I live in Brisbane in south eastern Queensland (Australia) and we are now on what are called level 3 water restrictions. This means if you want to water your garden you have to use a bucket. It is illegal to use a sprinkler or even a hose at any time.
South east Queensland is one of the fastest growing regions in Australia and we have had a few dry years. There is no water recycling, no desalination plant and we have not traditionaly pumped from groundwater, we have relied almost exclusively on three dams that were build decades ago.
As dam levels continue to fall and the population continues to grow the Labor state government recently committed to building a dam on the Mary River. A group has formed to opposed the dam with a website called SaveTheMaryRiver.com .
Following is an article from a local aboriginal elder about the Queensland lungfish and why the Mary River should not be dammed:
"Imagine being able to link your history back 380 million years? Impossible you say? Yes, for humans, but we have one resident of Queensland who can do that – The Queensland lung fish (Neoceratodus forsteri).
The lung fish appeared on earth 180 million years before the dinosaurs and found a habitat which enabled it to live into our days. Is it right that we humans are contemplating the destruction of this pre-historic example of evolution because of five years less rainfall than we used to have? This living fossil link is the evolution of all our feathery and hairy fellow creatures with fishes
There are six species of lung fish in the world belonging to two families. One family contains a single species only, and this is our Queenslander, making it a very rare species indeed. What is special about our lung fish is that it has only one lung, while all other species have two (paired) lungs. World-wide lung fish are very rare and endangered because they rely on special habitats that increasingly are occupied by humans. The natural habitat of the Queensland lung fish is restricted to the Burnett and Mary River systems.
The Queensland lung fish is unique in the world, making it a creature of highest biodiversity value and significance. It is a rare natural asset which we have a duty to protect.
Its uniqueness, the links to the past, afforded by its natural habitat confined to our State, should be sufficient reasons in themselves for highest protection priorityf or this creature and the habitat on which it depends to ensure the survival of a viable population – the only one of its kind on the planet.
However, another important reason to protect it, is that it is a sacred (totemic) fish of the Gubbi Gubbi people. We never killed or ate the fish, and saw it as important to protect it. We call it “Dala” and for reasons associated with its important place in our culture, we were often referred to by other Aboriginal groups, as “the Dala” people. Our traditional land encompasses the Mary River basin and its catchments.
The Mary Cod is an important economic fish, but the Dala (lung fish) are not to be killed but protected from harm.
The lungfish’s longevity of life and occupancy of our waterways, is undoubtedly due in part, to its protection by our people over tens of thousands of years. We are still bound by this duty of care – the reason for my penning this document in an appeal for help for the survival of “Dala”.Through the Integrated Planning Act (1997), now embodied in the South East Queensland Regional Plan (2005), the State government committed itself to “recognise, protect and conserve Aboriginal values in land, water and natural resources” (section 7.4). It also recognises the principle and policies to “conserve and manage the region’s biodiversity values” and “ensure land use planning and development activities “..respect identified biodiversity values” in order to “protect, manage and enhance areas of ..biodiversity significance: (section 2.1).
The proposed dam on the Mary River clearly violates the SEQ Regional Plan because the Mary-Burnett basin is known to be the only natural habitate of the Queensland Lungfish. It also ignores the Gubbi Gubbi cultural heritage values and the reverence we give to this creature.
Studies to date give sufficient reason to not dam the river, however, if further studies are undertaken for developments which involve use of water from the Mary River, the following should be given special attention:
Studies must involve fresh-water stream ecologists and other scientists using the most up-to-date technologies and methodologies. The issue is too critical to rely on outdated practices. (Data to date indicates that our lung fish transported to other catchments have not done well, so tranportation is not an answer).Its eggs are attached to specific aquatic plants during August to December. However, it is slow growing, taking 2 years to reach 1.2 cm. and 100 years to reach its maximum size of 1.5 m. The plants on which eggs are laid, should also be the subject of study and care. With its long life span, the fact that Dala fails to reproduce under altered conditions such as those caused by a dam will go unnoticed for years – but then it will be too late to rectify the mistakes we make today, which will destroy Dala forever.Effects of dams on Queensland Lung Fish (“Dala” to the Gubbi Gubbi people):
• Dams prohibit the possibility of migration over the long distances they need during spawning
• Dala requires shallow, flowing riffles and glides amongst dense beds of submerged aquatic plants to lay its eggs – these do not exist within a dam.Breeding cannot occur in the deep waters of a dam. There are many issues associated with the need for riffles, optimum water quality, and so on, but the bottom line is: Dala will become extinct if it cannot breed."
