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“Our basic position is that this has never been formally assessed,” he said.
“There is a rule of law and accountability issue here. We want the EPA to assess the overall loss of this 23,000 hectares, not only the loss of the bit left. We want the state held to account for the change in land use and for the impact of this change.
“The state government has avoided this. This is an abuse of power.”
Gnangara mound pine plantations across the cities of Wanneroo and Swan. This aerial shot was taken in January 2021.Credit:WWF/Pixel Pilot
Finn pointed out that the state’s native vegetation policy, released mid-2022 and part of its justification for dumping the Strategic Assessment, committed to an overall increase in native vegetation.
“We need to know these impacts on a landscape scale,” he said.
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“We have two choices. We can manage the decline to extinction, or we can create a landscape that will sustain the recovery of this species for our children and grandchildren.
“In 2009, I spent time studying the birds at the Gnangara plantation. They consumed every cone there and would go back and forage on the ground for what was left. There were thousands of birds in there and they used the entire food resource.
“They are now forming mega-roosts, being pushed together in the competition for food, and the last count in 2019 found 4000-6000 birds at a single roost [in the pine plantation]; a huge number of birds. A significant proportion of the overall population.
“They’ve been using those pines since the 1930s. Across that period they’ve lost the banksia woodlands they historically would have otherwise fed upon.”
The state’s original reason for not replanting water-hungry pines in a time of declining rainfall was that the Gnangara mound was vital for Perth drinking water supply, but the group says keeping the small remaining extent of pine forest would not have a significant impact on the water table.
Save the Black Cockatoos spokesman Paddy Cullen said a state plan to replant 2000 hectares of pines with native vegetation would leave a 10-year gap while this food source became viable, leaving the birds to starve in the interim.
He said cutting down the remainder before the impact was officially assessed amounted to a “killer blow” for the species.
Paddy Cullen (second from right) takes part in a Valentine’s Day action calling on the Minister for Environment Reece Whitby to save an area of cockatoo habitat from a mining exploration proposal at Cocanarup, near Ravensthorpe, a proposal that has also been referred to the EPA. Credit:Jess Boyce
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