The never-ending battles of the Coral Sea
by Viv Forbes, science writer
For at least 50 years Australian taxpayers and other innocents have supported a parasitic industry in academia, bureaucracy, law, media and the tax-exempt Green Alarm “Charities”, all studying, regulating, inspecting and writing about yet another “imminent threat to Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef.”
The Queensland Labor Party Government is about to embark on another reef-runoff onslaught against coastal farmers that is intended to close down farming along the entire coastline, from Cooktown to Brisbane.
It has become the never-ending battle of the Coral Sea.
The threats change, but there is always a doomsday forecast – Crown-of-Thorns, oil drilling, fishing, cane farming, coastal shipping, global warming, ocean acidity, coral bleaching, port dredging, chemical and fertiliser runoff, coal transport, river sediments, loss of world heritage status etc. Every recycled scare, magnified by the media and parroted by politicians, generates more income for the alarm industry, usually at the expense of taxpayers, consumers or local industries.
The reality is that sea creatures would starve in pure water – all marine life needs nutrients, salts and minerals. These come from other life forms, from decomposing rocks and organic matter carried to the sea by rivers, from dissolving atmospheric gases, or from delta and shelf sediments stirred up by floods, cyclones, dredging or coastal shipping. No one supports over-use of toxic man-made chemicals, but well-run cane, cattle and coal companies can co-exist with corals.
Corals first appeared 500 million years ago and have proven to be one of Earth’s great survivors. They outlasted the Carboniferous Forests, the Permian and Cretaceous extinctions, the dinosaurs, the mammoths, the Neanderthals and the Pleistocene cycles of ice age and warming. They thrive in warm tropical water, cluster around hot volcanic fumaroles and survive massive petroleum spills, natural oil seeps, tidal waves and volcanic dust. They have even recolonised the Montebello Island waters devastated by atomic bomb testing in the 1950’s.
The ENSO oscillation of blobs of warm Pacific water which caused recent coral bleaching can be identified in historical records for at least 400 years. Corals have survived El Nino warmings for thousands of years and they will probably outlast Homo Alarmism as Earth proceeds into the next glacial epoch.
See the Supercorals:
Corals do not rely on computer models of global temperature to advise them – they read the sea level thermometer which falls and rises as the great ice sheets come and go.
In the warming phase like the one just ending, ice melts, sea levels rise and the reef that houses the corals may get drowned. Corals have two choices – build their reef higher or just float south/inshore and build a new reef (like the Great Barrier Reef) in shallower, cooler water. When islands sink beneath rising oceans, corals may build their own coral atolls as fast as the water rises.
Then when the cold era returns, ice sheets grow, sea levels fall, and the warm era coral reefs get stranded on the new beaches and coastal plains. Usually the process is slow enough to allow the coral polyps to float into deeper warmer water closer to the equator and build another reef.
This eminently sensible policy of “move when you have to” has proved a successful survival policy for the corals for 500 million years.
Humans should copy the corals – “forget the computer climate models but watch real data like actual sea levels and . . . move when you have to.
Scientists have blamed extensive areas of sea ice for a catastrophic Adelie penguin breeding season in Antartica leaving just two chicks to survive out of a colony of 18,000.
Unusually extensive sea ice late in the summer, despite low ice early in the season meant the penguins had to travel further for food, causing the chicks to starve.
Marxist conservation group WWF is devastated, claiming that the fishing industry somehow is to blame for the extensive ice coverage.
“The ice is supposed to be melting not increasing and this goes right against our campaign to get the public to believe the ice has all but gone due to man-made global warming,” a WWF spokeswoman said.
A proposal for a new protected area for the water off east Antartica will be considered by government this week.
from Jim O’Toole at Cooktown
The highly controversial purchase of the 150,000 acre Springvale Station, 50 klms west of Cooktown by the State Government is refusing to die in the media, in spite of a recent scientific report clearing the Lakeland farming district of any reef runoff from the Springvale river catchment.
Taking advantage of annual coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef , 200 nautical miles north of Cooktown that this year covered a larger than normal area, ABC Television and their usual Green bed mates have wasted tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayers money with false and misleading reports.
