E&OE….
Topics: Threatened Species Summit, National Threatened Species Strategy, Shenhua Watermark mine approval
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Today the Environment Minister Greg Hunt launched a new strategy for protecting threatened species. $6.5 million dollars will be used to protect 20 mammals, 20 birds and a range of plants.
That includes the orange-bellied parrot, the numbat, and the golden bandicoot. Money will also go to habitat recovery and killing feral cats, which, judging by our Facebook and Twitter comments so far, seems to be a topic that gets many of you very, very fired up. And Greg Hunt is with us now. Welcome to the programme.
GREG HUNT:
And good evening Patricia.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Minister I want to read you a couple of Facebook comments from our listeners, which pretty much sums up the attitude I think Australians have to feral cats. Here's one: Yes, all cats should be desexed, and ferals hunted. Cats and rabbits should never have been allowed into this country.
And another – yes, lock up domestic cats and kill the rest somehow. So it's not a scientific sample I'm providing you, but the sentiment is there. When it comes to feral cats – not big fans. We're not big fans. So how will you do it?
GREG HUNT:
Sure. So the first thing is the scope of the problem. The strongest advice from Professor John Woinarski, who's one of Australia's great ecologists and hard scientists, is that the number one threat to Australia's wildlife is feral cats. This was an exhaustive study and he identified habitat loss, foxes, climate change, a variety of factors, but number one with a clear position was feral cats because there are, on the advice of the Threatened Species Commissioner, about 20 million of them. They are tsunamis of violence and death for Australia's native species.
So, what are the things that we're going to do? We are going to create, firstly, enclosures where you create feral-free space for habitat recovery and in particular the recovery of both birds and mammals. Secondly, we've set a target of eradicating 2 million feral cats over the coming years, and then back that with creating about 10 million hectares of feral-free open land and 10 of these enclosures and five feral-free islands. And then we build on that with looking to get more funding from the States and Territories.
The other element which wasn't mentioned in your introduction, because it's not been widely reported, within the Agriculture White Paper, was $100 million dollars for eradicating feral animals. 50 for current and 50 for new and emerging threats, so that's a huge additional sum on top of what we're already doing.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Okay, you've just described feral cats as tsunamis of violence, but today's announcement was just for $6.6 million dollars and feral, you know, there's – that doesn't seem, I mean I know something about the Federal Budget; I've been to a couple of lockups. $6.6 million dollars isn't very much.
GREG HUNT:
Well where we're at, all up, is a total of about $215 million dollars. We already had $110 on the table for threatened species recovery. That's $80 million dollars that the Threatened Species Commissioner has helped coordinate and $30 million for a National Threatened Species Recovery Hub.
That's led by Professor Hugh Possingham and Professor David Lindenmayer, two of Australia's great, practical, ecologists, and their work is field work, it's not just research, it's practical recovery of threatened species. There's the additional $6.5 million dollars today, but then there's the further $100 million dollars for directly targeting the feral animals, that was included in the White Paper. So all up…
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
So the $6.6 is the additional money that you've committed today…
GREG HUNT:
It is additional. So all up that's about $215 million dollars.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Let's put this in perspective. We've had reports on RN that found that feral cats eat a mind-boggling 75 million native animals every night. That's been, you know, some…
GREG HUNT:
That's correct. It's been the most astonishing figure and discovery.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
I didn't believe that figure when I first heard it, I've got to say. One of the producers provided it – I didn't believe it was so high. Are you saying that that's actually where we're at?
GREG HUNT:
Correct. I went over that with the Environment Department today and the Threatened Species Commissioner. And the way it works is there are about 20 million feral cats in Australia. On average, they take close to four animals a night – these could be lizards, they could be small animals, sadly they could be larger mammals. And then when you multiply it out over the course of the year that is a truly frightening number.
