Recently released internal documents reveal the Government attempted to cover-up the mass sawfish death incident on Gina Rinehart's Fitzroy Valley cattle station. The news was withheld from the public for 6 months until local media broke the story.
“I am trying to prevent this issue getting out in the media.”
This is a direct quote from a WA Government official, revealed in internal documents just released on the mass death of over 40 critically endangered sawfish last December in the Kimberley — near where Gina Rinehart’s Liveringa Station pumps water for irrigation from a tributary of the Fitzroy River.
The revelation is even more damning because just days before when Government thought that the sawfish rescue attempt would be a success, they were talking about a good news story that would "go global". Once it turned out the sawfish had died however, they instead withheld the information for six months until local media broke the news.
The Government claims that the endangered sawfish died due to heat stress and the drying of the pools they were trapped in. But very surprisingly, there has been no investigation into whether irrigation of over one billion litres of water from the creek that normally connects the sawfish’s pools to the Fitzroy River played a role.
Of even more concern, Mrs Rinehart wants the Government to increase the allocation of irrigation water from the Fitzroy by 300 times this amount!
Whilst Indigenous rangers, scientists, station staff and Government officials all tried their best to rescue the sawfish, sadly they were too late. Now it's important to know why these sawfish became trapped. Ask for a thorough, independent investigation into the deaths of these sawfish in their last global stronghold.
Devastating images of the sawfish deaths on Gina Rinehart's cattle station, Dec '18.
