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THE TWEED SHIRE Volume 2 #10 Thursday, November 5, 2009 Advertising and news enquiries: Phone: (02) 6672 2280 Fax: (02) 6672 4933 editor@tweedecho.com.au adcopy@tweedecho.com.au www.tweedecho.com.au
A contractor for a controversial proposed new township at Bilambil Heights who chopped down and poisoned over 1,200 trees, including many threatened species, has been fined $135,000 and ordered to complete 200 hours of community service. Chillingham farmhand Lance Rawson pleaded guilty in the NSW Land and Environment Court to seven charges under the National Parks and Wildlife Act and was convicted last week with one of the largest penalties ever handed down in the state for such offences. He was also ordered to pay professional costs Rawson was contracted to poison camphor laurel and privet by developer Godfrey Mantle and his Terranora Group Management Pty Ltd, which owns the land and currently has plans before the state planning department for the township with up to 1,800 homes known as The Rise on the 170-hectare site of the derelict Terranora Lakes Country Club. But the court found that Rawson went much further, using a chainsaw and poison to kill 1,279 trees, of seven different threatened species, between December 2005 and September 2006 on the property which included highquality remnant rainforest. The court heard that environmental consultants were also engaged to complete flora and fauna surveys for the site which identified hundreds of individual threatened species on the land which were then marked with pink flagging tape. When the consultants later returned to the land they discovered
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many threatened trees, including those marked with the tape, had been cut and poisoned. The court found that Rawson’s actions were deliberate and that he acted in reckless disregard of information, advice and warnings from one of the environmental consultants that at least some of the trees he had cut were threatened species.
Warnings ignored Rawson also ignored warnings from a Tweed Shire Council ranger that the cutting of trees on the property may be contrary to the law. The court’s chief judge, Justice Brian Preston, said ‘the conservation of biological diversity is a common concern of humankind’ and Rawson caused actual environmental harm to seven threatened species and populations of those threatened species and an endangered ecological community, their habitat, composition, structure and functioning. Justice Preston said Rawson admitted pulling out hundreds of plants on the site but found his denials over picking some specific plants lacked credibility. He said Rawson also tried, but was ‘unconvincing’, to suggest other people including marijuana growers or opponents to the controversial development, were to blame for cutting and poisoning trees on the site, even though he had never seen anyone doing it. Rawson’s actions in picking plants of threatened species without first applying for, then obtaining approval under the National Parks and Wildlife Act, he said, ‘thwarted the achievement of the objects of the
Murwillumbah races on Melbourne Cup day was full of action, fun and fashion. Race 5, the Casella Wines Yellowtail Bubble Benchmark 45 Handicap, saw a close finish at the post with 20-1 outsider and first emergency Aladdin Sane, ridden by Lorna Cook and trained by her partner Dennis Dwane, winning by a quarter of a length from favourite Cooly Road, ridden by George Auckram, with Dance Machine, ridden by Darren Coleman, a further half length away in third place. Photo Jeff ’Battle Cries and Champagne’ Dawson
Act, including ecologically sustainable development’. ‘The plants were not only of a threatened species but also were components of, first, populations of those species of significant conservational status and, secondly, a listed endangered ecological community,’ Justice Preston said.
Lack of knowledge He accepted Rawson’s evidence as to his lack of knowledge of threatened species generally. Rawson said he knew some plants were protected by the law but did not know which ones. He also accepted Rawson’s evidence that he never had a conversation with Mr Mantle or anyone else from his company about threatened species on the property or about Rawson cutting
down or damaging them. Rawson told the court that he did see tags, including pink tags, ‘everywhere, on camphors, lantana, fence posts, surveyors’ pegs and the ground’ but was not told the reason for them or their significance. He admitted cutting some trees or shrubs with pink tags. The court also heard how an ecologist tagging the threatened species on the property had seen 20 Red Bopple Nut trees (a threatened species) which had been cut down and confronted Rawson over it.
‘Just doing what I’m told’ The ecologist had asked him ‘Why the hell have you cut down all these trees?’ to which Rawson replied: ‘Godfrey’s orders. Just doing what I’m told to do’.
The judge said Rawson benefited financially from committing the offences as he was engaged by Mr Mantle to undertake the vegetation clearing work on the property for a fee of $32 per hour including cutting and poisoning plants of the threatened species which were part of the offences. He said Rawson could have and should have refrained from cutting and poisoning plants of threatened species unless and until all necessary approvals had been sought and obtained from the regulatory authorities. The court heard Rawson had no prior convictions for environmental offences. The prosecutor had also called for a jail sentence because the offences were ‘very close to the worst type of continued on page 2
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