Local Business Delegation Supports Creation of Great Koala National Park

 Liz Jeremy, NSW  National Parks Association President and local Mid North Coast resident,  welcomed NSW Premier Chris Minns' positive response to a delegation representing local businesses and recreational groups calling for the declaration of the Great Koala National Park (GKNP).

 Ms Jeremy said, "More than a hundred businesses and recreational groups from the Coffs Harbour region have signed an open letter telling the NSW Government that the Great Koala National Park is not just good for Koalas, it will be a drawcard for regional tourism and a boon for local business." 

"Tourism is so important for our region, and the more than a hundred businesses who signed onto the open letter are saying that the Great Koala National Park is the natural and cultural wonder that will put us on the national stage along with the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru." 

The open letter highlights the urgency of permanently protecting 176,000 hectares of State Forest as part of the new national park. The open letter states "Every day the decision to create the Great Koala National Park is delayed, we lose more koalas, and the tremendous potential for tourism and conservation slips away.”

The proposed park, which was promised by NSW Labor before it won the March 2023 state election, will include areas of publicly-owned State Forests as well as the existing National Parks in five local government areas from Kempsey to the Clarence.  It will provide a network of protected koala habitat on public lands which would protect approximately 20% of NSW's remaining wild koalas.

The delay in creating the promised park has been of increasing concern to local conservationists and community members.  They are watching important habitat in the proposed park area continuing to be industrially logged by the NSW Forestry Corporation.  Many of them are wondering just what will be left of biodiversity if the important habitat in these publicly-owned State Forests continues to be trashed by logging.

 

ARE RIVERS A LIVING ENTITY ?

 “Is a River Alive?”  That’s the title of a new book by British author and professor, Robert Macfarlane, which goes beyond thinking of a river as a living entity, as do many indigenous peoples around the world, including Australia’s First Nations people, who worship rivers as life-giving deities.

The notion of accepting rivers as living beings and granting them rights under the law is not new. Many have argued in support of legal protection for rivers, sometimes successfully. In fact, some two decades ago, Ecuador embedded four Rights of Nature articles in its constitution, granting ‘Mother Earth’ “the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.”

 

Then, as recently as 2017, New Zealand legislated that the Whanganui River, “from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements” is a “‘legal person’ with the capacity to represent itself in court and to bear rights - the right to flow unpolluted and undammed to the sea, for example, and the right to flourish.”

 

This concept is also close to the hearts of local Clarence Valley activists who have been campaigning for the past seven years to stop mining and mineral exploration in the valley, for fear of potential pollution.

 

When reading an article on Macfarlane’s exploits and endless campaign to have rivers given the constitutional protection they so clearly deserve, I was struck by the description of that campaign as, “enabling the engagement of constitutional and legal tools in defence of natural systems from their most voracious predators: us.” Certainly, mankind is the most invasive and destructive species this planet has ever seen.

 

The Clarence River’s water quality is dreadful, mainly through mud from up-stream erosion for which humans are entirely responsible. Thoughtless and often outdated agricultural practices, and a failure to fence livestock out of rivers, along with logging of forests, which are nature’s water filters, are also contributors.

 

Rivers are our lifeblood, so it’s imperative that we clean up our act.

 

    - John Edwards 

HERITAGE DESTRUCTION AND CLIMATE FOLLY IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

A few weeks ago new Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt announced the approval of fossil fuel giant Woodside’s North West Gas extension giving it permission to operate until 2070.  This decision, which the Minister claims contains strong conditions, has been condemned by environmentalists and First Nations people but unsurprisingly welcomed by Woodside and the Western Australian (WA) Government. 

Opposed by First Nations peoples for years, the North West Shelf gas project has been operating since the 1980s.  Gas extracted off the Pilbarra Coast is processed at Woodside’s plant at Karratha on the Burrup Peninsula.  Burrup (Murujaga) is also the location of around 500,000 ancient First Nations carvings or petroglyths.  This ancient art is of such significance that in 2023 former Environment Minister Plibersek applied to have it listed as a World Heritage site.  The United Nations' Heritage Committee recently flagged concerns over the ongoing effects of degrading acidic emissions from the Karratha processing plant on the fragile carvings and the need to prevent any further industrial development.

Minister Watt did not have to consider climate impacts of  Woodside's extension but what damage it might do to the rock art as well as economic and social matters.  His conditions largely focus on air emissions from the project.  For decades processing plant gases such as nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and ammonia have been gradually eroding the petroglyths without any effective state or federal government action to protect them.  Whether Minister Watt’s “strong conditions” will actually work, even if they are effectively monitored and enforced, is open to question.

Environmentalists oppose the extension because of the huge emissions the project will create over its increased lifetime.  As well as undermining Australia's drive to lower emissions, it threatens the nation’s climate credibility at a time when it is seeking endorsement to co-host the UN COP31 climate talks in 2026.  Any claims by uninformed politicians and others that this extension could lead to nationally cheaper domestic gas supplies or to improved gas supply on the East Coast are nonsensical as only WA will see increased supply.

The only certainty is legal action and increased campaigning against the folly of continuing to allow expansion of fossil fuel projects.

-        Leonie Blain

 Adapted from an article originally published under the title "Heritage Destruction and Climate Folly" in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent ,4 June, 2025.