DISCOVERING SHANNON CREEK'S UNIQUE SANDSTONE FLORA

Those responsible for promoting the Regional Water Supply Project are ducking for cover after the Friends of Shannon Creek Action Group revealed enormous failures in their early flora surveys.

They are now predictably espousing the time-honoured theory that: “Whenever a development is proposed, these threatened species suddenly come out of the woodwork. They're probably everywhere” North Coast Water's chairman, Fred Morgan, and long time Board member and Coffs Harbour Council representative, Bill Palmer, have both made public claims that the threatened species recently discovered at Shannon Creek have occurred as a result of cattle being removed from the site. Mr Palmer even went as far as to claim (Letter to the Editor, Daily Examiner), that if any farmer removed stock from his property, threatened species would probably appear.

Both men must be aware that the threatened species 'missed' by the EIS surveys of Shannon Creek include trees that grow to 40 metres in height, and many specimens would be over a hundred years old, yet they still make those nonsensical statements, seemingly in a desperate attempt to down-play their significance, and thus justify their destruction. With that ingrained mind-set firmly established in our councils and governments, what chance does our environment have?

Most environmentalists seem to eventually tire of hitting their heads against the brick walls of bureaucracy, but we should not give up hope. We need to do more than wave banners. We have to do the research ourselves. If Shannon Creek has taught us anything, it is that Development Applications, EISs, and other statements presented by the developers have to be questioned. This has to involve physically undertaking investigations into all claims presented through the public exhibition system.

To assume that an EIS is a thorough assessment of environmental impacts, is a mistake. There is a thriving industry built around the environmental requirements of existing legislation, and that industry has a vested interest in seeing projects approved. We should not be fooled into believing that they have the best interests of the environment at heart.

Again using Shannon Creek as an example, and using the pathetically inadequate flora surveys to make the point, I present the following facts:

• In the 8 years since Shannon Creek was chosen as the preferred dam site, the proponent's consultants have identified just two of the 13 threatened plant species now known to occur at the site, Melichrus hirsutus and Ancistrachne maidenii. The Melichrus had actually been reported at the site two years earlier in 1995 during a plant audit undertaken by State Government agencies, and, having been mapped, could not be ignored. The Ancistrachne, likewise, had been previously found on land proposed as compensatory habitat.



• A rare undescribed Boronia was misidentified by three separate survey teams, giving it three different names. That plant was finally described by FOSCAG members in association with Dr Marco Duretto of the Hobart Herbarium, named Boronia hapalophylla, and declared endangered.



• A list of 18 threatened flora species were provided to the proponent by National Parks and target surveys requested. Five of those species are now known to occur at the site, including the M. hirsutus. However, the two target surveys failed to find any of the other four.



• The spillway site at Shannon Creek contains numbers of three of the above target threatened species. However, none of the flora surveys for the EIS identified their presence.