Tuesday night’s 7.30 Report hosted by Mark Willacy took the cake.
After lower Cape York Peninsula viewers last year were treated to one of the most misleading reports ever broadcast by the ABC about land clearing at Olive Vale station, 60 klms to the north, WWF head kicker Andrew Picone was joined on the show by Tim Hughes of the South Endeavour Trust.
Local viewers said the story was devoid of fact and an insult to Peninsula farmers and cattle producers who believed comments by Mr Hughes amounted to a “bid for paid management rights.”
“Never let the facts get in the way of a Green story,” another landowner, who asked not to be named, told Cairns News.
Tim Hughes, through the South Endeavour Trust, manages the neighbouring property Kings Plains.
The Trust has 10 properties in its portfolio, purportedly managed by Mr Hughes for ‘conservation values.’
Predictably the ABC trotted out an indigenous group from Laura to visit the seasonal river.
They said members of their community visited the Normanby to catch fish and for recreational camping.
Cairns News can report that some indigenous people regard river beds as rubbish dumps, as the picture below of the nearby Laura River shows.
This campsite in the Laura River bed was photographed last year after a group of indigenous people left a mountain of rubbish behind. Beer bottles, food wrapping, an old mattress and disposable baby nappies were strewn about the river bed.
It was not removed and ended up being flushed down the river in the first fresh late last year.
Kings Plains manager Daryl Paradise and Mr Picone claimed a mining application by former Cook Shire Mayor and onetime owner of Springvale, Graham Elmes would silt-up the entire Barrier Reef if mining in the sandy bed of the West Normanby River went ahead.
Mr Elmes explained that removing gold or tin from sandy river beds is quite common in the Far North.
A large gold dredge was operating in the Mitchell River last year and the rich Palmer River had been extensively mined in this way for 120 years, without any evidence of serious river degradation.
Along with Mark Willacy, who was present at nearby Lakeland three weeks ago when the Great Barrier Reef Water Science Task Force gave the entire catchment area of the Normanby River system a clean bill of health, Mr Hughes seemed to be unaware of this finding. http://www.gbr.qld.gov.au/documents/gbrwst-interim-report-highres.pdf
Chief Scientist for Queensland, Dr Geoff Garrett, who heads the Task Force, told farmers in late May that the study found no measurable runoff coming from the Normanby catchment area that eventually runs into the sea.
This makes the $7m purchase of Springvale a rather spurious acquisition to halt alleged reef runoff.
Most farmers agree the well-improved cattle station, which runs 3500 breeder cattle, was purchased solely to prevent the proposed West Normanby dam site from going ahead.
Prior to the election, the Federal Government allocated $825,000 to conduct a feasibility study for a new dam site to provide reliable irrigation water for the nearby, expanding Lakeland farming district.
A substantial State Government budget allocation was made for the purpose of progressing World Heritage nominations for Cape York Peninsula.
The WWF and ACF have for two decades or more pushed the ALP to nominate the entire Cape for World Heritage, in defiance of the wishes of all Aboriginal communities.
WWF trying to gouge more funding from a gullible public. Urban encroachment along the eastern coastline dislodges most koalas. Western areas of Queensland recently cleared are not koala habitats Wildfires on North Stradbroke Island decimate koalas and other wildlife thanks to custodians of country
(republished from cairnsnews 2014)
North Stradbroke Island lies just off the coastline from Brisbane and is a popular tourist destination for adventurers from the mainland. With its long sandy beaches and easy surf fishing it attracts thousands of anglers each year who make the short journey from the mainland by barge.
Straddie, covering 54,500 hectares is the second largest sand island in the world. Its only industries are sand mining and tourism, which support its 2000 permanent inhabitants.
On any weekend and during holiday season the beach becomes an extension to the Pacific Highway where hundreds of four wheel drives converge, turning the beaches into major thoroughfares.
Last week, due to lightning strikes, fires broke out across the tinder dry island, eventually causing some settlements to be evacuated. A lack of hazard control burning in the cooler months of the previous 10 years created the most dangerous fuel load ever seen on the island.
