I have heard from a few reliable sources that the official ‘party’ line within the Queensland labor party regarding the impact of the Traveston Crossing Proposal on lungfish goes something like this:

“They haven’t bred in the Mary River for over forty years - so their only hope for species survival is a captive breeding programme and Traveston won’t make any significant difference to the chances of species survival if a captive breeding programme is in place.”

I imagine that this piece of Stupid Logic (tm - QWI PL) could be applied to any threatened species anywhere in the world by people who wanted to justify destroying remnant breeding habitat. Mountain gorillas, orangutans, pandas - they don’t need forests - they can live in zoos. It could also be used for other epbc species on the Mary like MR cod, MR turtle & giant barred frog-they don’t need breeding habitat in the wild - we can breed them in tanks!

I believe that there are two ways to tackle this before the EIS is released:

1. Bring this stupid argument right out into the open and expose it to scrutiny in the press. Of course captive breeding programmes are a good idea - because they might help the species survive - and of course destroying remnant habitat is a really bad idea (illegal in fact) - because it definitely will send a species in the direction of extinction. Rescuing a few orphans while deliberately burning down a village and murdering all their families is still generally regarded as a war crime.

2. Document as much breeding activity of lungfish in the river that we can: Photographs/ reports of small/young lungfish, reports of spawning activities. (For example, last year locals report that lungfish spawned vigorously in Yabba Creek.) Perhaps the “forty years” figure in the party dogma refers to the last time that lungfish were recorded breeding in the Mary River in a published scientific study and this fact is being twisted by certain interests within the party machine. By this logic - cobblers pegs (bidens repens) could be shown to be not reproducing in the wild in Noosa Shire because the Queensland herbarium has no recently recorded occurrances from that Shire in its database!

I believe that we need to enlist in the aid of the lungfish experts in this - particularly those who will be involved in the government’s proposal to set up a captive breeding and research facility on the Mary. I believe that they are highly ethical people who will agree with the first point above. You might like to read Prof Jean Joss’s excellent witness statement to the senate enquiry on this very issue.
http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/S10200.pdf#page=40

Please forward this information to people in your network of contacts who have the interests of these species at heart. The Traveston Crossing Dam proposal makes an almost useless and utterly superflous contribution to Brisbane’s water supply/demand balance problems but would likely be instrumental in pushing a record number of vertebrate species towards extinction in one fell proposal. It could even surpass the 3 Gorges dam in this respect -” by crikey -it doesn’t produce much water,- but we’ve sure set a world record in terms of species extinction!” just the sort of thing that soon-to-be-retiring dam-builders and environmental consultants would be proud to have on their resume.

If people are interested, the Mary River Catchment Coordinating Committee has just set up a web-based forum for recording community observations about events in the Mary River Catchment - perhaps this could be used to collate reliable current lungfish observations in the Mary. This forum is at www.MRCCC.org.au/wwwwatch. Perhaps we could have a community focus on river and creek observations in the Mary Catchment during threatened species week (1st week in September) This also coincides with the International RiverSymposium and Riverfest in Brisbane. What do you think?

Read also: Can the Queensland Lungfish use Fish Ladders
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