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Administration to permit logging in the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest
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Saturday, 31 October 2020
James Hansen - Sophie’s Planet
Thursday, 29 October 2020
Trump to gut protections in Alaska’s Tongass forest, the ‘lungs of the country’
Extract from The Guardian
The Trump administration has announced it will lift protections in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, permitting logging in the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest.
Experts call the Tongass the “lungs of the country” and one of nation’s last remaining bulwarks against climate change. Located on the southwestern coast of Alaska, it is made up of centuries-old western cedar, hemlock and Sitka spruce trees, and is home to immense biodiversity, including the largest-known concentration of bald eagles.
“It’s ironic that this administration is trying to tout this president’s environmental record when [Trump is] unwinding environmental safeguards all over the place,” said Ken Rait, project director of the Pew Charitable Trust, who two decades ago helped win the protections that Trump is now undoing. “And lifting protections on the Tongass, the nation’s flagship forest, is about the most egregious of all of them.”
The administration’s decision ignores overwhelming public support for keeping protections in place on the Tongass, including resolutions from six south-east Alaska tribes and six south-east Alaska city councils against lifting protections. Of the public comments solicited on the plan, 96% were in favor of keeping protections in places.
Tribes also petitioned the government to protect customary cultural use areas of the Tongass. “All other avenues to protect our homelands have been exhausted, to little avail”, they wrote in their petition.
The Tongass has been safeguarded since 2001 by a “roadless rule”, which prohibits road construction, road reconstruction, and timber harvesting in designated areas of national forests. It barred the construction of roads on some 58.5m acres, and in addition to the environmental benefits, the rule was motivated to protect US taxpayers from the costs of maintaining a web of US Forest Service roads “long enough to go to the moon and most of the way back with no way to maintain them”, said Rait.
Tourism has soared, and the forest support some of the last productive wild salmon runs in the world, and a billion-dollar commercial fishing industry. A 2019 scientific analysis showed that the Tongass absorbs more carbon than any other national forest, on a level with the world’s most dense terrestrial carbon sinks in South America.
After a brief private meeting between President Trump and the Alaska governor, Mike Dunleavy, aboard Air Force One in June 2019, Trump ordered his administration to lift all protections from the forest.
According to Rait, “between taxpayer expenses and the fact that the majority of logs cut on the Tongass will be exported to China and other Pacific Rim nations, today’s decision isn’t going to have robust economic benefits to anyone in this country.”
A recent report from the Center for Sustainable Economy documented taxpayer losses of nearly $2bn a year from federal logging programs, largely due to the fact that demand for timber has been flagging nationally.
“The Tongass is America’s Amazon,” Adam Kolton, executive director of Alaska Wilderness League, said in a statement. “This presidentially directed move to gut roadless protections for our nation’s largest and most biologically rich national forest is a calamity for our climate, for wildlife and for the outdoor recreation economy of south-east Alaska.”
Unions urge ALP to accept need for gas and back blue collar workers or face losing next election.
Extract from The Guardian
Labor MPs told gas power is a necessary part of the transition to renewables
AGL power station in South Australia. Union leaders have urged Labor to support gas in the medium term.
Last modified on Wed 28 Oct 2020 21.08 AEDT
Union officials have given Labor MPs a message that gas will be needed in the transition to renewable energy, and have urged them to defend blue collar workers in traditional industries or face losing another election.
The leadership of the Australian Workers Union and the construction and mining union attended a briefing organised this week by Labor’s country caucus, which is run by the shadow resources minister Joel Fitzgibbon.
Guardian Australia reported in September that union leaders were on the warpath internally, demanding that the shadow climate minister Mark Butler adopt a more supportive public stance about gas.
With parliament’s resumption, senior officials Tony Maher and Daniel Walton addressed between 30 and 40 Labor MPs, including Fitzgibbon and other frontbenchers, but not Butler or the party leader, Anthony Albanese.
The two warned MPs not to position themselves as opposed to blue collar workers or anti-jobs in traditional industries, and urged attendees to defend blue collar workers while plotting a path to jobs that would be created during the transition to low emissions energy.
