Last Saturday at the Slipway Precinct in Lakes Entrance, Tracey Anton from Friends of Latrobe Water (FLOW) and Derek Russel from Bird Life East Gippsland (BLEG) gave powerful, insightful and informative presentations at Friends of the Gippsland Lakes’ (FOGL) Safe Keeping Forum on the final day of the East Gippsland Winter Festival.
For many people they opened their eyes to the significant connection between mining, agricultural run off, climate change and challenges from PFAS to the health and biodiversity of the Gippsland Lakes.
“Their evidence is surely enough to convince the vested interests in existing industrial mining, agriculture and primary industries to motivate policy changes,” FOGL’s Heather Oke said.
“But is is clearly evident that unless there are community-based educated support organisations, collaborating to achieve the numbers to pressure local, state and federal government agencies, from the bottom up, then this evidence will go unheeded, ignored and disappear from view.”
The presentation will assist FOGL to re-assess its capacity to create more citizen science activities and thereby provide further evidence of the condition of the Gippsland Lakes, assisting Federal MP Darren Chester with his call for an audit of the Gippsland Lakes.
“A major issue is not just the amassing of environmental and ecological evidence, with the assumption that scientific evidence is enough to implement urgent policy change,” Heather said.
“It is also that systemic structural transformation is required to ground a whole systems approach to governance of land, waterways and oceans in this region aligned with GLaWAC’s (Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation) Whole of Country Plan.
“With their expertise and support, FOGL can address pathways to establish the rigorous water quality research needed to influence existing government responsible authorities and build community networks to which local state and federal government authorities are accountable.”
