Morrison Government's newly appointed “Special Envoy” for the Great Barrier Reef is in favour of large scale land clearing on the reef's doorstep

This is the newly appointed “Special Envoy” for the Great Barrier Reef, Liberal MP for Leichhardt Warren Entsch…..

The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 June 2019:

Coalition MP Warren Entsch has backed a plan to bulldoze 2000 hectares of pristine forest near the Great Barrier Reef despite being appointed to a role championing the natural marine wonder.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison appointed the veteran Liberal MP, who represents the seat of Leichhardt in north Queensland, as special envoy to the Great Barrier Reef in last month’s ministerial reshuffle.

Mr Entsch once owned Olive Vale station, a large Cape York farm north-west of Cairns, and has been a vocal proponent of land clearing on farming properties in north Queensland. Land clearing can create sediment and nutrient run-off and is the main driver of serious water quality problems on the Great Barrier Reef.

Liberal MP Warren Entsch is a strong advocate of land clearing, despite the possible effects on the Great Barrier Reef's water quality.

In particular, Mr Entsch lobbied his government on behalf of a highly contentious proposal to clear 2000 hectares of forest at Kingvale Station on Cape York Peninsula.

The land drains into two rivers that run into the Great Barrier Reef 200 kilometres downstream. Government-commissioned experts have warned that soil erosion from the work is likely to damage the reef.

Mr Entsch told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that despite his new responsibilities, the Kingvale land-clearing proposal had his “total support”.

“It has absolutely nothing to do with my role [as reef envoy],” he said…..

New Environment Minister Sussan Ley will decide on the Kingvale plan, which is being assessed under Commonwealth laws.

This is what Mr. Entsch is determined to ignore……

The relationship between the position of Kingvale Station in a river catchment which discharges water into the Great Barrier Reef at a point where the reef is under stress from multiple coral bleaching events.

Normanby Catchment in Far North Queensland

Kingvale Station approximate position maked in red

Map found at Great Barrier Reef Foundation

Warren Entsch cannot be ignorant of this relationship, as Kingvale Station is in the federal electorate he has held for the last twenty-three years.

A suspicious person might wonder if Mr. Entsch was one of the government MPs who allegedly 'lobbied' departmental staff on the matter of Kingvale Station land clearing consent in the past,

Such a mind might also ponder the proposition that he was made Special Envoy for the Great Barrier Reef in order to assist in subverting attempts to stop landclearing so close to this World Heritage listed marine area.

BACKGROUND

ABC News, 22 May 2018:

The Queensland Government has launched legal action against the owner of a Cape York cattle station at the centre of a land-clearing controversy for allegedly breaching an obligation to care for Indigenous heritage.

The owner of Kingvale Station on the Cape York Peninsula legally cleared 500 hectares of land before the Federal Government intervened in 2016, over internal concerns about the effect on sediment run-off into the Great Barrier Reef.

The traditional owners of the land, the Olkola people, claim the owner of Kingvale Station went ahead with the clearing without their knowledge and may have destroyed a burial site.

The ABC can reveal the Queensland Department of Environment and Science is taking court action as a result of an investigation which started as early as 2016, when the Olkola people complained to the Government that they believed Kingvale Station may be in breach of the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 November 2018:

The Morrison government has conceded it botched scrutiny of a plan to bulldoze 2000 hectares of pristine Queensland forest near the Great Barrier Reef and has been forced back to the drawing board following a legal challenge by conservationists.

The development comes as confidential documents show government MPs lobbied environmental officials to wave through the proposal, which would raze land almost three times the size of the combined central business districts of Sydney and Melbourne.

As Fairfax Media reported in May, the Department of the Environment and Energy in a draft report recommended that the government allow the mass vegetation clearing at Kingvale Station on Cape York Peninsula.

The finding, which prompted public outrage, came despite the department conceding the native forest was likely to contain endangered species, and despite expert warnings that runoff caused by the clearing may damage the Great Barrier Reef.

Environmental Defenders Office NSW (EDO NSW), media release, 27 November 2018: 

In a case demonstrating the critical role community organisations play in holding elected officials to account,  the Federal Court has upheld a challenge by the Environment Council of Central Queensland (ECOCeQ) – represented by EDO NSW – to a proposal to clear 2,100 ha of native vegetation on Kingvale Station on the Cape York Peninsula in the Great Barrier Reef catchment.

