Macquarie Marshes under threat from mining

If it hasn’t been hard enough protecting the Macquarie Marshes from drought because of the upstream cotton growers, now farmers are faced with a new threat to this environmentally significant, Ramsar-listed area.

The Nature Conservation Council of New South Wales (NCC), has expressed outrage at news of gold and copper mining exploration occurring in the Macquarie Marshes.

The Resources Regulator has approved the exploration for copper and gold by Australian Consolidated Gold Holdings after taking at face value the company’s statement that: ‘There are no areas of critical habitat or areas of outstanding biodiversity value within the proposed drilling area.’

The Macquarie Marshes is a Ramsar-listed wetland, one of the largest remaining semi-permanent wetlands in Southern Australia, and a critically important site for water bird breeding in Australia.   

Mole Marsh

Macquarie Marshes Graziers, Garry and Leanne Hall are landholders of the area that includes Mole Marsh – one of the proposed drill sites. Mole Marsh is part of the Macquarie Marshes and connects to the protected nature reserve.

With less than a week left to challenge the Regulator’s decision, they say, they need more time to try to get this mining activity stopped in its tracks.

‘As landholders around the Macquarie Marshes Nature Reserve, we abide by strict guidelines before doing so much as constructing a fence, and yet a gold miner can start drilling without any proper assessment of the land’s cultural values and biodiversity,’ said Garry Hall.

‘This approval from a desktop study is a classic example of apathetic box ticking by a disconnected bureaucrat without any knowledge of the land.

‘This is an area full of life and home to many endangered, threatened and vulnerable species.

‘Brolgas, magpie geese, painted snipe and countless other endangered and vulnerable listed birds, breed and nest right where they want to drill.

‘Most of the sites where they want to drill are currently under water – this makes no sense.’

The most biologically diverse wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin

NCC Water Campaigner Mel Gray said it’s obscene to hear that a mining exploration license has been granted in one of the most biologically diverse wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin. ‘The Macquarie Marshes is an awe-inspiring patchwork of interconnected miniature habitats, all of them bursting with life. 

‘The impact of this drilling would have unforeseeable consequences for the whole wetland system and the myriad of life it supports. 

‘The area is home to an incredible diversity of native birds and fish and it is beyond belief that the Regulator would allow mining exploration here.’