Fitzgibbon has been campaigning internally for Labor to wind back the level of ambition for its medium-term emissions reduction target.
He wants the ALP to adopt the same 2030 target as the Coalition, and recently told Guardian Australia he could quit the shadow cabinet if the leadership takes a position he can’t defend. Butler has publicly opposed the move to decrease policy ambition.
Albanese on Wednesday told reporters Labor would hasten slowly to resolve that issue. With his senior colleagues openly at odds, Albanese told reporters Labor would delay the final decision on a 2030 target until after the next international climate change meeting, which is in Glasgow at the end of next year.
Scott Morrison says he will run full term, but the prime minister can call the election any time after the middle of next year.
Delaying the resolution of the issue risks Labor unveiling a new target during an election, or immediately before, which increases the likelihood of a scare campaign. Albanese has previously committed Labor to setting a new medium-term emissions reduction target consistent with scientific advice before the next federal election.
While the 2030 position is internally contested, Labor has already adopted a mid-century target of net zero emissions by 2050 – a target Fitzgibbon supports. But the Morrison government is continuing to resist signing up.
The prime minister told reporters on Wednesday – after a conversation on Tuesday night with the British prime minister Boris Johnson, where net zero was raised – that Australia would set its own targets, not Europe or London, because this was a matter of sovereignty.
The UK in 2019 became the first G7 country to legislate a target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Net zero is an increasingly uncontroversial position. This week Japan pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
South Korea also joined its east Asian neighbours Japan and China in declaring it would target “carbon neutrality” by or near the middle of the century.
The South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, told the national parliament he would end the country’s dependence on coal and invest in green infrastructure, clean energy and electric vehicles under a multibillion-dollar green new deal to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
China last month pledged to reach carbon neutrality by no later than 2060. Korea, Japan and China are the biggest markets for Australia’s $110bn coal and gas exports.
While regional decarbonisation has clear implications for Australia’s fossil fuel exports, during a press conference on Wednesday, Morrison said he was not concerned about the shift by most of Australia’s major trading partners.
Morrison’s upbeat declaration came as the New South Wales Liberal environment minister, Matt Kean, launched a clarion call for his party to represent “the forgotten people” who “don’t march down George Street” and “don’t have a platform on Sky News” but support meaningful action on climate change.
Borrowing “the forgotten people” locution from the Liberal party founder, Robert Menzies, Kean told a forum organised by the Australia Institute on Wednesday that the free market was driving an inexorable transition to low-emission energy sources but “politics and ideology” had been getting in the way of market forces.
“Climate change didn’t start out as a political issue – we made it one – and this needs to end,” Kean said.
The NSW Liberal said climate action “should not be a partisan issue. It is not in the UK, it is not across Europe, it is not in places like Japan, in fact, largely, those jurisdictions are run by conservative governments and they are leading the way on this issue.
“What could be more conservative than protecting and handing our environment to the next generations better than we found it?”
Australian measure of poverty unnecessary because welfare is 'comprehensive and targeted'
Extract from The Guardian
Social services minister Anne Ruston says government sees no need for ‘narrow definition of poverty’
Social services minister Anne Ruston says there is no need for Australia to have an agreed way to measure poverty.
Last modified on Wed 28 Oct 2020 19.43 AEDT
Australia does not need an official poverty measure because its welfare system is “comprehensive” and “targeted”, according to the social services minister.
At a Senate estimates hearing on Wednesday, Anne Ruston faced questions about the government’s plans for the permanent rate of the jobseeker payment, temporarily set at $815 a fortnight, up from the pre-pandemic level of $565.
Ruston gave her strongest indication that the supplement would be extended beyond 1 January, although it was unlikely the government would announce a permanent increase before the end of the year.
Quizzed about the role of poverty measurements in setting welfare payments, department officials suggested they were generally “very theoretical” or “academic”.
And in an exchange with Labor’s Katy Gallagher, Ruston dismissed the need for an agreed way to measure poverty.
“The government doesn’t have a measure of poverty, which has been the practice of successive governments, because our payments system is very comprehensive and specifically targeted towards providing the policy outcomes that are defined by the particular [support] measures,” Ruston said.
“The suite of determining factors in those particular payments is specific to those payments.
