Petition: End salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour – protect the skate
From The Australia Institute (11/12/24)…
Petition: End salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour—protect the skate
The salmon industry is calling for a “national interest exemption” to federal environmental protection laws so they can continue killing off one of Australia’s most endangered species.
In 2022, the new environment minister Tanya Plibersek pledged that there would be no more extinctions in Australia.
In 2023, Australian scientists warned that unless salmon farming was better regulated, the Maugean skate—a stingray-like marine animal from the dinosaur era—would go extinct. Salmon can be farmed in many places, but the Maugean skate only lives in one place in the world: Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour.
Australia’s existing laws give Tanya Plibersek the power to protect the Maugean skate, but she is under huge pressure not to use those legal powers.
If business continues as usual, without intervention from the Environment Minister, the Tasmanian salmon industry will go down in history for being linked to the extinction of a species.
Help counter the lobbying pressure from salmon industry.
The Environment Minister has the power to put science ahead of the salmon industry’s profits and to protect the skate before it becomes extinct.
Maugean skate, Dipturus maugeana. Image: Institute Marine and Antarctic Studies, Tasmania.
