extend for more than one kilometre from mine workings (and in extreme cases in excess of three km) (ACARP 2002, 2003), although at these distances, the horizontal movements have little associated tilt or strain. Subsidence at a surface point is due not only to mining in the panel directly below the point, but also to mining in the adjacent panels. It is not uncommon for mining in each panel to take a year or so and therefore a point on the surface may continue to experience residual subsidence for several years (Holla and Barclay 2000).
4. The degree of subsidence resulting from a particular mining activity depends on a number of site specific factors. Factors that affect subsidence include the design of the mine, the thickness of the coal seam being extracted, the width of the chain pillars, the ratio of the depth of overburden to the longwall panel width and the nature of the overlying strata; sandstones are known to subside less than other substrates such as shales. Subsidence is also dependent on topography, being more evident in hilly terrain than in flat or gently undulating areas (Elsworth and Liu 1995, Holla 1997, Holla and Barclay 2000, ACARP 2001). The extent and width of surface cracking over and within the vicinity of the mined goaf will also decrease with an increased depth of mining (Elsworth and Liu 1995).
5. Longwall mining can accelerate the natural process of ‘valley bulging’ (ACARP 2001, 2002). This phenomenon is indicated by an irregular upward spike in an otherwise smooth subsidence profile, generally co-inciding with the base of the valley. The spike represents a reduced amount of subsidence, known as ‘upsidence’, in the base and sides of the valley and is generally coupled with the horizontal closure of the valley sides (ACARP 2001, 2002). In most cases, the upsidence effects extend outside the valley and include the immediate cliff lines and ground beyond them (ACARP 2002).
6. Mining subsidence is frequently associated with cracking of valley floors and creeklines and with subsequent effects on surface and groundwater hydrology (Booth et al. 1998, Holla and Barclay 2000, ACARP 2001, 2002, 2003). Subsidence-induced cracks occurring beneath a stream or other surface water body may result in the loss of water to near-surface groundwater flows.
If the water body is located in an area where the coal seam is less than approximately 100-120 m below the surface, longwall mining can cause the water body to lose flow permanently. If the coal seam is deeper than approximately 150 m, the water loss may be temporary unless the area is affected by severe geological disturbances such as strong faulting. In the majority of cases, surface waters lost to the sub-surface re-emerge downstream. The ability of the water body to recover is dependent on the width of the crack, the surface gradient, the substrate composition and the presence of organic matter. An already-reduced flow rate due to drought conditions or an upstream dam or weir will increase the impact of water loss through cracking. The potential for closure of surface cracks is improved at sites with a low surface gradient although even temporary cracking, leading to loss of flow, may have long-term effects on ecological function in localised areas. The steeper the gradient, the more likely that any solids transported by water flow will be moved downstream allowing the void to remain open and the potential loss of flows to the subsurface to continue.
A lack of thick alluvium in the streambed may also prolong stream dewatering (by at least 13 years, in one case study in West Virginia, Gill 2000).
Impacts on the flows of ephemeral creeks are likely to be greater than those on permanent creeks (Holla and Barclay 2000). Cracking and subsequent water loss can result in permanent changes to riparian community structure and composition.
7. Subsidence can also cause decreased stability of slopes and escarpments, contamination of groundwater by acid drainage, increased sedimentation, bank instability and loss, creation or alteration of riffle and pool sequences, changes to flood behaviour, increased rates of erosion with associated turbidity impacts, and deterioration of water quality due to a reduction in dissolved oxygen and to increased salinity, iron oxides, manganese, and electrical conductivity (Booth et al. 1998, Booth and Bertsch 1999, Sidle et al. 2000, DLWC 2001, Gill 2000, Stout 2003). Displacement of flows may occur where water from mine workings is discharged at a point or seepage zone remote from the stream, and in some cases, into a completely different catchment. Where subsidence cracks allow surface water to mix with subsurface water, the resulting mixture may have altered chemical properties. The occurrence of iron precipitate and iron-oxidising bacteria is particularly evident in rivers where surface cracking has occurred. These bacteria commonly occur in Hawkesbury Sandstone areas, where seepage through the rock is often rich in iron compounds (Jones and Clark 1991) and are able to grow in water lacking dissolved oxygen. Where the bacteria grow as thick mats they reduce interstitial habitat, clog streams and reduce available food (DIPNR 2003). Loss of native plants and animals may occur directly via iron toxicity, or indirectly via smothering. Long-term studies in the United States indicate that reductions in diversity and abundance of aquatic invertebrates occur in streams in the vicinity of longwall mining and these effects may still be evident 12 years after mining (Stout 2003, 2004).
