The Commonwealth’s top scientific committee says salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour could wipe out the Maguean skate.
The salmon fillets you’re buying at the supermarket could be driving one of Australia’s rarest and most ancient animals to extinction.
Farms are located around the Tasmanian coastline, and Macquarie Harbour is not the main source of salmon supply. But that’s where the most controversial leases are because it is the only place on earth where the skate lives.Salmon farming began there in the late 1980s and all three of Tasmania’s salmon companies, Tassal, Huon Aquaculture and Petuna, operate in the waterway.
“For years the writing has been on the wall about the dangers of farming salmon in Macquarie Harbour … and now there’s a very real chance the ancient Maugean skate will go extinct in the wild because of it.”“They can simply say no to selling Tasmanian salmon products sourced from Macquarie Harbour and in turn do their bit to protect a species on the edge of extinction.”
“The salmon industry, state government and federal government are all taking action to improve the harbour which incidentally is now at near its healthiest in a decade,” Martin said. Critically endangered means that the probability of extinction in the wild will to be greater than 50 per cent in 10 years or three generations, whichever is longer.
The government has set aside $5.7 million to improve the health of the harbour, including $2.1 million for a captive breeding program which last week announced the world’s first baby Maugean Skate hatched from a captive-laid egg.
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