“A narrow definition of ‘poverty’, as I said, is not something the government has ever sought, doesn’t have.”
Asked by Gallagher whether people should receive payments that left them in “poverty”, Ruston replied: “You’re returning to the word poverty again.
“But what I would say is that income support payments are put in place as a safety net to assist people.”
Kathryn Campbell, secretary of the social services department, said officials did not “frame” advice on the adequacy of welfare payments based on measures of poverty.
“It’s about what does the word poverty mean and it’s about how much income, how much support is provided to people,” Campbell said.
“What are their expenses versus their support base. Those are the issues. We haven’t provided advice about a definition of poverty.”
Campbell said the Productivity Commission had found there was no one indicator of poverty that was relevant in an Australian context.
Ruston declined to answer when asked whether payments were adequate for a dignified life or whether people on welfare lived in poverty.
“I can see why you run a mile from having a definition of poverty,” Gallagher said. “You don’t have to deal with the issue of adequacy then.”
Asked by Greens senator Rachel Siewert how she would describe the lives of people on welfare, Ruston said: “I am not disputing the fact that living without a job is not a desirable situation to find yourself in.”
Siewart said: “Just because you haven’t got a definition doesn’t mean people aren’t living in poverty.”
Until the $550 coronavirus supplement, the base rate of jobseeker payment – $280 a week – was well below commonly used relative poverty measures. It fell back below this line when the supplement was reduced to $250.
Australian researchers generally use the relative poverty measure of 50% of median income, set at $457 a week for a single adult living alone or $960 a week for a couple with two children. Using that measure, Acoss and the UNSW said this year there were 3.24m people living in poverty.
There is also the Henderson poverty line, which emerged from a 1973 inquiry of the same name, and is set at a higher level of about about $550 a week for single people.
While poverty measures are the subject of debate, other OECD countries have adopted an agreed poverty line and the Australian government has been urged to do the same.
The US adopted a poverty measure during its “war on poverty” in the 1960s, though it has been criticised as outdated. The Canadian government has an official legislated poverty line, and the UK produces poverty statistics.
Amid Jacinda Ardern’s crusade against child poverty, New Zealand’s statistics agency publishes child poverty statistics after legislation passed in 2018.
Fresh debate about a poverty measure came as the social services department confirmed it expected about 1.8m people to be receiving jobseeker payments at Christmas.
That was an increase of about 300,000 on July forecasts, which officials attributed in part to the second wave in Victoria and an expected influx of people from jobkeeper payments on to welfare.
Though describing the situation as “volatile”, officials forecast 1.3m on payments in 2021-22, falling to 1m in 2022-23 and 900,000 in 2023-24.
Labor said there were 813,000 on the equivalent payments in December 2019.
There are about 1.4m on jobseeker and youth allowance (other).
Asked multiple times about the possibility of a permanent increase to jobseeker, Ruston emphasised the government’s priority was setting further temporary supports through the coronavirus supplement.
“There is very likely to be continued elevated levels of support recognising we are still in a pandemic and we still don’t know when and where this pandemic is going to end,” she said.
An announcement is expected in December.
Prime Minister's Prize for Science awarded to gravitational wave scientists.
Extract from ABC News
When Susan Scott first started looking for gravitational waves more than 25 years ago, many scientists were sceptical of finding anything.
Nearly 100 years after Einstein first proposed these tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime existed, Professor Scott was part of a 1000-strong international team that finally detected them in 2015.
"That detection involved two black holes colliding and the two amazing projections from Einstein's theory are black holes and gravitational waves and they came together in that one event," she said.
On Wednesday night, Professor Scott of the Australian National University was one of four scientists — and the first female physicist — to be awarded Australia's top science prize for their pioneering work discovering gravitational waves opening a new window to the universe.
She shares the $250,000 Prime Minister's Prize for Science with David Blair, of the University of Western Australia (UWA), Peter Veitch of the University of Adelaide, and David McClelland of the Australian National University.
"Australia has a presence in this field now because of the work we have done over more than 30 years," said Professor Scott, who is a head investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav).
Australia is one of four nations that signed up to the Advanced LIGO Project, which made the historic discovery.
