The Kimberley Coast

$1m Refurbishment at Iconic Kimberley Coast Retreat

2012-02-22T20:57:00.000-08:00

20 Feb 2012

SOLAR power, handmade timber furnishings, ocean and earth colour themes, a custom built boat, unique ‘Outback bar’, and a new jetty to work around the massive 7 meter tides are just some of the recent upgrades at the exclusive Kimberley Coastal Camp in the far north Kimberley of WA.

Following its sale in late 2010, over $1m has already been spent on upgrades at the luxury wilderness retreat with more to be expected in coming years.

In keeping with the rustic yet refined theme of Kimberley Coastal Camp, furniture has been handmade in the South West of WA by local craftsmen. “A lot of thought has gone into each and every decision on this project”, commented manager Kevin Dean. “If it’s not unique, then it’s not for us”.

The new solar power system produces over 80% of the camp’s daily power and repeat guests will notice the absent hum of the diesel powered generator. What more can be said about an Outback bar? “I guess you’ll have to see for yourself on that one” said Kevin.

Kimberley Coastal Camp’s reputation for unparalleled hospitality remains unchanged, with a high staff to guest ratio of 1 staff member to a maximum 3 guests. All inclusive packages at Kimberley Coastal Camp start from $2594 per person for 2 nights and guests can choose to spend their days viewing some of the world’s oldest rock art - Gwion Gwion, or the more recent Wandjina rock art, bushwalking, fishing, birdwatching, mudcrabbing, or just relaxing in the peaceful surrounds of the Admiralty Gulf. Packages include transfers from one of 4 Kimberley locations, meals, beverages, accommodation, all activities and a scenic flight over the Mitchell Falls.

Kimberley Coastal Camp is open from late March to October each year.
Telephone: 0417 902 006 Email: info@kimberleycoastalcamp.au
Web: www.kimberleycoastalcamp.com.au

fishingworld.com.au

Indigenous vision for Kimberley irks Greens

2012-02-10T18:29:00.000-08:00

Andrew Burrell The Australian
February 11, 2012 12:00AM

Derby Shire president Elsia Archer says the town is desperate for a developer to build a port to service export industries. Picture: Colin Murty Source: The Australian

FORMER ALP national president Warren Mundine and wealthy Perth dealmaker John Poynton are behind a plan to promote indigenous investment by building a $600 million port near the Kimberley town of Derby to service the massive offshore oil and gas industry.

But the plan could spark a fresh stoush with green groups over the industrialisation of the Kimberley, which boasts vast unexplored deposits of coal, bauxite, uranium and iron ore that could one day be shipped out through a new port.

A supply base at Point Torment, 30km north of Derby, would be aimed initially at servicing Woodside Petroleum's planned $40 billion Browse liquefied natural gas project near Broome, which has attracted opposition from environmentalists who say the Kimberley should remain undeveloped.

West Australian Greens MP Robin Chapple said any development at Point Torment, which he described as a pristine piece of coastline, would be "another nail in the coffin for the Kimberley".

Mr Chapple called on West Australian Premier Colin Barnett to reject the plan. "It flies in the face of what the Premier has said -- that we wouldn't have any further industrialisation of the Kimberley," he said.

Mr Barnett has expressed support for a supply port to service the LNG industry at Point Torment, saying it should not be built at Broome because of the need to preserve the town's tourism industry.

He told The Weekend Australian the government had held talks with firms with petroleum interests in the Browse Basin, off the Kimberley coast, to determine their interest in using Point Torment, but "in reality it will be a commercial decision which drives future development".

Leading Perth-based investment bank Azure Capital, which is run by Mr Poynton, is behind the Point Torment plan. It is understood a Malaysian investment consortium has expressed an interest in helping to develop such a project.

The plan is being driven by an Azure director, indigenous leader Clinton Wolf, and forms part of the bank's efforts to identify investment opportunities that would benefit Aborigines and involve them as shareholders.

A company called Point Torment Supply Base has been set up to examine the viability of building the facility. The directors are listed as Mr Mundine, Mr Poynton, Mr Wolf and fellow Azure Capital director Simon Price.

Mr Wolf said the plan was at a preliminary stage and would only go ahead if it was economically viable and was supported by traditional owners and other stakeholders.

But he said talks would be held soon to outline the proposal and get feedback from key players.

Mr Mundine, who chairs the Australian Indigenous Chamber of Commerce, said he believed a new supply base and port facility at Point Torment could help the development of the Kimberley's huge mineral reserves.

He became a director because he wanted to ensure that any development benefited Aborigines. "This is about closing the gap, it's about Aboriginal people having skin in the game," he said. "This type of project needs to go ahead otherwise you will keep people in poverty."

He said the Kimberley was bigger than most European countries and that Australia's environmental laws were strong enough to ensure responsible development.

Shire of Derby president Elsia Archer said the town was desperate for a developer to build a port, which could also be used for the region's live cattle exports.

A WA government report in 2005 identified Point Torment as a suitable site for heavy industry, suggesting it could be home to an alumina refinery, which would be underpinned by bauxite mining on the Mitchell Plateau in the northern Kimberley. It said the West Kimberley had deposits of diamonds, iron ore, copper, lead, zinc, silver, nickel, uranium, coal, tin, mineral sands and onshore petroleum.

Oil company Buru Energy recently announced a major discovery in the Canning Basin area of the Kimberley, prompting WA Resources Minister Norman Moore to say last month he expected an exploration surge. But the viability of a supply base at Point Torment will be linked to whether Woodside and other LNG companies, including Shell and Japan's Inpex, support it.

There is speculation that Shell plans to use ports in Broome and Darwin to support its Prelude LNG project, while Inpex is said to have settled on Darwin.

Tony Burke: man in the hot seat

2012-02-05T22:46:00.000-08:00

BY:GRAHAM LLOYD, ENVIRONMENT EDITOR

From:The Australian
February 04, 2012 12:00AM

Seen here in the west Kimberley, Environment Minister Tony Burke could be caught between a rock and a hard place with some of his pending decisions. Picture: Vanessa Hunter Source: The Australian

SWIRLING around the remote islands of King Sound on the Buccaneer Archipelago, powerful 12m tides create the Kimberley coastline's horizontal waterfalls, dotting the waters with perilous whirlpools that can sink the foolhardy and the unprepared.

Navigated properly, the currents provide an ocean jet stream that has been used for generations to help speed travellers towards their chosen destination.

The region is a favourite place for federal Environment Minister Tony Burke, who last year declared the west Kimberley a National Heritage area. He has shed blood on the Mayala people's sacred ground trekking barefoot over the rocky islands that help create the raging tidal flows.

The Kimberley coast, with its mix of natural beauty, indigenous aspiration, mineral riches and latent danger, is a fitting metaphor for the challenges facing Burke as a series of long-running conservation campaigns comes to a head this year, while the nation's mining boom continues to build.

Two significant reforms started under the Howard government - the Murray-Darling Basin plan and protection of commonwealth waters covering an area bigger than the continent - will reach their conclusion before mid-year.

A new peace appears to be within reach to stop logging in Tasmania's old-growth forests, widely regarded as the Middle East conflict of Australia's conservation politics. Success or failure will be known by June.

Alarm from the Paris-based World Heritage Committee has supercharged demands for action to safeguard the Great Barrier Reef from increased shipping.

And Burke has declared his intention to follow up the west Kimberley national heritage listing with a World Heritage nomination for Cape York by February next year.

"It is potentially an historic agenda for the nation," says Australian Conservation Foundation chief executive Don Henry. "We have a coincidence of major issues all coming into a decision-making frame this year."

In addition, Burke is at the centre of a political storm over the potential impact of coal-seam gas production on underground water supplies. And he has provoked a possible High Court state's rights challenge from Victoria with his ban this week on summer cattle grazing in the alpine ranges.

Burke is confident the next 12 months will be his time of delivery. It will, he hopes, provide an environmental legacy for the nation and a personal legacy for his time in the environment portfolio. But some fear he has too much on his plate.

"It is a big program and this stuff is getting more complex, not less," national campaign director for the Wilderness Society Lyndon Schneiders says.

"The worst outcome would be trying to reform a little bit of everything and failing on everything, rather than delivering on three or four big issues."

Burke insists the core principles remain constant.

"It is effectively the same question," he says. "How can you make sure any developments are sustainable, sensitive to the environment and are not something we are going to look back on in 20 years' time and say, 'Why did we do that?' "

But a lot has changed since the Hawke government surfed to power 30 years ago promising to stop the Gordon below Franklin Dam in Tasmania, and later to protect Kakadu from mining.

The bruising politics of climate change has been allowed to dominate the environment debate. And the success of the Greens has left Labor split between competing for the support of city elites and returning to its more jobs-focused, working-class roots.

Labor still wears an environmental coat but its core message these days is jobs and economic development. The party can point to its support for the expansion of Olympic Dam, the world's largest uranium mine, to illustrate how much the Labor brand has moved on and highlight the gulf that exists between it and its quasi-coalition Greens partner.

So, on the broad suite of environmental issues coming to fruition this year, Burke's ability to hold his ground in cabinet has yet to be fully tested.

Some conflicts are already apparent. The Wilderness Society did Burke no favours this week when it injected the issue of wild rivers and a call for emergency National Heritage Listing of Cape York into the first week of the Queensland election campaign.

Burke has been engaged in sensitive talks with pro-development indigenous groups on the cape for months in a bid to negotiate a deal on heritage listing later this year. The "alarmed" response from cape development groups to the call was predictable.

"This is an appalling attempt by the Wilderness Society not only to show that they have a total disregard for the aspirations of the Cape York people, but it is one where they are determined to keep Cape York people in poverty," said Cape York Sustainable Futures, which represents indigenous mining and cattle interests.

Burke has made it known that he is sensitive to indigenous development aspirations.

"Where you have traditional owners who love the country and want to develop it, it puts a different complexion on it," he says.

But this is not a uniform view among environment groups.

"There is a whole bunch of people across the broad Left who struggle with the same issue and I understand that," Schneiders says.

"But you can wrap yourself up into a world of pain by having two standards. At the end of the day a bulldozer is a bulldozer and it doesn't really matter who is profiting from it."

Henry is on the same page.

"If there is traditional owner consent we need to be respectful of that," he says. "But the minister is still duty bound to sit down and make a decision about how a development affects the national interest of all Australians in relation to the environment of that particular site or area."

Nowhere is this issue more divisive than in Broome, where groups and families - black and white - have been split over Woodside Petroleum's plans to develop itsliquefied natural gas facilities and James Price Point. With a heritage listing in place, Burke has a direct stake in deciding whether the James Price Point project can proceed.

The project has the support of the Kimberley Land Council, but still may fail on commercial grounds with Woodside seeking to sell down its interest in the Browse Basin offshore gas field.

If it does not proceed, Burke says he will feel most for the indigenous groups who had given consent in exchange for a substantial royalty deal.

Such sentiments fuel doubts about the value of Labor's heritage agenda.

"Burke has delivered on the listing but we haven't seen what happens when he has to go head-to-head with Martin Ferguson in his own cabinet over large-scale resource extraction in the Kimberley," Schneiders says.

The Murray-Darling Basin plan has yet to officially hit Burke's desk, and given the process so far it will be a difficult job to bring it to a civilised conclusion.

In the end, Burke may decide to nominate a range of options for how water will be split between agriculture and the environment. Environmental flows would increase subject to the completion of specified capital works programs.

In Tasmania, there are signs the promise of peace is starting to fracture, with Greens leader Bob Brown encouraging protesters back into the forest and loggers threatening to walk away.

"The jury is still out," Schneiders says. "We will have a much better picture if Burke has managed to pull off a miracle in Tasmania in six months' time."

