by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 1, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Indigenous Autonomy
By Sea Turtle Restoration Project
The first ever recorded hybrid hawksbill sea turtle found in Australia nested this season at James Price Point, site of the proposed natural gas refinery in the Kimberley of Western Australia. The rare sea turtle was discovered during an independent survey of marine turtles at James Price Point conducted to provide more accurate and comprehensive science than the oil-industry funded studies done to date.
The findings from the recent sea turtle study were released today, casting further doubts over the scientific integrity of the W.A. Government’s environmental impact assessment for the James Price Point gas hub.
SeaTurtles.org reported the nesting of the sea turtle in December and posted a video of the unusual sea turtle with the details here. Now the hybrid nature of the turtle has been confirmed. We will post the full sea turtle study as soon as we get it!
The peer-reviewed study into marine turtle nesting in the James Price Point area led by University of Melbourne marine biologist Malcolm Lindsay found 14 turtle nests and 38 false crawls over the 2011/2012 nesting season, including the first ever recorded hawksbill hybrid in Australia.
The vast majority of nesting activity was concentrated in a 6 kilometer strip of coastline directly adjacent to the proposed natural gas refinery. As a consequence, the nesting habitat will be heavily impacted by the proposed gas refinery and associated marine facilities and pipeline.
In contrast, the marine turtle nesting study commissioned for the Western Australian Department of State Development on behalf of the joint venture partners Woodside Petroleum, Chevron, Shell, BP and BHP Billiton found only one ‘old’ nest and three false crawls. The authors of the independent report claim that the government’s study was inadequate and poorly designed. The government study surveyed only 12 percent of the coastline most threatened by the precinct, overlooking the significant 6km strip of important nesting habitat.
One of the authors, marine biologist Madeline Goddard commented:
“We understand that these projects require difficult weighing up of impacts to environment and aboriginal culture versus perceived jobs and royalties, we would hope that those difficult judgements would be well informed. That is not occurring with the science involved here.”
Traditional Goolarabooloo elder, Phillip Roe, commented yesterday:
“[W.A. Premier] Barnett can try to paint James Price Point as insignificant, but we know that there are dinosaur footprints, bilbies, turtle nests, whales, songlines, registered sacred sites all here, this is a sacred site worth protecting for all Australians, black or white.”
“The hybrid hawksbill is exciting news, but even more so is the science that supports local knowledge that James Price Point is important to sea turtles,” said Teri Shore, Program Director at SeaTurtles.org in California. Shore has provided expert comments and testimony on the environmental analysis of the Browse Basin natural gas projects. She has traveled to the Kimberley to help monitor flatback nesting beaches and lend support to local activists striving to halt the fossil fuel expansion.
All three species found in the study are nationally listed as threatened and any nesting population is considered significant by the Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority due to the heavy impacts that have occurred and the international significance of Northern Australia’s turtle populations.
The new sea turtle findings add additional scientific doubts to the integrity of the Strategic Assessment Report for the Browse Basin Gas Refinery proposed for James Price Point.
In July, a Queensland palaeontologist documented dinosaur trackways of international significance at James Price Point that were overlooked by the government studies.
Another significant oversight was revealed in August, when an ecological survey found a breeding population of the nationally threatened Bilby at the site.
The cetacean research group of Macquarie University recently released a damning public submission on the Strategic Assessment Report, remarking that they had “little confidence in the scientific integrity of the report and … conclusions reached within.”
From Sea Turtle Restoration Project:
Photo by Randall Ruiz on Unsplash
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 26, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling, Obstruction & Occupation
By Ahni / Intercontintental Cry
Indigenous Lumad communities in South Cotabato have organized a set of blockades against an Australian-owned mining company that wants to relocate them to make way for a new copper-gold mine project.
A group of journalists were invited by a local Catholic Church this past weekend to sit down with the Lumads and discuss the situation.
Speaking through interpreters, the Lumad explained how Sagittarius Mines Inc. (SMI), an affiliate of Australia’s Xstrata Copper, recently outlined the terms of a proposed relocation project on a bunch of tarpaulins which it posted in the region without telling anyone.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the terms of the relocation were written in Cebuano, a common language in the Philippines, but which most Lumads can neither read nor write.
As the Lumads later learned, SMI had given them until March 22 to agree to the relocation proposal, which also included compensation for their land and their farms.
