I READ with great interest, the unbelievably poorly written and researched EPBC referral for the Tarkine road proposal.
The author has clearly exercised their well honed, ‘cut and paste’ skills from previous EPBC referrals. Aside from the lack of information provided, the reliability of the information is even more concerning.
The final section of the report becomes an admission that the flora and fauna surveys are incomplete and the sampling technique used did not identify all vascular flora. But wait, there’s more.
For what comprises the largest remaining tract of temperate rainforest, the flora and fauna information gathered for the proposed road relied upon internet based tools including the Natural Values Atlas and the EPBCA Environmental Reporting Tool. Both of these tools are useful for ‘flagging’ potential values and nothing more. They rely on other people putting in data from past research, most of which is questionable.
With respect to Fauna, one hoped that some detailed devil surveys have been undertaken. Instead ‘limited headlight surveys’ were conducted.
Here is the direct cut and paste from the referral (even I can do it).
Reliability of the Information:
• The vegetation survey has not identified all vascular flora due to the limitations of the sampling technique. Sampling has been undertaken to a level to assist with vegetation community identification.
• Threatened flora habitat has been identified by applying current knowledge of the species.
• All threatened flora species known from the area of the proposed road alignment (based on the Natural Values Atlas and the EPBCA Environmental Reporting Tool) have been considered in the light of habitat suitability.
• Fauna assessment has been predominantly limited to the identification of habitat of significant fauna species known from the area, except for limited headlight surveys and the interpretation of database records for threatened fauna.
So in summary it reads like…
Hey Garrett,
We want to build a road through the largest tract of temperate rainforest. The area has some threatened and soon to be endangered species. The road will cost a lot of money. We had a bit of a look around, but did not find heaps of plants. We saw some animals when we drove around with the lights on. Then we had a look on the internet and some databases. The road will be built through some forest with bulldozers and chainsaws. We will make sure everything is ok. We have built roads before.
Please let us know when we can start because I have some mates down here that are ready to go.
Cheers,
Graeme Sturgess DIER.
phill Parsons
October 28, 2009 at 08:43
A standard not dissimilar to the Forest practices Plan, there are trees, I want to cut them down, approved.
Pete Godfrey
October 28, 2009 at 08:57
Nice Summary Jarrah.
We managed to see Devils footprints and Burrowing Crayfish within the first hour of walking through the forest in the Tarkine just off the proposed road.
The chances of threatened species being protected by this government are pretty low. We also saw a man on a four wheeler going around plantations and newly felled forest putting corn down. The intention is to attract the animals who would eat corn and shoot them.
What happens then is anyones guess.
Obviously in a fauna free zone plantations grow better. After all they are basically a hydroponic crop and don’t like browsing animals.
I reckon your summary of the submission is a bit more cerebral than this bunch of thugs we call a government are capable of but pretty good.
Dave Groves
October 28, 2009 at 10:00
Jarrah, I personally don’t see a problem.
Standard practice is being firmly adhered to in Tasmania.
The application will swan around on Garrett’s desk for a spell, drift under the rubber stamp and abracadabra, next thing you know the “approval process” will be public knowledge…most likely on Xmas day…while the billys are opening their pressies…oooh maybe new years eve at “minutes to midnight”???
Taxpayers will front the bill and next thing you know we have MT Albert Road MK11 ready to ferry the largest tracts of cool temperate rainforest on the planet, straight to the chippers….
B.E.A.U.T….
Business Enterprise As Usual in Tasmania….
Concerned Resident
October 28, 2009 at 13:05
I think this is a logging road…if it was for any other purpose the gov’t would not be so bull headed about making sure it went through. I think the education fiasco is to take peoples minds off this contentious road and the pulp mill.
Simon Warriner
October 28, 2009 at 14:28
There is an easy way to highlight the likelyhood that this is a logging road: draw a line from the Hampshire Chip Mill to Tewksbury, then to OOnah, Then to Takone Road and along to Pruanna Road, follow Pruanna road, and oh gee, what a coincidence, its just where the proposed link road comes out. At the other end of the link road, the south arthur forests. How many k’s saved per trip, over how many trips? Why is Pruanna Road, owned by Forestry, constructed to such a high standard? Why has Takone Road recently had heaps of money spent on it?
Philip Lowe
October 28, 2009 at 15:30
What you need is a few foxes and then all hell will break loose.I’m sure that it can be arranged.
john hayward
October 28, 2009 at 19:12
I recall a similarly subtle ploy was used by the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood.
John Hayward
Dr Kevin Bonham
October 29, 2009 at 03:02
If anything is unbelievably poorly researched and written it is Jarrah Vercoe’s so-called “article”.
The author clearly has no understanding of the purpose of a referral under the EPBC Act. The purpose of a referral is clearly described on the EPBC site:
“Your referral will be the principal basis for the Minister’s decision as to whether approval is necessary and, if so, the type of assessment that will be taken.”
The referral is not the assessment itself, nor is it the case for approval of the proposal (beyond aiming to convince the minister that the project is not so “clearly unacceptable” that it needs to be knocked on the head immediately). Rather, it is a preliminary stage to establish whether the project will be assessed and if so how. Also see the flowchart (link to follow)
As such, the amount of information (including concerning additional work to be done) provided in the referral documents is very extensive and to insult it in the way that Mr Vercoe has done is astonishingly disrespectful to the professionals who have put far more work into the documents in question than Vercoe has into his lazy, biased, clueless denunciation.
It’s my suspicion that several of those who have worked on the material that Vercoe slams in this manner would have an excellent case should they decide to sue him for defamation on account of his often unsubstantiated insults that reflect so poorly and undeservedly on their professionalism.
One matter of interest to me in Vercoe’s rant was this paragraph:
“For what comprises the largest remaining tract of temperate rainforest, the flora and fauna information gathered for the proposed road relied upon internet based tools including the Natural Values Atlas and the EPBCA Environmental Reporting Tool. Both of these tools are useful for ‘flagging’ potential values and nothing more. They rely on other people putting in data from past research, most of which is questionable.”
The paragraph in question is an absolute trainwreck.
I do not normally engage in grammar flaming, but Vercoe has claimed to be opposed to things being “poorly written” and is therefore fair game for such treatment until he retracts or at least substantiates that attack. Thus, I point out that his last sentence above as written claims, without evidence, that the past research itself is mostly questionable. What he really means to say is presumably that whether past data have been entered or not is mostly questionable – whatever that may mean. Whatever it does mean, he provides no evidence that that is the case.
Furthermore he omits to note that (a) the documents independently review the more dubious records or occurrence claims from database type sources such as those mentioned and (b) threatened flora assessment in the documents is by no means limited to these sources.
Then there is Vercoe’s claim concerning “what comprises the largest remaining tract of temperate rainforest”. Never mind that less than ten percent of the proposed road length is rainforest and indeed that the road does little more than nibble at the edge of the “largest remaining tract” in question, with the total area of rainforest proposed for clearing coming in at a miniscule 20 hectares. So what exactly is his point here?
I suggest anyone interested checks out the various referral documents for themselves at http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/epbc/epbc_ap.pl?name=current_referral_detail&proposal_id=5169 .
I hope they will then agree with me (whatever their view of the proposal) that those documents show far more evidence of thought, reason, evidence, logic and even a minimal standard of expressive clarity than Jarrah Vercoe has displayed in one of the laziest and worst so-called articles I have seen on this site in a long long time (and that is saying something).
It is certainly possible to oppose this road proposal in an intelligent matter but Vercoe’s “article” is so much an example of everything that is wrong with the way some in the green movement go about their public agitations that I am sorely tempted to support the road in protest.