The same is true with offshore bioregional mapping of commonwealth waters, where Burke has elected to declare all protected zones around the nation at the same time later this year.

There are more immediate concerns over the threat that increased shipping poses to the Great Barrier Reef. Expansion of Gladstone Harbour to enable an east-coast LNG export hub is only the start of a projected shipping boom, with new ports and port expansions slated along the Queensland coastline.

"It is the right time to sit back and have a look at the development pressures and their impacts on the Great Barrier Reef as a whole," Henry says. "If you just look at individual proposals, whether it is gas industrialisation at Gladstone or proposals for a coal mine or a coal port, we might miss the big picture impact of them all put together."

Burke says this is already in place. And he is determined to extend his powers to consider shipping numbers, speed and where they wait offshore.

"I won't be approving anything unless I am satisfied that the reef is being appropriately protected," he says. "As a general principle I fail to see how you can you can have an expansion of any port where vessels will be going through a World Heritage area without those shipping movements being significant to any approval."

Few people doubt Burke's good intentions. But Henry says time is running out.

"As the mining boom picks up, we are probably finding we have less time to find solutions than we thought," Henry says. "It is the right time to make decisions."

Mining Boom Takes Its Toll on Australian Wilderness

2012-02-01T21:34:00.000-08:00

Holly Alsop
London based writer and Science Editor
The Huffington Post

Pristine regions of Australia are under threat as mining companies push to expand, once again creating uproar from environmentalists. The area now under fire is theCape York Peninsula in far North Queensland, a region well-known for its vast, untouched wilderness and a popular tourist destination among travellers.

Prominent environment group, The Wilderness Societyhas lodged an application for an emergency heritage listing to be placed on the region in a bid to slow mining permit approval. The Cape York Peninsula has been under threat from destructive expansion for years as a result of its rich resources and the discovery of bauxite, coal, kaolin and sand which have made the region a premier target for mining corporations. There are now six new mining permits under application for the peninsula and there is growing concern about the future of the environment.

The Wilderness Society is urging the federal government to take action as the new mines would result in the destruction of over 45,000 hectares of native forest and grassland.

Despite the lobby group's attempt to gain emergency heritage listing, Australia's Environment Minister Tony Burke claims the title is rare and even if it is approved there is little that can be done to shut down mining in the region altogether. Concerns from Queensland residents however are prevalent with a moratorium being passed in January this year that prevents coal seam gas mining in other parts of the state. The boom in mining in Australia has increased significantly over the years with an unprecedented level of development in the Cape York Peninsula.

The new permit applications are merely an addition to the numerous mines under construction throughout the resource-rich nation. Regardless of attempts to be environmentally conscious, and with aims to protect the unique flora and fauna, the Australian economy relies heavily on mining productivity. There is no denying that governments are torn between the immediate profitability of mining and the long-term benefits of investing in eco-tourism. In 2010 the Western Australian government proposed the development of a new marine park in Camden Sound, a premier humpback whale calving ground and resource rich coastline. The guidelines in the proposal however, still allowed the transfer of machinery and tankers through the park along with extensive deep-sea drilling resulting in massive financial gain but huge environmental loss.

The Wilderness Society have been consistent in their use of lobbying tactics to enforce protection for Australia's unique environment yet with legislation differing across state governments it is difficult to predict the future of the Cape York Peninsula in the North and Camden Sound in the West.

Calls for new Browse gas hub site mounting

2012-01-27T15:47:00.000-08:00

NineMSN

18:30 AEDT Fri Jan 27 2012

Calls are mounting for Woodside Petroleum to reconsider plans to process Browse Basin gas on the environmentally significant Kimberley coast of Western Australia.

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) on Friday said the Kimberley coastline was an inappropriate site for a large industrial project.

"The James Price Point gas hub proposal has stoked up so much opposition on so many fronts that many investors are now asking if the project is still viable, or if Woodside has already lost its social licence to proceed," ACF Kimberley officer Wade Freeman said.

Mr Freeman's comments came after Woodside said it was considering selling down its 50 per cent stake in the $US30 billion ($A28.32 billion) project.

He said gas from the Browse Basin should be piped to less environmentally sensitive locations such as the Woodside-operated North West Shelf in the Pilbara region, a view shared by some business analysts.

The ACF has also been critical of the role that the Colin Barnett-led state government has played in the project, an opinion echoed on Friday by new WA opposition leader Mark McGowan.

The WA government in 2010 started the process of compulsorily acquiring land at James Price Point after the premier became frustrated by legal disputes among native title claimant groups.

A court last year ruled that the notices of land acquisition were invalid because they did not provide enough detail, so fresh notices of intent to take the land will need to be lodged.

Mr McGowan said the premier's interference in the proposed project had caused delays.

"He upset the indigenous people of the Kimberley, he upset the non-indigenous people of the Kimberley with his activities," Mr McGowan told reporters.

"He claims he's a can-do sort of guy.

"All it's resulted in is business nervousness."

Dampier Peninsula Flood Warning

2012-01-27T14:57:00.001-08:00

http://www.kimberleypage.com.au/2012/01/dampier-peninsula-flood-warnings/

Water lily research flourishing in the Kimberley

2012-01-27T14:27:00.000-08:00

Written by Geoff Vivian Wednesday, 18 January 2012 12:00

Science Network Western Australia

Dried Nymphaea violacea seeds are ground into flour for damper, the raw stems are eaten like celery and the tubers boiled and roasted as a vegetable. Image:eyeweed

A KINGS Park botanist is studying propagation viability of water lilies (Nymphaeacea), which occur in high-rainfall areas of Northern Australia.

Emma Dalziell who has made several collecting trips to the Kimberley, Darwin and Kakadu is collaborating with the Millennium Seed Bank Project (MSB) at Kew Gardens in England.

“Many of the storage techniques I’m using have arisen from King’s Parks longstanding research collaboration with the MSB,” she says.

“My PhD is specifically focusing on seed biology, long term storage behaviour of all Nymphaeacea occurring in Australia,” she says.

The seeds are subject to a variety of stimuli to assess their viability, and define suitable habitat types and appropriate storage and propagation conditions for possible reintroduction or restoration programs.

She says unlike Northern Hemisphere species, Australian lilies are adapted to long dry winters and the hot monsoonal conditions of Northern Australia’s “wet”.

They tolerate seed desiccation and can often grow, flower and produce seed in a relatively short time.

She says Australian lilies need a temperature range of 30–35 degrees Celcius to germinate.

“They are physiologically dormant,” she says. “They are waiting for various environmental cues.”

Ms Dalziell is also assessing the various species’ adaptability to climate change and related conditions such as increased salinity.

She gave the example of a two-centimetre rise in sea level, which could produce salt water inundations extending as far as five kilometres inland at Kakadu National Park.

Australian lilies have just been subjected to taxonomic review and there are now 18 recognised species across Northern Australia.

These range from Nymphaea violacea, which grows in a wide variety of habitats, to Nymphaea ondinea which is restricted to the extremely pure waters of sandstone creeks in only six known Kimberley locations.

Even rarer is Nymphaea kimberleyensis, which is known to occur in just one waterhole in a Central Kimberley cattle station.

Ms Dalziell says lilies are still an important food source for Aboriginal peoples across Northern Australia.

Dried Nymphaea violacea seeds are ground into flour for damper, the raw stems are eaten like celery and the tubers boiled and roasted as a vegetable.

Ms Dalziell says compared to other taxa, there has been very little research into Australian lilies’ biology and ecology.

Rare finch find restores rescue hopes

2012-01-27T13:06:00.000-08:00

NICOLA KALMAR, Broome Advertiser

Updated January 27, 2012, 7:59 am

Sarah Pryke ©

Hopes of rescuing one of Australia’s most endangered birds from the brink of extinction have been restored after the discovery of a breeding population of the rare Gouldian finch near Broome.

The discovery was made by indigenous Bardi Jawi and Bard Jawi Oorany rangers working with WWF Australia and Environs Kimberley on the Dampier Peninsula.

Environmental groups have welcomed the find and said there could be more findings of Gouldian finch in the Kimberley.

Bardi Jawi senior cultural ranger Kevin George said the find was “very exciting” for the rangers and the community, and said the first sighting of the finch was before Christmas.

There are believed to be fewer than 2500 adult birds surviving in the wild, as the population has declined steadily over the past 50 years.

Scientists have attributed fire regimes, cattle and throat parasites to decreasing numbers.

Mr George said the next step would be to implement a management plan to protect the species and continuing to work with elders and the community.

An important part in securing the future of the Gouldian finch was educating the younger generation in caring for wildlife and conservation, Mr George said.

Environs Kimberley projects co-ordinator Louise Beames described the finding as “exciting and significant”.

She said the birds had declined rapidly over much of orthern Australia due to a combination cattle and intensive fire regimes. Ms Beames said it was critical to continue to work with Bardi Jawi and Nyul Nyul rangers.

Press Release: 2011 Kimberley Cetacean Report Released

2012-01-26T15:09:00.000-08:00

PRESS RELEASE

Kimberley Whale Watching has just released their 2011 Kimberley Cetacean Report 2011. The report highlights the importance of the Dampier Peninsula and the Kimberley's outer shoals and reefs to the Breeding Stock D population of Humpback whales.

Breeding Stock D is thought to be the world's largest population of whales and undertakes and annual migration from the frigid waters of the Antarctic to the Kimberley's warm tropical waters to mate and give birth.

Richard Costin of Kimberley Whale Watching says "the Commonwealth Government should reassess its priorities and the boundaries for the proposed Kimberley Marine Reserve, and extend the boundaries along the Dampier Peninsula south to Eco Beach and upgrade the classification to IUCN 2.

"This is essential" Mr Costin says "to provide protection for the main breeding grounds for the Breeding Stock D population of Humpback whales.

The report is available for download from Kimberley Whale Watching's website: www.kimberleywhales.com.au

#####

Woodside kicks off $1bn Browse sale as plans for processing plant may be axed

2012-01-26T12:47:00.000-08:00

BY:ANDREW BURRELL
From:The Australian
January 27, 2012 12:00AM

Increase Text Si

WOODSIDE Petroleum has launched a $1 billion-plus auction of most of its 50 per cent stake in the huge Browse gas project in Western Australia, in a move that could kill off controversial plans to build a processing plant on the Kimberley coast.

Sources say the formal auction process began after Woodside was approached by scores of companies over the past 12 months over a potential selldown.

Indicative bids for the Browse stake are being lodged but any sale could take several months to finalise, especially in light of Woodside's announcement last month that it would be unable to proceed with the $40bn project for at least another year.

The potential sale comes amid industry speculation that Browse's 14.3 trillion cubic feet of reserves will soon be increased through the inclusion of additional sources under Scott Reef, an environmentally sensitive part of the Browse Basin, that were previously thought to be inaccessible.

The Australian understands that Woodside may reduce its 50 per cent stake in Browse to 16.67 per cent as part of a plan to align the ownership of the Browse joint venture more closely with the North West Shelf liquefied natural gas project.

"They would go from owning half of Browse to owning about one-sixth -- that would give some symmetry around what the North West Shelf looks like," said one source familiar with the process.

The shake-up may involve Woodside selling stakes in Browse to Japanese trading houses Mitsubishi and Mitsui, which are also partners in the North West Shelf and have previously expressed an interest in Browse.

But other companies, including European groups Total, ENI and GDF Suez, are also believed to be keen to snap up equity in Browse as they seek to increase their involvement in Australia's booming LNG sector.

It is understood any equity sale would not be linked to a gas supply contract from Browse, which is due to produce 12 million tonnes of LNG a year and become one of Australia's biggest resources projects.

