Save Bimblebox
The 8000 hectare Bimblebox Nature Refuge in central-west Queensland is directly in line of a giant open-cut coal mine proposed by Waratah Coal. The company is currently preparing the environmental impact assessment for the project which anticpates digging out around 40 mega-tonnes of coal per year, most of which will be transported on a yet-to-be-built rail line up to Abbot Point and shipped through the Great Barrier Reef on its way to China where it will be burnt for energy generation. Waratah has also recently announced plans to build a new coal-fired power station in central-west Queensland. Their ambitious and polluting plans have not yet received formal government approval. However, the Queensland state government has shown only enthusiasm for the proposed development for which they will receive some royalty payments, and there is no guarantee that Bimblebox, a protected area in the National Reserve System, will be excluded from the mine area.
We are faced with the absurd irony, that in the 21st Century with all that we know about Australia’s biodiversity crisis and the threat of climate change, that a protected area rich in biodiversity and with carbon stores intact could be sacrificed for the sake of producing more climate changing coal.
This case reveals a stunning contradiction in Australian government priorities and policies, which aim to conserve biodiversity on protected areas, but yet which affords no protection for these areas if minerals are found beneath the soil.