Protect our nature from Big Cotton

Tell Minister Watt to protect our nature from big cotton

Spirit Hills Station on the Keep River east of Kununurra, is one of the Northern Territory’s best kept secrets.  It’s part of a living, breathing ecosystem that includes Ramsar-listed wetlands and floodplains – areas recognized as internationally significant for their unique environmental values and biodiversity. 

But now, a proposed cotton farming project on the property – spanning thousands of hectares – has become the first major land clearing application in the Territory’s history to be considered under Australia’s national environment laws. 

Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt must now consider the significant impacts the proposed land-clearing will have on threatened species, migratory species and ecological communities. 

The land clearing threatens habitat for several species, including freshwater sawfish, northern blue-tongued skinks, merten’s water monitors, gouldian finches, and ghost bats. 

We also know that the landholder has bigger plans for massive cotton expansion and more dams, including a new 10 billion litre dam (equivalent to 4000 Olympic swimming pools) using flows from the pristine Keep River, just downstream of Keep River National Park.

This is another sign that the cotton industry from the Murray Darling basin is moving north to clear thousands of hectares of savanna and extract billions of litres of water from some of the world’s last free-flowing rivers. 

Write to Minister Watt today and ask him to protect our Top End nature.