The North West Shelf is owned by six companies, each of which has a 16.67 per cent stake -- Woodside, BHP Billiton, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron and an alliance of Mitsubishi and Mitsui.

But Woodside owns 50 per cent of Browse, with the rest of the venture held by BHP (8.33 per cent), Shell (8.33 per cent), BP (16.67 per cent) and Chevron (16.67 per cent).

A potential complication to Woodside as it tries to dilute its stake is that its Browse partners have pre-emptive rights over any sale.

BHP, Chevron and Shell would be unlikely to buy additional equity given their existing commitments in the sector.

However, BP is known to be looking for additional investments in Australia and may want to boost its stake in Browse.

Any selldown would reduce Woodside's exposure to the Browse venture and free up capital for its spending commitments on other projects, including a planned $10bn expansion of the Pluto LNG plant near Karratha.

But it would also reduce Woodside's voting rights within the Browse joint venture and could end the Perth company's plan to process the Browse gas at a greenfields site at James Price Point, north of Broome.

Most of Woodside's Browse partners favour piping the gas to the North West Shelf in the Pilbara when reserves at that project start to run low later this decade, thereby extending the life of the investment.

Significantly, a dilution of Woodside's equity interest in Browse would reduce its commercial incentive to process the gas as quickly as possible.

It would also lessen Woodside's exposure to rising project costs and fears of falling prices sparked by a possible global LNG glut. Some analysts believe the rapid development of the US shale gas industry will lead to LNG exports from North America within a decade.

Woodside chief executive Peter Coleman is believed to be far less enthusiastic about using James Price Point than his predecessor Don Voelte, due to the higher costs of a greenfields plant.

James Price Point is being vigorously opposed by environmentalists and some Kimberley indigenous people.

But it is backed by the West Australian and federal governments as well as local indigenous groups who stand to benefit from a compensation package for use of the land.

Woodside would need to convince the governments that James Price Point was not economic if it wanted to pipe the gas to the Pilbara.

Mr Coleman said last year that Woodside could sell down its stake in Browse, along with the Pluto 2 and Sunrise developments, to reduce $35bn in funding obligations for the projects when they proceed.

Merrill Lynch said in a report in September last year that Woodside's stake in Browse would be worth between $US2.2bn ($2.1bn) and $US4.3bn, based on recent gas pricing benchmarks.

This would value the equity being sold by Woodside at between $US1.4bn and $US2.7bn.

Sources familiar with the auction said the stake being pitched to potential buyers would fetch more than $1bn.

WA Premier clings to his gas dreams

2012-01-21T12:55:00.000-08:00

Australian Financial Review

The fate of West Australian Premier Colin Barnett’s grand vision of a natural gas processing hub on the richly picturesque Kimberley coast hangs in the balance.

Five years after the plan was formulated by the WA government, oil producer Woodside Petroleum remains the only company keen togo anywhere near the controversial James Price Point site near Broome.

One by one, other potential users of the “hub” have removed themselves from the picture, plumping for potentially easier and quicker solutions to convert their plentiful Browse Basin resources into liquefied natural gas to feed energy-hungry nations across Asia.

Shelley Gare - A whale of a dream

2012-01-15T13:36:00.000-08:00

Adelaide Now

IMAGINE what I could do with Bill Gates' millions...

----------

HUMANS are endearing. We insist we're all so different; then we discover matching frailties. Micheline and Curt Jenner are pioneering marine biologists who have lived on boats for almost 20 years as they follow their passion, tracking whales, dolphins and porpoises off Australia's coastline and helping protect one of the world's most valuable resources, the ocean.

And here am I, a journalist who lives safely, cautiously and drily on land, and I mostly track human-beings.

But one recent afternoon we discover a mutual foible. All three of us buy tickets in those monster multimillion-dollar lotteries. Then we don't look up the results for days, preferring to live on in our fantasies. "Dreamers!" says Curt, laughing.

There is still a big difference between us. A win for me might bring respite from the demands of daily life. For the Jenners, a winning ticket could end forever constant worries about funding their research - and their new boat.

Let me tell you about this boat, Whale Song. It is 28m long, weighs 200 tons, is steel-hulled and purpose-built for whale research. It looks like a tug-boat but it has specially sound-dampened machinery which means it can slip through the water like a sylph. The whales are oblivious. There's no other boat like it.

"We almost wet ourselves when we first saw it," says Micheline as she took me on a quick tour. That's not surprising given their research vessel back in 1990 was an inflatable rubber duckie. When I saw the staterooms below deck, with their ensuite bathrooms, the Jenners almost got themselves a stowaway.

In fact, given the massive monthly payments on the boat and what the global financial crisis has done to paid research work, they're looking for paying volunteers - rich paying volunteers - for trips far out to sea that offer an experience so unique the next closest thing might be space travel.

Right now, the Jenners and Whale Song are steaming back to WA under Australia's belly, and looking longingly towards the deep waters of the Great Australian Bight Marine Park, where southern right whales go to breed. Last year, the Federal Government gave BP a permit to look for oil and gas in the Bight and in parts of the park. The area, southwest of Ceduna, may become one of Australia's major gas and oil reserves.

What will this mean for the whales?

The Jenners, who discovered the main humpback whale breeding ground on the Kimberley coast and run the Centre for Whale Research (WA), work regularly with the big energy companies. They hope they may get involved in BP's research too. "Whales are the window to the health of the oceans," says Curt. Healthy whales, healthy seas. Healthy us.

Already, internationally, there's a program - Seakeepers - aimed at the world's wealthy who own huge yachts. If you're a Steven Spielberg, you can install sensors on board your mega-boat and help marine scientists capture essential data.

Recently, I heard a BBC interview with American oceanographer Sylvia Earle. Now 76, she is dubbed "Her Deepness" by The New Yorker. Earle is stunned by what humans have done to the oceans, "the great blue engine that keeps us alive".

My biggest regret is that I don't have Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates's number, as he holidays in Australia, to let him know about the berths going on Whale Song.

That might beat a lottery ticket.

* The Centre for Whale Research is at cwr.org.au

Inpex confirms $33bn Top End gas project

2012-01-15T13:32:00.000-08:00

ABC News

Japanese gas company Inpex and its French partner Total have confirmed they will proceed with their planned $33 billion Ichthys gas project in Darwin and off the coast of Western Australia.

Inpex chairman Naoki Kuroda made the announcement in Darwin today.

The company says about 8.4 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) will be produced each year once the project is up and running.

Preliminary works on the Blaydin Point gas processing plant in Darwin Harbour and a worker's camp in the city's rural area are expected to begin within weeks.

The camp will be able to house up to 2,800 workers.

The Northern Territory Government estimates several thousand workers will be needed to build the Darwin plant, which will process natural gas piped about 800 kilometres from the Browse Basin off WA's Kimberley coast.

Inpex and Total have already signed long-term sale and purchase agreements for the gas with Japanese and Taiwanese utility companies.

These cover the total projected LNG production from Ichthys for 15 years from 2017.

The first gas from the plant is expected to be produced in 2016.

Mr Kuroda says it will be one of the world's largest LNG facilities and that gas and condensate reserves in the Browse Basin would last around 40 years.

"Ichthys production volumes represent more than 10 per cent of Japan's (gas) imports at current levels," Mr Kuroda said.

In addition, the liquids-rich gas stream will also generate about 100,000 barrels of condensate a day at the peak of production.

AUDIO: $33 billion gas deal gets green light (PM)

Mr Kuroda says about 3,000 workers will be needed for the onshore construction phase, with a further 1,000 offshore.

"Once the project is in operation, we will require approximately 700 permanent positions," Mr Kuroda said.

Historic day

Chief Minister Paul Henderson says the signing of the deal marks an historic day for the Territory.

"The Territory has secured its economic future and is on the way to becoming the oil and gas capital of Australia," he said.

The Federal Government says the Inpex project in Darwin will be the "making" of the Territory for this century.

Resources Minister Martin Ferguson says the nation's combined LNG output is set to soar.

"Energy demand is growing, particularly from the powering economies of Japan and Taiwan, China and India, and this demand will continue into the foreseeable future," he said.

"It potentially means we will quadruple LNG production out of Australia within a decade."

Mr Ferguson says the Ichthys deal marks the beginning of a new era for northern Australia.

"The Ichthys project... is the second-biggest investment in a single project in the history of Australia."

Meanwhile during today's formal signing ceremony, a Japanese government minister apologised for the bombing of Darwin.

Senior vice-minister for trade Tadahiro Matsushita acknowledged the history between Japan and Darwin.

"During a certain period in the not-too-distant past, Japan caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries," he said.

"Taking this opportunity, I would like to express my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology."

Topics: business-economics-and-finance, industry, oil-and-gas, darwin-0800, perth-6000, broome-6725

First posted January 13, 2012 07:48:05

Recovery of corals at Ashmore Reef

2011-12-28T16:11:00.000-08:00

Written by Geoff Vivian Thursday, 22 December 2011 12:00

Science Network, Western Australia

RESEARCHERS at Ashmore Reef found shifts in coral diversity after recovery from bleaching events of 1998 and 2003.

Marine ecology consultant Dr Daniela Ceccarelli says, “The scientific consensus is that the causes of severe coral bleaching at Ashmore Reef and on other coral reefs in the region were caused by abnormally high sea surface temperatures associated with an El Nino event”.

Surveys commissioned by the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities found the percent cover of hard corals tripled and the percent cover of soft corals doubled over a four-year period from 2005 to 2009.

Dr Ceccarelli, who participated in one of the surveys, attributes the rapid regeneration to two factors: the reef’s relative freedom from human activity, and the success of fast-growing coral species.

“The corals that became dominant over the recovery period were a combination of species that can colonise the reef and grow quickly and species that weren't as heavily affected in the first place, whereas species that were less abundant included slow-growing species that suffered high mortality from the bleaching.

“The fast-growing corals that became abundant in the shallow zone were from the genera Acropora and Pocillopora, and the slower-growing corals that did well in the deep reef zones were from the family Faviidae.”

She said the overall composition of the reef had changed.

“There didn't seem to be any biodiversity loss, and certainly no extinctions, just a shift in species dominance,” she said.

The researchers expect the success of branching corals to promote future biodiversity of other reef species.

“Habitat complexity is a measure of how convoluted the structure of the reef is - corals with branches provide greater habitat complexity than, say, encrusting coral species which grow flat against the substrate.”

Ashmore Reef is a nature reserve with an area of 583 square kilometres on Australia’s Northwest Shelf.

It is located 610km north of Broome and 110km south of Roti in Indonesia, and includes three small islands, sand cays, lagoons and a large flat reef.

Dr Ceccarelli said the last coral survey at Ashore Reef was conducted in 2009.

“Theoretically the monitoring should be repeated every two to three years, but it depends on how much funding is available,” she said.

Dr Ceccarelli is first author of the CSIRO article Ceccarelli et al Rapid increase in coral cover on an isolated coral reef, the Ashmore Reef National Nature Reserve, north-western Australia Marine and Freshwater Research, 2011, 62, 1214–1220

Cyclone risk in lead-up to Christmas

2011-12-18T22:26:00.000-08:00

CONOR BYRNE | December 18th, 2011 NT News

A CYCLONE has been predicted to skirt the NT coast before Christmas.

And today Darwin weather bureau forecasters will discuss increasing the cyclone risk outlook.

Brisbane stormchaser Ben Quinn takes data from an American weather model and extrapolates it eight days ahead on his website to show this cyclone forming on December 23.

SEE: Reader photos of the storm season kick-off for 2011

Both Mr Quinn and weather bureau senior forecaster Ashley Patterson said forecasting tropical weather - especially cyclones - so far in advance could be inaccurate and that other models were not yet predicting a cyclone.

