Hurry Save The Murray!

How is the Federal Government is giving form to our responsibilities as a nation under the provisions of the Ramsar International Convention on Wetlands.*

This week the Australian Government hosted a visit by Secretary-General of the Ramsar Convention, Anada Tiéga, last week. There has been no official comment on the visit.

What did the Australian Government tell the Secretary-General? What data was he given? We know he dined in Adelaide on October 28 and travelled to Meningie, on Lake Albert, on October 29 where he met with invited guests. He also took a flight over the Wetlands. No doubt there were other meetings, conversations and discussions.

The Director of the Wetlands Section of the Environmental Water Branch of Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA) was not sure why a citizen might expect the Government to communicate details of the visit to those who live in the region. There were no plans to issue any statement regarding the visit.

Nonetheless DEWHA insisted the visit was successful.  Tom Arup, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald (31/10/2009) sounded a caution: “The head of a world treaty for the protection of wetlands has warned it is too early to flood the threatened Coorong wetlands with seawater and Australia should be ”very cautious” about the proposal. In an exclusive interview with the Herald, the secretary-general of the Ramsar Convention, Anada Tiéga, said the seawater proposal by the South Australian Government, which aims to prevent acidification of the area, should be delayed until the full impact of such a move on the ecosystem of the Coorong is understood. The Coorong was made famous as the setting for the 1976 Australian film Storm Boy. It is listed as a Ramsar wetland for its ecological importance, especially to such waterbirds as pelicans. In recent times fears for the health of the Coorong have been compounded by falling water levels and increased salinity, the result of drought and over-extraction of water in the Murray-Darling Basin. A three-year study of the Coorong by the CSIRO found it was in effect dead as an ecosystem, but it could be revived if new environmental flows of freshwater from the Murray were flushed into the wetlands.”

How bad is the situation? Sites on the List of Wetlands of International Importance which are considered to have undergone, to be undergoing, or to be likely to undergo change in their ecological character brought about by human action may be placed on the Montreux Record and may benefit from the application of the Ramsar Advisory Mission and other forms of technical assistance. However, the request to be placed on the Record must come from the Government itself.  The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) which is the Australian Government’s key piece of environmental legislation, commenced 16 July 2000. Is it working?**

Should the Lakes and Coorong be on the Montreux Record?

What can be done?

• Get informed. The crisis for this wetland has been long in the making. Stop blaming the drought: Address over-allocation. Stop blaming upriver communities: Complete the Water Allocation Plans (WAPs) for the Eastern Mt Lofty Ranges.
• Insist SA Government’s long term plan for recovery of this wetland is not delayed until after the March 2010 election
• Demand that the Commonwealth Government administer the Murray-Darling Basin as an integrated eco-system now.
• Write to Anada Tiéga? Ramsar Secretariat – 28 rue Mauverney – CH-1196 Gland – Switzerland/Suisse/Suiza – www.ramsar.org TEL. +41 (0)22 999 01 70 – FAX +41 (0)22 999 01 69 – E-MAIL tiega@ramsar.org, katz@ramsar.org

Some background reading
http://www.environment.gov.au/indigenous/publications/ngarrindjeri-plan.html
www.csiro.au/partnerships/CLLAMMecologyCluster.html [13]
http://www.efarming.com.au/News/general/13/09/2009/70256/bird-numbers-plummet-on-murray-darling-basin.htm

End notes
* Named after Ramsar, the city in Iran where the convention was conceived 1971, the “Ramsar Convention” is an intergovernmental treaty that embodies the commitments of its member countries to maintain the ecological character of their Wetlands of International Importance and to plan for the “wise use”, or sustainable use, of all of the wetlands in their territories. Australia was one of the original signatories. The Convention on Wetlands came into force for Australia on 21 December 1975 and Australia presently has 65 sites designated as Wetlands of International Importance, with a surface area of 7,510,177 hectares. (Visit the Ramsar site to learn more http://www.ramsar.org)
** The EPBC Act enhances the management and protection of Australia’s Ramsar wetlands. A “declared Ramsar wetland” is an area that has been designated under Article 2 of the Ramsar Convention or declared by the Minister to be a declared Ramsar wetland under the EPBC Act. The EPBC Act also establishes a process for identifying Ramsar wetlands and encourages best practice management through nationally consistent management principles. (Visit the Dept of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts to learn more of the legislation http://www.environment.gov.au/epbc/protect/wetlands.html )

Stop Press: The November 18, 2009  Community Update from the SA Government Department of Environment and Heritage carried a report of the visit. Apart from noting that it was an 8 day visit to Australia, the information from the DEH added little to what is stated above.

Wakakirri Festival, Adelaide Town Hall, a hot night but that did not deter the twelve groups of Primary School children who were performing. The philosophy of Wakakirri is to understand and appreciate that sustainability benefits every aspect of our lives, from physical and mental health to our interactions and appreciation of the world around us.  The children gave form to this in song and dance.

The Eastern Fleurieu School, which takes in Milang and Langhorne Creek campuses, told the story of Dry Bed, River Dead. Here is how they explained their story-dance: A river springs forth and brings life. People live in harmony with the river … at first. New people arrive in large numbers and take too much of the river’s bounty. A dying river results.

These are the same children who have been so involved in the save the turtle project at Milang. They are engaged and well-informed environmentalists.

We waited. Preliminary work costing approximately $14 million has already been undertaken in preparation for the proposed weir at Pomanda Island. What would the Federal Minister for the Environment decide with respect to the EIS? Would he give the go ahead? What conditions would be attached to the EIS? Would he heed the lessons learned from the Clayton dam/regulator and reject the EIS? Mr Garrett took the heat out of the debate by deciding he wanted further information before giving approval for, or rejecting, the proposed weir.

Meanwhile, Senator Penny Wong, Minister for Climate Change and Water, announced a new (all male) expert scientific panel that would provide advice on the long-term management of the Coorong and Lower Lakes.

• Don Blackmore – former Chief Executive of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission
• Dr Andrew Herzceg – CSIRO Land and Water Hydrology Research Program
• Prof Gary Jones – Chief Executive of the eWater CRC
• Prof Richard Kingsford – School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales
• Assoc Prof David Paton – Head of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Adelaide Adjunct Assoc Prof
• Adjunct Assoc Prof Keith Walker – School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide.

We must now wait to see how the Garrett deferral and the Wong panel impact of the EIS.