Media release – Concerned Residents Opposed to the Westbury Prison Site (CROWPS), 14 December 2021
Brushy Rivulet is not the Magic Pudding!
The eight former Tasmanian Government botanists, zoologists, ecologists and forestry researchers who sent a report detailing the importance of the Brushy Rivulet Crown Reserve from a conservation perspective to Premier Peter Gutwein recently, cannot be ignored (‘The Examiner’, 4 December 2021). The reserve needs to be taken off the table permanently in the search for a suitable location for a proposed Northern Regional Prison and be protected for future generations as was intended.
The attempt by the current government to diminish the importance of the reserve and ignore the need for it to be permanently protected, as was originally determined when purchased in 1999 using Commonwealth funds, is shameful.
The Tasmanian Government has now finally freely admitted Brushy Rivulet Crown Reserve does indeed have significant environment values. The same government is also saying it is acceptable to bulldoze these significant environmental values if they find an offset the federal minister would approve of.
It simply does not make sense to secure land elsewhere (offset) to try and replace the significant environmental values that would be lost if Brushy Rivulet Crown Reserve were to be flattened.
The Reserve cannot be put into the magic pudding thinking realm. Finding an offset will not magically re-house all of the endangered flora and fauna that exist on the Brushy Rivulet Crown Reserve site. Taking out yet another quantity of endangered flora and fauna will just move these species up into the next category towards extinction.
The Tasmanian Government needs to act now and acknowledge the scientific evidence that our endangered flora and fauna cannot sustain continual diminution around the state with projects such as the proposed Northern Regional Prison. When will common-sense prevail?
