Today’s news that two of the four adult Maugean skates in the species\u2019 new captive breeding program have died is devastating. This tragedy reinforces the scientific evidence \u2013 industrial fish farming in Macquarie Harbour must end for the skate to have the best chance of survival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Greens spokesperson for healthy oceans, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson said:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hats off to the recovery team for all their efforts to save the skate, but we can\u2019t rely on such an uncertain, high risk program as our only effort to save this species from extinction. Today’s news that two of the four adult Maugean skates in the species\u2019 new captive breeding program have died is devastating. This tragedy reinforces the scientific evidence \u2013 industrial fish farming in Macquarie Harbour must end for the skate to have the best chance of survival. Greens spokesperson for healthy oceans, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson said:\u00a0 … Continue reading “SKATE DEATHS DEMAND FISH FARM FREE MACQUARIE HARBOUR”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24818,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24817\/revisions\/24818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
“We have to do so much better to protect the skate in its only natural home: Macquarie Harbour.
“The federal government\u2019s own updated scientific advice clearly states the key threat to the skate\u2019s survival is poor water quality in the Harbour, and that the primary cause of this is Atlantic salmon farming. The fastest and simplest way to give the Maugean skate a fighting chance of survival is to remove toxic industrial salmon farming from the skate\u2019s natural environment \u2013 it\u2019s that simple.
“We can\u2019t allow the farming of an introduced species – Atlantic salmon \u2013 to cause the extinction of an iconic native species. The skate belongs in Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania\u2019s west coast, and Atlantic salmon belong in the Atlantic.
“Resorting to a captive breeding program will clearly be a case of too little too late unless Tanya Plibersek upholds her own \u2018Zero Extinction\u2019 pledge and protects the Maugean skate\u2019s last remaining natural habitat.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"