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What's a forest worth?

20/10/2022

9 Comments

 
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Tim O’Brien questions the local environmental cost of Melbourne’s Big Build. Photo: Woodrow Wilson
By Tim O’Brien
 
WILDLIFE corridor or sand pit? That’s the question posed by the Victorian National Parks Association report into the impact of sand mining in the Western Port Woodlands.  
 
This beautiful coastal forest is either habitat – with all that means around protection of forest, preservation, recognition of ecosystems, of endangered communities, and of essential habitat connections – or quarries. It cannot be both.
 
Despite the importance of this lowland coastal forest to the health and ecology of Western Port, and despite the defining natural character it gives the Bass Coast region, the woodlands are being lost to the growing pits of the sand mines - piece by piece, hectare by hectare.  
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Southern brown bandicoots inhabit Adams Creek Nature Conservation Reserve at the northern end of the woodlands.
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Striated pardalote. Photo: Jackie Newman
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Lace monitor, Adams Creek. Photo: Dave Newman
What cost should a regional community be asked to bear for Melbourne’s ‘Big Build’? What is an acceptable risk to this region’s tourism economy, for instance? Or to the Ramsar protected wetlands of Western Port? Or to the identified endangered wildlife and flora – some, like the swift parrot, critically endangered – that depend on these woodlands being undisturbed, viable, connected and maintained?
 
At what point is the environmental cost of this sand mining for Melbourne’s Big Build too high, unacceptable even to the Andrews Government?
 
Mines and trucks, the welcome mat 
 
Clearly, we are not at that point yet: 10 mines currently operate in vast pits behind the ridgelines in that woodland corridor, another nine have approvals, and a further seven are in prospect. Sand pit indeed.
 
With that expanded activity, truck movements, those bruising mud-carters that elbow their way into and out of Grantville and along the Bass and South Gippsland highways, are expected to continue to grow to number more than 4000 a day. Such will be the gateway – the welcome mat – to this shire which depends on tourism for most of its jobs.

​Why is the building of car parks, bridges, freeways, tunnels and apartments for Melbourne given such priority that even a cautious rethink of an environmentally destructive ‘sand strategy’ is not possible?
Why, when such a strategy has such irreversible impact on such an ecologically sensitive area? Why, when it poses such dire risk to Western Port’s last coastal forest – its last – and of such importance to the future of this region and the legacy we leave for generations to come?
 
So many questions, and yet, a Victorian Government turns a deaf ear to the environment of this region and to the wishes of this community.
 
Victoria’s Strategic Extractive Resource Areas (SERAs) and Extractive Industry Interest Areas (EIIAs) remove or limit the rights of communities, farmers and councils to object to new mines. It is Bolsonaro with a Daniel Andrews face.
 
While the imposition of this strategy is at odds with Bass Coast’s community and council, it is also at odds with this Government’s own claims to action on the environment, its professed commitment to addressing climate change (umm, Climate Change 101: stop deforestation, protect native forest), and its claims to responsible custodianship of the Victorian environment.
 
In this coming election campaign, we will see – you can count on it – political advertising by the Andrews Government claiming its ‘climate action’ credentials, claiming its big-picture commitment to the environment and to sustainability.
 
But judge it by its actions, here, in this coastal forest. Judge its commitment to sustainability against a public policy that protects the activities of miners over the rights of affected communities, over the protection of mature forest, over endangered and critically endangered wildlife.
Picture
‘Offsets’ and habitat loss
 
Of course, you will hear the inevitable humbug of ‘environmental offsets’, as if responsible environmental management can be played as a zero-sum game. “Don’t worry about losing this forest, this habitat, because we have another one over here”, or even "we're planting another one over here”.

It’s humbug. There is no equivalence, no equal for equal, when displacing mature forest.
When that forest goes, the habitat it provides collapses. The native plants and animals that rely on that habitat to sustain healthy populations are lost too. There is no mystery to it; that’s the way extinction works, piece by piece, habitat by habitat, loss following loss.​

​
The Federal Act and ‘listed species’
 
In our woodlands, those endangered populations include  the endangered southern brown bandicoot, critically endangered swift parrot, powerful owl, lace monitor and white-throated needletail (among a considerably longer list). Listing under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 means their habitat cannot be disturbed, impacted or removed without reference to the act, ie. referral to the Department.
 
Each of those listed and identified within this woodland corridor remain at high risk of extinction without without connected habitat.