So this has to be wildlife protection priority number one and there has never been a sort of feral cat eradication plan in Australia. Yesterday we had all of the State and Territory Environment Ministers together. They agreed to declare the feral cat as a national pest, which will apply in each State and Territory as well as under Commonwealth law. And then today, we went further with these projects that are on top of funding that was already in place.
I have to say, these- over 250 people, all of whom are going away to look at specific threatened species pledges that they can make themselves. So we're building a national prospectus. And we had the New Zealand Conservation Minister Maggie Barry, the American Ambassador John Berry who was a former head of national parks and zoos. And both gave their experiences and said that what we're doing in Australia is really ground-breaking stuff.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
A couple of quick questions, if I can, on the Watermark coal mine on the Liverpool Plains.
GREG HUNT:
Sure.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Aboriginal elders say they will take the mine approval to the United Nations because it will destroy sacred sites. Have you been ignoring Aboriginal concerns?
GREG HUNT:
No, not at all. There is a process for consideration of any Indigenous concern under what's called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act. And that's a separate process and any concerns that wish to be placed before the Federal Government go through that process. And it's what called a statutory process, a sort of a strictly legal process. And anything that is put to me and needs to be considered will be considered on its merits. It's a very, very strict legal process. And I'll consider anything against that basis.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Are you concerned though about this idea of moving them, storing them, for 17 years and then putting them back? Is that legal?
GREG HUNT:
Look, I simply have to follow the law and if something's put to me I'll address that, consider it and respond to it. What I can't do ever is pre-empt any of these legal processes because that always opens up grounds for appeal either way by a proponent or an opponent.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
If you're just tuning into RN Drive, I'm speaking with the Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, who's been launching a strategy today on feral cats and protecting Australian endangered species. 0418226576- or rather threatened species I think is the language.
Now, today on Macquarie radio you made a pledge in relation to the Watermark coalmine on the Liverpool Plains in New South Wales. Alan Jones wasn't very happy with you, was he?
GREG HUNT:
Look, this is a proposal that's he not purported. And there are differing views in the community. We are at stage 15 of 17, the Commonwealth. It's a New South Wales project, started by New South Wales Labor. They had total discretion over whether or not they opened the land, to whom they opened the land. It is confined to the ridge country. It is not on the black soil plain by law.
And all I can do is follow the advice of six rounds of scientific assessment, the legal advice and the departmental advice. And all said that with the conditions we were putting in place, there was no question, no question that the Federal standards were met…
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
That's right, and you've been saying that the approval of this mine is prescriptive – but don't you have a wide discretion to consider economic and social matters under Section 136 of the Act? So you could consider the economic costs of the mine, such as damaging agricultural land?
GREG HUNT:
Well, in fact, it is not on the black soil plain at all and the advice is that it wouldn't have any impact on the black soil plain. I think two things are very important here: one is it's not on that cropping land. Some of the claims there are completely false. It's not our project, we don't get any discretion over where, or whom, or when. We have to determine the Federal law and whether it applies.
Secondly, the scientific advice was that it would use approximately one in- well, a maximum of one in one thousand parts of the available agricultural water. That would have to be obtained by license in any event and all of the scientific assessments have said that they believe that's a very conservative figure and that in reality it's likely to be less than the one in one thousand.
But that's the legal limit. So both the water and the broader question of the land – it's a very different scientific situation, a very different environmental situation to what has been presented in some of the public debates.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Greg Hunt, thank you for joining me to talk about what you've been working on today.
GREG HUNT:
Thanks very much. I think it's one of those really good days in Australian environmental history. We've had the Barrier Reef announcement by the UN recently. We've had the Renewable Energy Target and now we've had the threatened species outcome. And it's a long, hard road. It'll be a challenge for Australia over the next 50 years. But I think we may have turned a corner today.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
Well, I've got to say, those numbers are absolutely staggering to me. Thanks for joining us.
GREG HUNT:
Cheers.
PATRICIA KARVELAS:
And that's the Federal Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, joining us.
(ENDS)