Loongana Valley is a biodiversity hotspot providing home and habitat to a large variety of Tasmania's most threatened and endangered species, their habitat and critically endangered forest communities.
Wedgetail Eagles nest less than 500m from the proposed line.
BIODIVERSITY LOSS THREATENS ICONIC SPECIES
Nestled between the sub-alpine heights of the Black Bluff and the myrtle rainforests of Loongana Range, Loongana Valley has a karst system running its entire length. High rainfall and steep gullies drain water through the karst and caves into the Leven River catchment. Our properties, and surrounding forests, provide crucial wildlife corridors between the habitats for the movement of healthy populations of threatened species of animals, plants, invertebrates and fungi, ensuring healthy breeding and genetics.
Wedge-tail Eagles
Grey Goshawks
Masked owls
Giant Freshwater Crayfish
Tasmanian Devils
Spotted-tail Quolls
Eastern Quolls
Eastern Barred Bandicoots
Tasnetworks cleared 60-90m cleared easements = Environmental vandalism
CRITICALLY ENDANGERED
Loongana Valley has the largest density of Wet Viminalis Forest Community in Tasmania. It is listed as threatened in Tasmania, and has recently been listed as Critically Engandered under the EPBC Act.
TasNetworks 60-90m easements will significantly threaten this and other forest communities by
permanent land clearing, increasing fragmentation of and distance between habitats, increased fire risk, ingress of invasive species, and impacts on water quality.
As part of their ongoing strategy to deny or downplay impacts, TasNetworks will try to isolate each issue, claiming each can be 'mitigated'. This ignores the cumulative effect of all the impacts imposed by their route, and that they will have long-term and permanent detrimental effects on the whole valley.
TasNetworks must go back to the drawing board and investigate an alternative route outside of the Loongana Valley.
BIODIVERSITY LOSS = CLIMATE CHANGE = INTER-GENERATIONAL SOCIAL IMPACTS
It is globally recognised that action on climate includes action on the biodiversity crisis. Both must be tackled together to avoid catastrophic impacts in the short and long term.
TasNetworks describe Loongana as a pinch-point for their proposed transmission line. While they talk of benefits, none substantiated by independent cost-benefit analysis, they deliberately ignore the damage that their cheapest, 'least contentious' route selection will have locally and globally.
Loongana Valley is the Central Coast Council's wild backyard, it must be treasured not trashed by TasNetworks and Project Marinus.
There is no social licence here.
LOONGANA SUBMITS OVER 50 SPECIES INTO TASMANIAN ANNUAL MOTH SURVEY 2022
The best measure of biodiversity is 'species richness'.
Moths play a vital role in food webs and are an important food item for birds, mammals, and other insects. Moths also play an important role as pollinators.
|
|
Since they are so widespread and found in so many different habitats, and are so sensitive to changes and for this reason moths are particularly useful as ecological indicators to measure biodiversity and the health of an ecosystem.
|
|
