LOSING OUT TO INVASIVE SPECIES

Australia’s State of the Environment Report, 2021, tells us that the greatest threats to biodiversity are habitat loss, invasive species, and climate change, with invasive species actually responsible for most extinctions.

While foxes, cats and wild dogs have had a devastating impact on Australian’s unique fauna, invasive plants have also taken their toll, often smothering native plant species.

The Centre for Invasive Species Solutions reports that weeds in NSW cost the economy between $1.67 billion and $1.9 billion annually, admitting that the impact of weeds on biodiversity and natural environments is harder to quantify, but equally significant.

The NSW government currently spends just $50 million annually on weed control, and clearly this is nowhere close to what is needed, as weeds continue to proliferate.

Invasive weeds such as Lantana are rampant in the state’s forests and national parks, with weed control in the former seemingly restricted to road verges to reduce scratching of vehicles, while national parks receive only cosmetic weed control around the more visited locations.

National parks and reserves have Plans of Management detailing weed control policy, which generally reads along the lines of: “NPWS weed control activity is conducted in accordance with the North Coast Region Pest Management Strategy. This strategy has been developed for the region as a whole and identifies pest populations, priorities for control, and control programs”.

However, while Lantana is probably the most invasive species in lower altitude forests, and is listed as a priority weed at a state level, it’s not listed as a priority for the North Coast region.

So essentially, because funding is so limited, the official policy focuses on newly emerging pest species such as Tropical Soda Apple and Devil’s Fig, hoping to eliminate them; while placing well established weeds into the ‘too hard basket’, allowing their uncontrolled proliferation.

“Collaboration” is a major theme throughout the regional plan, and we need to acknowledge that the weed problem is way beyond any government’s ability to deal with alone, so we all need to lift our game.

 

-        John Edwards

 

 Published in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent , 23rd July, 2025.

KOALA PROTECTION IN LIMBO IN NSW

 More than two years have passed since the Minns’ Government won office in NSW.  One of its election promises – the creation of the Great Koala National Park (GKNP) – appears to be in limbo.  While there have been various committees meeting and discussing the proposed national park, the time line for actually creating it keeps extending.

Those concerned with protection of koalas and other threatened species in the area of the proposed new park are watching its ecological viability being continually damaged because the Government is allowing Forestry Corporation NSW to industrially log in the State Forests which are being considered for inclusion in the park.

The proposed park will include about 1760 sq km of State Forests and 1400 sq km of 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 twenty per-cent of NSW’s remaining wild koalas.

Many conservationists and community members are wondering just what will be left for biodiversity if the important habitat in these publicly-owned State Forests continues to be trashed by logging.

They have reason for concern because Koalas are listed as an Endangered Species in NSW, Queensland and the ACT.  In 2020 a NSW Legislative Council Inquiry found that koalas will become extinct in NSW by 2050 if urgent action is not taken to protect their habitat.  Sadly, urgent action on protecting koala habitat is obviously not on the NSW Government agenda.

This was quite apparent to the Nature Conservation Council of NSW  when it pointed out that in the recent state budget there was no new funding for the GKNP, no plan to transition timber workers, and no pathway to protect the native forests our threatened species call home.

While the Government has no sense of urgency to protect Koalas and other important species and continues its delaying tactics on creating the GKNP, there are many community members who are doing what they can to delay or halt destructive logging in our State Forests.

-        Leonie Blain

 Published in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent , 2 July, 2025.

WHERE'S THE POT OF GOLD?

Much has been written about the current rush to find critical minerals in the Clarence Valley, and with demand rocketing, the state government is hoping to collect billions of dollars in royalties. As a result, exploration approvals are being fast-tracked with little regard for the resultant social upheaval or potential environmental destruction.

The Clarence Valley has a history of mining starting with the 1800s gold rushes, followed by the mining of copper, silver, cobalt, antimony and a host of other minerals which, by the 1950s, were mostly exhausted. 

So, is there any as-yet-undiscovered mother lode waiting to be uncovered? Events over the past 50 years suggest not, and it’s significant that most of these modern-day explorers have focussed their activities on those earlier mine sites, producing glossy prospectuses, and hinting that modern technology will succeed where previous methods had failed. 

The Dalmorton gold field is a classic example where, in 1980, 40 years after serious mining had ceased, the Little River Goldfields company spent almost a decade exploring, using aero magnetics, geochemistry, gradient array IP and magnetics.

In all, they drilled over 120 holes and then, clearly having found nothing, packed up and left, recently to be replaced by another explorer, Revolution Metals. However, following a flurry of announcements in 2017, including about the completion of deep ground-penetrating radar surveys, these announcements ceased and their website was shut down.

Dalmorton is not alone, White Rock Minerals’ partner company at Mt Carrington, Thomson Resources, split following exploratory drilling in 2022. Castillo Copper came, drilled for 3 years at Cangai, and also left. Corazon Mining’s Mt Gilmore operations have seemingly stalled, despite receiving state and federal government grants, and drilling to almost 800m without finding anything. Likewise, Anchor, after bouncing around and drilling on the Dorrigo Plateau for 11 years, has gone, only to be replaced by Trigg Minerals, bent on repeating the cycle once again. 

As I see it, the government has nothing to lose, while Clarence Valley residents have everything to gain by having the catchment declared off-limits to mining.

  

-            John Edwards

 

Published in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent 25 June, 2025.

 

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