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Australia

 
Graphic by Ioan Enion

Regional Forest Agreement

The decision by the State Government to support the Timber Workers union and the Forest Industry has jeopardised the protection of endangered species of flora and fauna in NSW.

Establishing A Forest Reserve System

Prior to the last NSW state election Premier Bob Carr promised to protect old growth forest and wilderness, and establish a reverse system which fulfilled the national reserve criteria and complied with the National Forest Policy. In 1992 the NSW government and commonwealth governments signed the commitment to protecting wilderness and old growth forest, and the need to establish a comprehensive, adequate and representative (CAR) reserve system. In 1997, the States and Commonwealth Governments signed up to agreed national reserve criteria. Carr and Howard agreed to the revised and watered down national reserve criteria.

Various expert panels established reservation targets for conservation values in line with the national reserve criteria. They also identified which of these are most vulnerable to logging and prioritised their need for reservation. All these targets were meant to be base lines which needed to be met as fully as possible in reserves (national parks and nature reserves) to truly achieve a CAR reserve system.

For over three years the conservation movement has been working with both State and Commonwealth Government agencies, unions and the timber industry to collate the required data to fulfil Carr's promises. It has been a time consuming and uphill battle to retain some scientific credibility for the data collected. Due to the years of systematic collection of environmental data in the north-east forests, these data are the most comprehensive and reliable available for any regional forest assessment in Australia.

For the north-east forests, data was collected on the distribution of 240 forest ecosystems, 140 of the rarest and most threatened animal species, 610 rare and threatened plant species, old growth forest, rainforest, wilderness and other conservation values. Government agencies (State Forests, National parks & Wildlife Service and Department of Urban Affairs and Planning) applied the environmental data and identified over one million hectares of public forests in eth north-east as requiring reservation in order to meet the national reserve criteria.

Unfortunately, the government applied a political yardstick to an environmental, scientific process and reduced the area of reserve to a paltry 375,000 hectares of new reserves, much of which would still be available for mining. In summary, Carr's north-east forests reserve system:

* achieves only 30% of the nationally agreed reserve targets, the worst outcome for any CRA in Australia;
* achieves only 39% of the national targets for forest ecosystems, thereby ignoring the requirements for representativeness and comprehensiveness;
* achieves targets most dismally for those entities most vulnerable to logging and most in need of reservation;
* excludes 238,000 hectares of old growth forest on public lands and only meets 28% of the national old growth targets, delivering the worst outcome for old growth in Australia despite an election mandate to protect old growth forest;
* excludes 56,600 hectares of wilderness and protects only 74% of high quality wilderness; and,
* condemns numerous species and populations of plants and animals to extinction by excluding known core populations and protecting only a small fraction of the habitat identified as needed for their survival.

Carr's reserve system clearly fails to deliver on the science, his pre-election promises, his own forest policy, the national reserve criteria and the National Forest Policy. It is most worrying that Carr apparently considered all of these irrelevant when he made his decision. 238,000 ha of old growth forest and 56,600 ha of wilderness on public lands were excluded from reserves, with some proportion to be made available for logging. Despite Carr keeping old growth and wilderness areas under moratoria for the past 3 years, he has now clearly reneged on his pre-election promise to protect them. He has even opened up such areas placed under moratorium by Greiner in 1990 for logging.

Further to this, Carr has effectively ignored the national reserve criteria and delivered by far the worst conservation outcome for any of the Comprehensive Regional Assessments conducted in Australia to date. Coalition Governments in WA, Victoria and Tasmania have all achieved national targets for old growth, wilderness, forest ecosystems and species more fully than Carr. Carr failed to give anything but token and incidental protection for numerous populations of threatened species. The nationally endangered Hastings River Mouse suffered particularly badly when the final wind back of the State position excluded most of its core populations.

Carr's proposed reserve system is a purely political decision aimed at excluding most areas identified as having mineral potential (or at best including such areas in a new category of Crown reserves which would still be available for mining) to please the mining industry, excluding all areas of Crown-timber lands with leaseholds to appease the grazing lobby, and using timber volumes to restrict the conservation outcome before finally releasing large areas of old growth and wilderness as well as tens of millions of public money to satisfy the timber industry.

What is the situation in our area!

The Bellingen Environment Centre (BEC), along with the NEFA asked for the following areas to be included in the Reserve System with the following outcome:

Protected areas:
1. All the compartments in the Never Never SF in the area known as McGrath's Hump, some 2474 ha, is now included in the Dorrigo National Park. The Environment Centre asked the general public to support this nomination along with the general position of the environment movement on all the forests in the north-east. Many people submitted letters and signed our petitions.

2. Four compartments in the Brooklana SF and one compartment from the Killungoondie SF. These compartments (1282ha) are now added to the northern section of the Dorrigo NP.

3. Compartments 146 and 147 and 148 in the Oakes SF, Upper Thora, an area of 1190ha, is now known as the Diehappy Nature Reserve.

4. The Ringwood Reserve in the Irishman SF, Cooks Creek, Kalang, was expanded by 2105ha.

5. The Golden Wattle "Chrysostricha Reserve" in the Newry SF was enlarged by 975ha.

6. The Killiecrankie Reserve in the New England NP was expanded by some 4636ha into the Oakes, Mistake and Nulla-5 Day SF in the Taylors Arms Valley, including the League Scrub Flora Reserve.

7. A small reserve (259ha) was created in the Tuckers Nob area and will be known as the Valery Nature Reserve.

8. Tuckers Nob itself will be included in the new Urumbilum NP which takes in the Orara West SF and part of Tuckers Nob SF - 4756ha altogether.

9. 683ha of Orara East SF will comprise the new Orara NP.

10. The southern part of Wild Cattle Creek SF is now the Cascade NP and covers 2919ha.

What Nature missed out on!

1. Pine Creek SF, a core koala habitat with a high conservation value, on eth coast, has not been protected.

2. A vital wildlife corridor through the Mistake SF, linking the Killiekrankie Reserve (New England NP) with the Dunggir NP.

3. The Yarrahapinni (664ha) and the Way Way SF (1159ha) were placed in the Proposed Informal Reserve system (PIR). This means that some logging and mining can be carried out at the Minister's discretion!

4. Lack of a wildlife corridor between eth expanded Nymboi-Binderay NP and the new Cascade NP.

From the Bellingen Environment Centre Newsletter - Summer 1998

Click here to view the Bellingen Environment Centre website or e-mail them at bec@midcoast.com.au

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Australia doing battle with salt

Salt mixing with soil as a result of rising groundwater tables affects 10 percent of the landscape in Australia. In the next 50 years it is expected to affect 40 percent. Australia is fighting a war against salt, and it will be a long, hard battle with no guarantee of victory, according to a recently released report on dry land salinity.

Arresting the salinity crisis over large tracts of the Australian wheat belt will be akin to trying to turn around a supertanker, said Tom Hatton and Ramsis Salama, researchers at CSIRO Land and Water Division. They say it may take generations to restore some salt-affected landscapes to fertile condition, while others may never recover.

The salt was deposited in some areas of the country by eons of mildly saline rainfall falling onto a semi-arid landscape and evaporating. In other parts, notably New South Wales, the salt originated in ancient seabeds. Little geological change has occurred in Australia over the last 60 million years, resulting in land that is dry and deeply weathered on the flattest continent on Earth.

Australia's original ecosystems had strategies to cope with this environment in ways which minimize runoff and groundwater recharge. European settlement over the last 200 years has dramatically changed those ecosystems, and the massive conversion from native bush to agriculture in the last 50 years has created a major problem.

Removing trees and native vegetation caused groundwater tables to rise, mixing salt with soil. Significant areas of vegetation are dying as a result.

"At the moment we're losing an area equal to one football oval an hour -- or about 85 typical suburban blocks," Hatton says. "In western Australia, 80 percent of the remnant native vegetation on farms and 50 percent on public lands is at risk. In other words, we stand to lose a large fraction of our native biodiversity."

