The incoming tide is covering the mudflats and sandbanks at Toondah Harbour and creeping up the mangrove branches.
Ospreys and sea eagles are fishing and a cloudless sky is framing Cassim Island – a bank of mangrove-covered sand – in a tranquil scene a watercolour painter would die for.
But a fight to stop a controversial $1.3bn plan to develop this area – part of an internationally-significant protected wetland – is about to reach a climax that has been building for eight years. The controversy belies the stillness of a sunny morning in the town of Cleveland, 25km east of Brisbane.
If approved by the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, this watercolour would be transformed forever with shops, restaurants, boardwalks, high-rise homes and a 200-berth marina that would build out over the mudflats and carve out a 50ha chunk of the wetland listed under the international Ramsar convention, stopping 200 metres short of Cassim.
Thousands have attended annual rallies. When developer Walker Corp released its draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) late last year, BirdLife Australia says about 27,000 submissions landed with the company opposing the plan.
The only evidence this morning of the conflict is the banners on chain link fences overlooking the bay, reading Save Our Wetlands, Save Our Bay and Take Back Toondah. And a worried Robert Bush.
‘Absolutely vital for the next generation’
Bush is a recently retired academic and epidemiologist and has been coming here once a month for 15 years to count shorebirds with the Queensland Wader Study Group.
Construction will go on for more than a decade if Walker Corp’s plan gets federal approval, says Bush.
“That’s my biggest worry. You are disturbing and extinguishing – for all time – part of an internationally recognised Ramsar wetland site.”
Developers have been considering the spot since the 1930s, Bush says, but the current controversy was lit in 2013 when the state government declared the area a priority for development.
Four endangered migratory birds use the harbour, including the critically endangered eastern curlew that migrates 10,000km to Moreton Bay every winter by tuning into the Earth’s magnetic field – one of the animal kingdom’s most epic feats. The species is one of 22 birds on the federal government’s priority list for protection.
While Walker Corp says the development covers only 0.02% of the entire Ramsar site, Bush and others argue it’s a misleading statistic. Part of the harbour to be reclaimed is used by juvenile curlews that have limited options elsewhere within the marine park.
The percentage is irrelevant if the habitat to be destroyed is a crucial part of the bird’s life cycle, Bush says.
“It’s absolutely vital for the next generation.”
When adult birds fly north to Russia and Alaska in March, juveniles left behind use the mudflats to dig up bugs and soldier crabs.
Walker Corp says the Ramsar convention allows developments to go ahead under certain circumstances, but campaigners and a group of scientists have rejected that claim.
High hopes of rejection
BirdLife Australia has been among several groups campaigning for more than eight years to protect the site, which is also part of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway – a route crossing the equator and skirting 22 countries along the way.
Birdlife Australia’s campaign manager, Andrew Hunter, says: “You can mitigate impacts but you can’t recruit new feeding habitats that have taken thousands of years to develop the micro-ecology that the birds need.”
Hunter says the loss of habitat along the flyway is a key reason for the loss of many migratory shorebirds – not just eastern curlews, whose numbers have dropped by two-thirds over the last 20 years.
“They fly for more than 10,000 kilometres and they expect to find a buffet [when they arrive] to fatten up,” says Hunter.
Without that buffet in Toondah Harbour, Hunter says the exhausted birds will be forced to expend even more energy to find a new feeding ground. “That could result in the death of birds,” says Hunter.
The Queensland government said Walker Corp is finalising its Environmental Impact Study (EIS) to send to Plibersek for final assessment under the country’s national environment laws.
“I hope – and I think – she will reject it when it gets to her desk,” says Hunter. “If you can’t protect what are deemed the most important sites internationally then what hope is there for other sites that don’t have that level of recognition?
“What message would that send to our partners on the flyway that don’t have as strong environmental regulations as Australia? What signal does that send to them?”
Reports earlier this month claimed the Queensland government had written to the minister backing the scheme.
But a spokesperson for the government’s state development department said it supported a “revitalisation” of the harbour “subject to a rigorous assessment of potential environmental impacts and compliance with environmental requirements and laws.”
A submission on the project “outlined how environmental impacts should be balanced against the economic benefits of the proposal and the project’s contribution towards meeting housing supply issues in the Redland city council area.”
“The EIS is required to address potential impacts of the project on wetlands subject to the Ramsar International Convention, listed threatened species and ecological communities, and migratory species.”
A state environment department statement said it was up to Walker Corp “address all submissions” before submitting the final EIS to the federal government.
The statement added: “Wetlands are so important because they deliver many ecosystem services that contribute to our wellbeing-such as water and food supply, filtering of pollutants, regulation of climate and flooding, coastal protection, provision of habitat for biodiversity, and recreation and tourism opportunities.”
Waves of birds
This is not Robert Bush’s favourite time of year on the harbour.
That comes around September, when for months wave after wave of birds arrive blanketing the shore line and squeezing on to roosts on Cassim Island.
Right now in wetlands in Russia and Alaska, these remarkable long distance flyers – including record-setting bar-tailed godwits – are busily gorging themselves on insects, molluscs and crustaceans before making their epic flight.
Satellite tracking has shown eastern curlews will return to the same spot – within a few metres – on a sandbank behind Cassim Island.
“I would be devastated if this was approved,” says Bush. “It would tell us we have a long way to go to change the mindset of governments and developers over what it means to incorporate nature into the places we live. Walker Corp would say they’re doing that. They’re not.”
Guardian Australia did not get a response to questions put to Walker Corp.