“The community was shocked by the relocation notice. I don’t want my family relocated,” said Juli Samling, a Lumad community member.
“Here in our community, everything is almost free. You have a land where you can plant to put food on the table. In the relocation site, you have to pay for everything to sustain the family”, Samling added.
Various allegations have been made that the Catholic Church pushed the Lumads into setting up the blockades; but Samling insists that isn’t the case.
All but one of the protesting communities are opposed to SMI’s Tampakan copper-gold mine. The one that isn’t opposed, simply wants the company to act responsibility.
“We are supportive of the mining project only that we have problems with their commitments. If we can settle it, which should include concerned government and private organizations, then no problem,” said Flao Saluli, the community’s leader.
Saluli also questions SMI’s activities in lieu of a January 9, 2012 letter from Juan Miguel Cuna, national director of the Environmental Management Bureau, to Peter Forrestal, president of SMI.
In that letter, Cuna informed Forrestal that SMI must “refrain from undertaking any development activity in areas mentioned in the application for ECC [Environmental Compliance Certificate] until the same is issued in your favor including permits from concerned government units.”
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ (DENR) rejected the company’s application for an ECC earlier that same month.
There is currently a local ban on open-pit mining in South Cotabato.
John Arnaldo, SMI’s corporate communication manager, however, says the company’s not doing anything wrong and that it has properly consulted the Lumad, stating, “This process has been widely appreciated by the respective tribal and barangay council leaders of affected communities, and for them to communicate this to their community members”.
“The company recognizes its obligation to the indigenous peoples and affected communities and we respect their rights.”
From Intercontinental Cry: http://intercontinentalcry.org/philippine-lumad-communities-set-up-five-blockades-to-resist-relocation/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 13, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Toxification
By Oliver Milman / The Guardian
The Australian government has passed legislation that will create the country’s first nuclear waste dump, despite fierce opposition from environmental and Aboriginal groups.
The passage of the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010 through the Senate paves the way for a highly controversial plan to store nuclear waste in Muckaty Station, a remote Aboriginal community in the arid central region of the Northern Territory.
The ruling Labor party received support from the conservative coalition opposition to approve the bill, despite an ongoing federal court case over the legality of using the Muckaty site to store radioactive material.
Currently, nuclear waste from the medical and mining industries is stored in more than 100 “temporary” sites in universities, hospitals, offices and laboratories across Australia.
Anti-nuclear protesters disrupted proceedings in the Senate as the legislation was debated earlier on Tuesday, with the group heckling lawmakers from the public gallery over their support for the bill.
A recent medical study warned that transporting nuclear waste over long distances to such an isolated location, which is 75 miles north of the Tennant Creek township, could endanger public health.
“The site is in an earthquake zone, it floods regularly, there are very long transport corridors, there are no jobs being applied and it’s opposed from people on the ground, on the front line from Tennant (Creek) all the way up to the NT government and people around the country,” said senator Scott Ludlam of the Greens, which successfully added an amendment to the bill that bans the importing of foreign nuclear waste to the site.
Aboriginal groups launched legal action after claiming that traditional owners of the land around Muckaty do not approve of the dump, despite the government maintaining that the local Ngapa indigenous community supports the plan.
Under Australian Native Title law, indigenous groups recognised as the traditional owners of land must be consulted and compensated for any major new infrastructure.
Although the Australian government insists that it has not decided on a site for the dump, Muckaty is the only option under consideration and the Northern Territory government has already been offered AUS$10m if it accepts the facility.
Finding a location for a national nuclear waste dump has proved a major headache for successive Australian governments, with former prime minister John Howard rebuffed in his attempt to situate the facility in South Australia in 2004.
The Northern Territory government has complained that it is being strong-armed into taking the dump due to it being a “constitutional weak link” and not having the same rights as full Australian states.
Nuclear power remains a highly contentious issue in Australia, which, despite having the largest uranium deposits in the world, has steadfastly refused to shift its largely coal-fired energy generation to nuclear.
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/13/australia-nuclear-waste-aboriginal
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 6, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling
By Oliver Milman / The Guardian
A UN environmental team has arrived in Australia for a crunch 10-day assessment of the Great Barrier Reef, warning that the coral ecosystem is at a “crossroads” due to the soaring activity of the mining industry in the World Heritage Area.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) visit comes amid fears that the reef’s world heritage listing, which it has held since 1981, could be placed in jeopardy after rapid escalation in coal exports and gas exploration.
