The Conservation Councils of Australia, representing 450 groups across all the states and territories, have signed onto a joint submission on the proposed Basin Plan in recognition that the Murray-Darling Basin is an issue of national significance. As a group the Councils had 10 key recommendations to improve the proposed Plan and called on the Government and the MDBA not to risk long-term health of the Murray-Darling Basin for short-term economic and political gain.

Download the submission here.

• Conservation Council of SA
• Conservation Council ACT (ConsACT),
• Conservation Council of Western Australia (CCWA),
• Environment Centre Northern Territory (Environment Centre NT),
• Environment Tasmania (ET),
• Environment Victoria (EV),
• Nature Conservation Council NSW (NCC),
• Queensland Conservation Council (QCC).

The Conservation Council of SA put forward 19 recommendations in our submission on the Proposed Basin Plan. Click here to download our submission.

Some of our key concerns included

• Environmental targets do not represent all Basin ecosystems and their functions
• Patchy use and presentation of best available science
• CSIRO findings did not consider massive increases to groundwater extraction
• Climate change has not been accounted for
• 2750 GL fails to meet a significant number of environmental targets
• The MDBA has failed to identify the environmentally sustainable level of take

On the 29th of September some 150 concerned South Australians packed the Bradley Forum at the Hawke Centre to engage with each other and an expert panel regarding the impacts of the coal seam gas industry on vital shared resources and human health.

Attendees representing a broad mix of government, NGOs, students, industry and concerned citizens heard from twelve expert panellists about what coal seam gas development has meant in Queensland and NSW, where rapid self-regulated growth of the industry has created deep community concern. We heard of how farmers and environmentalists joined forces in the Lock the Gate Alliance to express their outrage at the power the industry has been granted to proceed even in the face of strong opposition.