Early in 2018, the Federal Minister for the Environment decided that the proposed clearing could undergo the least rigorous form of environmental assessment available under Commonwealth environmental law.  The Minister was required, among other things, to be satisfied that the degree of public concern about the action is, or is expected to be, ‘moderately low’.

The Minister has now conceded that decision was not made lawfully. 

ENVISAT satellite image of the Great Barrier Reef alongside the York Peninsula.

“The Act deliberately applies a strict test that must be satisfied before the Minister can opt for the least rigorous assessment,” David Morris, CEO of EDO NSW, stated.

The Government’s own experts found that the proposed clearing would have a significant impact on the Great Barrier Reef and a number of threatened species.

The Minister must now go back to the drawing board to decide afresh how the environmental impacts of the proposal will be assessed. Steps that have been completed since the Minister made the original assessment decision are now void, including the Secretary’s draft recommendation report that was published online for comment in April 2018.

What follows next will depend on the assessment methodology selected by the Minister. Whichever approach is selected, there will be further opportunity for the public to comment on the proposed clearing.

Christine Carlisle, President of ECOCeQ, said ‘We hope the Minister rejects the tree clearing proposal outright, since it will destroy habitat for threatened species, the bulldozing of the forest will contribute to climate change, and there can be no guarantee that sediment run-off from this huge area will not make its way into Princess Charlotte Bay and then on to the Reef.’  

‘We trust that the Minister for the Environment will act in the best interest of the environment, and not rubber stamp this dangerous proposal. The Minister received 6,000 public comments when this clearing was first proposed, and I hope the public responds again to ensure this proposal is not approved at any level,’ she said.

This case illustrates yet again the value of the extended standing provisions in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Without community groups like ECoCeQ, and lawyers to represent them, this unlawful decision would have proceeded without scrutiny and key safeguards for our environment ignored.

The weather is slowly getting colder, but before minds turn to the thought of glowing fire in the hearth remember this....

Sitting before a glowing fire on a cold winter's night is something many people have done at some point in their lives.

However, this has fast become a luxury we as a society can no longer afford.

Because now when we go firewood gathering, sadly we are often taking the last remaining homes in that locality of Australian hollow nesting native birds, small marsupials, reptiles, frogs & insects.

Other things to remember about firewood gathering.......

Fines apply for removing fallen timber or trees from national parks or nature reserves.

Collecting wood from Travelling Stock Reserves is illegal in New South Wales and you can be fined if caught.

If you'd like to collect firewood for personal use from a state forest within NSW you need to apply for a permit and any timber taken must be paid for in advance.

Firewood permits are available online from the Forestry Corporation of NSW at: www.forestrycorporation.com.au/about/permits.  These permits only allow the collection of fallen timber and fines apply if rules are broken.

Removing fallen timber from roadside reserves is prohibited by many councils, so please check with your local council before considering collecting firewood from these areas.

NSW Office of Environment and Heritage:

Clearing of native vegetation on rural land is legislated by the Local Land Services Act 2013 and the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016. 

Clearing of native vegetation in urban areas and land zoned for environmental protection is legislated by the NSW Vegetation SEPP.

Please report suspected unlawful native vegetation clearing to OEH. 

You can contact Environment Line on 131 555 or send an email to info@environment.nsw.gov.au.

Illegal activity can also be reported to Local Land Services on 1300 795 299 or by contacting your local police station.

"BURNED- Are Trees the New Coal Roadshow" screening start on NSW

North Coast Environment Council, North East Forest Alliance, Rainforest Information Centre, No Electricity From Forests, Nimbin Environment Centre, Lismore Environment Centre, Bellingen Environment Centre, Coffs Coast Branch of the National Parks Association, Media Release April 30, 2019:

BURNED- Are Trees the New Coal Roadshow to tour the North Coast.

This award-winning film will be screened across the north coast over the next two weeks.

“Many people saw the film Gaslands and this spear-headed the movement against fracking.People power in the Northern Rivers region rejected this destructive activity and energy source. This film is to forests, what Gaslands was to fracking,” said Susie Russell, who has galvanised the collaboration of the participating organisations.

“The idea that whole forests are being cleared and burnt in power stations instead of coal seems crazy, but increasingly that is what is happening around the world and Australian governments want to see it happen here too.