The field of gravitational wave research in Australia was kickstarted in the 1980s by Professor Blair, who built an early detector in Western Australia.
"This is something we spent a long, long time doing," he said.
"But also we were doing this because we wanted Australia to be part of this discovery and it's wonderful that this has been recognised."
"This is a prize for physics in Australia."
A model for women in science
Professor Scott heads a team of scientists who are instrumental in analysing the data and deciphering signals picked up by gravitational wave detectors.
She also led Australia's efforts to follow up the detection of gravitational waves by optical telescopes to detect kilonova explosions created by merging neutron stars.
Professor Scott said she hoped the award will inspire young women to pursue a career in physics.
"It could have easily been the case that the four recipients were all males because that's how the field was when I started out," she said.
The experimental physicist started her career working with Professor Sir Roger Penrose, who has just won a Nobel Prize for his ground-breaking work that proved black holes were possible according to Einstein's general relativity theory.
But it wasn't until she returned to Australia from the United Kingdom in 1990 that she thought she'd concentrate on gravitational waves.
"When I got to Canberra I got to thinking 'Yeah, there's something in these gravitational waves'."
"I don't think I would have embarked on it if I hadn't convinced myself that the waves really were an implication of the theory," she said.
"I'm just glad it didn't take another 20 years."
Aim for the impossible and do the impossible
Professor Blair has been developing technologies to detect gravitational waves for 40 years and set up a research centre at Gingin in Western Australia.
Research and technologies developed by Professor Blair and his team were instrumental in the detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO Observatory in 2015.
When Professor Blair started working on gravitational wave projects in the US in the 1970s he thought it would just take a couple of years.
"Even now when you know how to do the calculations and can calculate their sensitivity it is still pretty hard to really believe we can measure these things," he said.
He said the success of the amazing quest to find gravitational waves was a tribute to the hard work of an immense team of people and the support of his university.
"I particularly thank the UWA for nurturing us and nurturing this vision of physicists can aim for the impossible and do the impossible," he said.
It was at UWA where he worked with Peter Veitch and David McClelland.
Developing technology that didn't exist
Professor Veitch was one of Professor Blair's PhD students.
Now at the University of Adelaide, his focus is on developing advanced lasers and optics now used in the Advanced LIGO detector.
One of the problems the LIGO Project faced, was that the high-powered laser beams used inside the detectors get slightly distorted as they travel through the instrument.
"We came up with this new technology that was able to measure these effects with the sensitivity … about a factor of 30 better than anything else in the world," Professor Veitch said.
"We're developing technology that did not exist until we came up with it," Professor Veitch said.
He's also pleased that the prize is recognising all four of them, although is quick to point out they represent a much larger team of collaborators.
"The four of us have been working together for quite a long time, but there have been many people that have worked with us as well," Professor Veitch said.
"Within physics, if you want to work on these really big projects that answer quite fundamental questions, it is rare that it's a single person or even a couple of people."
Australia could lead the way in the future
Professor McClelland and his team pioneered optical and quantum technologies that enable components inside the detectors to work together in harmony, and made the LIGO detectors so sensitive they can detect a gravitational wave signal every week when they're operating.
He said the prize is "a culmination of 30 years' worth of effort towards one of the most exciting outcomes in the history of physics".
"What we understand about the universe to date, has only been by looking at light and electromagnetic waves and some neutrinos.
"This is a new window to explore the universe," Professor McClelland said.
Professor McClelland said the quartet was humbled to accept the prize on behalf of the Australian effort, and they hoped it would lead to bigger things in gravitational wave detection in Australia.
In order to pinpoint where the gravitational waves sources are on the sky what's needed is a real network of detectors: a big detector in Europe, a big detector in the United States and a big detector in the southern hemisphere.
"Australia is one of the few places in the world where we can find sites suitable," Professor McClelland said.
"It'll inspire the next generations the way that the astronomy in the 1990s in Australia, in the 1980s, inspired researchers to build the SKA, the Square Kilometre Array."
The Prime Minister's Prize for Science was one of seven prizes awarded on Wednesday night. There are four other science and innovation prizes and two science teaching prizes.