8. The extraction of coal and the subsequent cracking of strata surrounding the goaf may liberate methane, carbon dioxide and other gases. Most of the gas is removed by the ventilation system of the mine but some gas remains within the goaf areas. Gases tend to diffuse upwards through any cracks occurring in the strata and be emitted from the surface (ACARP 2001). Gas emissions can result in localised plant death as anaerobic conditions are created within the soil (Everett et al. 1998).
9. Subsidence due to longwall mining can destabilise cliff-lines and increase the probability of localised rockfalls and cliff collapse (Holla and Barclay 2000, ACARP 2001, 2002). This has occurred in the Western Coalfield and in some areas of the Southern Coalfield (ACARP 2001). These rockfalls have generally occurred within months of the cliffline being undermined but in some cases up to 18 years after surface cracking first became visible following mining (ACARP 2001). Changes to cliff-line topography may result in an alteration to the environment of overhangs and blowouts. These changes may result in the loss of roosts for bats and nest sites for cliff-nesting birds.
10. Damage to some creek systems in the Hunter Valley has been associated with subsidence due to longwall mining. Affected creeks include Eui Creek, Wambo Creek, Bowmans Creek, Fishery Creek and Black Creek (Dept of Sustainable Natural Resources 2003, in lit.). Damage has occurred as a result of loss of stability, with consequent release of sediment into the downstream environment, loss of stream flow, death of fringing vegetation, and release of iron rich and occasionally highly acidic leachate. In the Southern Coalfields substantial surface cracking has occurred in watercourses within the Upper Nepean, Avon, Cordeaux, Cataract, Bargo, Georges and Woronora catchments, including Flying Fox Creek, Wongawilli Creek, Native Dog Creek and Waratah Rivulet. The usual sequence of events has been subsidence-induced cracking within the streambed, followed by significant dewatering of permanent pools and in some cases complete absence of surface flow.
11. The most widely publicised subsidence event in the Southern Coalfields was the cracking of the Cataract riverbed downstream of the Broughtons Pass Weir to the confluence of the Nepean River. Mining in the vicinity began in 1988 with five longwall panels having faces of 110 m that were widened in 1992 to 155 m. In 1994, the river downstream of the longwall mining operations dried up (ACARP 2001, 2002). Water that re-emerged downstream was notably deoxygenated and heavily contaminated with iron deposits; no aquatic life was found in these areas (Everett et al. 1998). In 1998, a Mining Wardens Court Hearing concluded that 80% of the drying of the Cataract River was due to longwall mining operations, with the balance attributed to reduced flows regulated by Sydney Water. Reduction of the surface river flow was accompanied by release of gas, fish kills, iron bacteria mats, and deterioration of water quality and instream habitat. Periodic drying of the river has continued, with cessation of flow recorded on over 20 occasions between June 1999 and October 2002 (DIPNR 2003). At one site, the ‘Bubble Pool”, localised water loss up to 4 ML/day has been recorded (DIPNR 2003).
Piezometers indicated that there was an unusually high permeability in the sandstone, indicating widespread bedrock fracturing (DIPNR 2003). High gas emissions within and around areas of dead vegetation on the banks of the river have been observed and it is likely that this dieback is related to the generation of anoxic conditions in the soil as the migrating gas is oxidised (Everett et al. 1998). An attempt to rectify the cracking by grouting of the most severe crack in 1999 was only partially successful (AWT 2000). In 2001, water in the Cataract River was still highly coloured, flammable gas was still being released and flow losses of about 50% (3-3.5 ML/day) still occurring (DLWC 2001). Environmental flow releases of 1.75 ML/day in the Cataract River released from Broughtons Pass Weir were not considered enough to keep the river flowing or to maintain acceptable water quality (DIPNR 2003).
12. Subsidence associated with longwall mining has contributed to adverse effects (see below) on upland swamps. These effects have been examined in most detail on the Woronora Plateau (e.g. Young 1982, Gibbins 2003, Sydney Catchment Authority, in lit.), although functionally similar swamps exist in the Blue Mountains and on Newnes Plateau and are likely to be affected by the same processes. These swamps occur in the headwaters of the Woronora River and O’Hares Creek, both major tributaries of the Georges River, as well as major tributaries of the Nepean River, including the Cataract and Cordeaux Rivers. The swamps are exceptionally species rich with up to 70 plant species in 15 m2 (Keith and Myerscough 1993) and are habitats of particular conservation significance for their biota. The swamps occur on sandstone in valleys with slopes usually less than ten degrees in areas of shallow, impervious substrate formed by either the bedrock or clay horizons (Young and Young 1988). The low gradient, low discharge streams cannot effectively flush sediment so they lack continuous open channels and water is held in a perched water table. The swamps act as water filters, releasing water slowly to downstream creek systems thus acting to regulate water quality and flows from the upper catchment areas (Young and Young 1988).
