A proposed dam one and a third times the area of Sydney Harbour has been stopped by the Australian environment minister, Peter Garrett.
The former front man of the band “Midnight Oil” named as his reasons the probable extinction of various unique species, including the lungfish, the first creature to crawl out of the sea hundreds of millions of years ago. It became the first land animal with a spine and is the only fish to breathe with lungs.
The primeval ancestor of human beings lives only in two Queensland Rivers, the Mary (entering the sea at Hervey Bay) and the Burnett (emptying near Bundaberg).
A former Queensland Labor premier, Peter Beattie, said when announcing the plan three and a half years ago, the dam would be built “feasible or not”.
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