But Mr Patterson said it was not to be ruled out, and predicts a low pressure system forming in a monsoon trough off the coast."There is an increased chance of a cyclone forming," he said.

"It's still uncertain so far out, but looking at the current block of models. It's possible."

The Darwin weather bureau looks at about four or five weather models when predicting cyclones.

"They all go for a monsoon trough to build over the next three to six days, and they indicate a weak low (pressure system) in the trough," he said.

"But that could be anywhere between Timor and the Gulf of Carpentaria.

"The models haven't come into agreement so there's a lot of uncertainty.

"I can't say for sure there's going to be a cyclone; there will be a developing low off the coast later in the week."

Mr Quinn's website predicts that the cyclone would smash the Kimberley coast at about 6.30am on Christmas Eve.

His data, from the US Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is updated every six hours based on current data.

"You can't accurately put a category on it. I'm not even going to have a guess," Mr Quinn said.

Woodside May Delay Browse Project Investment Decision to 2013

2011-12-18T21:31:00.000-08:00

Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Woodside Petroleum Ltd., Australia’s second-largest oil and natural gas producer, may delay an investment decision on the planned Browse liquefied natural gas venture by at least six months to 2013.

The venture partners plan to seek approval from the Western Australian government to extend the decision deadline to the first half of 2013 from mid-2012, the Perth-based company said today in a statement.

Chief Executive Officer Peter Coleman, who took control of Woodside in May, aims to develop an estimated A$75 billion ($75 billion) in LNG projects with partners including Chevron Corp. The Browse project may cost about A$38 billion to build, according to Deutsche Bank AG.

“The variation would allow time to better evaluate the outcomes of front-end engineering and design work and the results of the tender processes for the development’s major contracts,” Woodside said.

Woodside shares fell 3 percent to A$30.35 at 10:45 a.m. in Sydney. They’ve dropped 24 percent in the past six months

The partners in Browse are Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, BP Plc and BHP Billiton Ltd. The companies two years ago accepted a government deadline for developing the Browse project and in return were allowed to keep nine leases covering the Browse fields.

The partners are in talks on the final nature of the planned request for amendments to the Browse leases, Woodside said.

--Editors: Keith Gosman, Aaron Sheldrick

To contact the reporter on this story: James Paton in Sydney at jpaton4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Amit Prakash at aprakash1@bloomberg.net

Marine chief cautious on sanctuaries

2011-12-18T21:21:00.000-08:00

DANIEL MERCER, The West Australian

Updated December 19, 2011, 4:00 am

Sanctuary zones where all fishing is banned should be considered sparingly and only if there was overwhelming evidence of their need, according to WA's new marine parks adviser.

In his first interview as chairman of the Marine Parks and Reserves Authority, Tom Hatton said there was potential merit in "no-take" zones but they should not affect anglers unfairly.

Dr Hatton, a marine scientist and director at the CSIRO, indicated that he might also support controversial ideas put forward by recreational fishers opposed to sanctuary zones.

These include so-called wilderness fishing areas where recreational fishing was allowed but all other "extractive activities", such as commercial fishing and oil and gas drilling, were forbidden.

The comments are a significant departure from the position of Dr Hatton's predecessor, Eric Streitberg, who argued that sanctuary zones were essential if authorities were to protect valuable fish and marine species.

They also raised eyebrows among green groups as the Government thrashes out plans for a series of marine parks in State waters, including the much-touted Camden Sound proposal in the Kimberley.

"There's enough potential merit in (sanctuary zones) from place to place that they should be seriously considered," Dr Hatton said.

"But they need to be based on the best available scientific evidence and an understanding of potential impacts on recreational and commercial fishing and other users."

Environment Minister Bill Marmion said Dr Hatton would help create a world-class, comprehensive system of marine parks with two other MPRA board appointees.

Conservation Council of WA executive director Piers Verstegen said the appointments could weaken the resolve of the MPRA to establish marine parks with sanctuary zones.

He feared Premier Colin Barnett would not deliver on his significant commitments to marine protection if MPRA appointments were out of step with the latest science and community sentiment.

Plenty of prawns for Christmas

2011-12-16T23:15:00.000-08:00

ABC Rural Report

Rural Report for Northern WA: Wednesday December 14th 2011

By Matt Brann, Kununurra

The Department of Fisheries says prawns should be relatively cheap and plentiful this Christmas.

Around 3,500 tonnes of prawns were caught off WA's coast this year, which is well up on 2010.

Catches around Shark Bay were up around 25 per cent on last year, although heavy rain earlier in the year, has kept sizes down.

Fisheries research officer Errol Sporer says sales have been slow, which means there's a lot of product in the market place, which will mean good value for seafood lovers this Christmas.

"There should be plenty of prawns at a good price," he said.

"If you go to the supermarkets now, you're seeing prawns generally selling at around the $13 to $14 a kilo mark on special, so there should be quite a few prawns around at a good price and at good value, particularly around Christmas."

The department's Dr Mervi Kangas, says catch numbers were down off the Kimberley coast this year, mostly due to a lack of trawlers.

"There were not that many boats operating because of the economic climate," she said.

"Because of lower prawn prices it hasn't been economically viable to go to those fisheries and fish."

Fishing fears stall marine parks

2011-12-13T20:18:00.000-08:00

Daniel Mercer

The West Australian

Attempts to set up marine parks in WA's waters are getting bogged down amid fears about how they will affect fishers, the Barnett Government's marine parks advisor has warned.

Marine Parks and Reserves Authority chairman Eric Streitberg said negative perceptions were dominating the debate about marine parks at the expense of their "demonstrable" benefits.

Writing in the authority's annual report, the respected oil and gas industry veteran noted the difficulty in reaching a balance between conservation and "extractive use" interests, namely fishing.

He said the situation was invariably leading to "processes that are often very protracted".

"The debate over reserves is often dominated by the perceived negative impacts on extractive users, and what is often overlooked, or lost sight of in the debate, are the demonstrated major positive social and economic benefits of reserves," Mr Streitberg wrote.

Mr Streitberg's comments come as the Government continues to struggle in its efforts to establish a network of marine parks in State waters between the coast and three nautical miles offshore.

Despite touting the proposed Camden Sound marine park in the Kimberley as one of Australia's most important conservation projects in 2009, Premier Colin Barnett has failed deliver an outcome.

A number of other marine parks, including one off WA's South West coast, have stalled as differences between Environment Minister Bill Marmion and Fisheries and Petroleum Minister Norman Moore reach stalemate.

World Wildlife Fund WA director Paul Gamblin backed Mr Streitberg's concerns, saying the uncertainty shrouding the marine park debate in WA was leading to longer delays on proposals.

Mr Gamblin said people were often receptive to marine parks once they had been established but the delays were fuelling fears about them.

"The focus on some of the negatives can be exacerbated by delay," he said.

"People generally don't like uncertainty.

"The longer you stretch out these processes the more uncertain they can become and it doesn't foster the environment where you get the best outcomes."

New resort opening at Kuri Bay

2011-12-11T21:21:00.000-08:00

eglobaltravelmedia.com.au

If wilderness is the new luxury, then Kuri Bay in Australia’s Kimberley will be its epitome when it opens in April, 2012. Located on the remotest shore of one of the most isolated regions on Earth, the new Wild Bush Luxury experience offers a new take on ‘luxury’, designed to be an immersion in the lore, legends and landscape of Australia’s last wilderness frontier.

In partnership with Paspaley Pearls, Wild Bush Luxury has – with minimal intervention – transformed Australia’s oldest pearl farm into an exclusive wilderness lodge. With just five rooms – which were previously reserved for special guests of the Paspaley family – Kuri Bay is not luxurious in the traditional sense: while the accommodation is simple, guests are assured of supremely comfortable beds, fine food and wine in line with Wild Bush Luxury’s other properties (which include Bamurru Plains, NT; Sal Salis Ningaloo Reef, WA; Blue Mountains Private Safaris, NSW and Arkaba Station, SA).

Menus will highlight local delicacies, including fresh fish and pearl meat with wines sourced from the Paspaley family’s own vineyards in New South Wales.

Kuri Bay’s five-star exclusivity lies in the uniqueness of the experience and the opportunity to discover the secret stories of the Kimberley.

The property is only accessible by helicopter or sea plane – a spectacular, one hour and 45-minute air safari from Broome over the pristine, jewel-like islands of the Buccaneer Archipelago; the red rock cliffs of the Kimberley coast and the famous horizontal waterfalls, created by the massive tides. Before they even arrive at Kuri Bay, guests have a sense of the vastness of the Kimberley wilderness: an area the size of California with just 30,000 inhabitants. The nearest town to Kuri Bay lies 220 km away.

Days are filled with exploring the coastline with Wild Bush Luxury’s experienced guides, learning both the natural and human stories of the region: the whispered tale of two-metre tall Aboriginal people; the heroics and tragedy of the 1864 settlement where a number of European would-be farmers perished; and the zeal and fortitude of the early missionaries.

There is the story of Camden Sound, one of the world’s greatest Humpback whale calving grounds, which was recently designated a Marine Park under the Kimberley Science and Conservation Strategy, and which lies on Kuri Bay’s doorstep: between June and October, whales are often seen in the bay. There are guided whale watching trips and boat trips to Montgomery Reef, Australia’s largest in-shore reef, where the huge tide recedes so fast it creates cascading waterfalls.

One of the most biologically significant regions of the world, the area’s wildlife is prolific, including birds, turtles and enormous crocodiles, and the fishing is world-class, from Barramundi in the creeks to reef and open water pelagics.

The Kimberley is also one of the oldest landscapes on the planet, little changed since Gondwana, and steeped in 40,000 years of Aboriginal legends and culture.

Along with some of the world’s most ancient Aboriginal cave art, there is also the story of the pearling heritage of the Kimberley, in which Kuri Bay and the Paspaley family play a key role. Founded in 1956, Kuri Bay was Australia’s first South Sea pearl farm and is named after Tokuichi Kuribayashi (1896–1982) of Nippo Pearls, the company that provided the technical expertise to the early farming joint venture. Paspaley’s improved techniques enabled farming of the delicate Pinctada maxima oysters to be perfected, helping the industry to grow and prosper. In its heyday, Kuri Bay was one of the most successful and productive pearl farms in the world.

Kuri Bay will be managed and marketed by Wild Bush Luxury in a joint venture with Paspaley Pearls.

“Our new Kuri Bay venture exemplifies the Wild Bush Luxury philosophy of reconnecting guests to the landscape through inspirational experiences,” explained Charles Carlow, CEO of Wild Bush Luxury.

“We combine the best field guides in Australia and our own unique brand of professional, down-to-earth hospitality to immerse guests in the story of the land, and to deliver an experience unlike any other.”

Each of the five Verandah rooms are fan-cooled and housed in a traditional Broome-style building opening on to a deep verandah, with sweeping views over Kuri Bay, with three shared bathrooms. With no telephone, television or the typical features of a hotel room to distract attention, guests’ focus turns to the environment.

“Kuri Bay’s remote location only serves to enhance the mystique of the Kimberley and lures guests who want to escape the mainstream tourism destinations and experience a unique wilderness location,” said Charles Carlow.

“Few visitors to the Kimberley leave without having been seduced by the purity of the environment, the breathtaking beauty of the rugged landscape set against the emerald sea, and the spirit of one of the most ancient lands on Earth.”

Kuri Bay will open for leisure business in April, 2012. Four-night packages include one night pre-trip at Pinctada Cable Beach Resort, Broome (owned by Marilynne Paspaley), airport transfer and return seaplane flight to Kuri Bay; three nights accommodation; all meals, beverages and guided excursions. They will start in Broome each Friday between April 1 and October 31 and cost 3,585.62€ per person.

