NSW GOVERNMENT'S $10 MILLION FOR KOALAS INADEQUATE

The NSW Government recently announced $10 million to voluntarily acquire properties with core Koala habitat across the north coast of the state, as part of the Save our Species program to save Koalas.

$10 million in this day and age does not go far, particularly when managed by bureaucrats who will spend a large portion of that on touring the state running workshops and think-tanks. Air travel, hire cars, accommodation, venue hire, and catering, not to mention the employment of project coordinators, and experts in the field.

While grateful for any action to save koalas, those currently on the 'front line' of this struggle to save the species from almost certain extinction in this region, question the effectiveness of buying, at most, 10 - 15 properties across an area of perhaps 20,000 square kilometres.

Recently, various stakeholders received a letter from the office of Environment and Heritage, signed by Steve Hartley, Director Public Land and Aquatic Ecosystems Policy Branch, proudly announcing the Government's Koala initiative, and inviting suggestions.

It should be noted that Mr Hartley previously worked with the Forestry Policy and Regulation Unit of the Environment Protection Agency, watching on as Forests NSW rode rough-shod through our native forests, flouting regulations in regard to threatened flora and fauna, and destroying Koala habitat with impunity in state forests such as Boambee, Orara East, Clouds Creek, Double Duke and Royal Camp in the Northern Rivers.

So here is a logical solution. If the government is really serious about saving Koalas, how about putting an immediate halt to logging in any state forest where Koalas are known to occur? That would achieve much better results, and cost taxpayers nothing. In fact, $10 million is little more than native forest logging has cost taxpayers each year for the past decade and a half, so we'd actually be saving money!

And just think of all the hundreds of other threatened species that would benefit along the way, while the money saved each year could be added to the $10 million and start making a real difference through their strategic acquisitions program.

- John Edwards

 This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on December 12, 2016   

LOGGING LAWS IN NSW STATE FORESTS MUST BE ENFORCED

In a recent media release the North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) called on the state government to restore the rights of the public to take the Forestry Corporation to court in order to enforce environmental laws.

“If the Baird Government refuses to enforce the logging rules, then let us do it,” said NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

“For years we have been finding the same sorts of logging offences, time after time.  The Forestry Corporation are being allowed to flout environmental laws with impunity.  The Environmental Protection Authority’s (EPAs) lax regulation is clearly not working. “

Mr Pugh referred to breaches NEFA had identified in the forests of the North Coast and the slowness of the EPA in responding to its breach  reports.

He said NEFA ‘s audits showed that environmental laws were being broken constantly and pointed out that, as 20,000 hectares of NSW’s public forests are logged every year, both the scale of the breaches and the damage from them is immense.

In 1998 the public’s right to take the Forestry authority to court was removed with the promise that the EPA would take over regulating and policing the Forestry authority. According to Mr Pugh the EPA has been a dismal failure.

The failure of the EPA to enforce the environmental regulations is leading to destruction of old growth trees, damage to waterways, and failure to protect the habitat of koalas and other threatened species.

A major concern is the failure to protect tree hollows.  NEFA particularly has fears for the future of 70 species (28%) of vertebrates that depend on tree hollows in northern NSW as well as numerous species, such as koalas, which prefer to feed on older trees.

It points out that a eucalypt takes 120-180 years to develop hollows and more than 220 years to develop the large hollows needed for large animals.  This means that large old growth trees are priceless treasures.

Is it lack of will or lack of resources which has made the EPA a “dismal failure” in enforcing environmental regulations in our forests?  There’s an urgent need for a change. 

            - Leonie Blain

This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on December 5, 2016    

ONE OF THE PROBLEMS WITH GAS-MINING EMISSIONS

“Australia could be underestimating its annual greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to the output of the nation's entire transport sector”. This was the startling finding released last month by the Melbourne Energy Institute.

According to the report, Australia's carbon accounting problem stems from a failure to include the fugitive emissions released during the production phase of unconventional gas, i.e. gas extracted from coal seams, shale and sandstone. Currently the level of fugitive emissions is set at only 0.1% of production; in other words the authorities are conveniently ignoring them. The authors point out that this level, is in stark contrast to measurements made at US unconventional gas fields, where measured leakage rates have been found to be as high as 17% of production, 170 times higher than Australia's assumed figure.

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, is a process used to blast apart underground rock seams to release the methane, which is lighter than air and a highly potent greenhouse gas. Therefore it stands to reason that when those rock seams are shattered, not all the gas will conveniently flow into the pipes for capture, but will seep upwards through the fractured rocks to the ground's surface and into the atmosphere.