“Due to a perversion of the international greenhouse gas accounting rules, burning wood is considered to be 'carbon neutral' because it's not a fossil fuel and eventually the carbon can get taken out of the atmosphere by growing more trees. But that will take decades, decades we don't have.

“In the meantime, forests, which are the most effective mechanism we have to capture carbon and store it, are being destroyed to fuel power stations that actually produce more CO2 than if they were burning coal! And it's being subsidised as a 'renewable' industry that is 'clean and green'. Meanwhile the homes of wildlife that depend on forests are gone, pushing many species of plants and animals closer to extinction.

“The scale of this insanity is documented in the film. It shows what is planned for our forests if people power doesn't stop it. It's a cry from the forests, for our help. We really have to stop this madness before it kills us all. Burning forests for electricity must be stopped. The scientific consensus is that saving forests is absolutely key if we want to stop runaway climate change” Ms Russell said.

See below for schedule of screenings.

Participating organisations: North Coast Environment Council, North East Forest Alliance, Rainforest Information Centre, No Electricity From Forests, Nimbin Environment Centre, Lismore Environment Centre, Bellingen Environment Centre, Coffs Coast Branch of the National Parks Association.

Roadshow: Burned- Are Trees the New Coal

Feature film documenting the burgeoning 'biomass' or 'bioenergy' industry that is converting forests to electricity, at enormous cost to the planet!

Coming soon to a forest near you.

May 1- Bellingen Memorial Hall from 6pm, food available

May 2- Coffs Harbour, Norm Jordan Pavilion at Coffs Harbour Showground , Pacific Highway, 6pm

May 4- Nimbin. Screenings at 11am, 1pm and 3pm at the Birth and Beyond Room, 54 Cullen St, close to the pedestrian crossing. Tea and coffee will be available during screenings.

May 5- Nimbin, Birth and Beyond. Screenings at 11am and 1pm as above.

May 7- Mullumbimby, The Mullumbimby Commons, 91/74 Main Arm Rd, 6pm

May 9- Byron Bay, Pighouse, 1 Skinners Shoot Rd, Byron Bay 6pm.

May 10- Lismore Gallery Events Space. Rural St/Keen St, Lismore at 6.30pm, food & drink available Slate Café from 6pm.

Followed by:

May 11- Lismore, Community Climate Crisis Rally, Peace Park, cnr Bruxner H’way & Keen St. Speakers, music & stalls 10am.

Screenings are free but donations towards venue hire and materials would be appreciated.

You can watch a trailer here: http://watch.burnedthemovie.com/

Valley Watch urgent message to Clarence Valley residents about saving Lawrence koala habitat

Koala habitat within Larwence village streets

Valley Watch Inc has sent this email out…….

Hi everyone brief history and response from Essential Energy below.  

Upgrade and change of route required due to safety (currently passing over someone's house).  Project planned then needed to change route as an underground water main was identified in their proposed route.  New route chosen and vegetation clearing increased from two trees and trimming to approx. 28 trees & shrubs being cleared in a known koala corridor.

Thanks to Community who raised concerns and attended special meeting where they presented new route that could be considered.  As per email below we need to ensure Essential Energy hear there is large community support for protecting koala habitat.

Please telephone and email Raelene Myers at Essential Energy.

Thanks

----- Forwarded message -----

From: Linda redacted]

Sent: Friday, 5 April 2019, 05:06:11 pm AEDT

Subject: save Lawrence koala habitat

Hi everyone,

At the end of an information session today in Grafton, led by Essential Energy Community Liaison Officer Raelene Myers, the Essential Energy staff told the assembled concerned Lawrence and wider Clarence Valley residents, after much discussion, that they will now put the plan to relocate some poles and wires to an area that would involve koala habitat destruction on hold, while they examine an alternative route that would not. 

The alternative route was put forward by meeting attendees. The plan attached shows the existing route in green, the habitat-destroying route in orange, and the non-habitat-destroying route in red.

Raelene has undertaken to keep updated people who let her know they want to be. Our best chance of saving the koala habitat now is to get as many people as possible to contact her and let her know we are in favour of the non-habitat destroying route and want to be kept updated. Her contact details are below.

Please pass this information on to anyone you think might care.

