Re: Mallee Trip Report, May 2007

I just wrote an e-mail to you're so called premier with these kind of rediculous plans:  t
Just keep you're hands of the Nowingi Track and surroundings!

Cheers,

Justin Jansen
The Netherlands

Greeting birders, 

I have just returned from a birding trip around the Mallee National Parks around Ouyen.

On the well publicised Nowingi Track, i spotted some of the specialities of the area;  a pair of  Two-headed Mallee Emu Wrens, a Glowing Grasswren sat up a top some spinifex providing excellent views.   A couple of Uranium-Breasted Quail Thrush hoovered across the road in front of me. 

I also stumbled apon a Mallee Fowl mound made entirely of Cadmium Batteries. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*sigh* 

Obviously the above is fictional, but Steve Bracks, Victoria's premier, has gone and done it again and announced the site of the proposed Toxic Waste dump at Nowingi, right in the heart of Victoria's three largest Mallee National Parks. 

The mention of Nowingi and toxic dump will terrify all birders who have ever been Mallee Emu wren searching in the Victoria Mallee.  A search through the archives on 'Nowingi' will outline to all birding aus members, how significant the vegetation is around this area to birdlife.

Lets hope the environmental assessments wont allow this to go ahead, but make your birding voice known about these concerns.



FROM  http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8339
"Mr Bracks said the Nowingi site had not originally been considered because in 1989 the Land Conservation Council recommended it be classified as state forest. "
...............

"Mr Bracks said Crown land had always been included in the search for a site, as long as it did not have environmental value." "A full environmental assessment of the Nowingi site would now be undertaken and the government was confident it would be approved within about 12 months, he said."


For more information, here's a couple of links:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1111472.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1111857.htm