What's the bigger threat to marine parks: fishing or oil spills?

While commercial fishing and now recreational fishing are increasingly perceived as a threat to the oceans, it is hard to see how they are a greater threat than seismic testing and oil wells, writes Crikey naturalist Lionel Elmore.

The Victorian National Parks Association is lobbying the Brumby Government to increase size of marine parks by 20 per cent by 2012, to include areas such as the Gippsland Lakes, Philip Island and Point Nepean. A review paper, commissioned by the Victorian National Parks Association and leaked to Crikey, also recommends that a grading system be re-introduced into Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to allow oil exploration and drilling in Victorian marine parks — again.

But the Royal Commission into Exploratory and Production Drilling for Petroleum in the Area of the Great Barrier Reef, which concluded in 1974, recommended there be no exploration or drilling for oil and that;

“a special statutory authority should be established responsible to the appropriate Parliament for ecological protection and the control of research and development within the Great Barrier Reef province”. Shortly after the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park was declared.

This report from the consultants Australian Marine Ecology is odd in many ways. Unusually there is no mention of who provided the funding to the VNPA for the report — and it would have been very expensive. Some of the consultants who wrote it were previously contracted by the Port Of Melbourne Authority in preparation of its Environment Effects Statement — hardly the “green credentials” one would expect.

It recommends increasing marine protected areas from 5% to 20% of the Victorian coastline and targets many popular recreational fishing areas, such as the lower lake of Mallacoota inlet — but with zoning that allows oil exploration and drilling.

In a briefing to green groups, not the communities affected, the VNPA stated that they planned to release this report just before the state election. The reasoning is believed to be that the Labor government would get a “boost in the polls” if it declared these parks before the election — and ambushed coastal and rural communities before they could mount a campaign.

There has been no government input into the various drafts of this report. Recreational fishfolk have quizzed government departments about the existence of this report only to receive phone calls soon after from the VNPA.

The Victorian Bracks’ government mooted a major controversial expansion of Marine Parks in 2000 after rural and fishing communities mounted an effective statewide campaign that brought commercial and recreational fishfolk together. The government and opposition were forced to delay the implementation as the backlash from the recreational fishing industry that fished areas threatened with closure from city electorates grew.

Most of these park boundaries were negotiated and were implemented with reduced “No Take Zones” — except Port Campbell, now the site of a gas plant fed by pipelines blasted through the MPA. In the fine print, the legislation allowed seismic testing, pipe laying, oil and gas drilling in MPAs.

A separate fight by commercial fishfolk and green groups the Greens and Democrats in the senate eventually resulted in these activities, except pipeline construction, being banned in marine parks in 2003.

The report outlines the risks:

Despite strong local opposition the Victorian Brumby government announced the construction of its massive desalination plant currently being constructed on the shoreline with a pipeline through Bunurong Marine Park, which will discharge its saline waste discharge into the sea adjacent to it.

Meanwhile a government spokesman confirmed this morning that the proposal has been given to Environment Minister Gavin Jennings, but he said there are no current plans to extend marine park boundaries.

UPDATE: The official Victorian National Parks Association response to this article:

The Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) strongly opposes oil exploration and drilling in marine national parks.

Contrary to Crikey naturalist Lionel Elmore’s report, neither VNPA nor the Nature Conservation Review commissioned by VNPA, condone or recommend introducing a grading system into Marine Protected Areas to allow oil exploration or drilling in marine parks.

VNPA believes oil exploration and drilling should not be allowed in Victoria’s national parks. Parks are for people and nature, not for oil and gas wells or mines.

Just last month, VNPA voiced its strong opposition to a government decision to allow petroleum exploration in Victoria’s Bay of Islands Coastal Park.

Unfortunately, a loophole in the National Parks Act allows petroleum exploration even though new mining leases are banned. VNPA has advocated for the removal of this loophole to ensure Victoria’s national parks are protected and safeguarded for future generations.

VNPA has commissioned a comprehensive scientific review of Victoria’s marine natural values and threats. One part of this two-year review, which is yet to be formally publicly released, identifies 20 priority areas for conservation. The report will be formally released in the next few weeks.

A section of the review, which outlines the way the IUCN defines different types of marine protected areas, appears to have been misread by Mr Elmore as suggesting VNPA supports oil exploration in marine parks. This is not the case.

Our position is, and always will be, national parks should be conservation reserves, and should be consistent with IUCN categories I to IV. That is, they should exclude extractive activities, including oil and gas exploration and drilling.

VNPA is calling on the State Government to commit to protecting at least an additional 20 per cent of Victoria’s waters in new marine national parks – highly protected areas where no extractive activity could occur. We are also calling for the government to undertake a comprehensive investigation of the state’s marine environment through a Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC) study or a similar open and transparent process where all parties have the opportunity to have input.