Five-night packages, which extend the Kuri Bay stay to four nights, cost 4,183.35€ per person and begin in Broome on Monday each week.

For further information, visit www.kuribay.com.au, www.wildbushluxury.com or call 1300 790 561.

Woodside not bothered by Kimberley land ruling

2011-12-08T14:56:00.001-08:00

Rania Spooner

December 7, 2011

WA Today

Woodside Petroleum is confident the $30 billion Browse gas project will move ahead as scheduled despite a court win for some traditional land owners over the proposed processing facility at James Price Point yesterday.

The Woodside-operated Browse (liquefied natural gas) development would process gas from fields 400 kilometres off the Kimberley coast to an onshore WA Government precinct 60 kilometres north of Broome.

The WA Supreme Court yesterday found compulsory acquisition notices issued by the West Australian government regarding the proposed gas hub were unlawful because they did not contain a description of the land required.

Premier Colin Barnett said the ruling did not make a lot of difference and the WA Government would reissue the notices with amendments.

Woodside, Australia's second largest gas producer, does not believe the ruling will hurt its development plans.

"The provision of the land for the Browse LNG Precinct is a matter for the State," a Woodside spokesman said in a statement today.

"Woodside does not believe that this result will impact on our work program and our activities are continuing on site as scheduled."

Mr Barnett said when the original notice of intent to acquire the land was issued, it covered an area of 7000 hectares, and that was to allow flexibility for where the final 3,500 ha would be.

"The court says you have to identify the exact 3,000 ha so the government will do that, we will reissue the notice of intent," he told reporters.

The Kimberley community has been divided and some have had an ongoing battle with Woodside over its plans to build the liquefied natural gas precinct.

Chief Justice Wayne Martin found yesterday any decisions made since the government-issued notices to take land at James Price Point and extinguish native title were also unlawful.

Chief Justice Martin found Neil Patrick McKenzie representing the Jabbir Jabbir people, and Phillip James Roe representing the Goolarabooloo people, had a sufficient interest in the validity to invoke the jurisdiction.

Mr Roe told reporters he was very happy with the result but the fight was not over.

"There's more to come and I'll be still going hard at it," he said outside court yesterday.

Mr Roe's lawyer Michael Orlov said there would be proceedings, probably next week, to declare the songline area an Aboriginal site under the Aboriginal Heritage Act.

He said the area where the project was being developed was an Aboriginal site and should have been approved by the minister under the Heritage Act.

Mr Orlov said because the approval was not obtained, it could halt the development for around 12 months.

"The immediate practical effect of this judgment is the Browse project agreement, which depended on the validity of these notices, is invalid and has no effect," he said.

"The minister can commence again but it is a long process and we'll have to see what he does."

- with AAP

Potential new dams in the North

2011-12-07T16:54:00.001-08:00

ABC

The federal Opposition says it is preparing a list of potential new dam sites to take to the next federal election with major opportunities in the country's north.

The chair of its dams and water management taskforce, Andrew Robb, is in the Kimberley this week looking at proposals such as a dam on the Margaret River near Fitzroy Crossing.

Mr Robb says it has "magnificent potential".

He says previous water taskforces have failed to realise the true opportunities in northern Australia.

"For instance, the Northern Land and Water Taskforce, originally commissioned by the Howard Government, was hijacked, the membership was replaced and I think they were under instruction to reach an outcome," he said.

"To say that across the whole north there's not one opportunity for one dam anywhere, small, medium or large, just beggars belief but yet that was the conclusion."

The former chair of Labor's Northern Land and Water taskforce, Joe Ross, told the ABC in September that there is little scientific evidence to support further dams in northern Australia.

"Looking at the history and the evidence so far, such as the dam on the Ord River, it's still being paid for by taxpayers dollars," he said.

"I think the damming of any freshwater system in northern Australia has to be proven that's it's going to be viable economically, environmentally and that it doesn't impact on the cultural integrity of the region.

"If the coalition can come up with an answer that fills all of those three values that our Australian community holds, then let them put a dam on the Margaret River."

The West

Disagreement over impact of Supreme Court decision on James Price Point traditional owner gas deal

2011-12-06T15:21:00.001-08:00

By Ben Collins

ABC News online

Disagreement over impact of Supreme Court decision on James Price Point traditional owner gas deal
The West Australian Supreme Court has ruled notices of compulsory acquisition at James Price Point invalid.
Lawyers representing James Price Point traditional owners opposed to gas processing are at odds with the
State Government and Woodside on how this impacts the billion dollar deal with native title claimants.

Lawyer Andrew Chalk representing traditional owners Phillip Roe and Neil Mckenzie, says that the agreement between the Goolarabooloo/Jabirr Jabirr native title claimants, the State Government and Woodside that relinquishes any claims to native title at James Price Point in return for a benefits package worth over a billion dollars has been nullified by the Supreme Court decision.

"That agreement...under the native title act depended on those notices being valid. If the notices are invalid then the surrender of the native title...falls away." he said.

But Premier Barnett has dismissed the impact of the Supreme Court decision on the plans to develop the James Price Point gas processing precinct. He told the ABC that the State Government will simply reissue the notice of intent on the specific area that has now been identified. He points out that compulsory acquisition has never actually taken place.

"The land was not compulsorily acquired. We have acquired it through negotiation with the Aboriginal representatives, and that is according to the Native Title Act, and that stands." Mr Barnett said.

Woodside have released a statement saying that their current site investigation work will be able to continue, and that the agreement they struck with native title claimants allows for changes to be made to the compulsory acquisition notices which were the subject of the Supreme Court decision. The oil and gas company also emphasise that "This legal action by Roe and McKenzie is not supported by the registered native title claim group, who are party to the Native Title Agreement."

The Kimberley Land Council (KLC) says that the Goolarabooloo/Jabirr Jabirr native title claimant group continue to support the agreement signed with the State Government and Woodside. In a statement the KLC say that they want "...the State Government to provide certainty that the proposed development of James Price Point will go ahead, following a Supreme Court decision that questions the development's progress."

The Court decided that moves to compulsorily acquire the land at James Price Point were invalid based on the requirements to specify precisely which areas of land were to be acquired. ABC Kimberley reported the discrepancies over the areas of land the State Government were saying they needed for the gas processing precinct and the area stated in the notices at the time compulsory acquisition was first initiated in September 2010.

The Premier confirmed to parliament later that month that he was pushing ahead with compulsory acquisition before the site work had been done to establish exactly which bit of land would be used for the gas precinct. Premier Barnett told parliament that over 7,000 hectares would be compulsorily acquired for what would ultimately be a 3,500 hectare precinct.

"This is to allow sufficient flexibility to identify final locations for each component of the Browse LNG Precinct and associated infrastructure taking into account Aboriginal cultural heritage concerns, as well as environmental and geotechnical considerations." the Premier said.

But today the Supreme Court ruled that the Land Administration Act does not allow the Government to make a broad compulsory acquisition, then choose the portions required and then return the remainder to its original title.

Andrew Chalk says the basic point from this decision is that "...if the government is going to forcefully take people's land they should be required to state precisely what it is that they're intending to take."

There may be further ramifications for the State Government which is said to have used this strategy to compulsorily acquire land in other cases. But the real impact for Kimberley gas processing at James Price Point will be felt if Mr Chalk's claim that the native title compensation deal has been voided, is borne out.

If this is the case then the Government may have to start the longwinded compulsory acquisition process again, and the Kimberley Land Council would have to reconvene native title claimants and take them through the painstaking process of coming to a new agreement with Woodside and the State Government.

This would be another stumbling block for the controversial plans for gas processing at James Price Point. The decision comes after Premier Barnett urged Woodside to hold their nerve amidst reports of increasing economic reasons not to proceed with the project. And there is ongoing uncertainty about environmental and heritage impacts. If the Environmental Protection Authority raises concerns in their report on James Price Point, due at the end of next month, then the gas precinct will be fighting for survival on multiple fronts.

No doubt lawyers from both sides will be preparing for the next court battle over whether this decision affects the billion dollar deal with native title claimants.

The Minister for Lands has 28 days in which to appeal the decision. The ABC has contacted the Minister for Lands, Brendon Grylls, for a response.

Secret men's business threatens $30 billion gas bonanza

2011-12-04T15:42:00.001-08:00

Paddy Manning

December 5, 2011Sydney Morning Herald

EXCLUSIVE

Aboriginal Traditional Owners at James Price Point in the Kimberley while protesting the proposed development of a gas hub on their land. Photo: Julia Rau

A PROPOSED $30 billion gas hub at James Price Point on Western Australia's Kimberley coast would disturb sites used for secret Aboriginal ''men's business'', lawyers say.

Documents seen by the Herald show a song cycle, a path sacred to the Goolarabooloo and other people of the Dampier Peninsula, which runs through the James Price Point site, 60 kilometres north of Broome. Woodside plans to build a liquefied natural gas terminal there to process gas from its Browse field. Late last month Chalk and Fitzgerald, lawyers for a traditional custodian, Joseph Roe, wrote to Woodside and its joint venture partners in the Browse development - Chevron, Shell, BHP and BP - requesting that site clearing works be suspended as they may be in breach of the WA Aboriginal Heritage Act.

Andrew Chalk of Chalk and Fitzgerald expects shortly to commence legal proceedings to require the WA Registrar of Aboriginal Sites to include the song cycle on the sites register, as was determined in 1991.

Goolarabooloo traditional custodians Phillip Roe, Richard Hunter and Joseph Roe say the proposed gas hub poses a heritage risk. Photo: Damian Kelly

Mr Chalk said the registrar had ''not explained why the song cycle was not listed in accordance with the standard procedures nor why the office has not taken the usual approach to protecting the site that was notified in July this year, which is to treat it as a site until investigations are carried out to determine otherwise".

The Premier, Colin Barnett, has described James Price Point as an "unremarkable beach" but in 1989 a report by the WA Department of Aboriginal Sites identified James Price Point, also known as Walmadany, as an area of "major" heritage significance, the highest category, with archaeological integrity and dense material over extensive areas including hearths and bone remains.

In 1991 the WA Mining Warden rejected an application for a mining exploration licence by Terrex Resources, based on objections from the Goolarabooloo Aboriginal Corporation and recommendations of an all-male subgroup of the Aboriginal Cultural Material Committee, established under the Aboriginal Heritage Act.

Warden John Howard then heard evidence from official anthropologist Nicholas Green, who had been commissioned to document the song cycle, that the song cycle was of ''critical'' significance to the Aboriginal people of the West Kimberley because it was part of the initiation of young men into Aboriginal law.

"The essence of that law has been placed in the ground," said Mr Green. "Not only at the name places but at all points between those name places."

Mr Green said he had personal knowledge of the song cycle having "attended a ceremony a

number of years ago and witnessed for myself the actual songs". He had recorded a lot of information on audio tapes, which had been transcribed, but the evidence was not provided to the court because of its "extreme, sacred nature".

Woodside said yesterday it had obtained all necessary regulatory approvals and consents required to conduct land clearing and geotechnical studies at James Price Point.

''Woodside engaged senior traditional owners to complete detailed anthropological and archaeological surveys and received the appropriate cultural directions in order to conduct our work within this area,'' the company said. ''We have taken this approach to ensure that our work program does not interfere with any potential heritage sites. Traditional owners are providing ongoing assistance to our contractors by monitoring our approved site activities.''

But Mr Chalk said Woodside's ''approach to the song cycle was one of recklessness, given its significance and of which they have been on notice for many years. It is arguably also illegal.''

Mr Roe's challenge recalls the Hindmarsh Island controversy in South Australia in the mid-1990s, which led to a royal commission into allegations that Aboriginal opponents of a proposed bridge to the island had fabricated claims that the project would interfere with ''secret women's business''.

