DATE: 4 February 2018
TO:
Our wide brown land
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Hi WBL Team,
We would like to submit our local case in Kuranda to your new series “Our wide brown land : We’ve hit rock bottom”.
It’s been a long and weaving story… apologies for the lengthy introduction email.
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BACKGROUND
JAN 2014 – private sale of 626ha of Kuranda freehold rural titles to Ken Lee (about 1/3 of all freehold land in Kuranda)
Our campaign started December 2015 when the first critically endangered frog habitat was destroyed by the fallout from a dodgy dam built on the SITE – no permit, no engineer, no soil and erosion controls. Local organisation Kuranda Envirocare started raising concerns and reporting the sediment flow in endangered species rainforest creeks, coming from upstream, on the SITE.
We have a local council that is going-with-the-flow of “development” in the region – for “economic progress”. Of course the project will only “progress” the pockets of the developer and his “contractors” – not the World Heritage Wet Tropics Bioregion or the almost-majority of people who live here – and have been living here for decades – to restore the rainforest corridors and habitat linkages, sweaty and tireless with bent backs relying on volunteers, landowners, residents and poor funding.
Not to mention what “gentrification” will mean to our most vulnerable and endangered of all – our Bama Rainforest People – short-statured and the oldest living continuous culture on earth! We have a large population of Bama, many already living in adverse conditions that will get pushed out over the coming decades by the next wave of human migration in high-densities.
We have a small, progressive community that is outraged and participating very actively in every opportunity to stop the ridiculous development of the ecologically sensitive (mapped) 626ha SITE – that will in the coming decades – destroy transiting keystone species endangered southern cassowary from north Wet Tropics Bioregion (Daintree way) to the south (Mission Beach way) – because the rainforest corridor at Kuranda above the Barron Falls is only 7km wide – which is why it’s called a “pinchpoint” for the Wet Tropics Bioregion. Our community fought this battle and won 10 years ago in our planning scheme.
The precedent this development will set for this bit of narrow, fragmented forest will be like a concrete bomb going off. It will mean that future subdivisions will go ahead because “oh well, it’s ruined now – may as well”. This planning decision will also affect other FNQ WT Bioregion communities with large freehold rural land allotments up for private sale to developers in the coming years.
We’ve had public meetings and a rally down the main street of Kuranda.
We’ve waved STOP KUR-WORLD signs on the highway and hung them on fences and trees around the village.
We have 600+ Resident Surveys (9 questions) submitted since November 2016.
A STOP petition we had for one night at the Midnight Oil concert last year at Kuranda Amphitheatre with 600+ rows.
We have 700+ proper EIS submissions on the social issues of the development alone – and as of today – the EIS has not even been submitted yet!
We had a local Independent candidate Cheryl Tonkin run in the recent election for the seat of Barron – on the message ‘STOP KUR-WORLD’ that garnered 1039 votes – which is pretty amazing for such a small town like ours.
We are organised.
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EXPERTS
JCU Distinguished Professor Bill Laurance attended our public STOP KUR-WORLD fundraiser in July 2017 and spoke of the broader global issues of deforestation (his specialty!) and the Myola Valley specifically:
“On the Australian continent, we’re talking about 1,000th of Australia’s continental land area.
A major analysis which looked at the biogeographic and the biological uniqueness and irreplaceability of different ecosystems on the planet – this was over 173,000 different protected areas on the planet – ranked the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area as the 6th most critical and irreplaceable.
Of World Heritage Areas, it was the 2nd most critical and irreplaceable. I think this gives you global perspective on what we’re talking about here.
Anybody, from anywhere on the planet, looking around would say this is absolutely critical biological and environmental real estate.
You would not want to risk it – from an International, from a global perspective – for lots of different reasons.”
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/I9aruVklZJA
WIKIPEDIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Laurance
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We also had Dr Cameron Murray author of ‘Game of Mates – How favours bleed the nation’ flown up for the community fundraising event to speak:
“This book Game of Mates is about communicating all the lessons I learnt in that 4-5 years of studying what I call “Grey Corruption”.
Now let me be clear. This is not illegal corruption. Grey Corruption is the totally legal and routine political favouritism that is completely unethical and costs the rest of us.
And that’s what’s particularly rife in Queensland and the rest of Australia.”
SOURCE VIDEO: https://youtu.be/ieaasV3f0cc
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JCU Conrad Hoskin has been studying our frogs in collaboration with local group Kuranda Enviocare and “citizen science” type monitoring programs with residents.
Evolution & Ecology of the Kuranda Treefrog : Dr Conrad Hoskin
VIDEO SOURCE: https://youtu.be/tCSGugGYk9E
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Kuranda.tv recently interviewed Jax Bergersen from local organisation Kuranda Conservation Community Nursery – long time Kuranda local and ‘Cassowary Custodian’ in our region – to ask what damage high-density real estate subdivisions will do to fragmented essential cassowary habitat (endangered, only 20-25% of former habitat remaining < 100 years)
What will intensifying development in Kuranda Region mean for the current population of cassowary that live here?
“If it’s development as we’ve always done it. It means the end of the line.”
“One of the things that’s got to change in our town planning is this ten year rule that there was something that was okay ten years ago and if you get in by the 31 July – you can still do that.”
“No. The reason that the plan had changed ten years ago – and you can’t do it anymore – is because it’s no longer appropriate. That we’ve woken up to ourselves. That we can’t do this anymore.”
SOURCE VIDEO: https://youtu.be/8Z5S2WYe5D4
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LEGALS
The Quaid-style developer did all his land prep without any permits – working with unscrupulous local machine drivers. We have an RTI that demonstrates the time passing before the permit was submitted and evidence of clearing on the ground (google earth). As far as I can see the same laws broken as Wombinoo Station, FNQ – except this is cassowary country. From the mapping – which is difficult to estimate – I usually say ‘Up to 120ha was cleared or scraped back, unpermitted and without soil and erosion controls in place. 626ha (1525 acres) of historically zoned rural titles – ‘one previous owner’ – the old Barnwells who held the land as low impact cattle pasture since 1927 – with the rainforest growing back as they became elderly.
We also have our critically endangered endemic Kuranda Tree Frog (Litoria myola) with only a handful of creeks over less than 5km local range – the SITE catchment for 3 rainforest creeks where the frog has been recorded.
We managed some speculation on this in the Cairns Post AUG 2016: Kuranda eco-resort under scrutiny by environment watchdog
The Department of Environment and Energy said it was looking into activities at the site.
Penalties of up to $9 million could be imposed for any action “that has, will, or is likely to result in a significant impact on a matter of national environmental significance without a relevant approval”.
Here is the video evidence of destroyed habitat creek:
BARNWELL / KUR-WORLD : RAINFOREST CREEK DEVASTATED BEHIND ILLEGAL DAM WALL – JULY 2017
These two infringements and all the others are documented here:
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If you would like a picture version of the story a meme-stream on this page – start at the bottom – will take a few moments to load the page.
http://kurandaregion.org/kur-world-kuranda-barnwell-memes/
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We have tons of other research material for you to access when you’re ready!
We also have an super-awesome KUR-Alert Inc campaign team (cc’ed) of local people fully informed and bursting with ‘what can we do next to stop this dumb thing’ ready and waiting!
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We’re not going to stop the fight to save the Myola Valley and the endangered species that can’t live anywhere else. Your help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Kind regards,
Jo Martin
ps. We are organising a fundraising event in the next two months at the Kuranda Recreation Centre to donate to your funding campaign, to raise awareness in our own community and to bring media attention to our case: