THE GREAT BARRIER REEF - BURKES WILL!

Abbott Point has to be stopped:

 Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein

The maddness of this is so evident but the people cannot stop them. How do we stop them. Where is Prince Charles?  He loved the reef so much and is a greenie.  Get Prince on the job!

Seagrass offsets labelled a ‘sick joke’

By John Mikkelsen

Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke  has come under attack from environmental groups including the Gladstone Conservation Council  over his recent proposal for miners to provide environmental offsets for seagrass beds.
Mr Burke announced the proposal at the Coast to Coast conference in Brisbane last week, when he suggested mining companies could offset damage they do to seagrass, the main diet of dugong and turtles.
He said miners could offset the damage to seagrass, similar to how environmental offsets are managed on land.

But environmentalists were quick to point out inadequacies in how offsets for the loss of seagrass in Gladstone Harbour  had been handled, with one labeling it “a sick joke”.
Gladstone Conservation Council Inc expressed alarm at  “some serious inconsistencies” in the Minister’s address.
Spokesman Jan Arens said it was not clear how offsets arrangements could provide a no-net-loss outcome to the environment.
“No amount of money spent on monitoring or research compensates for physical seagrass lost.
“There are no successful case histories on land or at sea where offsets have provided a real net benefit to the environment,” he said.
“The Minister draws our attention to the important role of seagrass beds in carbon sequestration and expresses concern about the global loss of seagrass, but fails to acknowledge his contribution when he approved the Western Basin Dredging project”.

Mr Arens said 443 hectares of “the most contiguous seagrass” was lost from within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (GBRWHA). This seagrass was also within a declared Dugong Protection Area.
The Balaclava Island offset consisted of  marine flood plains and mangroves within the GBRWHA.
“It has no equivalency to the seagrass beds lost, and is already protected by world heritage listing”.
Mr Arens said the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had “very specifically criticized the offsets” because they did not compensate for losses resulting from the developments .The UN’s  World Heritage Committee also did not support the offsets  applied to the harbour and  Curtis Island developments.
Meanwhile, a Rescue the Reef Coalition has  been established online at the Great Barrier Reef Blog (http://www.greatbarrierreef.org.au/great-barrier-reef-blog/) which contains several articles criticizing the offsets proposal and the Gladstone developments.
Environmental medicine specialist  Dr Andrew Jeremijenko who has been a long term critic of how environmental controls are applied in Gladstone Harbour, told the Telegraph yesterday that Mr Burke’s plan to use it as the model for seagrass offets was “a sick joke” as monitoring had shown how poorly Gladstone Ports Corporation  had stayed within the limits, and how poorly the limits were enforced.

“We don’t want to see another dugong mortality hotspot, arsenic-poisoned turtles and sick fish with lesions replicated in other areas of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area,” Dr Jeremijenko said. 

He said Mr Burke and a succession of state environment ministers had given  the Ports Corporation approval to affect  a total 1,493 hectares of seagrass and 5,000 hectares of seabed in the harbour.

“Tony Burke had promised the chairman of GBRMPA Mr Russell Reichelt that he would ensure water quality and protect the marine life when Mr Reichelt  had expressed extreme concerns to the Federal Government about the associated dredging operation.

“The water quality monitoring has just shown how inept his department, the State Goverment and the GPC are at staying within the water quality limits,” Dr Jeremijenko  said.

He claimed the turbidity levels at several harbour monitors last week had exceeded State levels for five days and federal limits for almost seven days. The GPC had  applied for an exemption from stopping dredging, and had continued to dredge over the limits, he said.
“If Mr Burke wanted to protect the seagrass, he would start by enforcing the water quality limits that he promised in this World Heritage Area, to Mr Reichelt, to UNESCO and to Australians.
“He is almost ensuring the Great Barrier Reef will be placed on the World Heritage in Danger list, by selling parts of the World Heritage area to a bunch of miners,” Dr Jeremijenko said..
Re Blogged from THE GREAT BARRIER REEF
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