By Eve Mumewa Doreen Fesl,OAM,CM,PhD (nee Evelyn Serico), Gubbi Gubbi Elder
I have just heard the story of the lung fish and the proposed Queensland dam on the BBC World Service. Although I am on the other side of the world, Essex in the UK, I am greatly concerned re the negative effect of the dam on both the local people and the ecology. If this goes ahead history will one day write this generation off as much as we are now critising the slave trade of the 18th Century. An alternative must be found. Dave Bolton
look, we've fucked with the indigenous people too much in the past. let them have their lungfish and land!
So it seems my that my initial disbelief at the costings for the proposed dam are founded in fact.
The estimate of 1.9 billion was a ball-park figure, and admissions have been made that it was not an estimate based on factual appraisal. The pipeline costs alone would eat up that amount, and then some, and the 50 million dollars allocated for land resumptions, as Premier Beattie admitted, would not even approach a percentage of the actual costs involved in repatriating those property owners affected by stage one of the proposal.
Also of interest is the call for all information and technical assessment outcomes to be tabled for public perusal. Why should we have to call for it? If the Beattie team has something to hide, the question is; WHY?
There is nothing untoward in people protesting such a proposal, considering the impact it may have on their lives, family history in the region, or personal attachment to their property, and there is surely nothing anti-establishment in the search for truth, in what is becoming a rather dictatorial approach to an issue that has so many question marks surrounding it.
What is required is transparency in Government decisions, factual evidence or research data backing the dam proposal (none so far), and the names of the obviously successful tenderers for the dam construction, pipeline installation, highway reconstruction, and technical data on the proposed absorption and evaporation rates for the dam.
So far, all we get from Mr. Beattie is, "The Traveston Dam will be built, no matter what."
Well I'm sorry to say, but that is not enough "evidence" for this little brown duck.
Lungfish aside, I might have overlooked it, but has nobody mentioned the endangered Mary River Cod (Maccullochella peelii mariensis)? I understand the species has been successfully stocked into lakes in the area, but like the Murray Cod, breeding in impoundments is unreliable.
On the dam issue, I'm looking at the costings, both initial, and long-term, and I'm still wondering how the scheme even got past the preliminary planning stages.
With an average soil depth of over ten metres, and an expansive shallow area, leaching and evaporation would see the flooded ground laid bare and unproductive for at least half of the year.
Like Lake Tinaroo in NQLD, any species surviving the initial damming, will perish in the oxygen-starved silt-laden shallows every year.
The lungfish will probably survive this. I don't know for sure. Other species like the Mary River Cod will not.
Not to mention the fact that our major highway will need to be reconstructed and diverted around the flooded ground, at enormous cost, and a pipeline, connecting the new dam with all the existing impoundments on the Sunshine coast will cross the landscape, dissecting the remaining tracts of bushland.
Get all the information already collected together, and let the people see it. We paid for those studies with our tax dollars. We are entitled to see the results.
Dams like Coololabin, and Wappa, need to be replicated. Smaller dams, in narrow passes higher in the mountains. Deeper, and closer to the bedrock, and less cash to construct.
The pipeline is what Beattie really wants. Traveston dam is not.
Cheers,
Norm from Yandina North Arm.
Hi
I'd just like to comment that whilst everybody is talking of water conservation and building dams,is Peter Beatty doing a knee jerk reaction to a problem that is not really there. Have a look at the following link: http://thecouriermail.com.au/extras/blogs/water/2006/06/seed-clouds.html
Dams may not be the answer. Could seeding rain bearing clouds be the answer?
