The site flagged for a 2,000 megawatt coal-fired power plant in the New South Wales Hunter region was the only breeding site in the state last year for the regent honeyeater, a critically endangered bird whose plight has blocked previous development plans.
Guardian Australia revealed yesterday that an agreement had been struck between the China Energy Engineering Corporation, Hong Kong-based Kaisun Holdings and a tiny Australian company, Cavcorp, to build a new coal plant.
Companies linked to Cavcorp’s sole director, Frank Cavasinni, own most of the land in the Hunter economic zone, a failed plan to stimulate local economies in the lower Hunter.
Previous plans to develop land in the HEZ failed to come to fruition because of their impact on the land, and particularly on the regent honeyeater.
In 2016 the NSW land and environment court overturned the approval for a steel plant on the grounds it would destroy the honeyeater’s habitat.
Mick Roderick, the NSW woodland bird program manager for BirdLife Australia, said the HEZ was the most important conservation property in the Hunter Valley. “It’s unparalleled in terms of the number of threatened species,” he said.
BirdLife Australia last year conducted searches for the regent honeyeater, which is estimated to have a remaining population of fewer than 400 birds. They could not find breeding sites elsewhere in the state, but observed nesting birds and chicks in the HEZ.
Roderick said the importance of the woodlands could not be overstated. “The fact that these are the only nests found so far this year shows how much trouble this species is in,” he said.
Dean Ingwersen, the national regent honeyeater recovery coordinator for BirdLife Australia, said the HEZ was “a critical piece of the conservation puzzle”.
“The lower Hunter Valley … supports at least a small number of regent honeyeaters in most years, but when flowering of key foraging trees inland of the Great Dividing Range fails, the species relies on these sub-coastal habitats for breeding, as evidenced by us finding a bird this week that had been banded in the Capertee Valley three years ago.”
The mayor of Cessnock, Bob Pynsent, told Guardian Australia on Wednesday he had been briefed by Cavasinni about plans to build coal-fired generators in the HEZ. He said he had no philosophical objection but that environmental concerns would make any progress difficult.
