An open letter to Gannawarra councillors
THE Central Murray Environmental Floodplains Group (CMEFG) is a group of community men and women who come from a diverse array of backgrounds and experiences who passionately work at highlighting the many problems the Murray Darling Basin Plan has caused to our region.
Our mission is to return irrigatable regional agriculture to an economically productive and sustainable future, enhancing the community’s wellbeing and society’s social fabrication.
Our passion is to help lead a combined community push to rebuild our devastated environment while helping to preserve our cultural and spiritual heritage for the education of our nation’s people and future generations.
Over the last couple of months, we have written to you on four occasions highlighting our group’s concerns of the irrefutable damage being caused to one of the shire’s biggest ecotourism assets, the Ramsar (Convention on Wetlands) listed Gunbower Forest, through continual flooding and poor management.
Our group has offered to take you, the councillors, on one of our bus tours to hear and see first-hand the damage being caused and how things could be fixed, a tour which Federal Minister for Water Keith Pitt, Senator Bridget McKenzie, local Federal Member Dr Anne Webster, and Victorian Member of Parliament Tim Quilty, have all availed themselves of.
Time out of their busy schedules to view the damage, which you have not yet done.
Instead, on April 12, you invited North Central Catchment Management Authority (NCCMA) to a briefing that spent 90 per cent of this time talking about the Gunbower Forest discussing their future plans and how good the forest was.
Unfortunately, this was in total conflict with our members’ day-to-day and generational knowledge, which spans, in some members’ cases, well over 100 years.
Yes, council pointed out that NCCMA were the department responsible for watering and flood inundation of the forest.
However, after raising our concerns then being totally overlooked by our own elected council, we found this insulting.
We have the evidence to demonstrate the damage being caused.
Surely, surely, surely, this generational local knowledge of our members accounts for some form of recognition by you, our council.
Unfortunately, for local people, history shows us that government department staff come and go and make decisions (in this case poor decisions) that we must endure for generations.
Our only hope is that in the future you, as our council, don’t side with NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey in the same way as you have in this issue to give away 360,000 megalitres of Victorian Murray irrigators’ water.
That you give some small amount of respect to our community that helped elect you and we stand and fight together so we can return this region to a flourishing, viable and prosperous future with a healthy environment.
Geoff Kendell
Chairman, CMEFG
Field and Game
again ducking the shooting issue
IN last edition’s “Your Say” (20/4/21), Dale Trevorrow asked why the Coalition Against Duck Shooting doesn’t protest against the hunting of rabbits, deer and foxes. There are two reasons for this.
It is the Coalition Against Duck Shooting, the name really says it all. Supporters who oppose other forms of hunting will obviously express their opinions under the banner of other organisations.
There is a striking difference between so-called “game” ducks and the feral animals Dale mentions.
All the game species are native and their numbers are in long-term decline, up to 90 per cent in eastern Australia according to the prestigious Eastern Australian Waterbird Survey (EAWS) conducted by experts from UNSW.
Unlike the recent GMA helicopter survey, which provides only one data set, the EAWS provides long-term indices which show concerning declines in game ducks, some by an order of magnitude.
In fact, two game duck species, Hardhead and Australasian Shoveler, both satisfied threatened species criteria in DELWP’s 2020 Conservation Status Assessment Project.
Whilst still technically “game”, the Shoveler has been off the menu for the past few seasons, but the Hardhead has inexplicably not been afforded the same reprieve.
Our waterbirds face many threats and human predation should no longer be one of them.
According to Field and Game Australia, notoriously destructive duck shooters are “surprising conservationists”, an oxymoron highlighted by Dale’s inability to recognise the difference between declining native waterbirds and environmentally destructive feral species.
Alyssa Wormald