The Rural Fire Service had a major incident on its hands with volunteers battling kilometres long fire fronts fanned by gusty winds. Fortunately there was no loss of human life but the islands flora and fauna copped a savage beating.
Fires with such a large fuel load burn extremely hot for a more prolonged period, in many cases far too hot for standing eucalypts and other flora to survive. Most of the islands scorched eucalypts will sucker from the trunk and limbs rendering their function in the natural habitat as useless.
In the aftermath of the searing flames, the environmental damage is strikingly evident. Hot fires also reduce the amount of already low levels of organic nutrients thus making it more difficult for regeneration.
Brisbane ecologist Dr Greg Baxter said the islands ecology would take at least 20 years to recover, unless of course there is another wildfire in the meantime.
A lack of seasonal rainfall is also inhibiting plant regrowth
The island is home to a large koala bear population, 59 species of birds including a large colony of glossy black cockatoos, native rats and numerous reptiles.
The island has been claimed by the Quandamooka and Noonuccal aboriginal groups who assist the National Parks and Wildlife Service with management of its natural resources.
Perhaps the best known of the Noonuccal clan was the late activist Kath Walker, who fought for many years to gain native title to the island for her family.
Kath was one of the last of the islands traditional people, passing away in 1993, and it seems some of the handed-down tribal lore Kath possessed was not passed on to the present generation of island inhabitants claiming aboriginality.
This writer stood on the hustings with Kath in the early 80s.
If Kath did pass on what she knew the message did not get through to the great custodians of country residing on the island and mainland.
These people who claimed native title, in a similar fashion to most other aboriginal groups, either do not know how to manage country properly, do not care or have been prevented by the idiotic Labor Party policies of the 90s from burning excess fuel loads each year or whenever it was deemed necessary.
Former Queensland Forestry Department practices of conducting annual or two-yearly cool fires, guarantee the damage from uncontrolled fires will be minimal and does not have a great impact on flora and fauna.
But what happened to the traditional hazard reduction burning of the open forest and grassland in the traditional August burning off period?
Did the NPWS prevent the local indigenous people from burning off in previous years? Perhaps it seems from similar lessons learnt in other indigenous controlled land or national parks, most of the old knowledge has not been passed on because the gap between the ways of the last of the traditional people of the 1920s and the present generation is too wide.
This knowledge is lost forever. It is accepted in some anthropological circles that the lost messages from true traditional people have been supplanted by university trained anthropologists with an agenda not necessarily in the best interests of indigenous people.
Some commentators liken the beaten up stories of modern anthropologists to reinventing the wheel.
Unfortunately politicians of all hues believe it as gospel that modern day aborigines are the only capable custodians of country, the latest fashionable coinage of the annual $25 billion aboriginal industry.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
from Robert J Lee, Cairns bureau
The Malthusians of the World Wildlife Fund and the Australian Conservation Foundation got the Cairns Post into hot water on Saturday Nov 7, when the Murdoch tabloid published their untruthful and misleading media release about land clearing.
Olive Vale station at Laura was granted a permit to clear 31,800 ha by the former LNP State Government but the WWF in usual form, churned out misleading information in an effort to halt any development in the north.
Local federal Liberal member Warren Entsch has been severely embarrassed by the publication of the falsified information that the journalist admitted was not checked for fact.
However to his credit he has come out swinging at the greenie “clowns” and his own government.
It would have been an easy exercise for the journalist to simply read previous articles held on file in the Cairns Post newsroom.
Not so the Murdoch media and in shades of the ABC, it simply regurgitates the dishonest crap put out by the multitude of Cairns greenie groups, particularly anything that mentions the Great Barrier Reef.
The offending article elicited a stinging rebuke from owner of Olive Vale station, Paul Ryan.
Below is Mr Ryan’s response to Cairns Post journalist Kimberley Vlasic:
“Approval is to clear 31,800 ha , not the 35,000 ha stated by Andrew Picone of ACF”.
To date less than 2000 ha has been cleared (confirmed by federal and state departments) not the bullshit comment of 5000 ha from Andrew Picone.
