?Conservation through sustainable use. Making people part of the solution?
?The voice of NSW recreational fishers?
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www.ecofishers.comMEDIA RELEASE 9.11.08
MARINE PARK AUTHORITY ACCUSED OF SCIENTIFIC FRAUD ? AGAIN!
Following blistering criticism from a raft of Australia?s leading marine scientists and fisheries biologists last year, led by Professor Bob Kearney, (Emeritus Professor of Fisheries, University of Canberra) the Marine Park Authority (NSW), has again been accused of further gross scientific fraud.
The original castigation centred on serious scientific, biological, environmental, sustainability and management shortcomings, on behalf of the NSW Marine Park Authority. There was serious systematic scientific abuse of the available science.
Continuing criticism from the scientific community resulted in the removal of the Marine Park Authority?s paper on ?the benefits of marine protected areas?, from their website. ?Deleting data which counters a preferred point of view, without full and open discussion is scientific fraud,? asserts Professor Kearney. A new version of this flawed paper has been posted on the MPA website (2008) ?Unfortunately,? says Prof Kearney, ?while numerous of the more blatant untruths have been corrected, the new version is still fatally flawed by the same bias and misrepresentation that dominated the earlier report. Arguably the new version is worse. The misrepresentation continues. And now the authors cannot claim they did not know of the problems.?
Despite the fact that NSW marine parks zonings, only restrict fishing,
no evidence whatsoever is given by the Marine Park Authority, to identify, where, how, when or why, recreational fishing is perceived as a real threat to either the long term sustainability of fisheries resources, or the underlying biodiversity and ecosystems. The Marine Park Authority provides no justification whatsoever, for restrictions on any forms of recreational fishing, in any NSW marine park.
So scathing were Professor Kearney?s and the scientific community?s criticisms, that Assistant Minister Verity Firth, earlier this year, promised ?there was to be an independent review of the science underlying marine parks in NSW.? The Labor government has now reneged on this promise too, for they see nothing but further embarrassment coming out of the independent review, for a government under siege from the community.
?The Marine Park Authority?s repeated assertion that these parks represent protection of coastal biodiversity and ecological processes is little more than distortions of the truth. They are simply an attempt to cover-up the appalling failure by NSW Labor to address the real threats to our coastal biodiversity and ecosystems. ( eg. pollution, agriculture, coastal development, introduced pests, etc)
Yet the Marine Park Authority continues to make unsubstantiated claims that recreational fishing is a serious threat. It is not!
In his latest critique, Prof. Kearney, cites the continuing disastrous Richmond River fish kills, as evidence of the real and major threats to our marine biodiversity and ecosystems.
The Marine Park Authority has irrefutable evidence that damage to water quality from agriculture and coastal development, etc, is a real and serious threat to marine organisms and assemblages, yet they surreptitiously blame recreational fishing! And the NSW government is aware of, and complicit, in attempting to continue the cover-up and to hoodwink the public.
It is significant that Assistant Minister for the Environment at the time, acknowledged under the banner, ?Marine Parks will preserve recreational fishers? future?, that NSW estuaries and coastal waters are in serious trouble. ?To have done nothing about the State?s rapidly deteriorating coastal ecosystems, would have been an abrogation of our fundamental responsibility to leave our natural environment in better shape than that which we inherited.? (Verity Firth, Assistant Environment Minister, Northern Star 20.10.07)
This article clearly made an unqualified claim that government marine parks would provide protection from the impacts on our rapidly deteriorating coastal ecosystems. They do not, will not and cannot!
Prof. Kearney reaffirms his conclusion that NSW marine parks, ?are little more than unjustified fisheries allocation mechanisms.?
They certainly do not conform to Minister Macdonald?s and Debus? promise that ?world?s best practice standards science,? would be used to underpin them. Nor do they address the real and known threats to coastal biodiversity, ecosystems or fisheries.
As a result, the NSW Marine Park Authority has a continuing serious credibility problem within the NSW community. Government marine parks are merely poorly conceived and badly designed fishing resource allocation devices for no identified conservation benefit.
?They unjustifiably and mistakenly demonize fishing and do not address the real threats. They do nothing more than hoodwink the public into mistakenly believing a representative selection of marine habitats is being protected,? adds Prof Kearney. Clearly they aren?t.
People don?t respect the Marine Park Authority, their published pap and motherhood statements, nor their unscientific zonings in these political parks. Is it any wonder non-compliance is rife? We are resigned to wait for a change of government, to get a fair dinkum scientific assessment and a fair go, for NSW recreational fishing families.
Ken Thurlow
CEO ECOfishers NSW