Hatton estimates that stores of salt as high as 10,000 tons per hectare could lie below the wheat belt in western Australia.

Two solutions tried so far have proven quite limited. Farmers and land managers had hoped that planting trees would stem the tide. However, the volumes of salt beneath the soils of the western Australia wheat belt and some parts of the eastern states are so immense and drainage so slow that trees will make little headway in the short run.

In areas where pumping has been attempted, there has been some success but there are additional problems: You're burning fossil fuel to run the pumps, you have no where to put the salt and the pumps must be run in perpetuity, making it a very expensive proposition.

Salinization of rivers draining the wheat belt is already causing massive loss of biodiversity, farm production and asset values. At present, 10 percent of the landscape is affected but this is forecasted to grow rapidly to probably 40 percent of the land in the next 50 years.

"Eighty percent of the beds and banks of rivers and streams in the western Australia wheat belt are seriously degraded. Wetlands are badly affected and riverine systems are largely degraded already."

Trees, or an agriculture that uses water more effectively, will remain the front-line answer to salinity, and large-scale adoption is urgent, the researchers conclude. However, don't expect a big change in the short run. Hatton and Salama say it may take major geologic change or a dramatic alteration in the climate.

"We may have to accept that some changes may be, in practical terms, irreversible," Hatton says.

Environmental News Network

New Uranium Mine for South Australia

The Federal Government has signalled the go-ahead for another new uranium mine, triggering warnings that it could pollute the vast groundwater resources of the Great Artesian Basin. The Environment Minister, Senator Robert Hill, announced that he could find no environmental reason for the Commonwealth to block approvals for the Beverley mine, west of lake Frome in the north of South Australia.

The Democrats said the plan by a subsidiary of the US-based company, General Atomics to inject hundreds of tonnes of sulphuric acid into the ground to leach out uranium was "world's worst practise" and must be stopped at all costs. The Democrats' environment spokesperson, Senator Andrew Bartlett, said the Government had shown total contempt for the fragile environment and placed Australia's biggest body of groundwater at risk.

Australian Conservation Foundation spokesperson, Dave Sweeney, said the technique would not be allowed anywhere else in the Western world. "It is a sad day when Australia adopts environmental protection principles that were developed in the former Warsaw Bloc with no level of environmental standards."

Senator Hill said the Government has requested some further tests on the project's likely impact on local groundwater. but, he said, the tests should be completed within a few months and they should not delay the development. He said the mine would have a life of at least 15 years and would create nearly 400 jobs. It would begin operations in the year 2000.

He said the subsidiary company, Heathgate Resources Pty Ltd had reached agreements with four local Aboriginal groups and would pay them royalties of more than $1 million a year. He rejected suggestions that the project posed a threat to the Artesian Basin. The groundwater in the area was completely isolated and further drilling was required to satisfy the Government that the groundwater at the mine sire was not linked to surrounding bodies of water.

Senator Bartlett said the process of in situ leaching involved the pumping of 274 tonnes of sulphuric acid into the ground to extract each tonne of uranium. "The process is fraught with problems, not least of which is the lack of adequate understanding of the local groundwater systems.

"It is incredible that the Minister for the Environment, the very person charged with protecting the environment, is prepared to approve the pumping of thousands of tonnes of acids and highly radioactive material through groundwater systems that nobody understands. All this within metres of the Great Artesian Basin. It is the absolute height of arrogance and idiocy."

Senator Hill said the mine would be great economic news for South Australia. (Excusez moi, I just have to have a giggle here... ed.)

From an article by Brendan Nicholson in The Age (Victoria's daily newspaper).

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Ozone-depleting halon emissions growing

Emissions of an ozone-depleting fire retardant are increasing at a rate of approximately 200 tons a year, according to an atmospheric researcher at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

In fact, based on measurements made in the atmosphere in Tasmania, the emissions of halon-1211 are 50 percent greater than previously thought, said Paul Fraser.

