Letter Writer's Corner: State level
Letter
#1:
To:
Minister for the Environment
Copy
to: Anna Bligh, Premier
While we are now receiving
the cooperation and assistance of the Commonwealth government on our new
frog diseases, the State maintains its 'head in the sand' stance. The
State environment portfolio has been scaled back for many years and some
might well argue that its budget is no longer sufficient to properly discharge
its own charter. Regardless, the current problems of new frog diseases
need to be brought to the Minister's attention so that voter concern can
be demonstrated and responded to by putting our frog problems on the Treasurer's
radar.
In your letter, you
can make one or more of the following points:
- Ask what steps
she plans to take to: a) help the FDR Project, Inc. with its disease
surveillance activities in Queensland; b) how the State's deficient
frog monitoring program will be modified so that it actually functions
as a disease surveillance mechanism; and c) what procedures will be
invoked so that all Northern Region staff and the volunteers they supervise
follow proper disinfection procedures for field work they do.
- As Environment
Minister, ask what steps she will take to ensure that QPWS adopts more
frog friendly policies concerning the receipt and rehabilitation of
diseased frogs throughout the state, and to establish a more supportive
and cooperative relationship between QPWS and the FDR Project, Inc.
(Cairns Frog Hospital).
Letter
#2:
To: Anna
Bligh, Premier of Queensland
Copies to: Leader of the Opposition and Minister for the Environment
The state government
has been telling the Cairns Frog Hospital for some time that it has no
money for helping our group or to help isolate the new diseases we've
uncovered. We accepted that argument and encouraged the state to at least
be involved in the monitoring side of things. However, in April 2005,
the Premier announced that the state was putting $1 million dollars into
cane toad control. So the state has no money? Where did this million dollars
come from?
There are two issues
of contention here: firstly, that it wasn't $900,000 for toads and $100,000
for frog diseases or even $975,000 for toads and $25,000 for native frogs
- it was $1 million for toads and zero for frogs. The second problem is
that the hefty contribution to toad control is being directed to yet another
hi-tech, "blue sky" project that MIGHT be ready some years from
now and MIGHT actually work against toads and MIGHT kill only toads and
not frogs . . . or it MIGHT not work at all and the money will be wasted.
We have been finding
diseased toads for years and have tried alerting the government to the
fact that expensive and very risky genetic engineering approaches to toad
control are unacceptable and merely money down a black hole. Toads are
already being affected by the same problems that are causing the frog
decline and are showing clear signs of reduction in Queensland already.
(We're also receiving reports of sick and malformed toads from the NT.)
If any of these hi-tech experiments ever come to fruition and actually
affect toads without killing frogs, the toad populations will be so compromised
by disease by then that they will no longer constitute enough of a problem
to justify the use of biological warfare.
In your letter to
the Premier, you can point out:
1) It is an important
step that the Queensland government has acknowledged its role in introducing
the cane toad to Australia and wants to help correct the problem -- BUT
why dump the money into a risky, hi-tech approach that may never work
and, if it does, be so far off in the future as to be rendered redundant
by the environmental factors that are already killing toads in QLD?
2) The state government
has declined to help the Cairns Frog Hospital or to help isolate the new
frog diseases (some of which also kill toads), but has found $1 million
dollars for toads. Why are toads considered so much more important than
native frogs? Why wasn't the toad contribution adjusted so that five or
ten percent of that amount could have been used to help save native frogs
in this state and the other 90-95% wasted on a risky toad project (if
the government wanted to demonstrate its commitment to technology)?
Please be sure to
send us a copy of any replies you receive to P.O. Box 1207, Earlville,
FNQ 4870. Thanks for your help.
last edited:
Dec. 5th, 2007
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