On Tuesday Chief Justice Wayne Martin in the WA Supreme Court will hand down judgment on a separate challenge by Mr Roe's brother Phillip, and Jabbir Jabbir man Neil McKenzie, to the validity of the WA government's notice of compulsory acquisition of the site at James Price Point.

The threat of compulsory acquisition was used by Mr Barnett, who supports the gas hub, to pressure traditional owners to surrender their native title rights over the James Price Point site and accept a $1.5 billion deal, championed by the Kimberley Land Council, allowing the Woodside project to go ahead.

Got you, you little rat - now let's save you

2011-12-03T19:12:00.001-08:00

Nicky Phillips

December 3, 2011
Sydney Morning Herald

In good hands ... one of the golden-backed tree rats that the Australian Wildlife Conservancy wants to ensure have a long and secure future. Photo: Nick Moir

IT WAS once so common it was considered a pest, found running through the rooftops of many houses in Broome.

But in a narrow, rainforest-filled gorge, 350 kilometres from the West Australian pearling capital, ecologist Katherine Tuft has had no luck catching a golden-backed tree rat.

And then, as she inspects the fifth cage she placed out the night before, Dr Tuft finds what she is looking for.

''These guys used to be across much of northern Australia but they've really contracted back and now the north-west Kimberley is the only place they are,'' Dr Tuft, from the non-profit conservation group the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, said.

The unfortunate case of the native rodent is representative of the plight of more than half of northern Australia's small mammals, such as the northern quoll and golden bandicoot, whose ranges have contracted and whose populations have plummeted in the past 20 years. For these species, the north-west Kimberley is the last stand.

In an attempt to guard these creatures the Australian Wildlife Conservancy has taken over the management of a new property in the region, the Artesian Range, where a team of ecologists have found many rare species, including several the scientists had never seen.

The chief executive of the conservation group, Atticus Fleming, said the conservancy planned to manage the reserve by eliminating or minimising the threats that have pushed many of these animals to this narrow corner of northern Australia, such as feral animals and fire.

''We've come in here in the nick of time,'' he said.

A wildlife conservation professor, Chris Johnson, said most mammals below a body size of a kilogram were in steep decline in northern Australia.

''It looks like one big chunk of the biodiversity of those ecosystems is disappearing. And it is happening really fast,'' Professor Johnson, from the University of Tasmania, said.

Several key species had reached their tipping point, and if their populations fell any lower it was unlikely they would ever be able to recover.

''Once a species has got down to a very small population it has lost a lot of genetic variation [which] means it loses some fitness and the ability to adapt to threats or cope with disease,'' he said.

A small population was also vulnerable to local threats such as a drought or dramatic bushfire.

But if the north-west Kimberley remained a sanctuary for these key species, and they were able to flourish, they could be re-introduced to parts of their former range, Professor Johnson said.

The reporter travelled to the Artesian Range Sanctuary courtesy of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/got-you-you-little-rat--now-lets-save-you-20111202-1obgi.html#ixzz1fX2TRaV8

The Last Refuge - The Artesian Range, North Kimberley

2011-12-02T17:48:00.001-08:00

Nicky Phillips

Sydney Morning Herald

December 3, 2011

Click to play video

The Kimberley

Nicky Phillips and Nick Moir travelled to The Kimberley to look at the Artesian range.

Great extinctions have blighted Australia since European settlement but Nicky Phillips finds a small sanctuary still thriving in the isolated splendour of the Kimberley region.

'No one is allowed to sleep until we find it.'' Ecologist Dr James Smith is half joking but the force of his voice suggests he is determined, even a bit desperate.

For the past two weeks he has been scouring the tree canopies and sun-baked rock ledges of a remote region of the north-west Kimberley for the elusive rough-scaled python.

There have been fewer than 20 reported sightings of the python, whose habitat is confined to this small fringe of northern Australia, since it was first described in the 1980s.

Running wild … Sarah Legge in the Artesian Range sanctuary, also above. Photo: Nick Moir

To Smith, the snake represents more than an ecologist's trump card; it is one of almost 50 reptiles, mammals and birds found nowhere else in the world but for this small pocket of Western Australia.

The north-west Kimberley is now the only area of mainland Australia where no mammal, and quite possibly no plant, has become extinct since white settlement.

The local inhabitants are not all that makes the region remarkable. For two decades, it has become a refuge for almost all northern Australia's small mammals that have been pushed out of native habitats across the top of the continent.

The Artesian Range. Photo: Nick Moir

This lost world, largely inaccessible to humans without a helicopter, has become a modern-day Noah's Ark on a landscape with the world's worst animal extinction rate.

While the region's remoteness means the populations of many species remain abundant, the broader Kimberley faces a variety of threats.

Fire, feral cats and wild herbivores will push up to eight kinds of mammals to extinction in the next 20 years if business as usual continues. And the populations of a dozen or more species will continue their steep decline.

Feisty - but under threat ... a quoll encountered by the team surveying the region's rare species. Photo: Nick Moir

Feral cats are by far the biggest threat to the Kimberley's biodiversity. There are at least 100,000, eating a million-plus native animals each day. They have a more direct impact than wild herbivores such as donkeys. And the impact of fire is far greater because it allows cats to hunt down small species more easily. Pressure from tourism and mining could take its toll on the region, one of the continent's 15 biodiversity hotspots, if left uncontrolled.

Despite Canberra's decision to place vast tracts of the west Kimberley on the National Heritage List, the scale of the problem has grown too large for governments to manage alone. It is this predicament that convinced the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, a non-profit conservation organisation, to take over the management of 150,000 hectares of wilderness in a narrow corridor of the north-west Kimberley.

Just under half the property is a mix of grassland savannahs and rolling basalt hills, bounded to the north by the mighty Charnley River.

A giant cave gecko. Photo: Nick Moir

The rest of the reserve comprises the Artesian Range, from which the sanctuary takes its name; a network of sandstone ranges and dramatic escarpments carved by deep, rainforest-filled gorges.

It is here that Dr Smith and his colleagues have been for the past two weeks surveying the native species.

hat is a pretty rat,'' laughs Dr Sarah Legge, the AWC's national conservation and science manager. She has just arrived by helicopter to join her team and is handed a Kimberley rock at, a small native rodent endemic to the region. ''I think she's preggers,'' Legge says, examining the animal's engorged teats.

Ecologist Dr Katherine Tuft weighs, measures and releases the rodent before the conversation turns to the other species the team have caught or spotted on the trip. So far they have seen many northern quolls (now regionally extinct in the Northern Territory), monjons (small rock wallabies), and a few scaly tailed possums, called wyuldas.

Around the campsite, the deep red dirt, rich with iron oxide, is pockmarked with bandicoot and rodent diggings. ''You come to a place like this and it's what the rest of northern Australia should be like,'' says Legge.

While eating dinner on their first night the team had even spotted an elusive golden-backed tree rat, whose habitat has shrunk from most of northern Australia to a tiny fringe around the Artesian Range. ''We were just eating papadams and James heard a noise,'' Tuft says. ''We looked up and it was a golden-backed tree rat.'' The rodents are so rare, Legge has not seen one. She hopes they'll catch one now she has arrived.

The contraction of the rat's range is symbolic of more than half of northern Australia's small mammals, whose populations over the last two decades have crashed.

In the iconic World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park, 75 per cent of small mammals have vanished in the past 15 years, despite an annual conservation investment of $18 million.

To ensure they do not disappear from the Artesian Range, the AWC will conduct annual animal inventories. ''We need to know what is here, where it is and in what density,'' Legge says.

Each evening for the past two weeks the team have set close to 200 traps with mammal-style delicacies of peanut butter and oat balls laced with honey, fish oil and tuna to give them a distinct, pungent odour.

The Artesian Range is rugged and unruly. There are no boarded walkways or paths to follow. To inspect the traps early the next day (sunrise is at 4:30) the scientists clamber over fractured sandstone ridges, whose size and jagged edges would pose a death trap to most people, while pushing past spiky pandanas palms and clumps of waist-high spinifex. The fine hairs on the branches of the native hibiscus are also best avoided. ''Watch those, you'll spend the rest of the day pulling them out of your hands,'' Tuft warns.

The rich and abundant biodiversity of the Range has remained intact largely because of the terrain.

The region's characteristic fractured rock structures, which formed when sandstone laid down some 1.8 billion years ago folded and crumpled under the pressure of several periods of tectonic plate shifting, provide considerable shelter for native animals, especially from fire.

Every year about 40 per cent of the Kimberley, roughly the size of Victoria, is razed. While fire is natural here - when grass growth from the preceding wet season dries and cures it is easily ignited by lightening strikes - bushfire patterns have been adversely influenced by humans over the past few decades. This has created the situation in which intense, devastating fires burn in the hottest, driest part of the year.

While studies in North America show that fires claim few animal casualties, they strip the landscape of significant habitat, limiting the amount of food and shelter available for survivors.

A day before, Legge had sat in her office at another AWC property, Mornington Sanctuary in central Kimberley, pointing to a digital map of fires in the area this year. ''This one was started by a spark from a bulldozer or a grader,'' Legge says, indicating a large purple blotch that represents an intense, late-season fire, east of Mornington. ''And that one was a campfire that got away.''

The gradual movement of Aborigines from the country to cities, coupled with increases in tourists and farming contractors, led to the jump in the number of out-of-control fires.

In an attempt to minimise the negative impact on wildlife, the AWC has set up a fire management program, called EcoFire, with neighbouring land managers, including pastoralists and Aboriginal communities.

In early April and May, at the start of the dry season when there is still some moisture in the vegetation, the AWC prescribes burns across more than 5 million hectares. While it cannot control the acreage that burns - past rainfall is the key predictor of the proportion of an area that will ignite - the program can alter when the fires burn. ''Burn in August, September [at the end of the dry season] and it's like a holocaust,'' says the AWC chief executive, Atticus Fleming. Whereas prescribed burning in April leaves areas of vegetation unburnt, he says.

The objective is to break up the landscape into a patchwork of burnt and unburnt vegetation that stops the spread of late-season fires and protects areas of old growth vegetation, says Legge, who flew 30,000 kilometres in eight weeks, dropping 50,000 incendiaries over the EcoFire area, earlier this year. ''We call ourselves the bombardiers,'' Legge says. ''Make that the conservation bombardiers,'' Fleming adds.

o escape the relentless midday heat on the Artesian Range, the ecologists take refuge under a large tarp.

Cross-legged, they hover like excited children on Christmas morning waiting to inspect the calico bags that contain last night's catches.

''What have you got now, Sarah?'' asks Dr Alex James.

Legge cups a small marsupial in her hands. The team is not sure if it is a northern brown bandicoot or a much rarer golden bandicoot, whose range has contracted so severely the Artesian Range is likely the last place it exists. Legge consults the books. The animal she holds in her hand is smaller than an average-sized northern brown bandicoot, but it could be a juvenile. She peers inside the creature's pouch to find two sets of black beady eyes. ''It would be very significant to find a golden bandicoot,'' Legge says. After measuring the marsupial's head, tail and a foot, and inspecting its tail, she concludes it is a northern brown bandicoot, but she take some hairs for a DNA sample to confirm her assessment. ''These are just the type of small mammals cats love to eat,'' she says.

Legge suspects feral cats are the greatest threat to the Kimberley's biodiversity. She estimates there are at least 100,000 in central and northern Kimberley. When they opened the stomach of several cats they found they were eating up to 12 animals a night, which equates to about a million native animals being eaten daily by cats.

