The horror of witnessing more and more habitat destroyed along and near Toodyay Road, Western Australia, is so overwhelming that it is causing post-traumatic stress disorder for some of us, and for the biosphere itself. And it's ongoing. Soon, large swathes of bushland will remain only as photos and memories. Then people can forget it was ever there and adjust to the new reality? No.
This 'road realignment' and 'improvement' for safety reasons, to bring into accordance with 'modern road standards', is excessive and counter-intuitive. The violence of driving patterns is in evidence for all to see on any journey along that road and that's a huge part of the safety problem. Upgrading doesn't have to mean mass destruction. Further, the extraction industries and their trucking patterns are a doom in themselves. Trucks are supposed to be speed-limited to 100kmh, and I can promise you that's frequently not the case — I have seen trucks overtaking cars that were doing 100kmh. The plus or minus in their limiting must be truly flexible.
Associated (above ground) power line installation (and the wide clearing for fire-safety reasons required around power lines), the nearby mining of gravel for road-building, and ongoing agricultural land clearing (clearly some are escaping scrutiny or working the laws to their advantage) are part of a package from Dante's Inferno.
Yesterday, nearer Toodyay, we also saw machinery tearing down vegetation around a creek, with the tracks of the diggers embedded in the stream bed itself. Have permissions been obtained from the Noongar community/elders? These are sacred waterways, as is very well known in the region.
The environmental 'sign-offs' on these kind of 'works' is reprehensible, and the gall of the justifications, including a specious argument that because there's nearby national park, animals have other habitat available to them, is appalling. And as soon as you read that some of the bush being cleared is 'degraded', you get the (il)logical rhetoric at work. And a sign on the road saying a section being cleared is 'dieback affected' is not going to prevent its spread!
Every crunch of the bulldozer kills innumerable smaller creatures — reptiles, rodents, marsupials — and demolishing bird nests and so on. We have for many years watched white-tailed black cockatoos roosting in the very trees that are being literally plucked out by the roots —it's an inventive array of machinery the destroyers have got at their disposal.
It bemuses me to see the operators of these machines chatting between killing sprees. Sure, people are compelled to make a living, but all of us have consciences, and surely these must be bothered? It reminds me of the 'just-war' scenarios and the military tyranny we are all being affected by. A pseudo-theological debate just as governmental 'environmentalism' is a pseudo-ecological fait accompli. And these demolitions are yokings of government and business — the twin arms of the modern Western state doing their best to cover each other's complicity in ecocide by fulfilling 'promises', 'contracts', and meeting 'outcomes'.
This is a local issue with planetary implications — if habitat can be treated with such disdain, then all life is devalued, and we all know where such degradation leads. We all have an obligation to act, including those doing the damage and hiding behind specious justifications. We are all in this together, let's start acting as a community that recognises that all roots reach into the planet itself, and roots around here are specifically Noongar and without ongoing Noongar consultation, there's no way through on any level.
Stages of Planet Killing on Toodyay Road
It starts in offices and conferences room,
unless it is that grim whisper on the road
as drivers overtake on double
white lines or thrash the speed limit.
It echoes through government,
through departments, to business —
that search for quotes combining
frugality, outcomes, and brag sheets.
The surveyors come — neat harbingers
with their deft theodolites, stakes
through hearts, pink ribbons
streaming like dead arteries.
Environmental clearances an exquisite fait
accompli, ultimately, and sacred water-
ways re-mapped to be entered by tracked
machinery, banks undone, water stained.
There is the language of minimisation,
which we’ve come to expect, thanks, and down-
loads to offset the distress. And as old trees
are yanked out by the roots, and buttressed
bulldozers mount vegetation
before crushing, carrion vehicles
buzz like powerlines, the land rewritten
outside so many memories — but not all.
Wildlife told there are other places
it can go as it is slaughtered. Contract
killers anonymous as, later, efforts to tidy
with a few plantings, or just guiderails.
John Kinsella
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