A male Sea Eagle and his female mate (sitting in nest upon eggs) with newly-installed Kaban Green Powerhub windturbines behind them. What will happen to these Sea Eagles when the windfarm becomes operational and turbines start spinning? Image taken June 2022

Northern Koalas threatened by proposed FNQ windfarms

“While the focus on Queensland’s koalas has largely been on the populations living in the southeast, they also occur the far north of the State. One habitat they occupy is the higher altitude eucalyptus forests along the western edge of the Wet Tropics Bioregion.

Modelling suggests that, because of its altitude and high summer rainfall, this forest may be an important refuge for the northern koala. However, the altitude as well as the proximity of a 275 kV transmission line, has attracted wind farms to the area and the construction of over 300 large wind turbines is in train for a 150 km strip of this forest between Atherton and Mount Fox.

This constitutes a potentially serious threat to the koala population there. Koalas are solitary animals and occur in low abundance in this forest. In the breeding season the females locate distant males from their low frequency nocturnal bellowing.

Wind turbines also emit a substantial amount of low frequency sound, and my fear is that this will mask the bellows of male koalas and disrupt the koala breeding season. Low frequency sound can be heard from a long distance away and these turbines are abutting the most biologically diverse forests in Australia. No consideration has been given to the impact of this noise pollution on koalas or on any of the other wildlife species living here.”

- Roger Martin, Atherton Tableland based wildlife biologist, 24th May 2022

Koalas live around Ravenshoe and are now losing their habitat to Kaban Green Power Hub: A Kaban local sent us footage of a Koala found near the site of Kaban Green Energy Hub, under construction, near Ravenshoe FNQ.

Chalumbin windfarm - issues for Spectacled Flying-foxes.

Comments from Maree Treadwell-Kerr, President of Bats and Trees Society of Cairns:

  • Chalumbin site was selected before studies and assessments.

  • No assessment of cumulative impacts.

  • Location just over 30km from Millaa Millaa Spectacled Flying-fox nationally important camp.

  • Spectacled Flying-foxes fly on average 30km per night to forage.

  • Spectacled Flying-foxes are able to fly up to 80km a night.

  • Spectacled Flying-foxes forage in rainforest and eucalypt forests and woodland.

  • Curtailment does not help flying-foxes.

  • 98% of the population of Spectacled Flying-foxes are in the Wet Tropics.

  • 80% population decline over 15 years.

  • 23,000 Spectacled Flying-foxes died in 2 days in one heat wave in 2018.

  • Climate warming is the biggest threat.

  • The cooler high elevation camps in Atherton Tablelands may be important for its survival.

  • Atherton Tablelands contains critical winter foraging habitat.

  • Windfarms are supposed to help with climate change but if they involve clearing of essential winter foraging habitat, and have the potential to directly kill Spectacled Flying-foxes they are failing in duty of care to endangered species.

Even small turbines, just a single one, near rainforest will kill unsustainable numbers of wildlife.

Wind farms kill high numbers of bats, the impacts are underestimated

“Wind power production poses a critical and rapidly growing threat to bats, especially in industrialized countries. The impact of exponential growth remains largely unmeasured and unreported, but available evidence is alarming. Wind production companies, widely viewed as “green,” have not lived up to their reputation, and too many conservationists have remained silent for too long. Bat researchers have worked diligently to help wind energy producers become truly green. However, only a small proportion of companies have implemented recommended actions. As Merlin reports in the following resources, it’s difficult to explain how we can know so much about cost-effective solutions yet do so little.

The public has been led to believe that bat kills are no longer a serious concern. Nevertheless, by 2014, despite widespread underreporting, 2.22 million bats were reported killed annually in the United States alone. By 2019, the U.S. wind industry grew by 52 percent. Simple extrapolation suggests 3.34 million bat kills, and the number continues to grow despite evidence of declining numbers remaining to be killed.

Merlin suggests an urgent need for public education and cooperation among responsible energy producers, and leading conservation organizations, to rank companies on a true green scale and share these rankings with energy investment advisers. This would provide industry incentives for progress beyond what has historically been achieved through poorly enforced legislation.

- Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation

 

Chalumbin and Kaban windfarms impact Sarus Crane roosting sites

Professor Tim Nevard has spoken out against the proposed Chalumbin windfarm.

Adjunct Professor Tim Nevard is a Sarus Crane and Brolga expert. He presented a talk to the Ravenshoe FNQ community in late 2021 explaining how the proposed Chalumbin windfarm could catastrophically impact roosting Sarus Cranes.

Importantly, both Kaban Green Power Hub (under construction near Ravenshoe) and the proposed Chalumbin windfarm contain wind infrastructure that will lie within a 5km buffer zone of Sarus Crane roosting sites. This may imperil Sarus Cranes and chicks, a species which is already globally threatened.

States Nevard on the importance of biodiversity:

“Biodiversity has always provided the crucial buffer for life on earth, mitigating the effects of previous climate catastrophies. Choosing between nature and windpower is therefore not an option. To secure the future we must have both. Careless destruction of biodiversity in our time of climate change can only bring on many more problems for future generations…and badly located renewable energy projects should not be our legacy.”

 
 

Sarus Crane killed by collision with powerline, central Atherton Tablelands, FNQ, November 2021

Listen to Professor Tim Nevard discuss impacts of windfarms on the Atherton Tablelands to Brolga and Sarus Crane populations on ABC Background Briefing.

 
 

Windfarms impacting roosting sites: Kaban Green Power Hub and the proposed Chalumbin windfarm both lie within 5km buffer range of known Sarus Crane roosts. Source: Professor Tim Nevard, Cranes of the Atherton Tablelands and the potential impact of wind infrastructure, presentation given to community at Ravenshoe Townhall, December 2021

The Magnificent Broodfrog threatened by Chalumbin windfarm. This tiny amphibian only lives only in Ravenshoe and Paluma on unprotected land. Chalumbin windfarm, if approved, may spell the end of the species around the climbs of Ravenshoe.

 
 

Magnificent Broodfrogs in peril from proposed Chalumbin windfarm

Michael Anthony of the Magnificent Broodfrog Action Group discussing impacts of the Chalumbin windfarm should it be approved.

 
 

“Stop cutting down our forests to save the environment!”

Pamela Jones, environmental scientist writes in response to the numerous proposed renewable developments along the FNQ Great Dividing Range:

“The proposed windfarms could add pollution to the Great Barrier Reef.

Projects like Chalumbin lie on the head waters of the river catchments of the Wet Tropics Area. Hundreds of kms of unsealed 70 metre-wide roads that cross waterways have the potential to dump sediment and other pollutants down rivers through areas of World Heritage Rain Forest and cane farms out to the Great Barrier Reef.  Farmers fear they will be blamed. There is no provision under the EBPC Act to consider any type of off-site impact. Water quality is not considered.

Building windfarms in the forest is a terrible waste. Forests are giant carbon and water storage batteries. Why discharge greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by land clearing and lose all the benefits forests provide in the mitigation of climate change? When they are gone, we lose all the carbon sequestration and cooling they do every day. Natural forests do this better than plantation forests.

By clearing forest to build wind farms, we lose a very substantial proportion of the carbon savings we would make by siting them elsewhere. Much of what we gain in lower carbon emissions from windpower, we lose by destroying forest.

We also lose our irreplaceable biodiversity, Aboriginal cultural heritage, and tourist jobs in areas of high importance. High quality patches of remnant forest are rare and precious, and some windfarm project areas were being planned for inclusion in National Parks.

 
 

Loss of forest affects cloud formation and impacts the hydrological cycle.

Loss of forest on mountain tops will lessen rainfall and lead to more droughts and flooding.  While one project may have almost negligible impact on weather, more and more wind farms are proposed. A major failing of the EBPC Act is the absence of assessment of cumulative impacts.  The wind farm projects change the land use from forest to major industrial, permitting major extensions to each project being possible with much less assessment.  This will impact on both our World Heritage listed Wet Tropical Forests and Great Barrier Reef while drying our inland agricultural lands to the west.

