The Nature Conservation Council of NSW today welcomed the proclamation of the world's largest network of marine reserves as an historic occasion for Australia.
NCC CEO Pepe Clarke said the new reserves, which added 2.3 million square kilometres to a system that now covers 3 million square kilometres, provided protection for extraordinary marine habitats around the country.
The Nature Conservation Council of NSW today called on the State Government to abandon the costly and destructive Cobbora open-cut coal mine proposal.
CEO Pepe Clarke welcomed indications that the State Government was now prepared to reconsider its commitment to the development of the mine for financial reasons.
“The government must now acknowledge the environmental and climate change costs make the project totally unacceptable,” CEO Pepe Clarke said.
Revelations about the high levels of methane leakage from the Tara Estate coal seam gasfield in Queensland cast serious doubts on claims the industry’s greenhouse impact is relatively benign, according to the Nature Conservation Council of NSW.
“Industry has repeatedly claimed that CSG is a low emission energy source because it contributes less to greenhouse gas emissions than other fossil fuels, but that argument may be blown out of the water by revelations aired last night on ABC TV’s 7.30 report,” CEO Pepe Clarke said.
Two grass-roots organisations have shared the NSW Nature Conservation Council’s (NCC) annual award for an outstanding environment group.
Friends of the Koala Inc shared the award with Lane Cove Bushland and Conservation Society Inc at the 2012 NSW Environment Awards, which were presented at the NCC’s annual conference at Sydney University on Saturday, October 27.
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The NSW Government wants to develop a state-owned coal mine that will cost taxpayers more than $3 billion, destroy nearly two thousand hectares of wildlife habitat, and provide half-priced coal to our state’s polluting power stations for more than 20 years.
State and territory governments cannot be trusted to meet federal environmental standards released today by Environment Minister Tony Burke, according to the Nature Conservation Council of NSW.
The draft standards for accreditation under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, released this morning, are a keystone element in the federal government’s proposal to transfer its environmental approval powers to the states.
Today’s decision to approve the Maules Creek mine is a disgraceful failure of public policy, and proof that the NSW Government has comprehensively failed to deliver protection for critical environmental assets, according to the Nature Conservation Council of NSW.
The NSW Planning Assessment Commission today approved the Whitehaven Coal proposal to carve a swathe through Leard State Forest in the state’s north west, opening the way for destruction of more than 1,800 hectares of high conservation value wildlife habitat.
The NSW Government is sitting on its hands while thousands of hectares of native bushland has been cleared near Moree and in other parts of the state, threatening the survival of local koala populations and destroying habitat for threatened wildlife, the state’s peak environment group said today.
More than 1,000 hectares of bushland near Moree, documented as important koala habitat, has been bulldozed and an investigation is underway, but the NSW Government has said it may not take any enforcement action until Christmas.
The decision to approve an open cut coal mine only a few hundred metres from the village of Camberwell in the Hunter Valley reveals fundamental failures in the NSW planning system, the NSW Nature Conservation Council said today.
Under pressure from big business and the mining industry, governments are moving forward with an aggressive plan to wind back our environmental protection laws.
In the guise of cutting ‘green tape’, government and industry propose to hand important federal approval powers to the states, and fast track approvals for large developments.
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