tuart conservation

here's a laugh for ya...

on the 23/11, our beloved premier (not), dr. geoff gallop put out a press release concerning a new walk trail to be built through tuart woodland south of bunbury. the reasons for this....

"...tuart was the most significant tree dominated woodland on the swan coastal plain and its conservation was vital. the new walk trail will highlight the importance of conserving our tuart woodlands for generations to come.
the trail will provide students and researchers with the opportunity to access information about the woodlands while enabling members of the community to experience the unique ecology of the tuart forest first-hand."

now, to me this is ironic in the extreme!! never mind the hypocrisy inherrent in this statement.

let me fill you in.....

just recently a group of dedicated, truly beautiful people who are concerned with conserving and saving the biodiversity of this planet, have spent months camped in the ludlow tuart forest to protect it from cable sands' bulldozers and earth moving equiptment. cable sands want to mine titanium mineral sands in the area, which is (read was) home to some of the tallest tuart trees in the world and part of the only tall tuart forest in the world.

gallop and our environment minister, judy edwards, decided that cable sands could go ahead and rip out 147 ha of this forest so the mine could go ahead because they believed that it was the best thing for the conservation of the area (huh?). their reasoning was that the $1.5m promised by cable sands would allow the protection of tuart forest for future generations. never mind that it will take at least 400 years for any semblance of this forest to return to the area. it will be generations upon generations before tuart will once again dominate this area within a healthy functioning ecosystem. and, contrary to the cable sands and government line, it has not been shown that tuarts can be successfully regenerated on mined soil. they grow only in the area of the swan coastal plain because of the composition of the soil!!

yes, parts of the area are weed infested, with exotics such as arum lillies and bridal creeper, but these weeds can be eradicated through an intensive programme involving hand weeding and a little bit of effort. let alone the fact that the fire regime of the area has been completely fucked up by the wadjella[var. sp.] (white/european invader).

this little patch that has now been destroyed by cable sands and the west australian government is situated between the northern and southern tuart forest national park, and i believe that if an intensive ecosystem management plan had been put in place, the area could have been incorporated within the greater tuart forest national park within a couple of decades. now, we must wait to see if a healthy, self repairing ecosystem can be re-established in the area, which will take a lot longer than a couple of decades and require a hell of a lot more money.

and now gallop is saying that tuarts must be conserved by way of a walk trail because of the unique ecology of the area. what a fool!!

wake up gallop. conservationists have been telling the west australian government how unique this area is in terms of its biodiversity for years. a walk trail will not fix anything. stopping mining in the area will be only the first step in a diverse programme to help save this inherently west australian ecosystem.