I have no doubt that the NSW Government, despite
occasional bouts of insincere 'hand wringing', and non-specific funding
announcements, doesn't give a damn about koalas. The failure over many decades
to even acknowledge climate change, much less take action to mitigate the
impacts, has now led to the incineration of hundreds if not thousands of these
iconic marsupials.
The current government also abolished the Native
Vegetation Act, opening the flood gates to land clearing on private
property. It also changed the Integrated
Forests Operations approval, removing some previous koala protections, and
allowing the clear-felling of large areas of state forests, some of it core
koala habitat.
Recently we learned that Comprehensive Koala Plans of
Management (CKPOM), that councils are required to formulate, are “frozen for
years in a sea of red tape”. Plans designed to protect koalas and their
habitat across NSW are taking years to be approved by the State Government.
Claims these delays are the result of developers’
lobbying may well be true but, given local experience, one wonders just how
effective those CKPOMs are. Just two months ago, developers were granted
approval to bulldoze 14 hectares of forest at Iluka, containing core koala
habitat and providing a vital fauna movement corridor.
In that case a CKPOM was already approved, and states:
“The primary aims of this Plan are to ensure
that the current extent of koala habitat is maintained and improved, and not
reduced; and to mitigate processes which are limiting koala occupancy rates
and/or population sizes”.
We are also assured in the Plan objectives
that Council would: “minimise the potential for adverse impacts and
disturbances to current and future areas of koala habitat; protect koala
habitat in order to, as a minimum, maintain koala populations across their
current range”, and “create, manage and/or restore koala habitat
linkages and corridors.
All of these were ignored by Clarence
Valley Council's Planners, the majority of Councillors, the Federal Minister
for the Environment, and finally the Joint Regional Planning Panel, all of whom
gave the development their tick of approval.
This is government-approved extinction in
action.
John Edwards
This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on December 30, 2019.
