Bushwhacked

Queensland's green shoe brigade endangers the Reef

On my show for ADH TV this week, I flew over Black Mountain in Central Queensland, which sits in the middle of a proposed wind energy plant.

The Moah Creek project's footprint covers 654 ha of remnant vegetation, a haven for koalas, greater gliders, echidnas and eastern horseshoe bats.

As you can see from the video we shot as we flew over the steep and rugged terrain, it will require some serious civil engineering to build the heavy-duty roads necessary to begin construction. You can stream the full report from ADH TV.

How much dynamite they’ll need to erect a 275m turbine on the top of Black Mountain (below) is anybody’s guess, but that’s the plan.

Unsurprisingly, this one sailed through Queensland’s approval process without a murmur. Which means it is just one ministerial signature away from getting the go-ahead.

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek recently banned gillnet fishing in Queensland to satisfy the conditions imposed by UNESCO in return for keeping the Great Barrier Reef off the “in danger” list.

Neither UNESCO nor the federal government have furnished scientific evidence that gillnet fishing is harmful. Yet since keeping in UNESCO's good books is now established government policy, Plibersek must block the Moah Creek proposal. 

Runoff from these hills flows into the Fitzroy River and the Coral Sea. Prioritising the protection of native vegetation in the GBR catchments was a recommendation in the same UNESCO report the government used as the authority to ban gillnets.

That also rules out turbines in the Chalumbin forest I have written about before. Chalumbin also sits in the catchment with several other proposed renewable energy projects requiring clearing remnant forests and heavy civil engineering.

Indeed, we don't need UNESCO to tell us the importance of preserving native vegetation and natural landscapes. The damage from renewable energy developments takes your breath away, as I hope we captured in this video shot in the Kaban forest north of Ravenshoe.

Legacy environmental organisations like Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the Australian Marine Conservation Society don't want to hear these stories. After a decade and a half of demonising fossil fuels and championing renewables, they have painted themselves into a corner.

They made a song and dance about the Adani mine and the expansion of the Abbot Point coal terminal. The AMCS led the charge against gillnets, manufacturing misinformation about the danger to dugongs and dolphins.

However, they are reluctant to acknowledge the environmental vandalism that is occurring right now, destroying vast areas of wilderness and productive agricultural land from Tasmania to northern Queensland.

That would require them to make trade-offs, which are taboo in the all-or-nothing world of moral crusading.