13. Upland swamps on the Woronora Plateau are characterised by ti-tree thicket, cyperoid heath, sedgeland, restioid heath and Banksia thicket with the primary floristic variation being related to soil moisture and fertility (Young 1986, Keith and Myerscough 1993). Related swamp systems occur in the upper Blue Mountains including the Blue Mountains Sedge Swamps (also known as hanging swamps) which occur on steep valley sides below an outcropping claystone substratum and the Newnes Plateau Shrub Swamps and Coxs River Swamps which are also hydrologically dependent on the continuance of specific topographic and geological conditions (Keith and Benson 1988, Benson and Keith 1990). The swamps are subject to recurring drying and wetting, fires, erosion and partial flushing of the sediments (Young 1982, Keith 1991). The conversion of perched water table flows into subsurface flows through voids, as a result of mining-induced subsidence may significantly affect the water balance of upland swamps (eg Young and Wray 2000). The scale of this impact is currently unknown, however, changes in vegetation may not occur immediately. Over time, areas of altered hydrological regime may experience a modification to the vegetation community present, with species being favoured that prefer the new conditions. The timeframe of these changes is likely to be long-term. While subsidence may be detected and monitored within months of a mining operation, displacement of susceptible species by those suited to altered conditions is likely to extend over years to decades as the vegetation equilibrates to the new hydrological regime (Keith 1991, NPWS 2001). These impacts will be exacerbated in periods of low flow. Mine subsidence may be followed by severe and rapid erosion where warping of the swamp surface results in altered flows and surface cracking creates nick-points (Young 1982). Fire regimes may also be altered, as dried peaty soils become oxidised and potentially flammable (Sydney Catchment Authority, in lit.) (Kodela et al. 2001).
14. The upland swamps of the Woronora Plateau and the hanging swamps of the Blue Mountains provide habitat for a range of fauna including birds, reptiles and frogs. Reliance of fauna on the swamps increases during low rainfall periods. A range of threatened fauna including the Blue Mountains Water Skink, Eulamprus leuraensis, the Giant Dragonfly, Petalura gigantea, the Giant Burrowing Frog, Heleioporus australiacus, the Red-crowned Toadlet, Pseudophryne australis, the Stuttering Frog Mixophyes balbus and Littlejohn’s Tree Frog, Litoria littlejohni, are known to use the swamps as habitat. Of these species, the frogs are likely to suffer the greatest impacts as a result of hydrological change in the swamps because of their reliance on the water within these areas either as foraging or breeding habitat. Plant species such as Persoonia acerosa, Pultenaea glabra, P. aristata and Acacia baueri ssp. aspera are often recorded in close proximity to the swamps.
Cliffline species such as Epacris hamiltonii and Apatophyllum constablei that rely on surface or subsurface water may also be affected by hydrological impacts on upland swamps, as well as accelerated cliff collapse associated with longwall mining.
15. Flora and fauna may also be affected by activities associated with longwall mining in addition to the direct impacts of subsidence. These activities include clearing of native vegetation and removal of bush rock for surface facilities such as roads and coal wash emplacement and discharge of mine water into swamps and streams. Weed invasion, erosion and siltation may occur following vegetation clearing or enrichment by mine water. Clearing of native vegetation, Bushrock removal, Invasion of native plant communities by exotic perennial grasses and Alteration to the natural flow regimes of rivers and streams and their floodplains and wetlands are listed as Key Threatening Processes under the Threatened Species Conservation Act (1995).
.
The following threatened species and ecological communities are known to occur in areas affected by subsidence due to longwall mining and their habitats are likely to be altered by subsidence and mining-associated activities:
Endangered Species
Epacris hamiltonii a shrub
Eulamprus leuraensis Blue Mountains Water Skink
Hoplocephalus bungaroides Broad-headed Snake
Isoodon obesulus Southern Brown Bandicoot
Petalura gigantea Giant Dragonfly
.
