Prime Minister Scott Morrison has put a pall over Australia’s Threatened Species Day by rushing legislation through the national parliament, which will accelerate the extinction of the nation’s wildlife, the Bob Brown Foundation said today.
“While other Australians are marking this 7th September as the 84th anniversary of the death of the last Tasmanian tiger in Hobart’s Zoo in 1936, the Prime Minister is aping the tragic 1888 legislation rushed through the Tasmanian state parliament which put a £1 bounty on the head of each tiger and directly led to their elimination from the planet,” Bob Brown said.
“Scott Morrison’s bill handing federal environmental powers to the states is a death warrant for more species,” Brown added.
“Under the 2002 federal legislation, which handed forest protection back to the states, thousands of hectares of vital habitat for species facing extinction have been deliberately destroyed by state-subsidised logging.
“The incredible Swift parrot is edging to extinction because of it and the koala is losing ground every day. Many more forest-dependent species are having forests cut out from under them.
“Morrison’s legislation will extend this environmental outcome from logging to other environmentally threatening industries. His environmental mindset is more 1888 than 2020,” Brown said.
“This is why it is so important that the nation’s watchdog, the Senate, blocks his legislation,” Campaign Manager Jenny Weber said.
“Our Foundation is launching a Summer of Swifties action plan that includes a rally to mark the five year tragic anniversary of the Swift Parrot being listed as critically endangered, a citizen science project to monitor the Swift Parrot habitat threatened by logging as the parrots return to Tasmania to breed and we will be taking action on the frontline if logging commences in any of these critical native forest habitats.
“While Prime Minister Morrison fails the critically endangered Swift Parrot, citizens will mobilise to raise the alarm about its plight to extinction under the Government’s watch,” Weber said.
Ryan Fritz
Ryan Fritz started The Advocate in 2014 to provide not-for-profits and charities another media platform to tell their worthwhile hard news stories and opinion pieces effortlessly. In 2020, Ryan formed a team of volunteer journalists to help spread even more high-quality stories from the third sector. He also has over 10 years experience as a media and communications professional for not-for-profits and charities and currently works at Redkite, a childhood cancer charity.