In south-east Queensland, residents living inside gas fields are reporting a range of health problems which are consistent with the inhalation of methane. The occurrence of fugitive methane in the air was supported when, some three years ago, methane was found bubbling freely up through the Condamine River, and further confirmed by Southern Cross University Researchers who recorded methane levels within the gas fields many times higher than elsewhere.

Any claim that the industry didn't know this would occur should be summarily dismissed. Any engineer would have known the risks, they simply ignored them as an expedient measure to support their grab for riches, and it's still being ignored.

This poses a serious problem for the government which has committed to the Paris agreement calling for emissions reduction because, with every new well drilled, the problem worsens, and those leaks continue for ever, even after extraction ceases and the wells are capped.

- John Edwards

This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on November 14, 2016   

QUEENSLAND GASFIELD TOUR – A KNITTING NANNA’S REPORT

A group of Knitting Nannas Against Gas from the Clarence Valley travelled to Chinchilla in the Queensland gasfields for the second annual Knitting Nanna (KNAG) conference which was held from September 26-28. Nannas from NSW and Queensland as well as some from further afield (e.g. Alice Springs) assembled for the conference and the gasfield tour on the last day. Nanna Lynette was deeply affected by the experience of seeing what a gasfield is really like.  Her report of the Nannas’ tour of the Kenya Gasfield (one of a number of gasfields close to Chinchilla) is below.

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Nanna Lynette's Report

I found that although I’d seen many photos and movies of gasfields and had heard people talk about them, nothing prepared me for visiting a gasfield and walking around the infrastructure and hearing the massive amount of noise. The size of the Kenya gasfield and the amount of infrastructure was mind-blowing.  

Gas Well

The gas from the field is piped to the Kenya processing plant and after processing is piped to Gladstone. The processing plant, which covers an area of a couple of acres, consists of three massive metal structures about five storeys high.  The noise coming from this was horrendous. We were standing about a kilometre away and where we were the noise was deafening.

The next part of the tour was a visit to the State Forest where some of the actual Kenya gaswells are. Initially they were about a kilometre apart but when production slowed they drilled other wells in between the existing ones so that the wells were then 500 metres apart.  Each well sits in a cleared pad of at least a quarter of an acre.  This means you’ve a fractured environment because the ground is bare except for some gravel over it.  And each well makes a horrific noise as well.

The whole area is massively noisy and dusty because of all the clearing.  

Nannas in a corridor infested with fireweed

The cleared pipeline corridors are about 100 metres wide and have been taken over by weeds like fireweed.  Along the main pipeline there are vents – high point vents and low point vents about 400 metres apart. 

The high point vents vent raw gas 24 hours a day. Of course this smells.  It just goes straight into the atmosphere. The low point vents expel moisture which is collected in troughs and presumably evaporates if it doesn’t overflow.

 

High point vent

We spent between four and five hours on the gasfield tour with gas company officials following us around the whole time.

During the tour my eyes started stinging and I started to get a headache.  Nearly everyone had these symptoms.  A couple of people had nose bleeds.  I can’t even begin to think of what the people who are surrounded by gasfields are going through.  The side effects of living close to a gasfield are very real.  These unfortunate people are not making it up.

The trip and the tour was a good thing to do. I am left feeling really thankful that we have kept this industry away from the NSW North Coast.

Cartoon from the local paper

THE PLAINT OF PHASCOLARCTOS CINEREUS

Stoned on oily eucalypt leaves, high in the cleft of a gum-tree bough,

Snoozy phascolartctos cinereus, indifferent to the world below;

For aeons we let that world go by, but our creeping ghetto isolation,

Without a blow, without a sigh, is wiping out our population.

While we koalas are protected our habitat is not,

When illegal logging fells our home, precious leaves are left to rot.

Starving we are forced to roam, but in the bush our fate is grim

Down on the ground and helpless when daylight’s getting dim

We’re completely at the mercy of attacking dogs and cars that speed.

They smash our bones, kill our young, leave us lying there to bleed.

While red-neck councillors and strutting pollies display us for the gaze

Of VIPs, foreign tourists get their jollies nursing us in sanctuaries

Ignoring the cause of our fearful plight, the death of our habitat.

Please, human beings, take up the fight before Phascolarctos cinereus

Forever will depart.

            - Dorothy Hillis

Photo: Stan Mussared