Environment Archives – Page 11 of 12 – Stephen Andrew Kickstart Queensland

TWO CAPE YORK CATTLE STATIONS SNAPPED UP BY QUEENSLAND’S ‘GREEN GRABBING’ GOVERNMENT

The Queensland Government’s recent purchase of two existing pastoral leases north of Weipa, amounting to nearly 325,932 hectares of agricultural land, has led to calls for the buying program in Cape York to “stop”.

Many graziers say they are becoming fearful for the future of the cattle industry up North, as more and more large pastoral properties are being bought up by the Government.

Since 2007, the Queensland Government has bought more than a dozen pastoral properties in Cape York, including Kalinga, Crosbie, Strathmay, Killarney, Dixie and Wulpan Stations.

Bertiehaugh Station was bought by the Federal Government and renamed the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve.

All these stations have been permanently removed from Australia’s agricultural lands network and converted into national parks or wildlife reserves.

Now Bramwell and Richardson Stations have joined the list – the northern-most cattle enterprise in Queensland.

The buy-ups are impacting neighbouring stations and communities, as more money is ripped from town economies, along with countless jobs.

Many are suspicious that the government may be buying up land to gain carbon credits. Bramwell Station, for example, came with a “carbon farming deal” in place.

Grazier Emma Jackson, who runs nearby Wolverton Station in Cape York, said the sale of Bramwell Station was very troubling.

“If the cattle stations continue to close down in Cape York, it will be … another nail in the coffin for the grazing industry” she told the Brisbane Times recently.

“The state government might buy the land, but they don’t invest money into it. It’s not feasible or possible for them to manage it”.

“When you’re producing on the land, you know where every weed is, you do your fire management, you make a dollar and it goes straight back into the land”.

“There’s this perception that when you’re working the land in cattle or horticulture, you’re not working with the land, that you’re not doing the right thing and that’s simply not correct.”

Local graziers and communities are not being consulted or given a say over the government ‘buy-ups’.

While questions around the vital issue of our ‘food security’ or the impact on Queensland’s agricultural sector overall, go unanswered.

Bear in mind that this is productive farmland we are talking about – land that food producers could make good use of.

Land that is now lost to Queensland agriculture forever.

THIS IS ABOUT “LAND, MONEY AND RESOURCE CONTROL”, NOT ‘SAVING’ THE ENVIRONMENT

Queensland Environment Minister, Meaghan Scanlon, recently announced the government’s purchase of 35,300 hectares west of Townsville, to be added to Queensland’s ‘Protected Area’ estate.

‘Lakes Station’, is “a massive and stunningly beautiful grazing property” in North Queensland that was owned by the same family for generations.

Scanlon said she will be making a lot more purchases in the region this year, as part of the government’s efforts to ‘protect’ more than 17 percent of Queensland by 2030.

In 2020, the Government set aside $28 million to expand the State’s ‘protected areas’ and today, more than 14 million hectares across Queensland are protected in some way.

Last year, around 33,621 hectares of high value ‘conservation’ land was added to Queensland’s protected area network.

Altogether, the network currently ‘protects’ an area more than twice the size of Tasmania.

Most of this land was once fertile farming and agricultural land.

THESE LANDS HAVE NOW BEEN PUT OFF LIMITS TO ANY PRODUCTIVE USE, PERMANENTLY.

How much the government paid for the property has not been disclosed, although it was revealed that $1.829 million came from the Wyss Foundation, set up by US billionaire Hansjorg Wyss.

Wyss is the former CEO of Synthes, a medical device manufacturer, specialising in medical implants and biomaterials.

In 2009, Synthes was charged with 52 felony for illegally experimenting on patients, three of whom died.

Wyss sold the company to Johnson & Johnson in 2012 for $20.2 billion and now focusses on his chain of billion dollar Foundations and Medical Institutes.

Interestingly, the Wyss Centre in Switzerland is developing a fully implantable brain-computer interface that directly detects brain signals and then wirelessly transmits them to a computer for decoding.

Wyss and fellow billionaires, Bezos and Bloomberg, have committed $5.5 billion to buying up ‘high value’ land worldwide.

Wyss alone has bought up 27 million acres of farming properties in the US and turned them into conservation areas.

In 2018 he bought 200,000 acres of farmland in Australia’s Murray Darling Basin to create a “protected zone”.

Clearly, the biggest threat the environment faces today, comes not from the people who live there, but from all these rich billionaires and their ‘dark money’ Foundations, looking to swoop in and buy up all the rights to it – financialising nature for profit and control.

As the head of Survival International said:

“Let’s not be fooled by the hype from the ‘conservation’ NGOs, UN and public-private funders. This has nothing to do with climate change or protecting biodiversity – in fact it will only make them worse”.

“THIS IS ABOUT MONEY, LAND AND RESOURCE CONTROL AND AN ALL-OUT ASSAULT ON HUMAN DIVERSITY”.

“THIS PLANNED DISPOSSESSION OF HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE RISKS ERADICATING HUMAN DIVERSITY AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY”.

Food Security – going, going, GONE

TWO CAPE YORK CATTLE STATIONS SNAPPED UP BY QUEENSLAND’S ‘GREEN GRABBING’ GOVERNMENT

Queensland’s protected areas

THIS IS ABOUT “LAND, MONEY AND RESOURCE CONTROL”, NOT ‘SAVING’ THE ENVIRONMENT