Food for thought
I've felt my blood pressure elevate as I scrolled slowly down the posts. Forgive me Jack, but I live by the Mary, and as I watch these ancient creatures, the lungfish, I just get a totally different view of this planet and our place in it. I certainly don't see them as a straw to be clutched at to stop a dam.
Would I still get this same feeling if I had my own pet N. forsteri in an aquarium in the living room? I spose it'd be a great converstion piece for parties, but hell aren't we missing something here.
Heaven't we learnt enough of our folly in making some pretty major changes to this planet already. Remember the Australia, the dry country, just add water, so we stopped the Snowy running wastefully into the sea and turned it inland .... a triumph they called it when i was in primary school. In my adoloescence I did a high school trip around Australia and I still remember seeing paddocks of dead trees along the Murray. They weren't too sure why, didn't want to burst the "triumph" bubble I guess but eventually we got the s word.
A few weeks back I listened to Prof Peter Cullen at a Natural Resources Confernce. Concern about rising salinity in the Mary Valley. Later I learnt farmers had been advised not to build big dams there.
Maybe Jack'd say I'm just using this to try to stop the dam. I always felt good that in queensland we could maybe learn from other's mistakes. It's a lot of money involved and you can't just lift all the N. forsteri and the Mary River Cod and the Mary River turtles out and despatch them to in-home aquaria around the country and feel you've addressed the situation.
Mr Beattie referred on the 7.30 Report the other night, to the fish ladder at paradise dam. More like an elevator, really, great visual of the cage thundering upward from base of wall to top.
Lungfish carried from one place where they can't breed to another.
They're long -lived and do seem to live happily (how can you tell if a lungfish's happy?) in impoundments. They've taken all the vagaries of million of years of whatever the planet's climate tossed at 'em, flood, drought, stagnant pool, just mud..... always in the hope that there'd be a time when condition's 'd be good to breed, nice shallow riffles, running water, good oxygen levels. In all their millions of years they've never had to deal with anything quite as obstructive, dare I say monumental, as a dam.
So are there alternatives? An earlier writer listed a number and went through problems with each.... sort of inferring a dam as some sort of default position that didn't come with its own set of problems.
Try cost for example. I was always told that water from any of the "alternatives" was more costly than water from a dam and only recently found out that the cost of resuming the land for a dam isn't factored into those costs, nor of replacing roads, schools, powerlines etc.
Figures for Traveston lie somewhere between 1 and 3 billion dollars. That's just to resume, replace and build. What about ongoing lost income for the local economy? And what if Peter Cullen's salinity fears are realised, what cost there?
But that's a time frame outside the political short-term imperative.
So thanks Dr Eve. You say DALA is sacred. I say we treat, not just DALA but the river it lives in, with respect, because, as they say, we didn't inherit this earth from our forebears, we borrowed from our kids.
May they too be able to look and ponder at N.forsteri swimming freely and breeding successfully, in one of our planet's arteries, the Mary River.
Luke" You can tame them to take food from your hand".
That's cool!
Ann - it's two edged sword - aquarists have done some good things like saving the Lake Eacham rainbow fish (North Qld freshwater crater lake) but also reponsible for introducing species into systems that they should not e.g. Tilapia and Mosquito Fish.
Some people should never keep fish - just a life of cruelty - but others have species including specialist lungfish alive for decades. All depends on quality of husbandry. If you want to get into lung fish you need lots of room. That counts most people out. You can tame them to take food from your hand.
A pet lungfish is an unhappy lungfish.
To keep wild animals captive should be banned.
There is this one good thing with Norway they have banned all dolphinariums on cruelty grounds, a wild animal needs some space and for example it is equal to keep a golden eagle in a cage and a cod in a fish farm.
Steve
SE Qld is being told they need "option (e) - ALL OF THE ABOVE". New dams, desal, recycling, tanks and water conservation. The government is well into the detail and seems to be doing every option.
Rainwater tanks probably have a lot more impact than people think but being lazy - why bother. Brisbane's rain itself has been OK - just none in the more western dam catchment.