11.09.2023

Media Release: CHALUMBIN PICNIC RALLY A GREAT SUCCESS

THANK YOU everyone for the fantastic turnout on Saturday morning for our final Chalumbin rally. We rocked it!

We thank journalists Nick Cater and Rebecca Weisser for attending and hearing the community. And other journalists that attended - thank you so very much.

The community has spoken once again - no one wants the proposed Chalumbin wind development 2.0 (aka Wooroora Station wind farm but we will never call it that!).

We're sick of the lack of transparency, the perpetual pivots by the people of Ark Energy trying to get this ecocidal development over the line. It's time for Tanya Plibersek to reject it!

Anthony Russo claims the scaling back of Chalumbin to 42 turbines is to address the visual impacts to the Wet Tropics. But the visual impacts from Chalumbin wind development to the WTWHA were but one concern among many. Our *primary concern* is the critical habitat destruction of landscape that falls within the ecologically significant Wet Tropics Bioregion. Numerous wind turbines are plotted only one kilometer away from the boundary of the WTWHA - simply madness. And there is no social license for the proposed Chalumbin wind development 2.0!

Chalumbin should be a National Park, not a wind development.

Adjunct Professor Tim Nevard says: "“It’s far and away most important value is part of the buffer of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, which runs down it’s western boundary and therefore is somewhere which should remain inviolate. We’re talking about the most important area of biodiversity in Australia and to put something which is essentially an industrial land use with massive change in the local environment, roads, turbines, access arrangements etc, right next door to it is nothing short of foolish”

Keep Chalumbin wild!