Gunns and roadkill

Tasmanians Against the Pulp Mill MR

Significantly TAP has identified and independently confirmed fifteen carcasses belonging to threatened species out of a total of 656 specimens. Gunns on the other hand, have only recorded five out of 272 specimens.

TAP Tasmanians Against the Pulpmill
MEDIA RELEASE May 15 2008

The Failure of Gunns to comply with requirements imposed by the Chief Scientist under the EPBC Act is exposed by TAP.

“Gunns Ltd have failed to provide accurate and substantive roadkill data for threatened species, in relation to the three major access routes to their proposed Pulp Mill as required under Condition 26 of the EPBC 2007/3385”, stated Tony Saddington, TAP Roadkill Monitoring Co-Ordinator.

“With the evidence before him there is no way the Minister for the Environment, Peter Garrett, can sign off on the inadequate work done by Gunns Ltd. Gunns have been exposed for giving only lip service to the Commonwealth requirements,” Mr Saddington continued.

Under Condition 26, the Chief Scientist required Gunns Ltd to give immediate attention to the following objectives:
“To manage the risks to listed threatened species associated with roadkill, Gunns Limited must, in accordance with the EIMP:
a) Immediately following the date of this approval, establish baseline monitoring of roadkill along the East Tamar highway and other major access routes for construction.
b) Monitor the roadkill and implement response strategies, as necessary, in accordance with the EIMP if the number of road killed mammals exceeds the trigger levels in the EIMP.

The requirement for Gunns Ltd to establish baseline monitoring “immediately following the date of approval” has not been met. Approval was given on the 4th October 2007, but the first results recorded by Gunns were on the 4th November 2007.

The requirement for Gunns Ltd to establish baseline data for the “East Tamar highway and other major access routes for construction” has not been met. A report submitted by geNAMES acknowledges on behalf of Gunns that they were only engaged to undertake a baseline monitoring programme on the East Tamar Highway between Dilston and Bell Bay. There has been no roadkill survey undertaken on behalf of Gunns on the Batman Bridge approach, the West Tamar, Frankford or Bridport Highways.

The requirement for Gunns Ltd to collect data on a daily basis has not been met. Weekends and public holidays appear to have been unmonitored and observations spasmodic. Evidence exists that carcasses were removed on occasions prior to inspection by Gunns’ survey crew.

The requirement for Gunns Ltd to “manage the risks to listed threatened species associated with roadkill” has not been met. Gunns have failed to either recognise or discover existing threatened species and as such have not established a true baseline.

The significant shortcomings of Gunns Ltd to supply accurate and substantive roadkill data, demand that the threatened species surveys must be redone to an acceptable standard. Data were not collected for 80% of the three month daily monitoring program as required by the Chief Scientist (Rec. 2.1.2.6.). In addition, for the first 6 of 24 sampling runs, data was collected over only 8010m or 24% of the total 32,912m of the East Tamar Highway.

Since the 21st October 2007 Tasmanians Against the Pulpmill (TAP) have been conducting a daily roadkill monitoring programme along 22ks of the East Tamar Highway to ensure accuracy and compliance by Gunns with acceptable standards of quality assurance and quality control. TAPs’ survey has been conducted seven days a week, typically commencing between 7 to 8am. It still continues. TAP data comprises species identification, location from both local landmarks and GPS along with dated digital photos of specimens.

Significantly TAP has identified and independently confirmed fifteen carcasses belonging to threatened species out of a total of 656 specimens. Gunns on the other hand, have only recorded five out of 272 specimens.