Perth Voice Interactive

A WA conservation group has appealed plans to carve a road corridor through a 96-hectare woodland along Anketell Road for Kwinana’s new port. 

The Wildflower Society of WA lodged the appeal with the federal climate, energy, environment and water department following a proposal from Main Roads WA to “widen” Anketell Road for vehicles going into the Westport project. 

The road upgrade will require clearing three threatened ecological communities, which the Wildflower Society says is “not sustainable” and “unnecessary”. 

According to the society, 10 per cent of the area to be cleared is core habitat for endangered cockatoos.

President Brett Loney says the clearing of such a valuable ecological area “isn’t justified” because funding for Westport and the road upgrade has not yet been allocated.

“The assessment of the port hasn’t been completed yet, so we don’t know whether that  will come up with an approval for the port project, or if there’ll be modifications to it, which will make the upgrading of the road unnecessary anyway,” Mr Loney said. 

“[The state government] have been working  on an alternative port to Fremantle for a number of years, but when is it going to be needed? And what if that that is too far out? 

“Why are they planning to do it and get the approvals now, when they might not build it for 10, 15, or even 25 years?”

According to the Wildflower Society, at least 25 per cent of the proposed area contains three threatened ecological communities, and over 80 hectares of secondary habitat for black cockatoos. 

This includes 41 hectares of tuart woodland, 14.26ha of banksia, and 1.96ha of endangered melaleuca.  

“The threatened ecological communities themselves are endangered,” Mr Loney said. 

“Two of them are critically endangered and the other one is endangered, and that’s because there’s been so much clearing on the Swan Coastal Plain. 

“There’s been limestone extraction, there’s been urban development, there’s a whole raft of things that have happened to that land, and so it’s gotten to the point now where it’s critically endangered.”

Bulldozing

Greens MLC Brad Pettitt drew a comparison to the failed Roe 8 project and says the bulldozing is “out of sight, out of mind”. 

“They’re kind of doing the same thing hoping that because it’s further south and in a more industrial area that people won’t notice,” Dr Pettitt said. 

“Part of the problem is that there aren’t as many residents as there were for Roe 8 which was almost in people’s backyards.”

Westport is unlikely to be finished until the 2030s or ‘40s, which Dr Pettitt says is disguised by the government “as part of the bluff” to get funding for the project. 

“The truth there is that the container trade of Fremantle port has barely grown – at less than 1 per cent a year,” he said. 

“Westport modelling assumes growth of over 3.25 per cent, and under the current growth rate, the port won’t be needed until the 2050s, or even the 2070s. 

“With the right management around how we move containers, getting more in rail, getting more low emissions trucks running off-peak means the current road and rail network means that Fremantle Port has many decades of life left in it yet, and we don’t need to move it.

“[Westport] is a huge, $10 billion plus project… and it’s deeply unnecessary.”

It’s the second major project from the Cook government to impact banksia woodland, with a wave park in Jandakot also criticised by conservation groups for destroying a 3.1 hectare banksia stand.

Dr Pettitt says it’s a “cumulative impact” of the government’s lack of urban bushland legislation, the last of which was cancelled in 2022. 

“Here we are, still with no plan for protecting urban bushland, and a series of ad hoc projects,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the cumulative impact of these kind of projects on urban bushland is that we are seeing key species like Carnaby’s cockatoo heading towards collapse, because we’re just seeing more and more bushland cut down with no real plan around replacing it or keeping what’s left.

Submissions to appeal the Main Roads proposal closed on Thursday, July 18.

by KATHERINE KRAAYVANGER