Vulnerable species
Acacia baueri subsp. aspera
Apatophyllum constablei
Boronia deanei
Cercartetus nanus Eastern Pygmy Possum
Epacris purpurascens var. purpurascens
Grevillea longifolia
Heleioporus australiacus Giant Burrowing Frog
Ixobrychus flavicollis Black Bittern
Leucopogon exolasius
Litoria littlejohni Littlejohn’s Tree Frog
Melaleuca deanei
Mixophyes balbus Stuttering Frog
Myotis adversus Large-footed Myotis
Persoonia acerosa
Potorous tridactylus Long-nosed Potoroo
Pseudophryne australis Red-crowned Toadlet
Pteropus poliocephalus Grey-headed Flying Fox
Pterostylis pulchella
Pultenaea aristata
Pultenaea glabra
Tetratheca juncea
Varanus rosenbergi Rosenberg’s Goanna
.
Endangered Ecological Communities
.
Genowlan Point Allocasuarina nana Heathland
Newnes Plateau Shrub Swamp in the Sydney Basin Bioregion
O’Hares Creek Shale Forest
Shale/Sandstone Transition Forest
.
Species and populations of species not currently listed as threatened but that may become so as a result of habitat alteration following subsidence due to longwall mining include:
Acacia ptychoclada
Almaleea incurvata
Darwinia grandiflora
Dillwynia stipulifera
Epacris coricea
Grevillea acanthifolia subsp. acanthifolia
Hydromys chrysogaster Water rat
Lomandra fluviatilis
Olearia quercifolia
Pseudanthus pimelioides
.
16. Mitigation measures to repair cracking creek beds have had only limited success and are still considered experimental (ACARP 2002). Cracks less than 10 mm wide may eventually reseal without active intervention provided there is a clay fraction in the soil and at least some water flow is maintained.
Cracks 10-50 mm wide may be sealed with a grouting compound or bentonite.
Cracks wider than 50 mm require concrete (ACARP 2002). Pattern grouting in the vicinity of Marhnyes Hole in the Georges River has been successful at restoring surface flows and reducing pool drainage following fracturing of the riverbed (International Environmental Consultants 2004). Grouting of cracks also appears to have been relatively effective in Wambo Creek in the Hunter Valley. Installation of a grout curtain in the Cataract River, however, has been only partially successful and it was concluded in 2002, after rehabilitation measures had taken place, that the environment flows released from Broughtons Pass Weir by the Sydney Catchment Authority were insufficient to keep the Cataract River flowing or to maintain acceptable water quality (DIPNR 2003). Mitigation measures themselves may have additional environmental impacts due to disturbance from access tracks, the siting of drilling rigs, removal of riparian vegetation, and unintended release of the grouting material into the water. Furthermore, even measures that are successful in terms of restoring flows involve temporary rerouting of surface flows while mitigation is carried out (generally for 2-3 weeks at each grouting site). Planning for remediation measures may also be hampered by the lack of predictability of some impacts, and difficulties gaining access to remote areas where remedial works are needed. The long-term success of mitigation measures such as grouting is not yet known. It is possible that any ongoing subsidence after grouting may reopen cracks or create new ones.
Further, it is not yet known whether the clay substance bentonite, which is often added to the cement in the grouting mix, is sufficiently stable to prevent shrinkage. Grouting under upland and hanging swamps that have no definite channel is probably not feasible.
17. Empirical methods have been developed from large data sets to predict conventional subsidence effects (ACARP 2001, 2002, 2003). In general, these models have proved more accurate when predicting the potential degree of subsidence in flat or gently undulating terrain than in steep topography (ACARP 2003). A major issue identified in the ACARP (2001, 2002) reports was the lack of knowledge about horizontal stresses in geological strata, particularly those associated with river valleys. These horizontal stresses appear to play a major role in the magnitude and extent of surface subsidence impacts. The cumulative impacts of multiple panels also appear to have been poorly monitored. The general trend in the mining industry in recent years toward increased panel widths (from 200 up to 300 m), which allows greater economies in the overall costs of extraction, means that future impacts will tend to be greater than those in the past (ACARP 2001, 2002).
18. In view of the above the Scientific Committee is of the opinion that Alteration of habitat following subsidence due to longwall mining adversely affects two or more threatened species, populations or ecological communities, or could cause species, populations or ecological communities that are not threatened to become threatened.
.
References
.
ACARP (2001) ‘Impacts of Mine Subsidence on the Strata & Hydrology of River Valleys – Management Guidelines for Undermining Cliffs, Gorges and River Systems’. Australian Coal Association Research Program Final Report C8005 Stage 1, March 2001.