White House coronavirus advisor Anthony Fauci praises Victorian attitude to mask wearing.
Extract from ABC News
Top White House coronavirus adviser Anthony Fauci has praised Victoria's attitude towards mask-wearing, saying it has been "painful" to see the issue become politicised in the United States.
Key points:
- Dr Fauci said the vitriol towards mask-wearing in the United States in some cases was "extraordinary"
- The US might be in a better position if all states followed universal COVID-19 guidelines, he said
- Wearing face masks in the US has "almost become a political statement", he said
Dr Fauci, one of the United States' leading infectious diseases experts, said Australia and New Zealand were among countries that he believed had done "quite well" in tackling the pandemic.
He made the comments in a panel discussion with Doherty Institute director Sharon Lewin, hosted by the University of Melbourne's Dean of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences Shitij Kapur.
"I would like to say the same for the United States, but the numbers speak for themselves," he said.
Dr Fauci said among the country's challenges were how states operated independently despite having a central government.
"Although there's many positives of independent states, when you're dealing with a pandemic and you say 'we need everyone to be doing A, B and C', and all of a sudden state 43 does this and state 27 does that, it becomes very difficult," he said.
He said the problem was particularly noticeable when the US tried to "open up the economy" recently.
Despite having recommendations for how to do that safely, Dr Fauci said the approach across the country was like an inconsistent "free for all" where some states skipped benchmarks or did not pay attention to health advice at all.
"Some states tried to do it well, but yet when you looked at the TV screen, you'd see people crowded at bars with no masks, just essentially causing super-spreading," he said.
"Even though we had the guidelines of universal wearing of masks, keeping distance, avoiding crowded and congregated settings, doing things outdoors more than indoors, and washing your hands.
"If everyone had done that uniformly, I don't think we would be in the position we're in right now."
Dr Fauci, a member of the United States coronavirus taskforce, has often been at odds with US President Donald Trump over how to best handle the pandemic.
Mr Trump recently described the renowned infectious diseases expert as a "disaster" and has ridiculed his Democratic opponent Joe Biden for wanting to "listen to Dr Fauci".
Divisiveness around mask-wearing 'painful to see', Dr Fauci says
Fellow panellist Professor Lewin said there were many reasons for Australia's success in tackling the pandemic.
Early international border closures, having a National Cabinet, early COVID-19 testing, a "robust" public health system and policy driven by science all contributed to Australia's relative success, she said.
But the infectious diseases expert also said the "individual individualism" in the United States was very different to Australia, and she pointed to Victoria's approach to fining people for not wearing a mask in public.
"If you walk on the streets of Melbourne, 99.9 per cent of people are wearing masks and we did it by fining people," Professor Lewin said.
"That, I gather, would be very difficult in the US."
Dr Fauci replied: "I really wish that we could transplant that kind of mentality here, because masks in the United States have almost become a political statement."
The vitriol towards mask-wearing in the United States in some cases was "extraordinary", he said.
"People were ridiculed for wearing masks, it depended on which side of a political spectrum you were at, which is so painful to me as a physician, a scientist and a public health person — to see such divisiveness centred around a public health issue," he said.
"If there's one area of life that there should not be divisiveness, it is in the health of your nation."
US has 'got to do better' on coronavirus
While Dr Fauci praised Australia's coronavirus response, he said being an island nation had helped it control incoming arrivals.
The United States has recorded more than 8.7 million infections and more than 225,000 coronavirus-related deaths since the pandemic began.
Dr Fauci said with winter and holidays such as Thanksgiving approaching, he was "really concerned" about the next few months.
Australia's COVID-19 health measures, such as social distancing and hand sanitising, drove down influenza infections and helped the country avoided hundreds of flu deaths this year.
"We're hoping we're as lucky as you are," Dr Fauci said.
Dr Fauci said he told a recent Senate hearing that if the United States did not do something differently, it could reach records of 100,000 infections per day.
"Days ago we were up to 83,000 cases in a single day. That is really troubling. We've got to do better than that," he said.
The full panel discussion is available on the University of Melbourne YouTube channel.
