In a report commissioned by activist group Lock the Gate Alliance, botanist Dr John Hunter found that the forest earmarked to offset the Leard State Forest area being cleared had only 5% of the sensitive box-gum woodland it was supposed to replace.
Lock the Gate national coordinator Phil Laird said Whitehaven would clear more than 500 hectares of critically endangered box-gum woodland and 1665ha of habitat for 31 threatened species.
“The report demonstrated that the ‘like for like’ offset was pure fiction and the mine would result in the permanent loss of the critically endangered ecological community [CEEC] and its associated threatened species,” he said.
“That impact has been approved based on offsets which turn out to be Stringybark open forest, which is the wrong vegetation community and wrong habitat for the threatened species.
“It is like replacing a tropical rainforest with a grassland. The ecosystems are very different and the species they support are very different.”
“The Stringybark forest does not provide suitable habitat for the majority of the threatened species that occur in Leard State Forest, species such as Corben’s long-eared bat, large-eared pied bat, swift parrot and the regent honeyeater, which prefer the critically endangered box-gum woodland.”
In his report, Hunter concluded that a “thorough independent investigation” should be undertaken to properly verify the extent of CEEC within the offset areas and to properly map all the communities within the offset.
Laird concluded that Whitehaven had made a “brazen” attempt to bypass federal and state legislation to protect endangered species.
Australian Greens senator Larissa Waters subsequently called for federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt to suspend the Gunnedah Basin coal project’s approval.
“Minister Hunt must immediately suspend the approval for the Maules Creek coal mine given this new information about the gross inadequacy of the so-called ‘offsets’,” she said.
"The Maules Creek approval is a complete farce and should never have been granted under our national environment law.”
Project construction work in the Leard State Forest started in December but is facing setbacks from an ongoing activist campaign, with 28 people arrested by February 7.
Rail spur construction was initially expected to take 13 months with first coal production due in the first half of 2015.
Targeting 13 million tonnes run of mine, the open cut project is about 17km northwest of the main rail line that links the Boggabri town.
ILN is seeking comment from Whitehaven.
