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Water - National News - January 2009 |
Australian Capital Territory; New South Wales; Northern Territory; Queensland; South Australia; Tasmania; Victoria; Western Australia
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05/01/09 Garrett shoots down Gunns hopes on pulp mill / Blow for Gunns planned $2.2 billion Tasmanian pulp mill. Ben Cubby The Age Breaking News / smh.com.au, with AAP04/01/09 Australia fails to act on wetland obligations Carmel Egan and John Elder , The Age
04/01/09 Bird species threatened The Age John Elder
Carmel Egan and John Elder , The Age
January 4, 2009
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AUSTRALIA has snubbed an international agreement — to which it is the No. 1 signatory — by refusing to provide information on the neglected state of our most endangered wetlands.
Now wetlands experts have joined a chorus of criticism of state and federal governments for failing Australia's obligations under the Ramsar Convention by not reporting wetlands damage caused by drought, pollution and irrigation.
Some of those wetlands are so degraded the experts believe they may no longer meet the standards to be classified as internationally significant.
Australia was the first of five founding nations to sign the Ramsar Convention in 1971 and now lists 65 "wetlands of international importance", including 11 in Victoria.
Ramsar (named after the Iranian town where the convention was signed) has 158 member countries and 1825 sites listed to ensure their "conservation and wise use", with special consideration for waterbirds.
Article 3.2 of the Ramsar Convention commits countries to investigate potential changes to the ecological character of listed sites and "report these to the Ramsar secretariat without delay".
In 1990 Australia opposed the introduction of an additional voluntary reporting system, known as the Montreux Record, which publicly identifies wetlands undergoing ecological change, and has refused to name any adversely affected sites.
However, 30 other Ramsar signatories have identified 55 such endangered wetlands, including the US with the Florida Everglades, and numerous sites in Britain, Germany, Austria, Greece, India, Egypt, Denmark and others.
Although Australia was quick to sign the treaty, some of our Ramsar-listed wetlands are now so degraded they barely meet the criteria of international significance, according to Stephen Garnett, an environmental scientist with Charles Darwin University and chairman of Birds Australia's threatened species committee.
Professor Garnett said wetlands of the Riverina in south-western NSW and the Swan Plain lakes in Western Australia would now barely qualify for Ramsar listing.
"It's the wetlands in the south-east and south-west of Australia that are most badly affected … the worst being the string of freshwater wetlands being eaten up by the expansion of Perth and Fremantle," he said.
In Victoria "there's a triage process going on along the Murray systems … to decide which ones are worth trying to save and which ones have to be abandoned."
A government spokesman said last week's decision to create new national parks along the Murray to save red gums "sets up a framework to prioritise water use".
But Max Finlayson, of the Institute for Land Water and Society at Charles Sturt University, believes state and federal governments are indulging in "circular bureaucratic arguments" and ignoring their ethical and global obligations under the treaty.
"Australia has 55 sites and, astonishingly, 47 sites have no information on them on the (Ramsar) website," said Professor Finlayson, also a member of the convention's scientific and technical panel.
"When a Ramsar site undergoes adverse change we are obligated to inform the convention about that. There are a large number of those 55 sites in Australia where that has occurred but we don't seem to able to inform the convention.
"For various reasons we baulk with being honest to the international community. Or even, more importantly, honest with ourselves about the condition of those sites and therefore what we need to do."
Professor Finlayson said he believed the Gippsland Lakes were among the Australian sites that should be listed for their adversely changing ecology.
He also nominated areas within the Murray-Darling Basin, including South Australia's devastated Coorong region.
Former Ramsar deputy secretary-general Bill Phillips agrees Australia is morally bound to inform fellow signatories of the true state of our wetlands.
"Australia should do the right thing," said Dr Phillips, a freelance environmental consultant and former federal bureaucrat. "It is almost like snubbing your nose at the convention.
"It seems we agreed to set this up for every other country but we don't think it applies to us."
January 4, 2009 The Age John Elder
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WITH its habitat drying out fast, and no sign of rescue, the Australasian bittern needs a miracle. Listed as critically endangered, it's a heartbeat from extinction.
Also in trouble through wetlands neglect are the blue-billed duck, Lewins rail and the Australian painted snipe.
Professor Stephen Garnett, chairman of Birds Australia's threatened-birds committee, says many Australian bird species had "coped with dry periods in the past … waterfowl in particular are highly mobile and able to travel from one wetland to another.
"But some of the core refuges in the southern part of the continent are drying out, and that will leave some with nowhere to go."
Professor Garnett described the wetland woes as "a failure of government and a failure of the market in terms of water being counted as free goods for too long".
In the Coorong wetlands in South Australia, the fairy tern has been left homeless and pelicans no longer breed.
Closer to home, the Victorian Wetlands Network has been disbanded because of a lack of funding — but founder Aidan Banfield has built wetlands on his Grampians property, prompted by a decline in frog species.
While wetland species such as herons and snipes have visited Mr Banfield's 30 ponds, most of the visiting birds are woodland species seeking respite from the big dry.
JOHN ELDER