ACARP (2002) ‘Impacts of Mine Subsidence on the Strata & Hydrology of River Valleys – Management Guidelines for Undermining Cliffs, Gorges and River Systems’. Australian Coal Association Research Program Final Report C9067 Stage 2, June 2002.
ACARP (2003) ‘Review of Industry Subsidence Data in Relation to the Influence of Overburden Lithology on Subsidence and an Initial Assessment of a Sub-Surface Fracturing Model for Groundwater Analysis’. Australian Coal Association Research Program Final Report C10023, September 2003.
AWT (2000) ‘Investigation of the impact of bed cracking on water quality in the Cataract River.’ Prepared for the Dept. of Land and Water Conservation Sydney South Coast Region. AWT Report no. 2000/0366.
Bell FG, Stacey TR, Genske DD (2000) Mining subsidence and its effect on the environment: some differing examples. Environmental Geology 40, 135-152.
Benson DH, Keith DA (1990) The natural vegetation of the Wallerawang 1:100,000 map sheet. Cunninghamia 2, 305-335.
Booth CJ, Bertsch LP (1999) Groundwater geochemistry in shallow aquifers above longwall mines in Illinois, USA. Hydrogeology Journal 7, 561-575.
Booth CJ, Spande ED, Pattee CT, Miller JD, Bertsch LP (1998) Positive and negative impacts of longwall mine subsidence on a sandstone aquifer.
Environmental Geology 34, 223-233.
DIPNR (2003) ‘Hydrological and water quality assessment of the Cataract River; June 1999 to October 2002: Implications for the management of longwall coal mining.’ NSW Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment, Wollongong.
DLWC (2001) ‘Submission to the Commission of Inquiry into the Proposed Dendrobium Underground Coal Mine Project by BHP Steel (AIS) Pty Ltd, Wollongong, Wingecarribee & Wollondilly Local Government Areas’. Department of Land and Water Conservation, July 2001.
Elsworth D, Liu J (1995) Topographic influence of longwall mining on ground-water supplies. Ground Water 33, 786-793.
Everett M, Ross T, Hunt G (eds) (1998) ‘Final Report of the Cataract River Taskforce. A report to the Upper Nepean Catchment Management Committee of the studies of water loss in the lower Cataract River during the period 1993 to 1997.’ Cataract River Taskforce, Picton.
Gibbins L (2003) A geophysical investigation of two upland swamps, Woronora Plateau, NSW, Australia. Honours Thesis, Macquarie University.
Gill DR (2000) Hydrogeologic analysis of streamflow in relation to undergraound mining in northern West Virginia. MSc thesis, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia.
Holla L (1997) Ground movement due to longwall mining in high relief areas in New South Wales, Australia. International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences 34, 775-787.
Holla L, Barclay E (2000) ‘Mine subsidence in the Southern Coalfield, NSW, Australia’. Mineral Resources of NSW, Sydney.
International Environmental Consultants Pty Ltd (2004) ‘Pattern grouting remediation activities: Review of Environmental Effects Georges River Pools 5-22. May, 2004’.
Jones DC, Clark NR (eds) (1991) Geology of the Penrith 1:100,000 Sheet 9030, NSW. Geological Survey, NSW Department of Minerals and Energy.
Karaman A, Carpenter PJ, Booth CJ (2001) Type-curve analysis of water-level changes induced by a longwall mine. Environmental Geology 40, 897-901.
Keith DA (1991) Coexistence and species diversity in upland swamp vegetation. PhD thesis. University of Sydney.
Keith DA (1994) Floristics, structure and diversity of natural vegetation in the O’Hares Creek catchment, south of Sydney. Cunninghamia 3, 543-594.
Keith DA, Benson DH (1988) The natural vegetation of the Katoomba 1:100,000 map sheet. Cunninghamia 2, 107-143.
Kodela PG, Sainty GR, Bravo FJ, James TA (2001) ‘Wingecarribee Swamp flora survey and related management issues.’ Sydney Catchment Authority, New South Wales.
Keith DA, Myerscough PJ (1983) Floristics and soil relations of upland swamp vegetation near Sydney. Australian Journal of Ecology 18, 325-344.
NPWS (2001) ‘NPWS Primary Submission to the Commission of Inquiry into the Dendrobium Coal Project’. National Parks and Wildlife Service, July 2001.
Sidle RC, Kamil I, Sharma A, Yamashita S (2000) Stream response to subsidence from underground coal mining in central Utah. Environmental Geology 39, 279-291.
Stout BM III (2003) ‘Impact of longwall mining on headwater streams in northern West Virginia’. Final Report, June 2003 for the West Virginia Water Research Institute.
