The demise of the black-throated finch in New South Wales has added urgency to the need to protect the bird’s largest remaining habitat on the site of Adani’s proposed Queensland mine, conservationists have said.
The finch – whose fate forms a key plank of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF)’s federal court challenge to commonwealth environmental approval of the Carmichael mine – was declared extinct by the NSW government last Friday.
Dr April Reside, a member of the black-throated finch’s threatened species recovery team which provided advice to environment minister Greg Hunt, said its extinction in NSW showed why its habitat in north Queensland’s Galilee basin was pivotal to its survival.
“Basically the evidence is pretty strong that they’ve lost over 80% of their entire range,” she told Guardian Australia.
“That’s why the Galilee basin area is of such interest, because it’s basically the best habitat left for the black-throated finch, and it is the largest chunk of habitat left.”
ACF has alleged in papers filed in the federal court that Hunt, when approving the mine, failed to adequately consider advice from the recovery team.
Hunt did not refer to the recovery team’s submission in his reasons for giving approval. He found the project “would not have any unacceptable impacts on listed threatened species in view of all relevant avoidance, mitigation and compensation (offset) measures to be adopted”.
The recovery team had told Hunt that Carmichael and other nearby Galilee mines were “likely to accelerate the trajectory of the species to becoming critically endangered”.
It said the “proposed offset strategies” did not “adequately address legislated obligations to protect this threatened species”.
“Assessment processes conducted to date have not accurately reflected the national significance of the population or the substantial threats now posed to it,” it said.
Adani won Hunt’s approval in part with a proposal to cushion the impact on the finch by setting aside land to make up for the habitat destroyed by the mine’s development.
Reside said this attempt at mitigation rested on “an absolute logical fallacy”.
“If the birds aren’t already there, they’re not going to move there,” she said.
“If it’s good habitat, they’ll be there. They’re a highly mobile species.
“It’s not that there might be viable habitat somewhere and they just haven’t found it yet, because clearly it’s contracted from so far, if it was viable habitat they would still be there.”
Kelly O’Shanassy, the chief executive of ACF, said the bird’s extinction in NSW was “terrible” and would “strengthen” the commentary of the recovery team around its vulnerability.
“It does make it more important to protect the last remaining habitats on the planet where it does live,” she said.
“And we know that there’s two significant habitats [the other being near Townsville] and the largest is right where the mine is being built.”
Queensland land court judge Carmel MacDonald in December added conditions to the black-throated species (BTF) management plan while recommending approval of an environmental permit for Carmichael.
This included that “more effort should be placed into actively locating BTF and collecting information on their movements across the project and offset areas”.
MacDonald also ruled that “any future revision of the current survey and monitoring programs should be developed in consultation with researchers from the BTF recovery team and independently peer reviewed”.
The Queensland government granted Adani an environmental permit this month but is yet to issue a mining lease.
The future of the mine remains uncertain after executives from Adani’s Indian parent indicated its investment in Australia would be frozen until world coal prices showed a clear recovery.