Based on calculations from the United Nations' Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, an agreement to eliminate substances destructive to the ozone layer and signed by 165 countries, it was assumed that halon-1211 had peaked in 1988.

Since 1998, however, emissions have risen by about 25 percent. Halon-1211 is one of the three ozone-destroying halons that the protocol seeks to control. Current emissions make it the most damaging of the halons.

Fraser and his colleagues from the United Kingdom measured halon levels in the Australian science agency's archive of pristine air collected at the Cape Grim baseline air pollution station in north-western Tasmania.

"Halons are now responsible for about 20 percent of global ozone destruction. The continued growth of halon-1211 could be due to increased legal manufacture and release in China," said Fraser.

China is responsible for about 90 percent of the world's production of halon-1211. Under the Montreal Protocol, developing countries such as China have until the year 2010 before they must completely phase out halon production.

"I anticipate that China will begin reducing halon production soon," said Fraser. "Montreal Protocol calculations based on production data indicate that halon levels in the air will stabilize during the next few years. Unfortunately, growth of halon-1211 is likely to delay this stabilization by years."

While concentrations of most of the ozone-damaging chlorofluorocarbons are either steady or falling, halon levels continue to rise.

The Cape Grim station is located in the path of the "roaring forties," which blow unpolluted air across the Southern Ocean. Roaring forties was coined by sailors who had to battle storms as they passed through latitude 40.

Copyright 1999, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved






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Abandoned mines are an ecological time bomb

Acid mine drainage from mine sites around Australia is an ecological time bomb, say scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific Research Organization. And unless long-term management plans are put into place, governments, the mining industry and the environment will all pay a high price.
Acid mine drainage is caused by oxidation of sulphide mine tailings.

CSIRO Minesite Environment Research leader Dr Graham Taylor says while old and abandoned mines are the biggest problem, with taxpayers footing the clean up bill, potential contamination from active mines is a large environmental liability for the mining industry.

Taylor says the mining industry is recognising, through duty of care obligations and community expectations, the value of a proactive role in avoiding contamination and is taking steps to do just that.

"According to a recent survey, we estimate that for the Australian industry as a whole, the cost of managing potential acid generating wastes at operating mine sites is $60 million a year. That may seem like a lot of money, but it is cheaper than trying to clean up environmental damage after it has occurred," says Dr Taylor.

For example, the cost of remediating abandoned sites releasing acid drainage -- $100,000 per hectare -- is 150 percent higher than the average cost at active mine sites.

Taylor says there are many examples throughout Australia of mine sites -- both active and abandoned -- which have not been adequately managed environmentally and which have caused varying degrees of contamination.

"These usually cost mining companies, and in some cases governments, more money to fix than they would have if the companies had put in place adequate management plans," said Taylor. "It's only in the past 20 years that the potentially catastrophic effects of acid mine drainage have become known to miners, regulators and the public.

"One of the things we're concerned about is that the industry's most commonly used method of managing potential environmental damage, which is to simply cover the sulphide waste and revegetate, may not be effective in the long term."

Australia has a number of abandoned mines where acid drainage caused and, in many cases, still causes major contamination problems -- Brukunga in South Australia, Captains Flat in New South Wales, Mt. Lyell in Tasmania, Mt. Morgan in Queensland and Rum Jungle in the Northern Territory, among others.

Despite general agreement on the potential environmental damage from acid mine drainage at Australian mines, the extent of the problem has not previously been accurately quantified. But now, a national survey supported by the mining industry has indicated there are 54 mine sites in Australia managing significant amounts of acid generating wastes and 62 sites are managing potential acid generating wastes.

Taylor says the CSIRO mine site rehabilitation team of some 20 scientists and technicians is successfully developing innovative techniques and cost-effective strategies for the industry and regulatory authorities to return land disturbed by mining to agreed community land use. It also evaluates the effectiveness of predictive techniques.

Taylor says some of the team's techniques may have possible applications overseas which could improve global mining rehabilitation as well as generate earnings for Australia.
For more information, contact Julian Cribb, e-mail: julian.cribb@nap.csiro.au.