Determined and strategic predators, feral cats often hunt animals thought to be rare in the landscape. ''I remember opening up one cat and it had 10 dunnarts [small carnivorous marsupials] in it,'' she says. ''That's not an animal we catch very often.''

Not only are feral cats effective hunters, they fill a niche in the food chain. ''They can exert maximum pressure downwards but there is nothing controlling them,'' Legge says.

She has collaborated with several Australian universities, three national park agencies and the CSIRO on a cat-tracking project that has revealed surprising insights into feral behaviour.

So far they've attached GPS collars to 20 cats and recorded the animals' movements over several months. Late last year they found a collared tomcat, Bruce, travelled more than 14km to hunt along the edge of a fire scar. ''It was such a shock for us to see this cat travelling out of his home range, through other cats' territories, to pick off the refugees at the edge of this fire scar,'' Legge says.

Since Bruce, they've witnessed similar behaviour in two other feral cats. While the AWC ecologists have not seen any of these predators in the Artesian Range, Legge is confident they are there.

''They are found across all four corners of the continent, they're in rainforests, deserts.''

A collaborator on cat-tracking program, wildlife conservationist Professor Chris Johnson, believes the role feral cats play in the north closely mirrors the impact red foxes had on mammals in the arid and semi arid woodlands of central Australia from the 1870s to the 1950s. Nineteen species became extinct during that time, giving Australia the claim to the world's worst extinction rate, says Johnson, of the University of Tasmania.

The feral cat invasion has been, at least in part, facilitated by the spread of introduced herbivores such as cattle, donkeys and pigs.

With most of the Kimberley under pastoral lease, these animals have become ubiquitous across the landscape, including national parks. The grazing and trampling of these animals, both captive and feral, creates large patches of barren, functionless land across the tropical savannahs, destroying the habitat of many small animals in the process.

In an attempt to measure the impact of these introduced species, Legge led a four-year study to destock more than 40,000ha of Mornington Sanctuary. Three years after removing the beasts, the team, which included scientists from Charles Darwin University, the Australian National University and the Northern Territory government, found native animals almost doubled in abundance.

While Legge concedes that removing introduced herbivores from the land is not a wholesale solution, they should be moved off conservation land. ''That will be an interesting challenge for parks, because they don't have the staff on the ground to carry out the removal,'' Legge says.

The final assault on the Kimberley will be the arrival of cane toads. They have already reached Kununurra in the state's north east.

Evidence from other states shows Australia's most notorious pest has a severe impact on several species unfortunate enough to eat them, such as goannas, snakes, northern quolls and freshwater crocodiles.

For wildlife ecologist Professor Brendan Mackey, it is the interaction of all the threats to the Kimberley that have created the current situation.''If we don't do something now, it will be too late in 10 years,'' says Mackey, director of Griffith University's climate change response program.

To save the Kimberley and its unique wildlife, a group of scientists and conservationists formulated a priority list of programs and their cost to safeguard key animals.

An author of the study, ecology and mathematics professor Hugh Possingham, says a cost-benefit analysis shows the area's wildlife can be secured with an initial $95 million investment, followed by another $40 million each year.

He says it is not good enough to just fence off an important piece of land and call it a national park. ''A national park doesn't mean anything unless you manage it,'' says Possingham, director of the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at the University of Queensland.

As part of a new conservation strategy for the Kimberley, the Western Australia Department of Environment and Conservation has committed $63 million over the the next five years. It includes $21.5 million for a landscape-scale program of fire, feral animal and weed control.

Possingham doubts this will be enough to save many of the region's most vulnerable creatures. He says that if in 10 years several key species have vanished, as predicted, governments can blame no one but themselves. ''We told them what to do, and they chose not to act,'' he says.

For Fleming, the AWC's chief executive, the scale of the problem in the Kimberley is too great for governments to solve alone. ''We've got to do something different if we want to prevent extinctions and save the wildlife,'' he says.

The conservancy's model of placing people on the ground to manage conservation areas based on published science is going against the trend in the state's national parks, whose administrators have dramatically cut numbers on the ground.

''How can you effectively manage a national park if you don't have people living there, getting to know the place?'' Fleming asks.

''The wave of extinctions that have swept across northern Australia is crashing on the Kimberley's right now. If we don't act, it will be too late.''

Back at the Artesian Range campsite, the AWC ecologists are preparing for a final night of spotlighting.

''It's a good night for pythons,'' says Alex James, who has already spotted a couple of Olive pythons on the rocky ledge between her tent and the nearby creek.

Due perhaps to the victory of hope over experience, she was confident her team would find their rarer cousin, the elusive rough-scaled python. The tracking gods were not to be with with the group that night, but hope lives.

Nicky Phillips travelled to the Artesian Range courtesy of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

Kimberley Marine Research Station November Newsletter

2011-12-01T00:25:00.001-08:00

http://www.kimberleymarineresearchstation.com.au/marine-expertise/monthly-newsletters/

50+ species of hard coral identified on one reef walk at Cygnet Bay

2011-11-30T22:37:00.001-08:00

North-west Marine Bioregional Plan submissions close 28 November

2011-11-18T15:25:00.001-08:00

Submissions to the draft North-west Marine Bioregional Plan and proposed marine reserves network close 28 November.

The draft Marine Bioregional Plan and marine reserves network proposal for the North-west marine region were launched by the Federal Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Tony Burke, on 23 August 2011.

Copies of these documents and other supporting materials are available at www.environment.gov.au/coasts/mbp/north-west/index.html

Everyone with an interest in this process is encouraged to make a formal submission to the department before the conclusion of the 90 day consultation period on 28 November 2011. Submissions can be made online at http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts/mbp/north-west/consultation/index.html#submissions

If you would like to contact the team with responsibility for the North-west marine bioregional planning process, please email: Northwest.MarinePlan@environment.gov.au

New conference facilities for Kimberley Coast

2011-11-16T21:35:00.001-08:00

New conference facilities for Kimberley Coast

KIM BENJAMIN, 16 November 2011

The Berkeley River, a multi-million dollar development located on the Kimberley Coast in Western Australia is scheduled to open next year.

The property will feature 20 suites with panoramic ocean views and a main lodge with state of the art conference facilities.

Incentive activities including boat cruises, fishing and helicopter rides will also be available.

http://www.citmagazine.com/News/MostEmailed/1104716/New-conference-facilities-Kimberley-Coast/

Browse up for review

2011-11-14T17:07:00.001-08:00

Energy News Bulletin

Browse up for review

Bevis Yeo
Tuesday, 15 November 2011

WOODSIDE Petroleum is confident of managing the risk to fisheries, marine fauna and flora under the greatest threat from development of the upstream component of its $A30 billion Browse LNG project.

Illustration of the Browse LNG upstream facilities

Map of the Browse LNG fields Image courtesy Woodside Petroleum

Browse LNG retention leases Image courtesy Woodside Petroleum

In its environmental impact statement, Woodside said the development of the Torosa, Brecknock and Calliance fields did not represent a significant threat to any listed or migratory species and management response measures were in place in the event an unplanned incident like a spill occurred.

Woodside said 50-90 wells would be drilled over the project life.

They will be connected to manifolds (four at Torosa, two at Calliance and one at Brecknock), which will be connected in turn through flowlines to their respective infield platforms.

The platforms will be connected to the central processing facility, which will comprise up to four platforms located on the continental shelf in 80-120m of water.

Gas and condensate will be processed at the facility before it is sent by about 310km of pipeline to the LNG plant at James Price Point.

The upstream facilities will tap the 13.3 trillion cubic feet of gas and 360 million barrels of condensate believed to be present in the three fields.

While most of the expected impacts are classed as low risk, Woodside noted
local fisheries faced a medium risk through exclusion zones around platforms and drill rigs, though the total area is expected to be small.

Woodside also carried out tests to determine the impact of light from the Torosa platform on marine turtles and concluded maximum light levels reaching Sandy Islet would appear to be no more than a small lit object, which Woodside said would not influence nesting behaviour of adult turtles.

However, the company said it had started a long-term monitoring program of turtles on the island to identify impacts from the development.

Noise produced during the construction of the project, vessel movements and operational activities were also assessed and while most were found to be of low risk to cetaceans, uncertainty over the noise from the subsea choke valves in the channel between the north and south reefs at Scott reef led Woodside to conclude it presented a medium risk to cetaceans until more data became available.

Woodside said besides carrying out measurements of the noise, it would also investigate insulation methods to reduce the noise produced by fluids through the chokes.

Other risks brought up by the report included the high possibility vessels and rigs might bring in invasive species – though Woodside said its comprehensive management plan made the likelihood low – and changes in water quality due to elevated suspended sediment from pipeline trenching works.

The study also examined the reasons behind the Browse joint venture’s decision to drop development alternatives.

Woodside said the Browse to Darwin option was dropped in 2007 due to the higher cost of running a long pipeline, while an option to build a liquefaction facility in the shallow water of the southern lagoon of Scott reef was deemed to be environmentally unacceptable.

Floating LNG was also dropped due to the need for multiple facilities to efficiently recover gas from the fields.

Woodside acknowledged the option to pipe gas to the Burrup peninsula, widely considered to be the most viable alternative to developing Browse LNG at James Price Point, did not pose unmanageable environmental issues though it raised the possibility that issues related to the cumulative impacts on the Burrup peninsula might present challenges for the option.

The EIS represents 17 years of research that has shed new light on Western Australia’s northern offshore ecosystems.

“Browse represents a major opportunity for Australia to meet the world’s growing demand for cleaner forms of energy,” Woodside Browse senior vice president Michael Hession said.

“It is likely to be a major part of Woodside’s growth as an energy supplier.

“We are also working closely with traditional owners to make sure that Kimberley indigenous people can realise the economic and social development opportunities from this project.”

Browse LNG is expected to generate up to $50 billion for the Australian economy and create up to 8000 jobs, 6000 onshore and 2000 offshore, during construction.

The 12 million tonnes per annum LNG project is expected to be approved next year, with first production in 2017

Murdoch researchers slam gas hub report

2011-11-10T23:04:00.001-08:00

Murdoch researchers slam gas hub report

Updated November 11, 2011 15:29:42

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-11/university-scientists-condemn-environmental-report-on-kimberley/3660968

A key document examining the potential impact on marine mammals of a proposed liquefied natural gas precinct near Broome has drawn criticism from scientists.

A team from Murdoch University's Cetacean Research Unit says it has very little confidence in the report's scientific integrity and what it calls its "unfounded" conclusions.

The "Strategic Assessment Report", prepared by the Department of State Development, is designed to provide advice to the State and Federal governments on whether to give final approval to the gas hub which would span 3,530 hectares of land and sea at James Price Point, north of Broome.

The document's many findings include a prediction that activities associated with the LNG hub are unlikely to have an impact on dolphins in the area because the animals are likely to exhibit avoidance responses such as faster dive times and high-speed swimming.

The report also found that dugongs are not likely to be affected by a loss of seagrass due to dredging because they will relocate to adjacent areas to look for food.

On the subject of the estimated 13-thousand humpback whales that migrate through the area each year, the report found they successfully cross shipping corridors with little evidence of vessel strikes further south at Port Hedland and Dampier ports.

But, in a scathing submission, four scientists from Murdoch's Cetacean Research Unit have questioned many of the report's findings.

"There has been no targeted effort to identify and quantify the abundance of dolphin species ... this is a glaring omission in the Environmental Impact Assessment," the submission says.

"Thus the conclusion that the activities associated with the development of the precinct port area is unlikely to impact these species (humpback dolphin, snubfin dolphin) is unsubstantiated and based on field efforts that were aimed at quantifying humpback whale and dugong numbers only."

The unit's Amanda Hodgson told the ABC that a Murdoch University research team had recorded multiple groups of snubfin, Indo-Pacfic humpback and bottlenose dolphins just north and south of James Price Point during a boat-based survey in July last year.

