Landcare Awards: Barcaldine 2005

2005-08-02

Acceptance speech for the Qld Landcare Awards (Coastal and Community).

This project is a culmination of 2 years background work, getting communities, especially Indigenous, Non-govt & govt agencies to all
1. Acknowledge that they are not the only ones with either a problem or an interest in the issues, and
2. Decide to put regional & local issues aside to work together on this problem.
This is summarised by our motto: “saltwater people working together”. Saltwater People is the cultural way of saying that you are a person who not only lives by the sea but your livelihood, knowledge, recreation and whole social fabric is connected to the sea.

Even though the project is barely 6 months old the success of it can already be gauged by the incredible cooperation and goodwill towards each other. Out of 15 potential indigenous communities in the Gulf, 10 are active participants with two more on the fringes. This alone is a tremendous feat as never before has NT & Qld, NG & SG, Yolgnu & Balanda (black & white), worked together in a common cause.

Why? Because the issue is so great! It is hard to quantify the incredible impact of these tons of nets on the breeding turtle populations of the northern gulf (both East & west). It is hard to quantify the sheer numbers of these nets littering our shores. It is even harder still to even imagine the number unseen, continuing in their ghostly path, ensnaring, starving & strangulating turtles, sharks, dugongs, fish and even birds. But we will try. This is what this project is about; removing nets, recording information about them & reporting that information to the govt and non-govt agencies so we can put a stop to this wanton littering.

To give you a snapshot of this task…I have here two photos, one taken after a 4-day cleanup in mid July this year, of an eight kilometre stretch of beach at Cape Arnhem organised by WWF & the Dhimurru Rangers with assistance from the Conservation Volunteers for Australia (pictured). They are sitting on the total haul from this clean-up. Note that this amount of fishing related rubbish, mostly ghostnets, is from one year’s accumulation as this particular beach, all eight km of it, & that this beach has regularly been cleared of all rubbish. The rest of the coastline is virtually untouched & has 10 years accumulated rubbish, not just one, because of the sheer difficulty in getting access to. The second photo is of a ranger, Jimmy Panuel floating on a ghost net off Badu island in the Torres Straights. We have approximately 5,000kms in between to cleanup & monitor!!!

Thankyou for this award, it helps me to show that people in Australia care about the work these rangers do looking after their sea country.