YELLOW THROAT The newsletter of BirdLife Tasmania: a branch of BirdLife Australia Number 106, July 2019 General Meeting Thursday, 11 July, 7.30 p.m. Please come along to Catherine Young and Geoff Shannon’s presentation on Bird banding in Tasmania. Bird banding is an important research tool for ornithologists, providing unique and valuable data from individual to community level. Geoff and Catherine will provide updates on their recent projects in Tasmania including population monitoring and collaborations with other groups. Having recently returned from the Australasian Ornithological Conference they will also give a synopsis of the meeting, including insights from the banding symposium on the future of banding in Australia. Catherine completed her PhD with the Australian National University in 2017, working in the Kimberley region of WA. Currently she holds a visiting position at the University of Tasmania through which her bird banding project is run. She learnt to band birds with the Australian Bird Study Association in 2007 and is still actively involved with the organisation and their banding projects. Geoff, a member of the BirdLife Tasmania Executive Committee, has been involved in bird- banding organisations and projects for many years, originally in south-west England, then Western Australia and now Tasmania. He also runs bird talks and walks in north-west Tasmania, through U3A. Mike Newman will also briefly present his recent analysis of data on the Pallid Cuckoo. Meeting venue: Life Sciences Lecture Theatre 1, Life Sciences Building, University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay. Access and parking are from College Road or from the parking area outside the University Centre via the pedestrian bridge over Churchill Ave. Everyone is welcome to stay for tea and coffee afterwards. Pallid Cuckoo (fed by Black-headed Honeyeater). Photo by Alan Fletcher. 1 Are our altitudinal migrants stressed? By Mike Newman Winter birding in Tasmania can be lean pickings after our summer breeding species migrate north. However, although species diversity may be lower, numbers may increase in lowland habitats as birds move down from their montane breeding areas. Crescent Honeyeaters and Eastern Spinebills are well known examples moving to coastal heaths and suburban gardens where native plantings have created a supportive niche. But how much do we really know about these movements? In recent discussions friends have suggested that these birds have arrived earlier this year and it is easy to agree. Indeed, this might be an expected consequence of lack of resources in their montane summer habitats following an extended period of hotter, drier summers and birds displaced by wildfires. But are our opinions soundly based or just subjective judgements? In conversations with friends one tends to avoid being the hard-nosed scientist. This may well be a fault because many people may have meticulous diaries documenting this information in their back yards. The question is how to gather and assess it? There is also the question of whether the abnormally dry conditions in eastern Tasmania are affecting the floristic species on which honeyeaters depend in the winter months. A recent comment by Nick Mooney supports this concern. “By the way I was at Low Head last weekend and there were hundreds of eastern spinebills around the boxthorn near the lighthouse. It was the only thing flowering. Quite bizarre.” Another question concerns those species which remain at high altitudes where we seldom venture when conditions are bleak. During the last week of April during a period of extremely inclement weather, which made birding a marginal proposition, Tim Reid and I made independent forays up Mt Wellington to altitudes of 700m and above. We both encountered large flocks of Black-headed Honeyeaters, which were unexpected and contrary to our previous experience of the area while conducting Birdata surveys. Other high-altitude species may be more mobile than is commonly accepted with several records of immature Pink Robins in near-coastal habitat on the South Arm peninsula and Alan Fletcher recording flocks of Olive Whistlers at Pink Robin. Photo by Helen Cunningham. two locations on the peninsula last winter. Set public scrutiny in concrete By Nick Sawyer, Sophie Underwood, Peter McGlone and Tom Allen First published as a ‘Talking Point’ in The Mercury, June 11, 2019 PREMIER Will Hodgman often says his Government’s call for Expressions of Interest in tourism developments in Tasmania’s parks and reserves provides a rigorous and transparent process for their assessment (e.g., ‘Backing in sustainable nature tourism’ media release, March 19). However, the reality is that rather than using a well-defined, rigorous and transparent process which guarantees public comment and appeal rights, it is taking advantage of an absence of such a process. 2 The key decision in the approval or refusal of a development proposal in a national park or reserve (about 50 per cent of the state) is compliance with the relevant legally binding management plan where there is one, or consistency with the legislation if there is not. This is the decision that most needs to be rigorously documented and available for public scrutiny. This task falls to the Parks and Wildlife Service’s Reserve Activity Assessment, so it is essential this process is robust and transparent. The Reserve Activity Assessment, however, is only defined in an internal Parks and Wildlife Service policy document, not in legislation, so it cannot be legally challenged or appealed – there is no requirement that a Reserve Activity Assessment be made public, let alone that it be made subject to public scrutiny (Parks and Wildlife regularly undertakes Reserve Activity Assessments without public involvement), and it has no clearly defined relationship to any planning legislation despite its crucial role in informing federal and local government decisions. This means the public have no guaranteed right of say over development of public land – which is undemocratic. This situation must be addressed before the Tasmanian (Statewide) Planning Scheme takes effect. This will make things even worse because it effectively removes the only legislated protection the public has over development on reserved land by removing councils from key decision about impacts on reserve values. In the case of the Lake Malbena proposal, the key issue is impact on wilderness values. If there had been no role for council, the only public comment on wilderness concerns would have been through the Federal Government’s separate assessment – there would have been very limited opportunity for council to refuse the development and no opportunity to raise wilderness impacts in an appeal. Legally binding clarification of a process for assessing proposed developments on public reserved land is particularly important when the Government’s policy of unlocking our national parks actively encourages such development. Legislation is needed to guarantee an open and transparent process with meaningful public scrutiny and appeal rights, and to define the relationship with other legislation (nobody gains from duplication of process). This is not a big ask. Development on reserved public land needs to be assessed with at least as much rigour as development on private land – not less! An integrated process already exists for assessing works on heritage places, where the Tasmanian Heritage Council has a legally defined role in the planning permit assessment process and the decision is reviewable by the Resource Management and Planning Appeals Tribunal, ensuring independent scrutiny and oversight in the existing planning permit appeals process. The proposal for a wilderness lodge at Lake Malbena in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area originated as an Expressions of Interest proposal. On February 26, the Central Highlands Council met to make its decision on the development application. A common theme of comments by councillors was inadequacy of the Reserve Activity Assessment (which had not been subject to separate public comment) and the failure of process – the state and federal governments had shirked their responsibilities – a small rural council should never have been required to make key decisions about impacts on World Heritage values. Tasmania’s planning legislation dates from the early 1990s. Both major political parties then agreed that national parks were out-of-bounds for commercial development so the original omission of a rigorous process for assessment for developments is understandable. The State Government’s call for Expressions of Interest has taken advantage of this legislative void. There are thought to be about 40 Expressions of Interest proposals under consideration. Proposals are progressed to the stage of determining lease and licence conditions by an unaccountable panel of senior public servants, before the Parks and Wildlife Service is required to go through the motions of conducting a Reserve Activity Assessment which may never be made public. Depending on the detail of the proposal, further local and/or federal government assessment may be required, but these processes do not necessarily guarantee the key concerns of impacts on reserve values will be addressed. Only if the proposal requires a change to a management plan is there a legal requirement for public consultation by Parks and Wildlife. Even this may be lost in the future under the 3 Government’s apparent agenda of sidelining legally enforceable management plans in favour of the non-legally