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Off road vehicle activities, logging, sand quarrying and coal mining are making ever increasing incursions into the Gardens of Stone - Stage Two reserve proposal. All these activities cause serious environmental damage to fragile rock formations, streams, cliffs and groundwater dependent ecosystems such as upland swamps.
The reserve proposal is a comprehensive protection plan to curb cumulative impacts and to foster appropriate recreation within the proposal area. The following management issues are addressed:
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The proposed Bells Line Super-highway
There have been many super-highway schemes proposed through the Blue Mountains. One was through the Blue Labyrinth, another for a tunnel under the Mountains and a third for a road passing north behind the towns through the National Park. The current proposal, at a cost of at least $3 billion, uses tunnels commencing at Richmond, roughly follows the Bells Line of Road but diverts at Clarence over Newnes Plateau to meet the Great Western Highway north of Lithgow. In June 2000, the consulting firm, Maunsell McIntyre, reported the scheme to be grossly uneconomic. Undeterred, the road's proponents produced a two million dollar feasibility study for a four-lane highway in 2005 by another consultant, SKP, which again found the proposal to be uneconomic because the vast majority of Mountains traffic is local, not through traffic.
The proposal would seriously damage World Heritage listed national parks. The marvelous canyon lands of the Grose and Wollemi Wilderness areas either side of the proposed super-road would be choked with sediment. Tourism, cultural heritage, endangered shale forest communities would be bulldozed; and private and national park land would need to be acquired. Where the proposed super-highway crosses the Newnes Plateau it would impact upon nationally endangered shrub swamps, Lithgow’s water supply and significant pagoda landscapes.
The new road would ruin the charming scenic drive on a forest and fern lined road with spectacular vistas of unspoilt wilderness and pleasant stops to buy flowers, fruit and local produce at local stalls. The current Bells Line of Road is a delightful alternative to the Western Highway and a boon to local tourism.
Building a super highway would only encourage urban sprawl, ruin the Bilpin area and compromise the World Heritage. Pursuing expensive major highways in rugged terrain is an outmoded transport policy that increases greenhouse emissions and 'locks in' our future dependence on foreign oil.
The best solution is to spend money to upgrade rail and road access where people live, rather than on an obscene monumental road that would be little used, except by increasingly unaffordable road freighters, that should be loaded onto an integrated system for the benefit everyone.
Repetitive canyoning, abseiling and climbing activity, where it involves large groups who congregate and mill around, can be very environmentally damaging, particularly if areas of endangered species habitat on escarpment edges are impacted. Adventure recreation can cause loss of soil, rock and native vegetation, as evidenced at existing heavily used sites such as Mt York, Mt Boyce, Centennial Glen, Walls Ledge and Mt Piddington.
Intensive rock climbing should be designated within existing areas. Outside those areas, rock bolts and anchor should not be used. No rock bolts should be installed in canyons. The existing level of disturbance should not of itself justify continuing with a high intensity use at a site that is being degraded and of high conservation value.
Intensification of use by commercial operations should be subject to an adequate environment assessment, public comment and review process. Sites selected for development or site-hardening should have a high resilience to impact and not have high environmental values.
The siting of park facilities should be away from fragile rock environments. Competitive events are not acceptable within pagoda landscapes due to potential injury to competitors and the likelihood of damage caused by competitors stumbling over padogas. Any damage caused to geodiversity is permanent.
Helicopter joy flights over the Gardens of Stone and the Capertee Valley area may thrill the riders but repeats the mistake made in the early 1990s, when helicopters flying in the central Blue Mountains drove both local residents and park visitors to distraction.
Helicopter joy flights have an engine, rotor and vibration noise signature that is primarily downward due to air being pushed down by the rotor. In consequence, helicopter operations are significantly louder and distinctly more annoying than fixed wing aircraft. Helicopter joy flights are capable of more frequent, low level flights than other aircraft. Joy flights adversely affect peregrine falcons, eagles and other raptors, as well as tourists attracted to the Gardens of Stone area.
The Gardens of Stone’s ambience as a hidden world “away from it all” would be seriously undermined by regular helicopter flights. Flights from the helipad at Capertee could concentrate over the very scenic Mt Genowlan, Mt Airly and Pantoneys Crown areas, the key areas for any ground based eco-tourism, causing serious disturbance to an essential quality of any nature tourism product – the sense of peace and solitude and being within nature.’
