Date: 23rd January 2023 To The Hon. Dugald Saunders, MPMinister for Forestsdubbo@parliament.nsw.gov.au Dear Minister, Last year we wrote to you as Minister for forests, expressing dismay at the lack of…
In November 2019, the Liberation Trail bushfire decimated the Nymboida area, destroying more than 50 homes. The environmental damage was enormous, made worse by what is arguably the worst drought in the close to 200 years of white occupation of the area. That prolonged drought, combined with record high temperatures and heatwaves, saw moisture content of vegetation at such low levels that living trees were reduced to charcoal.
While the potential introduction of some form of traceability has merit, we must point out that goats are rapid breeders, and within two years of a goat escaping or being released into the wild, there could be 2 generations of untraceable animals creating havoc in the wild. Frankly, we believe the risk to the environment from any goat-keeping exercise is just too great, and something that needs extremely strict controls!
Having read through the Plan, we are left somewhat disappointed. Given the climate change driven extremes we have encountered over the past 4 – 5 years, we were hoping to find a greater degree of forcefulness, for lack of a better term, in ensuring best practice NRM is occurs across all sectors. Instead, this plan, has the objective to: “Promote the Landscape Restoration Flagship Program as the region’s overarching approach to delivering integrated landscape scale NRM programs ….,” which merely tinkers at the edges of the problem.
The Clarence Environment Centre has a proud 32-year record of environmental advocacy, with conservation of the natural environment an absolute priority. As such, we view planning as the key to an ecologically sustainable future.
Having been alerted to the above document privately at the last minute, this submission will be far from comprehensive. However, we would like to make the following observations in relation to the salient points of the Draft.
Twelve months on from the delivery of the "Water Quality Crisis” report, another flood, and another announcement from council (5th March 2022), to the effect that: “Our drinking water storages at Shannon Creek Dam and Nymboida River have received a huge amount of dirty water over the past week. The dirty water will affect our water treatment processes and we unfortunately cannot be certain of the water quality”.
As our earlier report explained, supported by evidence, it is soil disturbance through human activity and bad management that contributes to excessive turbidity, not just heavy rainfall.