Saving the Skate
NOFF campaigning outside Minister Tanya Plibersek's office in Redfern. Photo: Byron Martin
Tasmania is home to a unique wilderness of astonishingly beautiful bays, inlets, beaches and rivers with incredible wildlife. But these natural wonders face a myriad of threats from industrial salmon farming. Our grant partner Neighbours of Fish Farming are the neighbours nature needs, including for one of its most vulnerable inhabitants.
An animal as old as the dinosaurs, the Maugean Skate has been pushed to the brink of extinction by industrial salmon farming in Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour.
“We have this unique animal in this unique waterway … it’s going to be the thylacine of the sea — the pre-historic animal that we absolutely let become extinct because of anthropogenic causes,” says Jess Coughlan.
Jess is a campaigner with Neighbours of Fish Farming (NOFF), a Tasmanian community organisation working to mitigate the harm caused by the salmon farming industry to marine animals, the environment, communities and consumers. The Reichstein Foundation is backing this work, including NOFF’s involvement in the Save the Skate campaign, which has reached a critical stage.
In August, the Federal Government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee confirmed there are as few as 40 adult Maugean skate left in their last remaining habitat, Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s remote West Coast. Salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour is the main contributor to the skate’s demise, it noted, and that failing to deal with it could be “catastrophic”.
“It’s a really, really sad and serious story to tell,” says Jess. “Once you lose an animal like that, you can’t come back.”
NOFF has been working with Environment Tasmania (also a Reichstein Foundation grant partner), Sustainable Investment Exchange (SIX), the Reichstein Foundation and others to deliver an investor campaign calling on Coles and Woolworths to stop buying salmon from Macquarie Harbour farms. The Coles and Woolworths AGMs will be held this coming November.
Earlier this year, NOFF presented at the Senate Greenwashing Inquiry, calling for an investigation into why certifications and supermarkets could continue to label and market a product as responsible and sustainable, while its production is contributing to an extinction event.
Jess is right: the Skate’s potential extinction is a sad and serious story, but its ending is yet to be written. An analysis of the systems at play suggest change is possible — indeed necessary — if we are to avoid this extinction and the others that will follow if we stand idle. These include corporate over-reliance on compromised industry-run certification schemes, the pervasiveness of corporate capture of government processes, but also the power of shareholders to push for better corporate practice on the environment.
Right now, Australia’s federal Environment Minister has two decisions concerning the skate on her desk. One is the uplisting of the species to “critically endangered”. The Threatened Species Scientific Committee has recommended this uplisting, but ultimately the decision rests with the Minister.
The other crucial decision regards the permissions under the EPBC Act given to the industry back in 2012 to expand operations in Macquarie Harbour. That decision is currently under review and could result in a pause to industry operations while an EPBC Act assessment is undertaken.
As Richard Flanagan concludes in his recent essay in The Monthly, “[I]f politicians won’t act then we must. Because we can always do something. Don’t buy salmon. Don’t eat salmon. Because to eat salmon is to participate in the crime. Because each time you eat salmon, a little more of the wonder of my island home dies – and with it, something of us all.”
Links
SIX’s investor campaign: Woolworths and Coles can Save the Skate