To avoid community conflict and protect the natural quiet of the Gardens of Stone area, joy flights must operate within existing background noise levels when flying near national parks or over any environmentally sensitive area, including the Airly-Genowlan Mesa. This requires flying at 5000 feet and avoiding overflight of wilderness areas and national parks.
The Gardens of Stone State Conservation Area proposal encourages responsible use of vehicles by family groups, rather than by high impact motor sports enthusiasts operating off road. Drivers and riders of a proportion of off road vehicles, particularly trail bikes, revel in the so-called ‘technical terrain’ with mud, sand, ‘roll overs’, steep slopes, loose rocks, stream crossings and rock bars. In the last decade, off-road activity has begun to cause environmental degradation over a growing area of the Gardens of Stone.
Those 4WD clubs and bike associations that promote responsible driving amongst their members – being the drivers of registered vehicles by licensed drivers on designated 4WD trails are welcome. Unlicensed trail bike riders that have no regard for the damage they cause or the fact that their off road activities are illegal should go elsewhere. Damage to the geodiversity of the Gardens of Stone is permanent; some flora may eventually recover, but not the non-living part of the ecosystem.
A much more precautionary approach is required for vehicle access regulation in the Gardens of Stone. To be sustainable, visitor use and enjoyment must be made compatible with the conservation objectives of the proposed conservation area. No motor vehicle should be allowed to go off road , in sensitive public lands like those on Newnes Plateau.
Appropriate signage should regulate vehicle use of retained management tracks, while all unwanted tracks should be closed, actively rehabilitated and management trails gated, particularly those regulated by the mining industry. The gated access on the Wolgan River link road is a step in the right direction. Vehicle access also should be restricted to isolated mountain peaks, small mesas and to the Wollemi Wilderness.
To designate Ben Bullen, Wolgan and Newnes Plateau ‘State Forests’, as viable timber production areas is a stretch of the imagination. These areas consist mainly of open woodland with extensive heath lands, swamps, bare rock, cliff and steep rocky slopes. Logging operations are associated with the isolated pockets of iconic Blue Mountains Ash (Eucalyptus oreades). The logging of scattered Silvertop Ash (E. sieberi), Mountain Gum (E. dalrympleana), stringybark and peppermint eucalypt trees is causing further environmental damage for very small returns.
The 1900 hectare radiata pine plantation in the centre of Newnes Plateau requires tremendous inputs of nutrients and a large fire break to preserve the investment. Without huge fertilizer inputs and over-burning the surrounding bush the plantation could not be viable. Sewage sludge has been spread over the plantation at a rate of 30 tonnes a hectare, which causes significant pollution of the adjoining Newnes Plateau Shrub Swamps and the World Heritage Areadownstream. The pine forest sits over an Aeolian dunefield of deep, permeable, acidic sand and is the last place to dump sewage sludge. Even with these efforts, it is a very slow growing plantation.
Continued retention of these unproductive state forests is difficult to justify on ecological and economic grounds. To stop the economic and environmental losses, the pine plantation should be clearfelled, ripped and the affected areas allowed to recover by fostering native regeneration as well as some revegetating with native plants of local provenance.
Ben Bullen and Newnes Plateau ‘State Forests’ are designated for hunting, in schedule 1 of the Game and Feral Animal Control Act, 2002.
Newnes State Forest is the second most visited state forest in NSW. Its listing on Schedule 1 of the Act as a hunting area, along with Ben Bullen State Forest, is a very high risk to public safety. Game Council by listing popular state forests for hunting has shown itself to be unaccountable to objectors, acting inconsistently with its public promises of avoiding high use areas, and irresponsibly in regards to public safety.
All forests in the Blue Mountains are popular areas and should not be locked up for use by hunters. The guidelines of the Hunter Education Handbook are almost unenforceable. Many unlicenced hunters and hunters have little interest in following these suggestions, when there is only a remote chance of being caught without a licence.