Are we getting our money’s worth?

It is very difficult to estimate how much the renewables sector is being subsidised by taxpayers money.

In 2020, Australia invested $7.7 billion or $299 per person in renewable energy. The Clean Energy Regulator estimated that a record 7.0 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable capacity was installed in the same period. (media release by The Hon Angus Taylor MP: Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction on 2 February 2021)           

 On Sky News in 2020, Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce said it is important to remember each wind turbine costs the taxpayer $660,000 per year, per tower, due to the government subsidy scheme for renewable energy developments. He was commenting on a $600 million, 77-turbine wind farm proposed just outside of Tamworth.”

 
 

Watch Pamela Jones’ lecture on issues surrounding renewable energy developments in Far North Queensland.

The brutality of a windfarm on FNQ landscape: Kaban Green Power Hub, 6 km north-west of Ravenshoe FNQ, is currently under construction. Here, mountaintops are blasted away, habitat is cleared, wildlife is relocated or scatters. 70 metre wide haulage roads are being carved through remnant forest to accommodate the transporting of wind infrastructure. Kaban Green Power Hub consists of 28 wind turbines and other infrastructure. Chalumbin windfarm, just south-west of Ravenshoe, proposes 94 wind turbines, concrete batching plants and more - a massive industrial windfarm by any estimation, and one that shouldn’t be located on remnant, high-biodiverse forest of FNQ.

Impacts on vegetation from proposed windfarms in FNQ

Jeanette Kemp, vegetation ecologist

Jeanette Kemp has contributed new research (11.04.2022) to the impacts of vegetation clearing for proposed windfarms in FNQ. There is a sense of urgency when she writes:

“…the many renewable energy proposals proposed in large tracts of native “Remnant” vegetation in Queensland are completely unacceptable. If the general public were fully aware of the impact of these proposals on our natural environment, there would be considerable backlash. Unfortunately, the pace at which these proposals are being approved, mean that the public is largely unaware.

Many of these projects are proposed here due to proximity to high transmission power lines. There has apparently been no Statewide strategic assessment in terms of location and the trade-offs between massive environmental impact, and costs of locating further from the line.” Jeanette Kemp, Effects of proposed windfarms on vegetation and plants in north Queensland, 11.04.2022, p, 4

Read her research in full here.

Stunning old-growth paperbarks midstream: This is Desailly, site of the proposed Desailly Energy Park, a hybrid wind and solar facility about which little is known.

Habitat destruction for Kaban Green Power Hub, Feb 2022

 

Tsunami Infrastructure and the fate of nature for Chalumbin

Professor William F. Laurance

William Laurance states in his lecture Tsunami infrastructure and the fate of Nature (presented 4th November 2021 in Cairns):

“A few things I’ve noticed about Chalumbin:

  • Once completed, Chalumbin windfarm could be sold to ‘anyone’, including China.

  • Roadworks could be up to 75 metres wide.

  • Roads and wind-tower clearings would predispose ecosystems to invasions of cane toads, feral cats, exotic insects, many weeds, myriad edge effects, and sharp spikes in fire intensity.

  • Project area contains many patches of wet sclerophyll (rose gum) forest.

  • EIA or quick surveys are unlikely to provide anything close to a full list of rare or endangered species in area.”

See Professor Laurance’s full presentation here.

Read Professor Laurance’s vital recent research on Why EIAs fail.

 
 

Spectacled Flying-fox, critically endangered: inhabit the high elevation climbs of the Atherton Tablelands where numerous proposed large scale windfarms are planned.

 
 
 
 

Chalumbin windfarm impacts critically imperiled amphibians

Deborah Pergolotti is a frog expert and the President of Frog Safe Inc, The Frog Hospital at Mission Beach, Far North Queensland. Here she discusses potential impacts to amphibians, particularly the to the highly localized and critically threatened Magnificent Broodfrog, from the proposed Chalumbin windfarm. Find out more about her work here.


 

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