Lake Pedder: Inundation and Restoration

The Lake Pedder Restoration Committee recently launched (at MONA) Lake Pedder: Inundation and Restoration, a 3D visualisation which enables viewers to appreciate the process, the drama and the excitement of restoration of this unique landscape.

The launch event generated renewed enthusiasm for the restoration of the lake and has led to increased membership and public awareness. The media response was informed and positive, especially in The Age (which ran an article, a cartoon and even an editorial), and on ABC TV and radio.

For links to media responses, see:

http://lakepedder.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/media-covers-3d-visualisation-launch-event/

The Lake Pedder Restoration Committee has now set itself the task of developing a “state of the art” website to enable more effective communication of the issue and the entire story of Lake Pedder.

The committee is also seeking to gain commitment at the political level to a feasibility study into the economic, cultural and environmental benefits that restoration of Lake Pedder could bring to Tasmania and Australia. We hope to convince state and federal governments to conduct a dispassionate analysis of the potential benefits. Our aim is to see the potential of Lake Pedder restoration tested as an idea for the future of Tasmania, as we are convinced that a restored Lake Pedder would strengthen Tasmania’s vulnerable economy.

The restoration proposal outline in Lake Pedder: Inundation and Restoration is designed to allow the Middle Gordon power scheme to continue to operate at greater than 80% of its current capacity.

In its 7th July 2013 editorial, The Age recognised the pragmatism of this approach:

Conservationists are often criticized as impractical and idealistic … The Lake Pedder Restoration Committee has developed a plan in which the hydro scheme would largely remain intact, and the restoration would take place gradually, in what the committee calls a commitment to being “totally pragmatic … This highly practical attitude, in which infrastructure is not sacrificed to utopia, is hopefully the beginning of a new type of environmentalism – less foot stomping and more accommodation of broader realities.

We hope you will continue to follow our journey towards achieving the restoration of this iconic lake which would be an act of global significance and national pride. As Steve Biddulph comments in his Tasmanian Times response to the news of our recent launch:

The tourism and inspirational value of this reclamation would be immense, a world-scale good news story, unfolding gradually and visibly for the whole world to see.