The risk of habitat fragmentation increases with every mine expansion and new approval.
The fact that there are ample alternative supplies elsewhere – hundreds of years’ supply according to the Victorian Government's own analysis – not in forest, not posing risk to endangered species, and within reasonable range of Melbourne’s needs, might prompt in a reasonable government a rethink of the impact of its sand strategy on this region. ​​
If you would like to help

Write to the Federal Minister for Environment and Water, the Hon Tanya Plibersek, and tell her of your concerns. A letter is better than email. (NOTE: The Minister has expressed her determination to stop forest decline and species loss.)

The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP
Minister for Environment and Water
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
tanya.plibersek.mp@aph.gov.au
 
Ask the Federal Minister to review and investigate ALL sand mining activity in the Western Port Woodlands under the Federal EPBC Act.)
 
Write to the Victorian Minister for the Environment:
The Hon Lily D’Ambrosio MP
PO Box 500
Melbourne VIC 3002
lily.dambrosio@parliament.vic.gov.au
 
Join Save Western Port Woodlands. 
What's 10 years? 
 
The argument given for continuing to plunder this coastal woodland, despite ample availability of sand, gravel and stone resources elsewhere, is that it takes some “10 years” to open a new mine.

​Well, lose the swift parrot, and it’s gone FOREVER. Ditto the rare orchids, southern brown bandicoot, growling grass frog.

 
So judge this government by its actions, here, in these Western Port Woodlands, Bass Coast’s last forest and its precious disappearing wildlife; our home, our beautiful place.
 
Tim O'Brien is a member of Save Western Port Woodlands. ​
9 Comments
Joy Button
21/10/2022 10:42:13 am

Totally agree Tim and find it so sad that the Andrews Government cares so little for the environment and offers no real solutions to retain some of the existing natural wonderlands that we currently have. Liberals could also do far more too .....

Reply
Austin Cram - AJP Candidate for East Vic
21/10/2022 12:22:56 pm

Well said Tim. We're well past the point of offsetting. We need to guard absolutely everything we have left.

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Daryl Hook
21/10/2022 03:17:48 pm

Although Landcare plants trees nothing can replace the significance of the existing complex forest.

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Mike Cleeland
21/10/2022 08:21:43 pm

Well written as always Tim. Keep up the good work.

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Tim Herring
22/10/2022 09:40:25 am

Great article Tim!
I am lucky enough to have seen some of these wonders with my own eyes. I have also seen the scanty "re-plantings" put in by sand miners just to tick a box.
I have seen too the actions of multiple new miners that are just starting; and could be stopped if the Andrews government would take action now!

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Linda Cuttriss
22/10/2022 10:30:18 am

You’ve summed it up so well Tim. It is tragic that the last remaining coastal forest in the Gippsland Plains Bioregion is being treated by the Labor government as dispensable. Is it just too inconvenient to consider the abundant sand supplies identified on cleared land elsewhere? Labor still the only candidate not standing to protect the Woodlands. Early voting starts 14 November.

Reply
Margaret Lee
24/10/2022 05:10:56 pm

Thank you Tim for you succinct and detailed article on the ongoing and projected sand Mining in our precious Bushland.

MASS DESTRUCTION ON A GRAND SCALE

and our current Labour Government does not care.

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Anne Heath Mennell
28/10/2022 12:37:23 pm

Wonderful, succinct and evidence based article, Tim and I agree with all the comments above. However, we are fighting the State government, which is likely to be returned, even if our current member isn't. Common sense and evidence haven't shifted it so far, which I find incomprehensible. I doubt a new member for Bass, whatever their party, will have any real impact. We need to prepare to up the ante, in terms of action, including legal action.
We will not be giving up!! Onward and Upward. Together we can. Together we will!

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joanwoodz@bigpond.com
1/11/2022 07:02:51 pm

Greed is invincible - more houses, more work, mork of everthing except common sense.
In my pocket handkerchief garden I have been bothered by something I thought to ber a mouse in the compost - what I now think it is after viewing it closely, is a poteroo slightly bigger than a mouse and with tight almost cable tings around its tail. I could be wrong, but if it camed from the Gurdies/Grantville forest, it has come a long way to find ony a parchel home.
Sand has been put where it is by nature/God or by whatever we live by and now its just more of the same as quickly as possible and if its not quick - just make another big machine to make it quicker still.
, to escape judgment by concensus.

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