It was two years ago that Steve Irwin (The Crocodile Hunter) was killed by a sting ray and started the rise to fame of little Bindi. Since then the Irwin family has been in the news here on and off… admittedly more on… with various issues, problems, and triumphs.
For months we’ve carried a link to a petition to try to save part of the half million acre property leased by the Irwins and called in part The Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve, from being mined by a company called Cape Alumina.
Sadly we’ve learned today that the Queensland courts have rejected the application to have their right to mine the area removed with the result that endangered wildlife and pristine habitat will shortly be under threat of total unrecoverable destruction.
Of course before they can actually start excavating their mine, they still have to run an ‘environmental impact study’… but once that hurdle is over, the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve will find itself ruined forever as the spoil, dust, truck movements etc concomitant with this sort of development spreads over what is currently a half million acres of wilderness.
To rub salt into the wounds… the Land Court awarded costs in favour of the mining company which Terri Irwin et all will have to cough up.
As land grab follows land grab, as old growth forests are felled to fuel Japanese obsession with woodchip, as mines pile the spoil from their exploitation into ever increasing mountains oif filth does *nobody* care what is happening to the country and how little will soon be left for our kids of what is best about Australia??
I’m sure Cape Alumina will add as much ‘positive spin’ as theycan manage to reduce the public relations fallout but regardless of what they say there is one unalterable truth. Once ruined by them the area will *never* be the same again.
Makes me seethe.
The Eclectic Interweb 