Media release – Birdlife Tasmania, 15 January 2021
Robbins Island Windfarm – Industrial development in wetlands of international significance
Birdlife Tasmania is severely disappointed by UPC Robbins Island’s decision to formally seek approval for its industrial-scale wind farm in north-west Tasmania – a move that conflicts with its major shareholder’s own environmental pledges.
Birdlife Tasmania convenor Dr Eric Woehler OAM today confirmed that he and Birdlife Australia’s CEO Paul Sullivan jointly wrote to AC Energy, in December last year asking the Filipino company to uphold their environmental pledges.
“In the pledges, readily accessible on its website, AC Energy said it would, “not engage in projects with migratory species threatened with extinction” or work, “in habitats with Critically Endangered or Endangered Species… if the project would lead to a net reduction of the species,” Dr Woehler said.
Yet, the proposed Robbins Island wind farm would be located right in the middle of the southern-most critically important wetlands for 20 species of migratory shorebirds on the globe-spanning East Asian-Australian Flyway. The wetlands are recognised internationally as an Important Bird Area, contributing to the conservation of global biodiversity.
Among the migratory shorebirds using the wetlands and coastline of Boullanger Bay/Robbins Passage are precious numbers of three birds listed as Critically Endangered in Australia: eastern curlew, curlew sandpiper and great knot.
“Data gathered over 25 years of counts by Birdlife Tasmania shows that these three species are decreasing precipitously,” Dr Woehler said.
“We know that these farthest fliers are sentinels for losses that are reverberating throughout the flyway among the less distant fliers. This makes their continued presence in north-west Tasmania doubly important.”
“It is inconceivable to us to believe that the birds will not fly across Robbins Island between their feeding and roosting sites. As long distance fliers, the birds will take the most direct route between sites, across the island and straight through the wind farm.”
In addition, construction of the wind farm would require building a bridge and causeway across Robbins Passage altering critical tidal flows, building a jetty and quarrying, all of which would create significant noise among birds for whom disturbance during feeding could mean the difference between life and death on their trans-equatorial migrations of 15,000km.
“We believe the industrial scale of the proposed wind farm on Robbins Island poses an unacceptable risk to the thousands of migratory and resident shorebirds, and the water birds of the Robbins Passage-Boullanger Bay wetlands system,“ Dr Woehler said.
He said he was most disappointed not have received any response to the letter from AC Energy, or their Australian-located subsidiaries.
“We strongly encourage the growth of renewable energy, but confirm that Birdlife Tasmania continue to fight against this project.”
“It’s simply the wrong project in the wrong site,” he concluded.
Featured image above: eastern curlew, ©Eric J Woehler.
Media release – Dr Rosalie Woodruff MP & Dr Darren Briggs – Greens Federal Candidate for Braddon, 16 January 2021
Robbins Island Must Be Protected
Rosalie Woodruff MP | Tasmanian Greens Environment spokesperson
The news that Filipino company, AC Energy, is persisting with its proposal for a biodiversity-trashing wind farm on Robbins Island is shameful. Irreplaceable migratory bird and Tasmanian devil habitat is the worst location for industrial energy generation. The Gutwein government should immediately move to recognise Robbins Island/Boullanger Bay for its essential global values and initiate a Ramsar listing.
International consensus is clear: the fight to de-escalate the twin biodiversity and climate crises requires us to stop trading off nature for climate change gains. We must prioritise renewable energy, but there are many more suitable sites for a massive wind farm in Tasmania, or off-shore, than a global biodiversity hotspot. The Gutwein government should take control of siting renewable energy generation in places that support biodiversity outcomes, instead of leaving the decision to self-interested international corporations.
A 2002 conservation assessment by the Nature Conservation branch of DPIPWE found Boullanger Bay-Robbins Island Passage meets all the Ramsar criteria for biodiversity, but political interests prevented its listing at that time. Twenty years later, the importance of this location as a migratory refuge has dramatically increased as climate change and land clearing have reduced wetland areas worldwide.
The island is also an important ark for about 150 disease-free critically endangered Tasmanian devils. This is our state’s most important devil insurance population, and there is no other possible safe habitat in Tasmania where these animals could be be translocated.
Instead of sitting on their hands and letting the market rip, to the detriment of unique and essential biodiversity, the government should step in, formally protect Robbins Island’s critically endangered species and habitat, and put an end to this wholly inappropriate wind farm location.
Dr Darren Briggs | Greens Federal Candidate for Braddon
The Boullanger Bay-Robbins Island Passage wetlands complex has been repeatedly assessed as being of global importance. It has been assessed as clearly holding values that make it eligible to be listed under the international Ramsar Convention to protect wetlands of international significance.
This is because Robbins Island is a crucial part of the global flyway that stretches from Australia, through eastern Asia, to north of the Arctic Circle in Siberia.
Around the world migratory shorebirds populations are declining. As a primary point of the migratory shorebird network, we must do better to protect the ecology of the Boullanger Bay-Robbins Island Passage wetland complex, before the area is modified or affected by development.
It would be a cruel irony if our renewable energy projects come at the expense of biodiversity or threatened species.
We need to have confidence that wind farms – like any energy project – don’t damage the environment. The fact is this project will impact the Boullanger Bay-Robbins Passage wetlands.
Previous attempts to have this area Ramsar listed were supported by the federal government however weren’t progressed by the Tasmanian state government due to opposition from a few local landowners. Some of which are now potential beneficiaries of the project.
With a federal election looming I urge the government to listen to the growing local community opposition and not the vested interests and international corporations.
Ben Marshall
January 19, 2022 at 16:35
Imagine hearing, for example, that the Chinese were about to bulldoze a Ramsar-listed wetlands on an internationally critical migratory bird route to put up a wind farm. Imagine that the same project would also cause immense and permanent damage to associated shoreline ecosystems, and on-island and marine environments, while also harming local tourism and fisheries. We’d be appalled, and scoff at what we’d assume to be stupid or corrupt government mismanagement.
Here in Tassie, that’s called ‘business as usual’.
There’s no way UPC-AC’s Robbins Island proposal would get traction on the Mainland, but here, this truly rotten project has made it so far through the ‘approvals process’ – ie rubberstamping by all arms of a politicised public service – that we risk it going ahead. Local and state politicians are backing it, and Murdoch and Liberal-aligned media are backing it. Everyone else thinks it stinks on environmental and economic grounds, and it’s all so foreign-owned and controlled that UPC-AC can sell Tassie windpower to the Mainland. We get nothing.
This proposal needs to be chucked out of the state, and UPC-AC told to go to hell, along with the other backers. I’d urge anyone who gives a damn about our economy and our environment to get up to speed, read the Development Application, then write a polite, to-the-point submission against it.