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<Federal environment minister Tony Burke has rejected National Heritage listing for Tasmania’s precious Tarkine Wilderness.

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Burke’s Ten New Mines!

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On 8th February 2013, Burke announced 10 new mines proposed over the next five years for the Tarkine Wilderness. Nine of these 10 mines will be open cut leaving scars of devastation in an area of north-western Tasmania.

Savage River Mine already scarring The Tarkine Wilderness

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“The Tarkine is one of the world’s great wild places.

It is an expansive 447,000 hectare wilderness area of recognised World Heritage significance in the North-West corner of Tasmania, Australia’s island state. The Tarkine contains remarkable natural and cultural values, including one of the world’s most significant remaining tracts of temperate rainforest,” said the Tarkine National Coalition.

The Tarkine is a place of unique natural and cultural significance and was nominated for World Heritage listing by the Australian Senate in 2007.

The Tarkine has been recognised by prominent bodies including the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Tasmanian Department of Parks, Wildlife and Heritage and environment groups such as The Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation.

The Australian government has recognised the Tarkine’s outstanding national significance through listing the Tarkine on the register of the National estate.

As the Tarkine National Coalition says:

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Burke only “listed a paltry 4% of the 433,000 hectares recommended to him by the inquiry”

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Since February 8, Burke has granted the first two of 10 mining permits to Venture Minerals for three iron mines at Mount Lindsay and granted Shree Minerals an iron ore mine proposed for Nelson Bay River.

Successive environment ministers have failed to put forward an assessment by the Australian Heritage council for Heritage listing with UNESCO leaving these areas of “outstanding natural and cultural value” vulnerable to the policies of Burke.

A national day of action on 14th February 2013 and a campaign in local media helped to expose the plight of the now endangered Tarkine and reverse this environmentally catastrophic decision.

Venture Minerals and Shree Minerals are driven by the profits to be made from these proposed mining ventures in the Tarkine. But the Tarkine has far more long-term value as a wilderness area and should continue to benefit all.>>

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[Source:  ‘Mining approved in the Tarkine’, 20130219, by Rachel Christensen, ^http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/53374]

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Tarkine Wilderness

(Peter Walton, Tasmania Expeditions)

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So in the absence of government responsibility, Dr Bob Brown has just been announced as new patron of rebranded Save the Tarkine campaign.

The Tarkine National Coalition is pleased to make two exciting announcements that we believe will help increase the national profile of this important campaign.

“Today we are unveiling the new Save the Tarkine branding that we will campaign under”, announced Campaign Coordinator, Scott Jordan.  “We believe that brand, Save the Tarkine will help the public more easily identify this important campaign, and let them know in clear terms what our mission is.”

To support this rebranding, a new Tasmanian devil inspired logo has been adopted  (see above).

Tarkine National Coalition Incorporated remains as the registered legal entity, with campaigns to be conducted under the registered trading name Save the Tarkine.

Save the Tarkine are also thrilled to announce that Dr Bob Brown has accepted our invitation to become patron of the campaign.

“Bob is no stranger to the Tarkine, having fought for it’s protection both in and out of the parliament. We are thrilled that Bob has agreed to accept the role of patron, and we look forward to sharing Bob’s passion for the Tarkine with all of Australia”.

“I’m honoured to be first patron of Save the Tarkine”, said Dr Brown in Launceston.  “I first walked the Tarkine forty years ago looking for Tasmanian Tigers, and if protected the Tarkine will create hundreds, if not thousands of jobs in the future.  If mined it will end up another post-industrial waste dump”.

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<<The Tarkine is a vast, continuous and largely untouched wilderness of exceptional and rare diversity. Covering an area of around 450,000 hectares in Tasmania’s north-west, it is a place worthy of World Heritage protection yet, unbelievably, remains inadequately protected and vulnerable to being carved up by the mining and forestry industries.

This book is the authors’ tribute to this last of the last frontier experiences on earth.>>

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‘Tarkine – Wild and Sacred’

by S & E Bartley

40 Degrees South Publishing

RRP:$29.95 Paperback 144 pp
ISBN 9780987243195

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[Source/Purchase:  ^http://www.fortysouth.com.au/writers-market/book/161]

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The following article was ‘borrowed’ from CanDoBetter.net under the title ‘The Tarkine Wilderness under threat‘ by author Vivienne Ortega dated 20111207:

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‘Tasmania’s Tarkine Wilderness Endangered!’

