Green Pages: Issue #194, Summer 2024

DAMN THE DAM WORKS

Lutruwita

With Lake Pedder sited on an active fault line, the Tasmanian Government is about to spend $150 million strengthening the dam. A better solution would be removing the dam entirely. 

Lake Pedder is currently held by three ageing dams classified as “high risk” due to their location on an active fault line. After years of resistance, Hydro Tasmania has finally released flood-risk mapping data through a freedom of information inquiry. The results are alarming: If an earthquake were to occur, the dams could fail, triggering a catastrophic flood that would devastate downstream communities.

While the chance of this happening in any given year is 1 in 10,000, this risk is not insignificant in today’s world of increasing natural disasters. The question is not if but when a “once-in-a-lifetime” event might strike. The potential threat looms large over the communities in the Huon Valley and beyond.

Hydro Tasmania has responded by planning expensive dam-strengthening operations, projected to cost over $150 million—money the already financially strained state of Tasmania can ill afford. While these measures may reduce the risk of failure, they cannot eliminate it entirely.

The Restore Pedder campaign is calling for a more decisive solution: decommission the dams and fully remove the flood risk, while simultaneously restoring the iconic Lake Pedder to its natural state. This bold move would not only protect the communities at risk but would also revive one of Australia’s most treasured ecosystems.

In the context of increasing calls from the Federal government to try and reverse Australia’s trajectory of environmental decline and to have any hope of achieving a Nature Positive future, the restoration of Lake Pedder and surrounding environments offers an opportunity for one of the country’s largest ever restoration projects; the site would make up the equivalent of one fifth of all of the land which has been financed for restoration with biodiversity credits this decade.

The campaign is intensifying as dam works, originally set for October, have been delayed until late November, providing a brief window of opportunity to reconsider. Protestors have taken to the streets, with demonstrations outside Tasmanian Premier Rockliff’s office demanding action. Greens MPs have taken up the cause in parliament, urging the Liberal government to listen to the public and make the rational choice for restoration. With dam works on the horizon, the campaign is escalating, and there are more actions and demonstrations planned to push back against this reckless development.

Time is running out, but the fight isn’t over. To support the movement and to help ensure a safer, more sustainable future for Tasmania by making restoration a reality, visit Restore Pedder at lakepedder.org 

MADDIE MCSHANE
Restore Pedder

---

DEMISE OF THE FALLS TO HOTHAM ALPINE CROSSING?

GunaiKurnai and Taungurung Country

After years of long-standing community opposition, Parks Victoria is perhaps retreating from its $40-million development of the Falls to Hotham Alpine Crossing. The proposal includes 36 buildings spread over four exclusive lodges on the Bogong Plains. Ecologists, however, have identified concerns for 137 threatened plants and 73 native animals, ten of which are threatened and five critically endangered. After being caught falsifying the results of early ‘consultations’, the original budget for the crossing has not been allocated, and the route has been truncated. In June, the Minister for Environment told parliament that Parks Vic has yet to determine the project’s final scope, design and operating model. And the Strategic Advisory Committee hasn’t met since 2023. We now don’t know the development’s scope, environmental impact, cost, or even the route, despite an apparent spend of about $15 million. Has this project died a slow and expensive death in the bowels of Parks Victoria?

GERARD MCPHEE

---

TASMANIA’S POOR REPORT CARD

Lutruwita

For fifteen years, Tasmanians have been kept in the dark about the true state of their environment. But in September, the decade-long-delayed State of the Environment (SoE) Report was finally tabled in parliament. The report paints an alarming picture of an environment under significant strain and facing multiple threats. Of the 29 environmental categories this report assessed, 16 were found to be getting worse and 11 were in poor condition. The list of threatened plants and animals in Tasmania is growing fast, and sensitive ecosystems unique to the island state are being decimated by climate change, vegetation loss and invasive species.

You can read more at the Environmental Defenders Office website: edo.org.au/2024/09/25/tasmanian-report-paints-a-startling-picture-of-an-environment-under-pressure

Environmental Defenders Office

---

MACHINES PUSHED OUT

Gumbaynggirr Country

The Bellingen Activist Network is dedicated to community-led organising and direct action to protect lands and waters across Gumbaynggirr homelands on NSW’s Mid-North Coast. One of our current battles aims at halting native-forest logging by Forestry Corporation NSW. Our collective efforts—including camps, blockades, and court cases—are pushing back hard against this rampant ecological destruction in some of east-coast Australia’s most biodiverse forests. Two recent camps, Camp Nunguu and Pine Creek, have seen hundreds of people pass through, and we have successfully pushed out machines in two actively logged forests so far. We’re building a movement that isn’t just about saving trees; it’s about challenging a system that puts profit before people. Find us on FaceBook, Instagram and X.

RUBY OLIVER-KING
Bellingen Activist Network

---

SAVING NINU FROM THE SKY 

Kiwirrkurra Country

On the Kiwirrkurra Indigenous Protected Area in a remote part of Western Australia, Kiwirrkurra rangers have been caring for bilbies (ninu) by hunting cats and conducting right-way fire. Recently, as part of a three-year trial, rangers conducted aerial baiting for the first time, deploying 20,000 baits to control feral predators. The area they chose for baiting was too far from the community to manage cats with traditional hunting, and has few dingoes due to the lack of permanent water.

Three-thousand baits are loaded into the chopper for each flight, and are then thrown from the back seat, while a bilby spotter sits up front mapping bilby diggings and burrows. Kiwirrkurra rangers are expert trackers and can easily pick up signs of bilbies from the air. Using this survey method—combined with bilby-scat DNA results, and with predator information gained via camera traps in baited and unbaited areas—rangers can see how the bilby population changes over the life of the project. 

Learn more at indigenousdesertalliance.com/stories/protecting-ninu-from-the-sky-aerial-baiting-in-kiwirrkurra or  go to facebook.com/kiwirrkurra

Indigenous Desert Alliance

---

If you liked this piece, you should subscribe to the print mag. Only a fraction of the great stories we run in the mag make it to our website; if you want to read them, head to subscribe.wild.com.au.