Clearing works stopped 10th June 2015 ,works then began on preparing cleared land for planting of Sorghum this coming wet season.
Andrew Picone of the Australian Conservation Foundation, a Malthusian, caught out sending misleading and dishonest media releases to the Cairns Post about lawful land clearing.
At no time has Olive Vale been formally notified to stop clearing by any government department .Current cessation of clearing is voluntary.
Olive Vale has met all legal requirements of project DA approval.
Approximately 500 ha to be planted with sorghum this wet season.
Queensland Department of Agriculture will be running a trail cropping program within the Olive Vale project area.
On 2nd July 2015 Olive vale and Koolburra stations were granted an approved generic SMP (species management plan ) for all clearing operations excluding Olive Vale farming project.
10th August 2015 Olive Vale submitted to EHP (State Department of Environment) a draft project specific SMP .
9th September EHP responded with request for changes to SMP
Olive Vale has been working through requested changes and will resubmit an up dated SMP by end of November.
The publishing of miss leading information in regards to the Olive Vale project affects the ability to obtain project specific external funding.
All current works to date have been funded directly by the owners of Olive Vale station.
The people affect the most by this project are the residents of Laura, Olive Vale is the largest employer within the Laura area.
I receive phone calls daily from locals looking for work .
Has anyone ask these local residents of Laura (Traditional owners) what their opinion is.
Olive Vale Pastoral operations within Cape York directly employs 20 staff ,with indigenous staff making up 40%.
A further 4 North Queensland based contractors are used to fill specific skill requirements.
If clearing was to proceed these numbers would double within 6 months.
All current indigenous employees have been signed up for apprenticeships (traineeship) in machinery operation.
These qualified staff will then be available as trainers for the employment of local residents that are currently not qualified.
How many people are directly employed by ACF or the Wilderness Society within Cape York and more specifically in the Laura area?
No representative from ACF or The Wilderness Society has ever contacted Olive Vale pastoral in regards to our operations.”
The Cairns Post, in a half-hearted retraction in its November 10 issue, tried to smooth over the irresponsible greenie claptrap.
In an email to Mr Ryan , journalist Kimberley Vlasic apologised for not contacting Mr Ryan to get the facts. No apology appeared in the Nov 10 story.
The article tries to sidestep its previous misinformation instead shifting the blame onto Warren Entsch and the Liberal Government, when in fact the impasse over approvals for the clearing lies directly with the State Government and Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, who has refused to pass on the necessary information to the federal government.
The Liberal’s much-heralded Northern Development is indeed a misnomer and a lot of Asian corporations have been misled about getting involved in agriculture by the state and federal governments.
A theory of the few remaining white pastoralists on Cape York Peninsula has become closer to reality as any development is stopped by governments pandering to greenies and the indigenous Cape York Land Council.
Not very secret plans to create an indigenous state of Far North Queensland are gradually taking shape as the theory of white de-population eventuates.
Graziers claim the banks, in collusion with the State Government( both the previous LNP and now ALP governments) and the Cape York Land Council and have begun their campaign of asset-stripping large pastoral properties as banks unlawfully foreclose on three of the largest remaining white-owned cattle producers on the Peninsula without so much as a peep from either political party.
At least one Aurukun ‘white’ Aborigine sits on the sidelines trying to wrest a large property from bank receivers at an offer that is one tenth of market value.
In the last three years 1.5 million hectares of dispossessed white-owned cattle properties have been acquired by the State Government and handed over to Aborigines free of charge.
Approximately 60 per cent of the Aboriginal freehold property on Cape York Peninsula has a conservation zoning of some description placed over it that precludes cattle grazing.
Peninsula hoteliers and businesses say they feel threatened by underlying simmering tensions and in some cases direct threats made by hostile black elements throughout the Peninsula.
The hoax of Northern Development that includes Cape York Peninsula came home to roost when in August the State Government negotiated an Indigenous Land Use Agreement that handed over control of the Peninsula Development Road to the CYLC.
The PDR is the only land access to vital defence installations in the Far North.