"The coastal dolphins that we know occur along the Dampier Peninsula include humpback and snubfin dolphins and both of those species generally have small populations, small home ranges and they rely on very specific habitats ... so they can't just avoid the area if they're disturbed by this development," she said.

"The broad conclusions that they've come to are not necessarily supported by the scientific literature."

The report's assessment of the impact on dugongs has also been questioned by the Murdoch team which cited the case of Hervey Bay in Queensland where they say the widespread loss of seagrass from a cyclone resulted in the death and emigration of many dugongs.

On the subject of humpback whales, the scientists argue many of the findings in the report are "unreliable".

They have described the report's prediction that whales will successfully cross shipping corridors as "inappropriate" because it is based on a study of just three, satellite-tagged whales traversing the Port Hedland and Dampier Port areas in September, 2010.

"We certainly know that humpback whales get hit by boats and are disturbed by boats," Dr Hodgson said.

"There's plenty of literature to suggest that the impact of boat strikes is significant on humpback whales."

The Department of State Development has defended the report, saying it is based on the findings of work by reputable scientists.

The department says it has received more than 11,000 submissions since the report was released for public comment late last year and that draft responses have been prepared for about 1,000 issues raised in the submissions.

The State's Environmental Protection Authority is expected to make a recommendation to the WA Environment Minister, Bill Marmion, on whether the gas hub should go ahead, and under what conditions, in February.

The project also needs to be approved by the Federal Environment Minister, Tony Burke.

2011-11-10T19:51:00.001-08:00

Marine reserves not enough: report

FLIP PRIOR, The West Australian

November 10, 2011, 5:40 pm

The Federal Government's proposed marine reserves in WA's north-west do not go far enough to protect cetacean species including humpback whales and snub-nosed dolphins, leaving them increasingly vulnerable to threats from the growing oil and gas industry, a new report claims.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare report, compiled by marine scientists, described the region's waters extending from Kalbarri up to the WA-NT border as the "last great whale haven" in Australia, which include the world's largest humpback whale population.

The report recorded 32 cetacean species as living in or migrating to the area, but just four - the snubfin dolphin, Indo-Pacific humpback and bottlenose dolphins and humpback whale - are recognised in the Federal Government's proposed bioregional plan.

With their highly refined acoustic senses, cetaceans are vulnerable to human-generated noise pollution from dredging, construction, explosions and seismic surveys and drilling, as well as fisheries, shipping and habitat degradation.

The Government's marine reserves offered little protection to the animals when "vast tracts" of ocean were being handed over to oil and gas companies for exploitation, the report said.

Areas of greatest risk identified by the report included the Exmouth Gulf, Ningaloo Reef, Barrow Island, Quondong Point and James Price Point, Browse Island, Scott Reef and Ashmore Reef.

Environs Kimberley spokesman Martin Pritchard said less than one per cent of the north-west marine area was protected.

"We are really concerned that the Federal Government will cave into the demands of the oil and gas industry rather than protect marine life up here," he said.

"In their draft plan, they could have taken the opportunity to put in a reserve adjoining the proposed State Government North Kimberley marine park proposal - but they haven't."

There was only one highly protected area within the Kimberley Marine Reserve, placed specifically to protect the humpback whale calving grounds.

Kimberley whale expert Richard Costin said the report indicated that Commonwealth and State marine reserves systems showed a lack of coordination and did not actually provide any meaningful protection for cetaceans.

"The classic example, of course, is the proposed Camden Sound marine park, which has only a very small sanctuary area set aside for the humpback whales," he said.

"That hasn't continued on into Commonwealth waters to probably the most important area that runs across to Adele Island through the outer shoals and down to Eco Beach.

"All the boundaries for the proposed marine parks have done is provide certainty for access to the oil and gas industry."

IFAW campaigns officer Matthew Collis said the north-west waters were globally environmentally significant with incredible diversity of whales and dolphins and needed stronger protection and more research to be carried out.

"Of the proposed reserves, only three are highly protected and two are far offshore," Mr Collis said. "Even that highly protected area (in the Kimberley) doesn't cover all the areas in which the humpback whales breed and calve."

Environment Minister Bill Marmion said State Government was committed to expanding the marine parks system in WA, including the four proposed in Camden Sound, Eighty Mile Beach, Roebuck Bay and North Kimberley.

He said the State and Commonwealth Governments had agreed to work collaboratively in planning processes and provide complementary conservation measures across jurisdictional boundaries wherever possible.

However, there was no overlap between marine park and reserve proposals in Commonwealth waters, and those in State waters, he said

IFAW Releases new Cetacean Report

2011-11-09T21:41:00.001-08:00

(Sydney) - Australia’s last great whale haven, the North West marine region, is under threat from unconstrained development by the oil and gas industry, and the Australian Government’s proposed Bioregional Plan offers little protection, according to a new report released today by IFAW (the International Fund for Animal Welfarewww.ifaw.org).

The report, written and reviewed by some of Australia’s leading marine scientists, reveals that this relatively untouched area has an incredible diversity of whales and dolphins. It also identifies several important areas for whales and dolphins that are not protected under the government’s draft plan. The report underscores the need for more protected areas and further research about the animals that live there.

“At the same time as the government has opened its token map of reserves for public comment, it is handing out vast tracts of ocean to oil and gas companies,” said Matt Collis, IFAW Oceania Campaigner.

“The rampant oil and gas development in the region has brought significant threats to whales and dolphins, including endangered species. It is noisy, toxic, and dangerous and when something goes wrong it can be catastrophic, as evidenced by the Montara oil spill.

“With the future of Australia’s last great whale haven in their hands, the government and industry have an immense responsibility to provide more stringent protection measures. Before any new leases are issued we are calling for more protected areas, more transparent research and stronger policies addressing the industry threats such as increased shipping, pollution and noise,” Mr Collis said.

Some 32 different species of whales and dolphins live in or migrate through the area, including the recently discovered Australian snubfin dolphin and the world’s largest, yet still recovering, population of humpback whales. The government’s draft plan effectively ignores 28 species by only taking into consideration four species and even the level of protection offered to these four is inadequate.

“All the indications are that this is an incredibly special region. To jeopardise the area before we fully understand it is like throwing away a gift before unwrapping it,” said Mr Collis.
Support IFAW’s call for greater protection at www.ifaw.org, find us on facebook.com/ifawoceania
Note
• A summary of the report is available here and a full version can be found here.
• IFAW is part of an alliance of conservation organisations pushing for greater protection for marine areas - www.saveourtropicalsealife.org

For media-related inquiries, contact:
Imogen Scott (IFAW Oceania)
Tel: + 0402 183 113
Email: iscott@ifaw.org

Kimberley coast yields natural treasure trove

2011-11-07T22:00:00.000-08:00

Michelle Ridley, The West Australian.

An octopus that can lose an arm at will, a coral that turns purple when it is stressed and another coral that produces mucus to clean dirt from itself are just some of the animals uncovered by marine scientists on a trip to the Kimberley.

The three-week field trip, led by the WA Museum, involved 14 researchers walking on the reef and diving to survey marine life.

The team included experts in algae, seagrasses, corals, sponges, polychaetes (worms), echinoderms such as starfish and sea urchins, crustaceans, molluscs and fish.

WA Museum cruise leader and dive supervisor Clay Bryce said the researchers discovered a new species of soft coral, a juvenile of a new species of fish they had found on an earlier field trip and a new genus of algae.

They also discovered a new species of seaweed, nicknamed Rasta weed because of its similarity to Rastafarian dreadlocks.

Mr Bryce said one of the most interesting animals encountered on the trip was the octopus Ameloctopus litoralis, which has a head about 2cm long and arms about 14cm long.

The octopus does not have an ink sac, but can drop its arms to escape if attacked.

The 220km survey of Kimberley waters last month was the first of four field trips in a five-year study of the region funded by Woodside Petroleum.

"It's the biggest biodiversity project running in Australia at the moment," Mr Bryce said. "We have 14 people on the reef or diving at any one time.

"Each person dives for an hour or walks on the reef for an hour and then we move to the next site."

The project involves researchers from the WA Museum, the Australian Museum, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, the Queensland Museum, Museum Victoria, the WA Herbarium, Curtin University and the CSIRO.

On the most recent field trip, researchers filmed the marine habitat, analysed the water quality and collected DNA in addition to the survey of underwater life.

Mr Bryce said the team collected about 1500 specimens and more than 1000 DNA samples on the trip.

"It's a significant amount of biological material to be researched and that's just this year," he said. "In the next three years we'll probably do about the same."

Mr Bryce said there was a huge amount to discover, with 2500 islands off the Kimberley coast.

"This is really one of Australia's last frontiers, not only because of its remoteness, but also biologically speaking," he said.

But the isolation of the Kimberley coast, coupled with low visibility, strong tides and the possibility of stonefish, crocodiles and sharks, can make it a dangerous place to work if precautions are not taken.

"We manage our diving and our reef walks very carefully, it's remote and a difficult place to work," Mr Bryce said.

Video diaries of the field trip will be released today at www.museum.wa.gov.au/kimberley.

Kimberley corals defy conventional scientific understanding in Talbot Bay

2011-11-07T21:51:00.000-08:00

Talbot Bay coral discovery defies conventional belief

| Print |

Written by Geoff Vivian Tuesday, 08 November 2011 09:00

The clarity of the water is affected by this large inter-tidal flow thus the discovery of corals in this environment is a surprise. Flickr: Waltzing Van

KIMBERLEY coral reefs are thriving in turbid inter-tidal conditions and defying conventional scientific understandings that corals need clear oceanic waters to survive.

Marine biologist Dr Barry Wilson last year spent time at Turtle Reef in Talbot Bay, on advice from One Arm Point’s Bardi-Jawi people.

Dr Wilson says there is greater diversity of coral species in Kimberley reefs than in oceanic atolls or the Great Barrier Reef.

“There have been 318 species of corals recorded now on the Kimberley coast,” he says.

Researchers in the late 1940s said the Kimberley had “a profusion of ordinary fringing reefs”.

Dr Wilson says they were right about the profusion of Kimberley reefs, but not about them being ordinary.

Known to survive at a depth of 60 metres in clear oceanic waters, Dr Wilson has found Talbot Bay corals as deep as 20 metres in turbid, muddy conditions.

Dr Wilson says non-Indigenous scientists would not normally look for corals in locations such as Turtle Reef.

“The water is very far from clear and oceanic—it’s turbid and the light doesn’t penetrate far. It’s not the sort of environment [conventional] corals require, yet we’ve got this prolific growth of corals,” he says

“This is in a land-locked gulf, you’ve really got to navigate your way in and you will have [difficulty] getting out if you don’t know your way.

“[The environment] is macro-tidal, [it has] eleven metres of tidal flow twice a day.

“As a consequence … the current flows away and you get whirlpools in the ocean,” he says.

The clarity of the water is affected by this large inter-tidal flow thus the discovery of corals in this environment is a surprise.

About 70 per cent of the Talbot Bay corals appear to be common to Queensland’s Barrier Reef.

Dr Wilson suspects the remaining 30 per cent will be found in Indonesia’s Maluku province, because of its proximity to Australia. He says the discovery turns conventional thought about coral on its head.

“This is the sort of information which some people will find difficult to believe because they have all been taught that corals all need clear oceanic water and it’s not true,” he says.

The original article 'Reconnaissance of species-rich coral reefs in a muddy, macro-tidal, enclosed embayment, – Talbot Bay, Kimberley, Western Australia' has been published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia issue 94.

http://www.sciencewa.net.au/3712-talbot-bay-coral-discovery-defies-conventional-belief.html