Stout BM III (2004) ‘Do headwater streams recover from longwall mining impacts in northern West Virginia’. Final Report, August 2004 for the West Virginia Water Research Institute.
Young ARM (1982) Upland swamps (dells) on the Woronora Plateau, N.S.W. PhD thesis, University of Wollongong.
Young ARM (1986) The geomorphic development of upland dells (upland swamps) on the Woronora Plateau, NSW, Australia. Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie N.F. Bd 30, Heft 3,312-327.
Young RW, Wray RAL (2000) The geomorphology of sandstones in the Sydney Region. In McNally GH and Franklin BJ eds Sandstone City – Sydney’s Dimension Stone and other Sandstone Geomaterials. Proceedings of a symposium held on 7th July 2000, 15th Australian Geological Convention, University of
Technology Sydney. Monograph No. 5, Geological Society of Australia, Springwood, NSW. Pp 55-73.
Young RW, Young ARM (1988) ‘Altogether barren, peculiarly romantic’: the sandstone lands around Sydney. Australian Geographer 19, 9-25.
The following article is a press release by UK-based NGO, The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), of 20120124 entitled ‘Conservation on the Front Line – Muara Tae’s Last Stand Against Big Palm Oil’
Their ancient rainforest home clearfelled for bloody Palm Oil, now these Orang-utans are homeless in their own homeland
[Source: ^http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/2010/05/4673]
(Click photo to enlarge)
.
MUARA TAE, EAST KALIMANTAN (Borneo, Indonesia):
The fate of a Dayak indigenous community, deep in the interior of East Kalimantan (Borneo) demonstrates how Indonesia must safeguard the rights of indigenous people if it is to meet ambitious targets to reduce emissions from deforestation.
Cleared land at Muara Tae
(c) EIA/Telapak
.
The Dayak Benuaq of Muara Tae, in West Kutai Kabupaten (Indonesia), today face a two-pronged assault from palm oil companies aggressively expanding into their ancestral forests. Together with Indonesian NGO Telapak, the community is manning a forest outpost around the clock in a last ditch attempt to save it from destruction.
The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has witnessed at first-hand the Dayak Benuaq’s struggle, and how their sustainable use of forests could help Indonesia deliver on its ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
EIA Forests Team Leader Faith Doherty said: “There are more than 800 families in Muara Tae relying on the forests for their food, water, medicine, culture and identity. Put simply, they have to keep this forest in order to survive.
Villagers on cleared land at Muara Tae
(c) EIA/Telapak
.
“The rhetoric from the President of Indonesia on curbing emissions by reducing deforestation is strong but on the front line, where indigenous communities are putting their lives at risk to protect forests, action is sorely missing.
“Giving these communities, such as the Dayak Benuaq, the rights they deserve is a vital step to reduce catastrophic levels of deforestation in Indonesia.”
President Yudhoyono has pledged to reduce carbon emissions across the archipelago by 26 per cent by 2020 against a business-as-usual baseline, alongside delivering substantial economic growth.
Self-serving bullshit artist
– take your pick
.
Plantation expansion will inevitably be a significant element of growth, but it has historically been a major driver of emissions and it is widely acknowledged that in order avoid them, expansion must now be directed to ‘degraded’ lands.
As a result of weak spatial planning, however, the forests of Muara Tae are identified as ‘APL’, a designation meaning they are not part of the national forest area and are open to exploitation. The theft of indigenous forests also raises serious questions as to what form of ‘development’ these plantations offer.
In indigenous communities such as the Dayak Benuaq of Muara Tae, Indonesia has perhaps its most valuable forest resource. It is due to their sustainable methods, honed over generations, that the forest even remains.
Benuaq girl and ncap payang tree
(c) EIA/Telapak
.
Telapak president Ambrosius Ruwindrijarto said:
“Together with the community, we have not only been protecting the last forests but also planting new Ulin and Meranti saplings to enhance it. These people are the true guardians of the forest and their fate is entwined with it.”
Muara Tae has lost more than half of its land and forests during the past 20 years to mining companies. The impact has been tangible; the villagers’ water source has dried up and they must now routinely make a 1km journey to collect clean water.
The remaining forest is home to a large number of bird species including hornbills, the emblem of Borneo. There are about 20 species of reptiles and it is also a habitat for both proboscis monkeys and honey bears.
Indonesia’s Environment Minister Gusti Hatta,
all talk..so…’what does an Orang-Utan look like?‘
.
