LAST year eco-activists were gearing up for a crusade against a Derby tidal power station.
LAST year eco-activists were gearing up for a crusade against a Derby tidal power station.
A year before they lined up to save the old-growth forests, many of which, we’ve subsequently learned, were man made, since the land had earlier been felled, so they are really re-growth woodlands.
This year it’s Ningaloo Reef, or at least a small part of this exquisite 250km-long creation.
No environmental issue involving conflict is easy.
But we’re fortunate in having institutions in place to help resolve complex differences in an orderly and, hopefully, wise and just manner.
All are set to be tested to the limit in coming months in relation to the proposed multi-million dollar Coral Coast Resort at Mauds Landing, near popular Coral Bay.
The State Government awaits an Environmental Protection Authority report with recommendations.
But eco-activists are restless in Fremantle, and author Tim Winton recently addressed 1500 of them.
Not widely known is that, between 1899 and the 1940s, Mauds Landing was a port.
Consult WA’s 1902-04 Yearbook under “Principal Towns” and you’ll see it had a 450m-long jetty, even a light railway.
So developers, Coral Coast Marina Development, want to resurrect a townsite gazetted in 1899, but with modern comforts and facilities, including a marina as protection against cyclones.
Even a Mauds Landing Shipping & Trading Company existed until 1924.
Surrounding the townsite is Cardabia station, owned by an Aboriginal community, while an adjacent, coast-fronting lease is the equally large Ningaloo station in which Perth businessman Martin Copley holds a 25 per cent stake through his pathfinding entity, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC).
Mr Copley’s AWC has teamed-up with the Australian Marine Conservation Society, Conservation Council of WA, and The Wilderness Society in a campaign called Save Ningaloo Reef to target the Mauds Landing resort.
This is further complicated by the fact that Mr Copley’s top consultant is leading WA naturalist Dr Barry Wilson, who also chairs the Marine Parks and Reserves Authority (MPRA), which naturally has a big say in the fate of Mauds Landing.
Dr Wilson is AWC’s managing director.
He also sits on Premier Geoff Gallop’s science council and is a man with knowledge about WA’s wildlife – threatened and otherwise – and coastal terrain.
I spoke at length with him last week and he appreciates his dual posts could be seen as compromising.
He said members of both the AWC board and MPRA knew of the overlap, as does Environment Minister Judy Edwards.
Dr Wilson is not clandestine about it.
In fact I discovered it by reading the AWC’s website, which says of Dr Wilson: “Zoologist and world expert on molluscs, former director of Natural Conservation in WA and currently chair of the MPRA”.
AWC hopes, with the concurrence of its Ningaloo station partners, to eventually transform the area into a wildlife sanctuary, along the lines of its other sanctuaries: Karakamia and Paruna, near Perth; Mt Gibson, near Payne’s Find; Faure Island within Shark Bay; and Mornington station in the Kimberley – 450,000ha all up.
All were bought by Mr Copley and are being restocked with indigenous creatures threatened by land clearance, feral cats, and/or foxes.
All are thus the creation of a truly farsighted philanthropist and nature lover.
AWC is unique in another way.
“It is a company limited by guarantee whose members have no rights to participate in the profits or any distribution of the assets of the company,” AWC’s website says.
“In the event that the company ceases to operate and is wound up, its assets must be transferred to another organisation with similar environmental objectives.
“The company is entered on the Register of Environmental Organisations and is exempt from liability for income tax by s.50-65 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997.
“Donations are deductible under subsections 78(4) and 78AB of the Income Tax Act 1936.”
But where does all this leave the Mauds Landing project?
Understandably its backers don’t wish to comment extensively.
But I expect they’d be angry if something they’ve spent millions on, preparing plans and reports – some more than 1000 pages – was simply canned.
And where would that leave the North West, with its array of tangible and intangible attributes, which could make it a gripping tourism destination, both for southern city-dwelling sun and nature-loving Australians, and foreigners.
Unlike northern Queensland, the North West is virtually barren of modern resort facilities, stuck back in the 1950s.