Dr Kevin Bonham
October 29, 2009 at 03:03
Link to flowchart (wouldn’t accept more than one web link in above comment apparently):
http://www.environment.gov.au/epbc/assessments/pubs/flow-chart.pdf
Also see http://www.environment.gov.au/epbc/assessments/refer.html
William Boeder
October 29, 2009 at 14:11
Though there can be much credence in what is stated here by Dr. Bonham, the simple facts are that whatever principled and formal manner that a report or submission may be presented in to the powers that be in this State, particularly when it is to do with precise and or sensible controls over the agressive de-forestation practices, forestry smoke pollutions, even the intolerable actions of poisons spraying across the State, they are doomed to the same woeful failure of even the most rudimentary forms of referencing and protocols.
Unfortunately such are the facts attributable to the best intentioned, as well as the academic inclined persons, whomsoever resident in this State of Tasmania.
Dr Kevin Bonham
October 29, 2009 at 14:56
William, I had great trouble making sense of your first sentence, which was 89 words long. The only things I could determine from it were:
(i) that you were asserting the existence of “simple facts” but providing no actual evidence that they were true.
(ii) that you were talking about state processes, but this is actually a federal referral under the EPBC Act.
(iii) that you were having a go at someone, but providing no evidence to back that attack.
I couldn’t make much sense of your second sentence either; my reaction to your whole post was “huh?”
William Boeder
October 29, 2009 at 19:01
Dear Dr. K Bonham.
In reply to your comments # 13.
Thank you for your barrage of criticisms.
Your are indeed a mystifying gentleman.
I am confident that there are people in Tasmania whom understood my contentions.
Those who did not could perhaps call upon yourself in future, should they be seeking a deeply intensive forensic interpretation of my comments.
Rita Skeeter
October 29, 2009 at 19:07
Budding award winning journos or would be experts on the EPBC Act should be careful not to read too much of their own propaganda. The area identified as the ‘Tarkine’ is not the “the largest tract of temperate rainforest†but instead contains “the the largest contiguous area of cool temperate rainforest surviving in Australiaâ€.
The words might look similar but there is an important difference as recent picnickers to the old track leading to the mining town of Balfour discovered, not all the ‘Tarkine’ is rainforest but includes a range of ecosystems including button grass and eucalypt forest including that often ignored tall E. Nitida forest.
The area nominated by the Tasmanian Conservation Trust for National estate listing was accepted as an area covering 350,000 ha, the current proposal by environmental lobby groups is a Heritage listing of over 450,000 ha.
The Savage River National Park according to its managers “protects the largest contiguous area of cool temperate rainforest surviving in Australia and acts as a refuge for a rich primitive flora, undisturbed river catchments, high quality wilderness, old growth forests, geodiversity and natural landscape values.†see http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/index.aspx?base=3732
Yet the National Park is a maximum area of 17,980 hectares and also contains the most extensive basalt plateaux in Tasmania, so the largest contiguous area of cool temperate rainforest is less than 4% of the area to be nominated as World Heritage. Of course there are other areas of rainforest in the river valleys, along the iron ore slurry pipeline from the Savage River open cut mine, along the 35 km sealed road to the mine, as well as around Tasmania’s largest open cut mine that has been operating since 1965.
The vast majority of the ‘Tarkine’ rainforests are within the region’s reserve system that cover about 308,000 ha, and not along the route of the proposed loop road. In fact the only new bit of road is a small 5 km stretch to access a lookout that overlooks the largest contiguous cool temperate rainforest.
Such a lookout is more likely to be used by tourists rather than log truck drivers!
Perhaps other budding award winning journalists can look up just what is meant by ‘contiguous’ or just where cool temperate rainforest was in 1750, (hint only Tasmania and a portion of Victoria has a cool temperate climate), or thirdly just who recommended to the Australian Heritage Commission to assign a name to this area that is an English transliteration and a truncation of the name of just of the aboriginal family groups that lived in the area.
Love
Rita