By CAROLYN TUCKER
08.09.2006


INTERNATIONAL anger is mounting over the Traveston dam, with more than 100 scientists from around the world writing to the State and Federal Governments to register their protest.

More than 5700 others have signed an online petition expressing outrage at the threat posed to one of the world’s most important evolutionary species, the lungfish.

Australia’s leading expert on the lungfish, Professor Jean Joss, and Swedish palaeontologist and biologist Professor Per Ahlberg initiated the campaign soon after plans for the dam were unveiled.

Professor Joss said experts from across the globe are universally dismayed about the dam’s potential to wipe out this scientific treasure, ancient ancestor and living fossil.

“The signatories represent almost all countries in the world,” she said.

“The letters sent directly are from the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, Canada and Japan.

“The latter in particular point out that Japan, once a great damming country, is now pulling down dams and attempting to reinstate their rivers at very great expense.”

The lungfish is equipped with both a lung and gills, and is seen as crucial support for Darwin’s theory that at some stage fish crawled out of the water and became land dwelling vertebrates.

Scientists say the Mary and Burnett Rivers are the lungfish’s only natural habitats and if its breeding grounds are destroyed, answers to some of the secrets of evolution will be lost forever.

Professor Joss said the Paradise Dam provides ample evidence that the Traveston dam will have disastrous consequences.

“Quite apart from the fact that the Paradise Dam is currently losing rather than accumulating water, the very extravagant fish lift constructed at taxpayer’s expense to ‘save the lungfish’ is useless for assisting lungfish spawning,” she said.

Professor Joss said attempts to raise the scientific community’s concerns directly with the Premier have so far been ignored.