Wednesday, 28 October 2020
Industrial emissions set to rise for another decade despite Coalition's pledge to cut carbon pollution.
Extract from The Guardian
Analysis shows Australia’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions are projected to increase by 77% between 2005 and 2030
File
photo of the Gorgon LNG project. Analysts blame the growth of the
liquefied natural gas industry for Australia’s skyrocketing industrial
emissions.
Adam Morton Environment editor
Last modified on Wed 28 Oct 2020 03.32 AEDT
Australia’s skyrocketing industrial greenhouse gas emissions are projected to increase by 77% between 2005 and 2030, the period over which the Coalition has promised to cut national carbon pollution.
RepuTex, an energy and climate change analyst firm, examined government data and found total emissions from the 200 largest industrial emitters – including mines, oil and gas production, manufacturers and waste facilities – was forecast to keep rising for at least another decade.
It blames most of the expected increase on the growth of the liquified natural gas (LNG) industry, which uses large amounts of energy to extract and compress gas before it is exported, and the government’s resistance to using its “safeguard mechanism” policy to limit industrial emissions as it was intended.
RepuTex’s executive director, Hugh Grossman, said emissions from electricity generation were falling as more renewable energy came into the system, but Australia would miss its 2030 climate target submitted under the Paris agreement unless it dealt with other parts of the economy.
“Industry
emissions are the elephant in the room for Australian policymakers.
While we are seeing rapid decarbonisation in the electricity sector,
those gains are being eroded,” Grossman said.
Grossman said Australian industry could reach net zero emissions as early as 2038 by cutting emissions from the sector by up to 8m tonnes a year. The annual task would double if nothing is done over the next decade.
RepuTex found the government’s existing policies, including the recently announced low-emissions technology statement, would not be enough to drive a transition to net zero emissions by 2050, as scientists have recommended.
The roadmap sets “stretch goals” for reducing the cost of five technologies – “clean” hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, energy storage, soil carbon, and low-carbon steel and aluminium – but does not include timeframes or emissions reductions targets. RepuTex said some of the technologies proposed were not expected to be commercially viable until 2030 or 2040.
It said an “industry emissions target”, requiring an annual reduction across big emitting facilities, was the best way to address what would soon be the major source of Australia’s emissions.
Grossman said increasing international pressure, with China, Europe, Japan and – depending on the result of the presidential election – possibly the US promising to do more to combat the climate crisis than before coronavirus struck, could force Australia to act faster than expected.
If Joe Biden becomes US president, more than 70% of Australia’s two-way trade will be with countries pushing for net zero emissions by or near mid-century.
“This could be a saving grace for high emitting facilities, with an earlier start point translating into a shallower emissions reduction trajectory and … lower costs for industry,” Grossman said.
Japan, the biggest market for Australia’s thermal coal and gas, this week announced a target of net zero emissions by 2050. The new Japanese prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, said responding to the climate crisis was no longer a constraint on economic growth and promised to back clean solutions and unwind its reliance on coal.
The Morrison government has rejected the 2050 target. Its policy is to achieve net zero emissions in the second half of the century, which it says is consistent with the Paris agreement.
Many climate experts, and a growing number of national governments, disagree on the grounds the agreement says commitments should be informed by the latest climate science and countries will pursue efforts to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found, in a report commissioned in Paris, that global emissions would need to be 45% below 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 to limit heating to 1.5C. It found staying within 2C heating would require net zero by 2070, but the environmental and social impacts would be significantly worse.
While some leaders emphasise the need to spend heavily on clean solutions – Biden, for instance, has pledged $2tn over four years if he claims office – the Australian government argues technological process is the only way to achieve net zero it while keeping economies strong.
Federal minister gives green light for koala habitat to be bulldozed for Port Stephens quarry.
Conservationists accuse Sussan Ley of choosing ‘rocks over koalas’ after she approved 52 hectares of habitat destruction to expand Brandy Hill quarry.
Conservations
say Sussan Ley’s approval of the destruction of 52 hectares of koala
habitat in Port Stephens is ‘heartbreaking’ coming after NSW’s worst
bushfire disaster this past summer.