Copyright 1999, Environmental News Network

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Illegal oil dumping taking toll on penguins

Researchers say that residues and oily sludge from ship bunker tanks are the cause of injury and death for up to 350 penguins each year at Australia's Phillip Island. Oily sludge and ship residues are causing injury and death to hundreds of penguins in Australia, according to a study by Australia's science and research Organization.

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization hydrocarbon specialists say that the illegal dumping of ship bunker tanks is the cause of injury and death for up to 350 penguins at Phillip Island, Victoria, each year.

"For every bird that makes it back to the colony at the Phillip Island Nature Park in an oiled state, there could be as many as 10 that don't," says Dr. Andy Revill, CSIRO Marine Research.

Revill says that there are commercial facilities which receive bunker oil and sludge, but there is no economic incentive to use them. "Illegal dumping is simply a cheaper option," he says.

"Ships are only permitted to discharge oily waste at a rate of 15 parts of oil to a million parts of water. This can be achieved by using special separating equipment. But some ships are ignoring the permitted discharge rates and are illegally discharging oily waste and slops knowing they have only a slight chance of detection," Revill says.

One of the problems that needs to be overcome, according to Revill, is the lack of awareness and misconceptions held by the public.

"There's a widely held view that most oil pollution originates from shipping disasters like the Exxon Valdez off the Alaskan coast, the Kirki off western Australia and the Iron Baron off northern Tasmania. But according to a 1996 study by CSIRO and the Tasmanian Department of Environment and Land Management, road run-off and industrial storm water dumping wash as much as 20,000 tons of oil into Australian coastal waters each year. This then finds its way into the sediments of our rivers and estuaries and becomes part of the unseen pollution of our marine environment," Revill says.

This adds up to more than Australia's largest oil spill of 17,700 tons of crude oil from the oil tanker Kirki off the coast of western Australia in 1991.

The U.S. Academy of Sciences estimated in 1990 that 37 percent of oil pollution of the world's marine environment enters the sea from the land. Other sources estimate that 45 percent comes from shipping (12.5 percent from tanker accidents); 9 percent from the atmosphere, 7.7 percent from natural sources and 1.5 percent from offshore oil exploration and production.

Dr. Revill, his colleague Rebecca Esmay, also from CSIRO Marine Research, and Margaret Healey of the Phillip Island Penguin Reserve Nature Park began their study in 1995 as a result of a particularly large oil incident. Up to 20 penguins a month were returning to the colony in an oiled state, and in April 1995, 60 birds came back oiled. Cleaning the penguins doesn't always save them.

The scientists were asked to "fingerprint" oil samples taken from birds returning to the colony. Natural oil has its own identifiable characteristics be it crude oil from Bass Strait or the North-West Shelf, Indonesia or the Middle East and can easily be traced to its source. Processed oil, used in industry, transport and shipping, also has distinguishing characteristics.

"Because penguins spend most of their time at the surface and range up to 200 nautical miles from their colony around Bass Strait and into Port Phillip Bay, they are exposed to numerous oil contaminants in waters around the coast," Revill says.

"We were looking for patterns of oil sources in the data we collected and those patterns indicated that while at times different oils were found on some birds, the source of between 80 and 85 percent of the contamination was ship fuel oil."

CSIRO is working with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority to extend the study to track down ships dumping oil.

"A possible solution is easily accessed port waste reception facilities with the cost of use included in port charges. This is an opportunity for Australian port authorities and the shipping industry to provide a lead following the International Year of the Ocean," Dr Revill says.

Environmental News Network

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The Planet

For some global environment news, click here, for the Environment News Network


Group calls for worldwide DDT ban

DDT is still used to control mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects in many developing nations. The World Wildlife Fund has called for a global ban on the production and use of DDT by the year 2007. DDT has been banned in North America, but is still used to control mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects in many developing nations.

WWF said new research shows that DDT sprays -- even when used indoors -- leak significant levels of DDT into the environment and pose hazards to both human health and wildlife.