Regards,

Linda

---

T: 02 6589 8810 (extn 88810) M: 0407 518 170

E: raelene.myers@essentialenergy.com.au

PO Box 5730 Port Macquarie NSW 2444

General Enquiries: 13 23 91

UPDATE

The Daily Examiner, 10 April 2019, p.5:

Clarence Valley councillor Greg Clancy said the the proposal would result in the removal of a number of trees and put at risk the koala population in the area.

“We think they could reroute the power lines a different way to reduce the number of trees that would need to cut down,” he said. “I think it’s going to push the local population further towards extinction"

Mr Clancy said despite the relatively small number of trees marked for removal, the frequency with which koalas could be found in them meant they should be saved.

“I was out there the other day with a representative from Essential Energy and there was a koala in one of the marked trees,” he said.

“The point is the koalas are always in these trees and there is a lot of habitat they may not find as suitable. You need to rely on where the koalas are, not where they might be.”

Rate of land clearing in the Orara Valley causes community concern

Orara Valley NSW: Image from Trip Advisor

The Daily Examiner, 13 March 2019, p.4:

Communities across the Orara Valley have expressed outrage at the loss of mature trees in their neighbourhood.

Fed up with tongoing clearing, a community meeting has been organised for 3.30pm this Sunday at Nana Glen Community Hall.

Posts on a number of Facebook pages including the Glenreagh Community page reflect the growing anger at the seemingly unregulated clearing taking place to make way for intensive agriculture.

Tania and Gerry O’Connor live nearby a stand of blackbutts recently taken down north of Nana Glen and are concerned at how rapidly and irreversibly the landscape of the valley is changing.

“The local council does not seem to be keeping up with the fast-paced changes. It is sad to see 100-year-old trees bulldozed. When the first trees were cut across the road we contacted council who informed us there was nothing they could do,” they said.

They contacted the Environmental Protection Agency which stated that due to the zoning, the clearing was legal.

“We are not against farming, we know we live in a rural community but the system of checks and balances seems to be outdated or non-existent.”.....

Loggers still breaching their environmental obligations in Northern NSW state forests

North East Forest Alliance, media release, 1 February 2019:

EPA ENCOURAGES ILLEGAL LOGGING BY REPEATEDLY LETTING FORESTRY OFF

The North East Forest Alliance is claiming there is no justice for forests after the EPA on Wednesday confirmed numerous breaches of the Forestry Corporation's Threatened Species Licence in Gibberagee State Forest (east of Whiporie) but yet again issued useless cautions and warnings rather than fines and prosecutions for these serial offenders.

"Over the past decade NEFA have exposed the Forestry Corporation committing thousands of legal breaches of their environmental obligations, with the EPA confirming hundreds more breaches in the last few months from NEFA's audits of Gibberagee and Sugarloaf State Forest", said NEFA Spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

"Yet the EPA have never taken the Forest Corporation to court, despite commitments to do so, and in January 2016 they made the political decision not to issue fines.

"With no consequences for their blatant breaches of environmental laws, is it surprising that the Forestry Corporation repeat them time and time again?

"If you or I went around illegally cutting down oldgrowth trees (hundreds of year old), clearing rainforest, and bulldozing roads through exclusions around threatened plants time and time again we would be put in jail, but the Forestry Corporation don't even get a fine.

"The EPA's regulation of the Forestry Corporation is farcical, though the biggest problem is that by their refusal to take meaningful regulatory action the EPA are fostering what Justice Pepper described in 2011 as "a reckless attitude towards compliance with its environmental obligations" Mr. Pugh said.

"On Wednesday, in response to a NEFA complaint made 2 years ago the EPA confirmed that the Forestry Corporation failed to adequately mark the boundaries of 50m logging exclusion zones around numerous individuals of Endangered heath Narrow-leaved Melichrus, and undertook logging operations and roading within their exclusion zones.

"The EPA also confirmed NEFA's complaints of reckless damage to hollow-bearing trees and recruitment trees, while also confirming that the Forestry Corporation was not following the requirements for selection of appropriate recruitment trees.

"Though we can't be sure the EPA found all the breaches we identified because the EPA won't tell us how many they found, and when the EPA invited us into Gibberagee to be show them in March 2017, the Forestry Corporation wouldn't let us show the EPA and ordered us out of the forest.

"When NEFA made its first complaint over Gibberagee in March 2017 we hoped the EPA would take action to stop the breaches, yet when NEFA did another assessment 7 months later we found the same sort of breaches were continuing unabated. We are still waiting for the EPA to respond to the last complaints.

