The Mary River… where fish breathe air and turtles breathe through their bums - 19/02/08

Ian Mackay – teacher, writer and President of the Conondale Range Committee – writes about the Mary River. While conservationists have corralled the Queensland Government towards protection of many of Queensland’s Wild Rivers, the free-flowing Mary River is earmarked for a mega-dam to supply water to South-East Queensland.

Not long after he’d announced plans to dam it, Queensland’s ex-Premier Peter Beattie labeled the Mary River as “hardly pristine”. At a superficial glance, and in selected places, one would have to agree. Just on a century and a half of logging and farming have taken their toll, but surely the real test would have to lie in either the biodiversity or the uniqueness of today’s river, still the least developed in south-east Queensland.

When Alastair Driver, head of the United Kingdom's Environment Agency, visited last year, he emphasised the global interest in endemic species - those organisms confined to a particular geographical region, for example a river basin.

He said the fact that species such as the cloacal-respirating Mary River Turtle and the recently described Southern Snapping Turtle were found nowhere else on this planet meant there was something "very special and subtle" about this vulnerable river system.

His comments were echoed by the executive director of the International Rivers Network, Patrick McCully, who visited the Mary Valley from his American base.

"I am stunned that something like this can happen in Australia," Mr McCully said, after taking an aerial tour of the river basin all the way to Hervey Bay where it empties into the Great Sandy Straits, opposite Fraser Island.

"This is the sort of thing we have come to expect from undemocratic and third-world countries, not from a place like this.”

"This is obviously a river of great value for its biodiversity, and yet you appear to have a government with so little regard for considering other options."

Their comments preceded the release of the dam’s Environmental Impact Statement, a mammoth 1800 page document which has drawn a record number of over 16 000 submissions.

The presence of not only the unique turtles but also the “living fossil” the Queensland lungfish, as well as its integral relationship with Ramsar wetlands and the Great Sandy Strait has meant that the proposed dam, the Traveston Crossing Dam, can’t go ahead without Federal Government approval.

Despite this, the State Government, through its specially created company QWI, has acted as if there is no impediment to the dam being built. It has thumbed its nose at the possibility that EPBC approval may not be forthcoming, and has embarked on an aggressive process of property acquisition, meetings with contractors and so on.

The EIS sought to downplay the impact of the dam. When it was shown that it would inundate more than 250 hectares of endangered riparian ecosystem, the EIS managed to reclassify the affected area, declaring that less than 60 hectares was of the endangered type.

Proposed mitigation strategies include a fish elevator for the lungfish and a “world-first”, ie experimental, turtle ramp. The EIS finally conceded what the Premier had denied, that the fish elevator at Paradise Dam hadn’t been able to carry fish since it was built, due to on-going low levels in the dam.

The fallback strategy of “catch and carry” has been described as laughable while the plan to build a Research Centre to study the river’s unique fauna- but only AFTER the dam is built- has been viewed as a cynical sweetener to diffuse international scientific condemnation for the proposal.

The Australian Senate conducted an enquiry last year, recommending, after four days of sittings, that the dam not proceed.

For more information go to www.savethemaryriver.com or www.stoppress.com.au