Let’s hope our environmental protection, and public and economic planning institutions, are capable of resolving, indeed enhancing, all such needs, wisely and justly
A year before they lined up to save the old-growth forests, many of which, we’ve subsequently learned, were man made, since the land had earlier been felled, so they are really re-growth woodlands.
This year it’s Ningaloo Reef, or at least a small part of this exquisite 250km-long creation.
No environmental issue involving conflict is easy.
But we’re fortunate in having institutions in place to help resolve complex differences in an orderly and, hopefully, wise and just manner.
All are set to be tested to the limit in coming months in relation to the proposed multi-million dollar Coral Coast Resort at Mauds Landing, near popular Coral Bay.
The State Government awaits an Environmental Protection Authority report with recommendations.
But eco-activists are restless in Fremantle, and author Tim Winton recently addressed 1500 of them.
Not widely known is that, between 1899 and the 1940s, Mauds Landing was a port.
Consult WA’s 1902-04 Yearbook under “Principal Towns” and you’ll see it had a 450m-long jetty, even a light railway.
So developers, Coral Coast Marina Development, want to resurrect a townsite gazetted in 1899, but with modern comforts and facilities, including a marina as protection against cyclones.
Even a Mauds Landing Shipping & Trading Company existed until 1924.
Surrounding the townsite is Cardabia station, owned by an Aboriginal community, while an adjacent, coast-fronting lease is the equally large Ningaloo station in which Perth businessman Martin Copley holds a 25 per cent stake through his pathfinding entity, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC).
Mr Copley’s AWC has teamed-up with the Australian Marine Conservation Society, Conservation Council of WA, and The Wilderness Society in a campaign called Save Ningaloo Reef to target the Mauds Landing resort.
This is further complicated by the fact that Mr Copley’s top consultant is leading WA naturalist Dr Barry Wilson, who also chairs the Marine Parks and Reserves Authority (MPRA), which naturally has a big say in the fate of Mauds Landing.
Dr Wilson is AWC’s managing director.
He also sits on Premier Geoff Gallop’s science council and is a man with knowledge about WA’s wildlife – threatened and otherwise – and coastal terrain.
I spoke at length with him last week and he appreciates his dual posts could be seen as compromising.
He said members of both the AWC board and MPRA knew of the overlap, as does Environment Minister Judy Edwards.
Dr Wilson is not clandestine about it.
In fact I discovered it by reading the AWC’s website, which says of Dr Wilson: “Zoologist and world expert on molluscs, former director of Natural Conservation in WA and currently chair of the MPRA”.
AWC hopes, with the concurrence of its Ningaloo station partners, to eventually transform the area into a wildlife sanctuary, along the lines of its other sanctuaries: Karakamia and Paruna, near Perth; Mt Gibson, near Payne’s Find; Faure Island within Shark Bay; and Mornington station in the Kimberley – 450,000ha all up.
All were bought by Mr Copley and are being restocked with indigenous creatures threatened by land clearance, feral cats, and/or foxes.
All are thus the creation of a truly farsighted philanthropist and nature lover.
AWC is unique in another way.
“It is a company limited by guarantee whose members have no rights to participate in the profits or any distribution of the assets of the company,” AWC’s website says.
“In the event that the company ceases to operate and is wound up, its assets must be transferred to another organisation with similar environmental objectives.
“The company is entered on the Register of Environmental Organisations and is exempt from liability for income tax by s.50-65 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997.
“Donations are deductible under subsections 78(4) and 78AB of the Income Tax Act 1936.”
But where does all this leave the Mauds Landing project?
Understandably its backers don’t wish to comment extensively.
But I expect they’d be angry if something they’ve spent millions on, preparing plans and reports – some more than 1000 pages – was simply canned.
And where would that leave the North West, with its array of tangible and intangible attributes, which could make it a gripping tourism destination, both for southern city-dwelling sun and nature-loving Australians, and foreigners.
Unlike northern Queensland, the North West is virtually barren of modern resort facilities, stuck back in the 1950s.
Let’s hope our environmental protection, and public and economic planning institutions, are capable of resolving, indeed enhancing, all such needs, wisely and justly