"In October last year the EPA confirmed over 86 breaches of the logging rules identified by the North East Forest Alliance in Sugarloaf State Forest, south of Tabulam, at that time the EPA issued the Forestry Corporation with a Warning Letter for 72 and an Official Caution for 1 offence.

"The confirmed breaches included roading through a wildlife corridor, nine cases of roading in exclusion areas along streams, failure to retain the required numbers of habitat trees, and over 70 cases of serious damage to, and inappropriate selection of, marked habitat trees.

"While failure to retain the required number of habitat trees is called one offence, in practice the EPA found that they had retained 200 less hollow-bearing trees than were legally required.

"There were numerous other breaches that the Forestry got off scot free for, for example the EPA confirmed clearing within the marked boundary of the Endangered Ecological Community Lowland Rainforest but refused to take action on the grounds that because the "forest structure and species present at this location have either been totally removed or severely altered/damaged" it precluded identifying what it had been like before logging.

"The EPA chose to ignore that they and the Forestry Corporation had jointly mapped it as Lowland Rainforest some 6 months before it had been logged and cleared.

"These offences are a repeat of similar offences we reported a year earlier in the nearby Cherry Tree State Forest. Despite the EPA's assurances they were going to take legal action there for logging and roading 4.5ha of mapped Lowland Rainforest and recklessly damaging hundreds of habitat trees, they let the Forestry Corporation off scot-free.

"NEFA estimated in that operation around 1,000 habitat trees were likely to have been damaged or had excessive debris left around their bases, though the EPA justified their refusal to take any regulatory action on the grounds that while it was "likely" the damages "were as a result of harvesting operations", they were not able to prove "beyond reasonable doubt ... that the damage was [not] caused by some other means".

"There is no justice. The EPA's sham regulation is encouraging the Forestry Corporation to repeatedly break logging laws with impunity" Mr. Pugh said.

NSW Liberal & Nationals politicians won't be satisfied until they have turned this state into a wasteland

Echo Net Daily, 3 December 2018:

The North East Forest Alliance has called the process used by the Commonwealth and State Governments to adopt new Regional Forest Agreements as a superficial sham simply intended to lock-up public native forests for private sawmillers at significant environment cost.

North East Forest Alliance spokesperson Dailan Pugh says there has been no attempt to assess or review environmental, industry or social data, instead they are relying on incomplete and out of date assessments undertaken 20 years ago.

’The Governments chose to ignore the recommendation of their own reviewer for a contemporary review that included an assessment of the effects of climate change,’ he said.

‘By rejecting the recommendation of their own review and proceeding on incomplete and out of date assessments the National Party have once again proven that their intent is to lock up public resources for private companies irrespective of the environmental costs and community interests.

Mr Pugh says NEFA are disgusted that the Governments have not publicly released their new RFAs, so it is not possible to know what changes they have made. ‘They are keeping us in the dark,’ he said. ‘The only document they have released is their resource commitments which show they are increasing the cut of high quality logs in north-east NSW by at least 10,000 cubic metres to 230,000m3 per annum, at the same time they are fraudulently claiming a shortfall of 8,600m3 per annum to justify opening up protected old growth and rainforest for logging.’

‘Due to their increased logging intensity they are intending to more than double the cut of small and low-quality logs from 320,000 tonnes per annum to 660,000 tonnes per annum.

‘The increased logging intensity and significant reductions in protections for most threatened species and streams is an environmental crime.

Mr Pugh says that out of more than 5,400 public submissions on the proposed new NSW RFAs, only 23 supported the RFAs. ‘There is no social license to continue the degradation of our public native forests.

‘Plantations already provide 87% of our sawntimber needs, it is time to complete the transition to plantations and establish more plantations on cleared land, while we actively rehabilitate our public native forests to help them recover from past abuses and restore the full suite of benefits they can provide to the community.

BACKGROUND

North Eastern, Southern & Eden Regional Forest Agreements
Image:NSW EPA

NSW EPA Regional Forest Agreements

NSW EPA Review of the regional forest agreements

Here are links to NSW members of the state parliament:

 List of Members, Legislative Assembly

List of Members, Legislative Council​

If any readers wish to contact members of the Berejiklian Government in order stand up for native forests these links provide addresses, telephone numbers and, in the case of the Legislative Assembly, the names of electorates these politicians represent.