The latest land-grabs have taken place since January 2010, when the local Bupati (regional government official), Ismail Thomas, issued plantation permits to two palm oil companies: Malaysian-owned PT Munte Waniq Jaya Perkasa (PT MWJP) and PT Borneo Surya Mining Jaya, a subsidiary of Sumatran logging, mining and plantation conglomerate Surya Dumai.
While the Norwegian Government has been instrumental in financially backing efforts to reduce deforestation in Indonesia through the REDD+ initiative, it has also invested in the parent company of PT MWJP through its sovereign wealth fund.
Pak Singko, a leader of the Dayak Benuaq of Muara Tae, said: “We are calling for help from people everywhere in protecting our forests and ancestral land. We are being squeezed from all sides by mining and plantation companies.
.
“This is the last remaining forests that we have and the only land we have to survive.
If my forests are gone, our lives will end.”
Cargill’s ecological facism for its self-serving Palm Oil
The destruction of primary rainforest by Duta Palma. West Kalimantan, Borneo.
Cargill was a key purchaser of palm oil from this notorious rainforest destroyer up until 2008.
[Source: Photo: David Gilbert/RAN, ^http://www.flickr.com/photos/rainforestactionnetwork/5551935164/]
(Click photo to enlarge)
.
The above photo is from an investigative report from Rainforest Action Network that presents evidence that (US conglomerate) Cargill is operating two undisclosed palm oil plantations in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Cargill’s pathetic claim of its Corporate Responsibility in Indonesia
When William Wallace Cargill founded our company in 1865, he deliberately set out to ensure that we earned and maintained a reputation for integrity, which he saw as a key differentiator in those times.
Corporate responsibility is part of everything we do. It is a company-wide commitment to apply our global knowledge and experience to help meet complex economic, environmental and social challenges wherever we do business. It is a process of continually improving our standards, our actions and our processes. Corporate responsibility extends not only to our own operations but to our wider communities and is based on four commitments:
We will conduct our business with high levels of integrity, accountability and responsibility.
We will develop ways of reducing our environmental impact and help conserve natural resources.
We will treat people with dignity and respect.
We will invest in and engage with communities where we live and work.
We recognize our continued success depends on the growth and health of our communities and partners, as well as the vitality and conservation of our natural resources. We are working with a diverse group of global, national and local organizations to support responsible economic development, help protect the environment and improve communities.
Forced eviction, forced immigration Orang-Utan orphans fleeing their ravaged parents and their ravaged ancestral homes
Present us an American citizen accepting of such home eviction!
.
ED: Cargill’s eco-rape and eco-plunder policy across Indonesia’s vulnerable Borneo (Kalimantan) demonstrates that Cargill’s above public relations spiel is clearly crap! This is a wealthy United States corporate exploiting a poor country’s precious rainforest ecosystems, buggering local indigenous peoples and driving the extinction of the endangered Orang-Utan. If you work for Cargill or have shares in Cargill yoiu may as well be associated with the arms suppliers to the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his regime.
Not just home invasion, but complete ecological erasionCargill is calling in the A-Bomb to Orang-Utans
What United States citizen would tolerate this?
911 is being inflicted on vulnerable species by the United States
.
.
Cargill’s worldwide president and COO Gregory R. Page
His life won’t end in devastation, but he drives devastation in vulnerable Kalimantan – in secret!
“Let us bind ourselves tightly to the Sorrowful Heart of our Heavenly Mother and reflect on it’s boundless grief and how precious is our soul.”
~ Saint Padre Pio
.
Kangaroo meat involves live castration. Would you like red wine, pear juice and cranberry jelly with that?
The following video confirms Australia’s rural culture encouraging a psycho-sadistical and brutal hate towards wildlife.
It could be of elephants or rhinos in Africa, it could be Nazi Germany or Poland, or Rwanda or Serbia, but it is rural Australia and its precious wildlife. It is 19th Century depraved sadism and kangaroo slaughter is condoned by Julia Gillard’s Australian Government. This is how rural Australian shooters treat wildlife, like Japanese fishermen treat dolphins at Taiji.
It is akin to the teenage deviantism of Tasmanian mass murderer Martin Bryant and straight out of the film Wolf Creek .
.
WARNING: This video is extremely disturbing and not suitable for children. But it needs to be made public! In 2012 it reflects the callous reality of rural Australia. No wonder urban Australia turns its back on rural Australians and starves them of funding – such sadists only deserve an eye for an eye.
‘Tarkine Tasmania: wild, unique, diverse’
Myrtle Beech (Nothofagus cunninghamii)
An evergreen tree native to Victoria and Tasmania, but hardly any now left in Victoria.
