The official opening of the Nelson Bay River mine in the Tarkine wilderness highlights the inadequacies of Tasmania’s existing reserve system and industrial approvals in the state.
The open-cut mine, partly located in the Arthur-Pieman Conservation Area was approved despite the reserve status of the area and impact on values like the Tasmanian devil.
Vast tracts of Tasmania’s existing conservation reserve system remain open to mining and other destructive activities, throwing a question over the protection of identified values and making a mockery of the rhetoric that too much of the state is ‘locked up’.
“Open cut mining in a region like the Tarkine is an anathema given the identified National and World Heritage values of the area, its significance for threatened species like the Tasmanian devil and the damage mining has already done to wild rivers across Western Tasmania,” said Vica Bayley spokesperson for The Wilderness Society.
“This mine is in an existing reserve that was declared to conserve important values, but given inadequate status to properly protect those values. Despite being a conservation reserve it does not prevent one of the most destructive activities possible – open-cut mining with associated acid drainage, rock dumps, tailings dams and roading.
“Cutting the ribbon on this mine blows open the myth that Tasmania is adequately protected and erodes the globally significant values of the Tarkine.
“The region deserves proper protection via its own National Park,” said Mr Bayley.
• Scott Jordan: Nelson Bay River Mine opening shameful day for environmental protection
• Mike Adams, in Comments: Interesting that the commercial TV news coverage showed a happy Bryan Green, an even happier Indian gent and a relieved N.W.Coaster truck driver. We have become a helot state – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helots – where keeping lowly qualified labourers in employment is the most important thing that government can do. Where the profits go from our natural resources is of little importance. … No 7. More waffle. The reasons that so many unskilled jobs have vanished is twofold: one, that machinery has replaced human muscle, and two, that overseas labour is cheaper and consequently companies able to do so have exported their jobs. The rant about tertiary hideaways is contrived and unjustifiable.
