The Environmental Protection Authority last week confirmed it would,due to a legal technicality.
The clearing is scheduled to finish by 2025-2026,meaning by the time an assessment is complete the clearing will likely be too.
Curtin University wildlife biology expert Dr Hugh Finn,who,defined this as a “species-level impact” as the Gnangara-Pinjar-Yanchep forest represented almost 60 per cent of the food source for the remaining Perth-Peel Carnaby’s population.
The group Save the Black Cockatoos of which Finn is part,an alliance comprising Birdlife WA,the Conservation Council of WA,WA Forest Alliance,The Wilderness Society and the Urban Bushland Council of WA,has called for a moratorium on further clearing pending the EPA assessment.
Finn said he understood there was a softwood shortage but said the government had allowed things to progress to this stage without taking action,.
The most recent was the Strategic Assessment of the Perth and Peel Regions,which the state. It included a strategy to maintain 5000 hectares of pines as a permanent black cockatoo food source,and a simultaneous assessment of the whole of the cockatoo food resource across the Swan Coastal Plain.
The EPA justified its decision not to assess the clearing by saying the area was already covered by the current Forest Management Plan,which it did assess,as law dictated the same matter could not be assessed twice. This is why it has committed to do the work after the Forest Management Plan expired at the start of 2024.
Finn said this plan,however,had never substantially addressed the loss of the resource for cockatoos.
“Our basic position is that this has never been formally assessed,” he said.
“There is a rule of law and accountability issue here. We want the EPA to assess the overall loss of this 23,000 hectares,not only the loss of the bit left. We want the state held to account for the change in land use and for the impact of this change.
“The state government has avoided this. This is an abuse of power.”
Finn pointed out that the state’s native vegetation policy,released mid-2022 and,.
“We need to know these impacts on a landscape scale,” he said.
“We have two choices. We can manage the decline to extinction,or we can create a landscape that will sustain the recovery of this species for our children and grandchildren.
“In 2009,I spent time studying the birds at the Gnangara plantation. They consumed every cone there and would go back and forage on the ground for what was left. There were thousands of birds in there and they used the entire food resource.
“They are now forming mega-roosts,being pushed together in the competition for food,and. A significant proportion of the overall population.
“They’ve been using those pines since the 1930s. Across that period they’ve lost the banksia woodlands they historically would have otherwise fed upon.”
The state’s original reason for not replanting water-hungry pines in a time of declining rainfall was that the Gnangara mound was vital for Perth drinking water supply,but the group says keeping the small remaining extent of pine forest would not have a significant impact on the water table.
Save the Black Cockatoos spokesman Paddy Cullen said a state plan to replant 2000 hectares of pines with native vegetation would leave a 10-year gap while this food source became viable,leaving the birds to starve in the interim.
He said cutting down the remainder before the impact was officially assessed amounted to a “killer blow” for the species.
The group has written to Premier Mark McGowan and Environment Minister Reece Whitby.
A spokesperson for the state government said:“The state government is aware of the Environmental Protection Authority’s determination to assess the change of land use,purpose and condition of land within the Gnangara,Pinjar and Yanchep pine plantations and is currently considering the implications of the decision.”
The EPA decision follows its the.
It also follows revelations of,another important black cockatoo food source.
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