Typically grow to 30–40 metres (98–130 feet) tall
The Tarkine is the largest surviving region of Nothofagus Forest left on the planet
Scotland has a Tarkine wilderness equivalent – ‘Cairngorms’
Rare ancient Caledonian Forest
A now ‘Endangered‘ Tasmanian Devil captured on motion-sensitive camera
Walkers join forces with conservationists through Tasmania’s remote Tarkine rainforest to help bring the Tasmanian Devil back from the brink of extinction.
[Source: ‘Tourists to use cameras to help save Tasmanian Devil’ by Dominic Bates, The Guardian (UK), guardian.co.uk, 20120203, Read More: ^http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/03/tourist-cameras-save-tasmanian-devil]
(Photo courtesy of Tarkine Trails, Feb 2012)
.
The Scottish Crossbill
..unique to the Cairngorms
Cairngorms Reindeer
Source: ^http://www.scotlandweb.be/photos.htm
Orange–bellied Parrot (Neophema chrysogaster)
critically dependent upon The Tarkine
In 2010 it was ranked by the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Services as one of the world’s rarest and most endangered species and “on the brink of extinction“
Orange-bellied Parrot numbers down to about 20 individuals in existence!
Watch ABC News ^Video (February 2012)
The Tarkine of North-West Tasmania
Note: dotted boundary above is only indicative
(Google Maps)
For a more detailed map of the proposed Tarkine National Park, click here)
[Source: ^http://development.savethetarkine.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/topo_tarkine_boundary.jpg]
.
Giant Eucalyptus regnans of The Tarkine
Logging legacy in The Tarkine
The natural ecological wealth of Tasmania’s Tarkine Wilderness
(Arthur River rainforest, Photo by Ted Mead)
Savage River Iron Ore Mine
..in the Tarkine
Hellyer Zinc and Lead Mine
..in the Tarkine
Construction of a new underground mine at the Fossey deposit, near Hellyer, began in January 2010.
Tasmanian Government’s mining leases (Dec, 2012)
threaten to destroy most of The Tarkine
Savage River Mine location map
..already in The Tarkine
Savage River Open Cut Mine
..a harbinger for The Tarkine… landscape absolute anhiliation
Savage River – a savage scar in The Tarkine
..courtesy of industrial miner Grange Resources
(Google Earth – click image to enlarge)
Mount Lindsay Tin Mine Plans (Venture Minerals)
.
Shree Minerals proposed Tin Mine Near Nelson Bay River
..in The Tarkine
(click map to enlarge)
Nelson Bay River flows through pristine wilderness
Industrial Miners just don’t get it!
[Source: http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au (Nelson Bay Report on water quality monitoring – >Read Report]
.
Shree Minerals death traps for Tasmanian Devils
Shree Minerals carving up wilderness across The Tarkine, even before mining commences
Industrial Miners eco-raping the fragile Tarkine
Wam, bam thank you mam!
Quarry Map of Tasmania
Terry Long
Tasmanian Minerals Council current CEO
Capable of seeing Tasmania only through miner’s subterranean eyes
2011: Sludge from the Aberfoyle Mine runs into the river at Luina (Savage River National Park)
..in The Tarkine
(Photo by Peter Sims, Fairfax)
Tasmania’s infamous Iron Blow Mine
Queenstown’s moonscape legacy of Mount Lyell copper mining
(Photo February 2010 – hardly rehabilitated]
[Source: ^http://www.sauer-thompson.com/junkforcode/archives/2010/02/]
Queenstown’s sulphuric acid legacy of copper mining
..no plans to rehabilitate the moonscape.
The confluence of the King River and Queen River, a few years ago.
Orange-coloured heavy metal toxins from Queenstown and Mt Lyell copper mining continue to flow into Macquarie Harbour.
No effort is made by the Tasmanian Minerals Council to rehabilitate these wild rivers.
Says the Council: “It was established well before the understandings and knowledge we have now, and the practice we expect today. The legacy from the old surface workings will be carried for a long time..”
And this council want more mines in The Tarkine?
Scott Jordan of Tarkine National Coalition at the so-called “rehabilitated” tailings dam at a tin mine in The Tarkine.
.. would mining executives drink this brown toxic, acidic, heavy metal water?
This is the Tasmanian Mineral Council being ‘sustainable‘ – they just don’t get it!
Bryan Green MP
Tasmania’s current Labor Minister for Resources and Energy, etc
Caught drink driving in June 2011
[Source: ^http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2011/06/26/240875_tasmania-news.html]
