After two years of stalling, Environment Minister Murray Watt has just given the green light for industrial salmon farming to keep polluting Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour, knowing full well it’s driving the ancient Maugean Skate to extinction.

The science could not be clearer: fish farms are having a catastrophic impact on the skate. 

And yet, the Albanese Government has chosen the profits of foreign-owned salmon corporations over the survival of a species found nowhere else on Earth.

Extinction is forever.

We refuse to stand idly by while this government signs a death warrant for a creature that’s been here since the dinosaurs.

Can you chip in with a tax-deductible donation today and help us build a war chest to take this fight for the Maugean Skate head-on?

In July 2023, we called on the government to review its disastrous 2012 decision to expand salmon farming in the harbour, given the devastating impact on the Maugean Skate.

They agreed, then spent two years stalling, before gutting national environmental laws to protect the toxic salmon industry from future review. 

Their controversial and outrageous new law, rushed through parliament just before the federal election, exempts environment approvals made more than five years ago from being reconsidered.

Now, in a shameless display of contempt, the Minister has invoked this law to ram through an approval for salmon farming to continue, just one week before our Federal Court case challenging the matter.

We won’t back down.

We will challenge the minister’s decision on the basis that the new law does not apply to industrial fish farm operations in Macquarie Harbour and the government cannot escape their duty to protect Australia’s environment, no matter how hard they try.

We are the only organisation in Tasmania taking on the salmon industry in the court and on the water.

By donating today, you will help power our relentless campaign to stop toxic salmon farms and save the Maugean Skate through:

🌊 direct action on the water

🌊 legal action to challenge this reckless decision

🌊 exposing the industry’s destruction to the world

The Maugean Skate has survived for millions of years.

We cannot, and will not, let it be wiped out for the sake of corporate profit.

Please donate now and help us fight back.

For our Oceans, 

Alistair Allan 
Marine Campaigner