The Tarkine region is located in the north-west of Tasmania. The area encompasses 447,000 hectares of wilderness including the Southern Hemispheres largest single tract of temperate rain forest, a wild coastline with an extraordinary wealth of Aboriginal Cultural Heritage sites. It’s the habitat for over 50 threatened species.  The extensive rainforests, beautiful river gorges, buttongrass mountain tops, flowering heathlands and long wild beaches combine to make the Tarkine one of the world’s great treasures.

These rainforests are important for their flora which has links to the ancient continent of Gondwana, and for their lichens and fossils which help tell the story of Australia’s ancient flora and its evolution.  The Tarkine is a  sensitive region rich in mega-diversity.  It’s one of the world’s last remaining temperate rain-forests, the home of the Tasmanian Devil and many other precious species.

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Tarkine National Heritage a must

How many places on Earth still look like this?

What an incredible asset of  eco-experience (not dodgy eco-tourism) wild Tasmania offers the world’s discerning explorer?

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The Tarkine must be put on the National Heritage List.  The heritage assessment of The Tarkine will help ensure that the heritage values are considered in decision-making, so heritage protection is balanced with the social and economic aspirations of the Tasmanian community. Short-term economic benefits should not be at the expense of the un-quantifiable value of ancient woodlands, rugged coastlines, and forest habitat destruction.  Mining companies like Venture Minerals are desperate to exploit the minerals beneath Tasmania’s environmentally significant Tarkine area.

Enter the Tin Men

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Demand for metals superior to Tasmania’s ecology?

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Chinese demand for base metals such as gold, iron, tin, zinc, lead, copper is at an all time high,  and this would mean logging, pollution, roads, and heavy traffic destroying the landscape and pristine rivers.

Environment Minister Tony Burke was called on to immediately include the Tarkine on the emergency National Heritage Listing amid concerns about the impact on the Tasmanian devil population of a revised tourist road project.   He denied that he made a promise to do so.  His predecessor, Peter Garrett, first gave the Tarkine wilderness a one-year emergency listing, which Mr Burke let expire.  Since then he has let a British mining company test drill in the area. Mr Burke says the new plan for a tourist road is not the same as the original 132-kilometre loop road plan that was subject to a now lapsed emergency listing.  One road is not similarly destructive an another?   Mining and road proposals threaten to carve up Tasmania’s unprotected the Tarkine wilderness area, local defenders say.

Venture Mineral’s Mt Lindsay tin, tungsten and iron mining proposal, coupled with the revival of the controversial Tarkine link road proposal, should have given Mr Burke grounds to reinstate Tarkine’s emergency National Heritage listing.  Heritage listings would not stop mining, but developments would have to pass more rigorous and critical environmental tests.

The Mount Lindsay tin project is the largest of several mines planned around the Tarkine in an emerging new Tasmanian environmental battle. The Tarkine National Coalition said up to nine new open cut mines are in development there.  Venture Minerals predict $1 billion in revenue, with more than 500 jobs in construction and 200 in operation.  Surely the threats of mining are enough reasons for an emergency heritage listing for the Tarkine?

Mr Burke says the principle that a heritage listing automatically locks out all development is wrong.  He says with or without a heritage listing, environmental protection remains.  “Developments” and “protection” are inherently contradictory.   Mr Jordan who heads the Tarkine National Coalition says Mr Burke’s decision to lift the heritage listing means other mining companies will not be scrutinised as closely as Beacon Hill Resources.  The whole area should be protected as a national park.

The interests of miners are being placed above the Minister’s obligations to the environment. All three proposed mining projects will have secured Commonwealth environmental permits during the 18 month period he had at his disposal, allowing them to avoid scrutiny against National Heritage criteria. They will also be allowed to continue exploration drilling and associated access roading without need for Commonwealth assessments.

The mining will cause havoc to the pristine condition of the area. There is nothing “sustainable” now. It’s just window-dressing. What about the costs and long term damage of these industries and jobs? Mr Burke is supposed to represent the environment, not the mining industries. As with his population strategy, that come to nothing, he is now abrogating his duty to protect one of the last temperate rain-forest areas in the world.

.It is wrong to destroy sacred and holy places to plunder their riches, and the same applies to Nature’s sacred places.

A proud colonial relic of a Tasmanian old growth forest raped, pillaged and plundered

 

 

…and today colonial logger descendants, hanging on to the past, are paupers.

(Photo by editor 20110928, free in public domain – click to enlarge, then click to enlarge again)

 

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^Save the Tarkine before it is massacred down to this!

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Please email a demand to the ultimate decision maker of our temporary time:

Australia’s current Environment Minister: Tony.Burke.MP@aph.gov.au

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