Conservationists have reached out to a higher power, the Queen, in a bid to save Black Swan Lake

GROUPS opposed to the Gold Coast Turf Club’s bid to fill in Black Swan Lake have made a plea to a higher power in the hopes she won't be amused.

CONSERVATIONISTS battling to save a Bundall waterway have taken their appeal to a higher power — Her Royal Highness, The Queen.

In a desperate bid to protect the threatened habitat following appeals to local Gold Coast City councillors, the council itself and the Gold Coast Turf Club, one opponent has taken it upon herself to seek help from the Palace in a bid to halt the turf club’s plan to fill in Black Swan Lake, a 2.7ha former borrow pit in Goldmarket Dr.

The turf club move is designed to cater for overflow parking.

Now, Tammy Hogan who lives in Tugun but has taken a special interest in the future of the lake and its feathered inhabitants, has decided it was time play the ace in her hand — or in this case hopefully a royal flush.

The Queen Mother feeding black swans. Photo: Supplied

Ms Hogan said she has taken her concerns to her local councillor, Division 14’s Gail O’Neill but felt she had been “fobbed off” so decided to report the action to someone of higher standing.

“I called Buckingham Palace and I explained the situation to them,” she said.

Having explained the lie of the land, the palace put Ms Hogan through to a man who had some knowledge of swans and their behaviour.

The Queen’s Swan Marker, Richard Barber.

Technically, all unmarked swans in open water in the United Kingdom belong to the Queen, although the Crown only ‘exercises her ownership on certain stretches of the Thames and its surrounding tributaries’.

Conservationists battling to save Black Swan Lake are hoping the Queen will not be amused at the decision to fill in the former borrow pit.

Mr Barber’s official role is to count up all the cygnets on the Thames and make sure the number of swans on the river is maintained.

Whether his sphere of responsibility can be extended to the Gold Coast remains to be seen but that hasn’t deterred Ms Hogan.

Timing is everything and Ms Hogan said she wanted to extend an invitation to the royals to visit the lake during next year’s Commonwealth Games but was fearful that time was something the lake didn’t have.

“I don’t want to extend an invitation, have them accept it and there’s nothing but a carpark here,” she said.

“I want to do all I can to make sure the lake is here and the black swans are here if the Royals came to visit it.”

And while Griffith University’s professor of public policy and law AJ Brown said while he was very sympathetic to anyone trying to save the swans, sadly the Queen would have no sway over the native birds.

“No way in the world,” he said.

“The only way it would have occurred would have been if in 1900 when the Australian was written that particular area of legislative power had been referred to Britain when the British passed the Australian Constitution.

“I have never heard anything to suggest it was.”