Protecting the Blue Pool

While both settings are within the World Heritage Area, the relevant section of Noah Creek is within protected area estate, and the Blue Pool is not. Environmental officers have long explained their inaction on a jurisdictional basis.

In order to overcome the jurisdictional weakness, Cooper Creek Wilderness formally declared its World Heritage property as a "Nature Refuge under a Conservation Agreement with the State of Queensland", to deliberately incorporate its rainforests, and most importantly, its Blue Pool section, into Queensland’s protected area estate.

Five years hence and still protection is denied, subject to the bureaucratic whim of those who have been entrusted with the statutory instrumentalities of nature conservation.

Environmental Impact Assessment Studies have established that there are major threatening processes degrading World Heritage values within the Blue Pool precinct. This has been done through direct comparison of quantifiable floristic survey work carried out in 1995, 1996 and 1998. In addition it has been clearly demonstrated that there exists little will or co-operation within the various government agencies at all levels to accept responsibility for management of this area.

In 1992 one of the major threatening processes identified at a workshop of technical experts on the conservation of rare and threatened species, was that: “official ineptitude/inaction can be a threat in itself to the survival of rare and/or threatened species” (Werren 1992).

Management agencies were notified of the existence and extent of the degradation of the values of the Blue Pool in 1996. Little or no action has followed and this inaction is clearly one of the major threatening processes that the Regional Action Plan for the Conservation of Rare and/or Threatened Wet Tropics Biota report identified.

The exceptional values of Blue Pool - sacred to traditional owners since time immemorial and to humankind as a whole through its World Heritage listing, should have been clear of any conflicting interest, but a model of conservation and reconciliation - it is not!

Perhaps through On Line Opinion interested readers could suggest solutions that will solve the complex problems of the Blue Pool.