The allegation that hunting can control feral animals is a myth. Hunting disperses feral animals away from core habitat areas making effective pest control by trapping much more difficult. Hunters also introduce pest species, such as pigs (SMH 3/8/2002). Previously uninfested areas are degraded so that hunters can have some sport (e.g. pigs will dig up the nationally endangered wetlands on Newnes Plateau).
A June 2005 draft sand mining strategy by the Department of Planning plans targeted Newnes Plateau for investigation as a source of Sydney's sand for the next 30 years. Quarrying in indifferent surroundings is not objectionable, but large-scale surface mining is intolerable on Newnes Plateau, particularly as the industry has difficulty keeping to established environmental safeguards, such as ensuring its discharge waters are clean of sediment.
Sand mining requires the complete removal of the natural environment due to clearing and wholesale removal of the landscape. Road works, soil erosion, stream siltation and vehicle pollution extend this destruction beyond the immediate extraction site. Four operations have consent to quarry sand on Newnes Plateau: Boral Resources, Kables Sands (Pioneer Concrete), ROCLA Quarries and Sydney Construction Materials. Of these, ROCLA has virtually exhausted its lease area, Kables Sands has received in 2007 a 20 metre depth extension for its existing site and Boral Resources is not operational. Approximately 310,000 tonnes of sand per year are currently being quarried from the ROCLA and Kables operations. The million tonne a year Sydney Construction Materials mine adjoins the World Heritage Area was apprved in 2007 and there is another proposed sand mining site in bushland on the Western Escarpment south-east of Clarence Village.
Local and state environment groups oppose surface mining within this park proposal due to the significant and non-reversible damage caused. Many sites around Sydney contain sand resources, and of these the Newnes Plateau on the watershed between the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and the headwaters of Sydney’s water supply catchment would be one of the least suitable places for development of a sand mining district. If the mining strategy is adopted, a visually intrusive, polluting, noisy, dusty blight will be imposed on one of the most botanically diverse areas around Sydney.
On the western side of the Blue Mountains, coal mining causes up to two metres of surface subsidence. The rock strata above longwall mining operations in the Mountains collapse into the void created by the mining. The ground cracks with subsidence, creek flow and water levels in swamps diminish, and if cliffs or pagodas rest above the coal seam, these topple and collapse. Other problems with coal mining include ecotoxic water pollution, a myriad of access roads that fragment bushland, cause soil erosion, encourage off road vehicle use, weed infestation and foraging by feral animals.
Click here more information on the problems with coal mining in the Blue Mountains
Conservation management - a way forward
Despite nearly all the proposed State Conservation Area being subject to coal mining leases or interests, it is possible to reserve it to a depth restriction under National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974. The Act respects any existing interest and the coalmine subsidence management planning operate to ensure that the values of the Gardens of Stone area are protected. These plans should protect all upland swamps, pagodas and cliff lines from mine subsidence. Parts of the coal seam should be retained to ensure that the surface environment does not experience environmentally unacceptable mining damage.
Using the subsidence management planning process, protection zones should be apply to streams within coal leases to ensure that aquatic environments and their dependent wildlife are not destroyed. Other areas requiring priority protection include Cape Horne to Mount McLean, an extremely scenic but remote watershed running off the Great Dividing Range, and the Baal Bone Creek headwaters, both in Wolgan State Forest. Similarly, the outstanding scenic beauty of the cliffs and pagodas, and the important cultural heritage of the oil shale ruins should make Mt Airly a heavily constrained area for mining, with extensive protection zones.
The best mining method for the Airly Mountain would be partial extraction by bord and pillar methods, as adopted at the Clarence Colliery. This mining method has protected Lithgow's drinking water catchment from damage by limiting surface movement to three centimetres.
Pollution licencing by the Environment Protection Authority and selection of the appropriate discharge points can prevent damage to pristine rivers. Collieries should upgrade water treatment plant for any discharged mine water so that metals and salts are removed before discharge.
The in-ground placement of the waste water transfer pipe from the Springvale mine minimised visual and wildlife impacts; however, pipeline construction has damaged sensitive swamps and woodland communities. The pipeline strategy was not subject to adequate public comment and review. The adopted project was flawed and lost community support.
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To comment on these letters, email: keith@colongwilderness.org.au
Last updated Thursday 13-Mar-2008
