Australia's Kimberley region has some of the largest, intact, natural landscapes left in the world. It has globally significant wetlands, free-flowing river systems and pristine oceans, and provides refuge for threatened wildlife that have disappeared from most of Australia.
The Kimberley is also a culturally rich region, home to a living Aboriginal culture that is tens of thousands of years old.
But all this is at risk. This iconic region in North West WA has been identified as having some of the largest untapped shale gas and tight sands gas reserves in the world, and companies are gearing up to frack for gas.
Fracking in the Kimberley
Unconventional gas production requires fracking and involves the industrialisation of entire landscapes. The proposed pipeline from the Kimberley to the Pilbara for gas export would open the region up to expansive, industrial-scale gasfields, with potentially thousands of wells and vast greenhouse gas emissions.
Fitzroy River Floodplain- Damian Kelly Photography
What's at Risk?
The Kimberley region is a biodiversity hotspot which harbours extensive unique and vulnerable biodiversity values, including coastal wetlands and threatened plants and animals.
There are 3.26 million hectares of current petroleum titles across the Kimberley- an area greater than entire countries like Belgium and Armenia. These license areas include the lower catchment of the iconic and national heritage-listed Fitzroy River and the Roebuck Wetlands, which are listed on the Directory of Important Wetlands of Australia.
The area covered by petroleum titles in the Kimberley contains known or likely habitat for 32 nationally endangered and vulnerable species under Federal environment laws and 33 threatened species under WA biodiversity conservation laws.
Threatened flora and fauna species under threat include the Greater Bilby, Northern Quoll, Freshwater Sawfish, Gouldian Finch and Australian Painted Snipe.
Gas Development
Unconventional gas development represents a significant threat to Kimberley plants and wildlife because it involves extensive vegetation clearing and fragmentation associated with numerous wells, extensive networks of roads and pipelines and associated infrastructure like compression stations and water treatment facilities.
Even in the early stages of oil and gas exploration in the Kimberley there have been significant impacts, with Buru Energy bulldozing globally significant vegetation over a distance as great as from Perth to London for seismic testing. And from three exploration wells, locals have witnessed a wastewater pond overflowing and a well leaking greenhouse gases.
Imagine what will happen if thousands of wells cover these landscapes!
