Finocchiaro government approves mass bird 'slaughter'
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
The NT Government has greenlit the slaughter of up to 20,000 native corellas and galahs at Newcastle Waters Station in the NT using poison.
This station, in the Barkly tableland, sits near the vast inland lake known as Lake Woods – an internationally significant wetland that supports over 100,000 waterbirds during the wet season. The impacts could be simply catastrophic.
The thought of 20,000 iconic Australian birds being shot and poisoned on a remote NT cattle station, part-owned by a British billionaire, should shock us. And it has.
In the last 24 hours, we’ve been flooded with messages of grief and anger at the wholesale destruction of what makes the Territory so special – our wildlife. The story has gone viral, and while it’s deeply distressing, it also shows that we deeply care about the natural world.
But this permit is only the tip of the iceberg. For years, we’ve been keeping a close eye on Consolidated Pastoral Company (CPC) and its plans to rapidly industrialise huge swathes of the Territory for cotton and other crops.
They’ve managed to secure approval to bulldoze around 25,000 hectares from the NT Government over the last few years. To put that in perspective, that’s over 80 times the size of Sydney’s CBD. And they’re after our precious water as well, applying for around 15 billion litres of free water every year from the Finocchiaro Government.
All of this has happened without any federal oversight by Environment Minister Murray Watt. Enough’s enough.
We call on Minister Watt to immediately take action and work with the Finocchiaro government to rescind the permits and investigate the culling of 20,000 iconic Aussie birds under our federal environment laws. He should also immediately take action to assess the impacts of CPC’s industrial-scale plans.
This could be one of the largest single permits for a native bird cull ever granted in Australia. It demands scrutiny.
As the end of the financial year looms, we’d love it if you could consider donating to ECNT so we can continue to expose scandals like this, hold decision-makers to account and protect the Territory’s nature. We know that times are tough, and your support means the world.
Kirsty & the team
[ED – We have invited Environment Minister Joshua Burgoyne to respond.]
UPDATE: The Environment Centre NT has announced online that the owners of Newcastle Waters Station instructed management to immediately cease plans for the culling of 20,000 native corellas and galahs.
The post said: "You signed. You shared. You spoke up. And it worked. When thousands of Australians stand up together for our iconic nature, the world listens. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. 💚”