“The Great Barrier Reef is definitely at a crossroad and decisions that will be taken over the next one, two, three years might potentially be crucial for the long-term conservation [of the reef],” said Fanny Douvere, from Unesco’s World Heritage marine programme.
Australia’s coal boom is set to open up the previously undeveloped Galilee Basin in central Queensland, greatly increasing the number of developments along the state’s coast, where the 1,800-mile reef stretches.
The proposed infrastructure includes Abbott Point, which would become the largest coal export port in the world.
At full capacity, the expansion would see more than 10,000 coal-laden ships a year cross the Great Barrier Reef by the end of the decade – a sizeable increase on the 1,722 vessels that entered the World Heritage Area in 2011.
Environmentalists are concerned that ships navigating reef passageways – many of which are narrower than the English Channel – will run aground, as a Chinese vessel did in 2010, tearing a two-mile gash into the coral and spilling several tonnes of oil.
There are also warnings that the reef’s six species of turtle, including the endangered loggerhead and Olive Ridley turtles, and the snubfin dolphin, Australia’s only endemic dolphin, would be affected by any mass industrialisation of the Queensland coast.
Read more from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/06/great-barrier-reef-mining-boom
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 24, 2012 | Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation
By Ahni, Intercontinental Cry
A Nyoongar Tent Embassy was established on Perth’s Heirisson Island this month in response to a Billion dollar proposal by the Western Australia government that would force the Nyoongar to surrender their land title, permanently.
For elders like Uncle Richard Wilkes, surrendering his custodianship of land is unthinkable, as the proposed deal, he says, won’t provide all the supposed benefits that the government promises.
Many of those involved in the Embassy are local Indigenous activists who just finished commemorating the 40th anniversary of the iconic Aboriginal Tent Embassy in front of the Old Parliament House in Canberra.
Prominent Indigenous organizer Marianne Mackay said from the embassy last week: “We don’t agree with the SWALSC negotiations with the Barnett government. We don’t want money. We want our land, for our future. We are the custodians [of the land] and we have an obligation to protect it.”
The embassy is rejecting any kind of deal with the government that involves ceding land rights.
“Elders, activists and local Nyoongar people have camped at the site every night” since February 12, explains Green Left Weekly; “The island is an important traditional meeting place.”
The City of Perth, however, considers the Nyoongar Tent Embassy to be illegal. On at least three separate occasions they have tried to shut it down.
On February 16, some council officers arrived with eviction notices; but they quickly left after being told that they weren’t welcome. The following day, City of Perth CEO Frank Edwards approached the Embassy on his own–and then tossed the eviction notices on the ground.
Speaking to AAP, Tent Embassy spokesperson Robert Eggington responded: “My message to the Perth City Council is move on yourself… This is not a camping ground. This is us practising our culture and our ceremonies on our traditional land of our ancestors.”
Eggington added that the police had no right to take the Tent Embassy down. “They’ll probably have to arrest the babies and the elders,” he said. “They’ll probably have to arrest every single person.”
“The jails are already chock-a-block full of Aboriginal people, so where are they going to fit us all?”
On February 19, more than 50 police officers arrived to carry out the eviction, leading to a false impression that the Tent Embassy was officially a thing of the past; however, as the Green Left Weekly noted two days later, that just wasn’t the case.
On February 23, the police arrived once again–this time, with a group of rangers to do the dirty work.
“When the protesters refused to dismantle their tents,” reports Adelaide Now, “rangers moved in to take them down as dozens of police officers stood by to prevent them being hindered.”
“The tents were packed onto a flat-bed truck and as it was driven off under police escort. Protesters chanted “shame, shame” and accused officers of being racist.
“An angry confrontation occurred when rangers next moved in to extinguish the main campfire as 30 police officers stood around them.
“Protesters jostled with police and shouted abuse as the rangers finished their job.
“Officers on horseback then moved in to escort the rangers and officers from the site.”
Despite the dismissal of the Nyoongar Tent Embassy, the Nyoongar have no intention of giving up.
From Intercontinental Cry: http://intercontinentalcry.org/australia-nyoongar-people-reject-billion-dollar-native-title-deal/