The environmental group released its new report as representatives from more than 100 nations gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, to discuss whether to recommend a global ban on 12 of the most toxic chemicals, including DDT.

In the report, "Hazards and Exposures Associated with DDT and Synthetic Pyrethroids Used for Vector Control," WWF summarises current research on DDT and its most popular alternative, synthetic pyrethroids. The report finds DDT can cause damage to the developing brain leading to hypersensitivity, behavioural abnormalities and reduced neural signal transmission, and suppression of the immune system resulting in slower response to infections.

WWF said research in Mexico and South Africa showed that the higher the levels of DDE (a breakdown product of DDT) in human mothers, the shorter the time they were able to breast feed.

The report notes that most of the millions of tons of DDT that have been produced in the past remain in soil and continue to be redistributed throughout the environment. When released into the atmosphere, DDT travels thousands of miles to colder areas where it returns to Earth and builds up in body fat of wildlife and humans.

So, DDT can be sprayed in a village in Africa and end up in the fat of polar bears in the Artic, says WWF.

"DDT is such a potent chemical that as long as it is used anywhere in the world, nobody is safe," said Clifton Curtis, director of the WWF Global Toxics Initiative.

"There is no longer a question about whether DDT should be banned, only how soon it can happen while still ensuring developing countries access to safe, affordable alternative malaria controls," Curtis said.

The 12 organic pollutants the United Nations is trying to control are aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, dioxins, endrin, furans, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, PCBs and toxaphene. Environmentalists and the chemical industry are at odds over whether to place a total ban on the 12 chemicals.

Copyright 1999, Environmental News Network

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Uses sought for aluminum by-product

Aluminum is used in automobiles, bicycles and beverage cans, to name a few products. Instead of having to pay millions of dollars in transportation and landfill costs and risk harming the environment, the aluminum industry may soon be able to make commercially viable products out of the waste produced when making aluminum.

Researchers at Michigan Technological University are developing new ways to use salt cake, a product that is skimmed off for disposal during the aluminum smelting process.

"The aluminum industry produces approximately 1 million tons of waste by-product (a year) from its domestic smelting process, " said Dr. J.Y. (Jim) Hwang, director of the Institute of Materials Processing and associate professor of mining engineering at Michigan Tech. "Getting rid of the salt cake costs aluminum producers millions of dollars in land filling and exposes them to environmental liabilities as well."

Hwang said he and his colleagues view salt cake not as a waste product, but as raw material that with further processing can be used to create value-added products that economically enhance the bottom line of the aluminum industry.

"We are developing a technology to divert salt cake into valuable feed stock materials for the manufacturing of concrete products such as lightweight masonry, foamed concrete and mine backfill grout," explained Hwang. "By using the unique properties inherent in the aluminum salt cake, we can make this by-product function as a foaming (air entraining) agent and as fine aggregate for use in concrete."

Hwang said the new technology will benefit the aluminum, concrete, mining and construction industries.

"The aluminum industry will improve its competitiveness from increased recovery of aluminum metal and release from its disposal burden and future liability threat," he explained. "The concrete industry is facing a growing building construction demand, especially in the lightweight concrete segment, and in the national overhaul of transportation infrastructure. The incoming processed aluminum smelting by-products will not only ease the concrete industry's material supply pressure, but will also improve its productivity by reducing weight and increasing strength, in addition to reducing materials costs.

"The mining industry is under increasing pressure to backfill mines and quarries that are no longer profitable. With foaming concrete, the mines and open pits can be filled with half the amount of cement used with standard concrete. And the construction industry is looking for alternative building materials due to fluctuating lumber prices and the sagging quality of lumber. Cellular, lightweight concrete products can fill the bill as an economically feasible alternative."

The four- to five-year project will be supported by a $1.6 million contract from the Department of Energy and $.4 million from industry.

For more information, contact Jim Hwang, Michigan Tech., email:jhwang@mtu.edu.
Copyright 1999, Environmental News Network

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