Last modified on Tue 27 Oct 2020 19.04 AEDT
More than 50 hectares of koala habitat in the New South Wales town of Port Stephens is set to be cleared after the federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, approved the expansion of a quarry.
The minister, whose decision comes as the government considers the koala for an official endangered listing, said on Tuesday the department’s assessment found the development would “not rob the area of critical koala habitat”.
Local campaigners and conservationists have described the decision as heartbreaking coming after the state’s worst bushfire disaster this past summer. They said environmental conditions that require the developer to plant new trees were “a fig leaf”.
Earlier this year, a NSW parliamentary inquiry found koalas would be extinct in the state by 2050 unless governments took urgent action to address habitat loss.
The expansion of the Brandy Hill rock quarry in Port Stephens in the Hunter region will clear 52 hectares of habitat to more than double the quarry’s annual production from 700,000 tonnes a year to 1.5m tonnes to supply the Sydney construction market.
Residents of Port Stephens have run a months-long campaign that has attracted support from celebrities including Magda Szubanski, Celeste Barber, Olivia Newton-John, Jimmy Barnes and kd lang calling on Ley to reject the development.
“I recognise the proposal has been subject to a high-profile public campaign that has tapped into the genuine concerns we all share about koalas and bushfire-impacted areas,” Ley said.
The minister delayed her decision until this month to hear from campaigners, consider ecological assessments of the site and to allow the department to commission a fresh independent report by an ecologist.
She said on-site assessments concluded that “as few as one or two koalas” were present in the proposed construction area and works could be managed without affecting “small pockets” on the south-western edge of the wider site where koalas had been sighted by residents.
“This is not a region where bushfires have impacted local populations or habitat, the area to be cleared is not a site that is supporting resident breeding populations and, having reviewed the department’s recommendations, I have approved the proposal,” Ley said.
Chantal Parslow Redman, the co-campaign manager of Save Port Stephens Koalas, said the government had chosen “rocks over koalas”. “It’s a heartbreaking decision,” she said.
Parslow Redman said residents involved with the campaign disputed the government’s view that the site did not support breeding populations because they had spotted mothers with young close to the quarry.
“The minister’s statement says this area didn’t burn – that’s the whole point. This is koala habitat,” she said. “This just shows that nothing will stop this government from destroying koala habitat.”
Ley said the approval was subject to strict conditions, including a requirement that the developer, Hanson, establish new koala habitat near the site.
According to the approval conditions, this would involve replanting 74 hectares to the south of the site with trees suitable for koalas. Hanson has been asked to submit a plan for this replanting within the next 12 months.
The conditions also require Hanson to commission site surveys prior to clearing to identify whether koalas are present in any trees due to be bulldozed.
If koalas are sighted, the company has been asked to leave a 25m buffer around the tree to be cleared as well as a corridor to allow “koalas to leave towards habitat outside of the area to be cleared”.
Chris Gambian, the chief executive of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, said no amount of replanting trees or relocating koalas “is going to make up for the loss of that critical habitat”.
“Given what we know about the state of koalas in NSW – they’re headed for extinction by 2050 – we have to treat every bit of koala habitat as absolutely precious,” he said. “You can’t replicate the forest.”
Both Gambian and Parslow Redman asked what the animals were expected to do after their habitat was cleared, noting that any new trees would require time to grow.
“We’ve only got 200 to 400 koalas left in Port Stephens,” Parslow Redman said. “We just don’t have time to wait for a tree to grow, koalas need habitat now.”
Last month, Ley asked the threatened species scientific committee to consider whether the koala should have its threat status upgraded from vulnerable to endangered due to ongoing habitat destruction and the effects of the bushfires.
The NSW independent planning commission approved the Brandy Hill expansion in July and the project is on a list of developments the NSW government wanted fast-tracked in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hanson on Tuesday welcomed the approval, saying it secured the quarry’s existing 50 direct jobs.
“Over the past six years, the project has been refined to reduce environmental impacts,” the company said in a statement.
“Hanson has dedicated an area of 74 hectares to koala habitat establishment that would be replanted in five stages, investing over $2m across the 10-year program. The establishment of this habitat will ultimately provide koala habitat that is of greater quality than currently exists.”
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