Black-throated finch derails Adani’s coalmine
The endangered black-throated finch is on the verge of halting Adani’s controversial coalmine after a review.
The endangered black-throated finch is on the verge of halting Adani’s controversial coalmine after a review by a Melbourne academic, commissioned by the Queensland government at the 11th hour, found the multi-billion-dollar project’s plan to protect the rare bird was inadequate.
The Indian conglomerate, which has won state and federal environmental approvals over more than seven years of assessments, last night criticised the draft report by University of Melbourne ecologist Brendan Wintle, who was accused of bias over his associations with anti-coal activism. A copy of the report, obtained by The Australian, recommended the Carmichael coalmine face a tough new monitoring scheme that would shut down mining if the finch population reduced over the project’s first five years.
Adani last night attacked the report by Professor Wintle — who tweeted a photograph last November of two children holding a placard that read “I’ll stop farting if you stop burning burn coal” — as a “shopping list of ideas” that went far beyond reviewing the management plan. “As we anticipated, this draft report reads like an anti-coal, anti-mining, anti-Adani lobbying brochure,” an Adani spokeswoman said.
Professor Wintle’s criticisms came despite Adani developing the management plan over 18 months of close consultation with Queensland’s Environment Department — including seven revisions — and obtaining the approval of federal environment officials. Environmental management plans are rarely controversial as the state government, by that stage, has already cleared the proponent’s broad strategy and issued an environmental authority.
Amid pressure to scuttle the mine, Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch’s department commissioned Professor Wintle last December to re-examine the finch plan, just weeks after Adani announced it had funding for the mine. The review’s findings are set to delay construction of the mine, which cannot begin without state approval of the plan to protect the endangered bird.
The Carmichael mine is critical to opening up the Galilee Basin, a massive, untapped coal province geologists say could yield more than 27 billion tonnes of coal, employ 15,000 coalminers across six projects and bring broader economic benefits to the region.
A departmental spokesman said it would consider the final report and any submissions by Adani in making a decision on the black-throated finch management plan.
Adani’s spokeswoman criticised the draft report for raising questions about how the finches would cope with climate change, and for citing research by an academic who had been “actively campaigning against the Carmichael project for years”.
“If the Queensland government accepts any part of this report, it means their own Department of Environment’s work over the past 18 months is at best incompetent, and at worst using purposeful delay tactics to slow down the delivery of the Carmichael project and the thousands of jobs it will provide,” she said.
The Minerals Council of Australia said Professor Wintle was “clearly biased” against coalmining and Queenslanders had “every right to be angry”.
Although Labor ministers were once enthusiastic about Adani’s plan to open the Galilee Basin, the project has since divided the Palaszczuk government.
A key sceptic is left-wing Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, who hit back this week at Adani’s claims that Labor was deliberately frustrating the project.
“If Adani means that the Queensland government using science to verify reports that are put forward as government ‘changing the goalposts’, then I think Queenslanders would have a different opinion,” Ms Trad said.
“We will not be bullied by anyone in relation to making sure we do our job properly.”
Ms Enoch has insisted Adani’s project was vetted by her bureaucrats, free of political interference.
“The department is committed to working with Adani to ensure that the (finch management plan) meets the requirements of the environmental authority conditions and is based on the leading science and advice,” the departmental spokesman said.
Professor Wintle, who directs the taxpayer-funded Threatened Species Recovery Hub, said he had been chosen to appoint and chair the six-member review panel “due to my expertise in the area of threatened species conservation planning”.
In December, Professor Wintle criticised policymakers and scientists for “continually” clearing patches of rural vegetation to make way for job-creating mines.
“Mostly, policymakers and scientists do not consider these losses to be, on their own, a fatal blow to the biodiversity of a region or country,” he wrote for online media outlet The Conversation.
“Small, often isolated patches of vegetation are considered expendable, tradeable, of limited ecological value due to their small size and relatively large amount of ‘edgy’ habitat. Wrong.”
Adani announced in November that, after almost a decade of delays, it would start construction of a scaled-down coalmine before Christmas. At the time, chief executive Lucas Dow said the project’s two outstanding management plans — the finch plan and a groundwater plan — were “essentially routine” and would be approved within weeks.
Once touted as able to produce 60 million tonnes a year, the mine project has been scaled back to an initial output of 10 million tonnes a year before ramping up to an annual 27.5 million tonnes within a decade. Adani’s planned rail link to the Abbot Point port would also be opened for use by its rivals, with an initial hauling capacity of 40 million tonnes annually that could be doubled within years.
Labor’s approach to Adani contrasts with its approach to the Townsville Ring Road. The government did not seek an external review before approving that popular project.
