Western Australia: Fears gas hub will harm dinosaur prints

ABC.net.au: Fears gas hub will harm dinosaur prints
EMILY BOURKE: To Western Australia now and traditional owners around Broome will vote tomorrow on whether to accept the latest deal on a proposed multi-billion dollar gas plant.

Woodside and its joint venture partners want to bring gas from the offshore Browse Basin to James Price Point.

Woodside and the WA Government have offered native title claim groups $1.5 billion in benefits over several decades.

But palaeontologists are worried about the destruction of dinosaur footprints known as underprints if the project goes ahead.

David Weber reports.

DAVID WEBER: Indigenous people in the area are split.

In general terms the Jabirr Jabirr support the proposed plant and the Goolarabooloo don't.

The Premier Colin Barnett is hoping the deal will be approved.

COLIN BARNETT: Essentially the details have been agreed between the Aboriginal negotiators, the Kimberley Land Council, the State Government and Woodside. That now needs to go back to the traditional owners at a broader open meeting and I'm hopeful that they will agree and endorse this project.

DAVID WEBER: Palaeontologists fear that important evidence of dinosaurs will be lost if the gas plant is built at James Price Point.

There are sauropod underprints in the area.

An underprint is the impression of a footprint which has degraded over time.

Dr Steve Salisbury of the University of Queensland:

STEVE SALISBURY: The prints up in the Kimberley are by far the best record that we have of dinosaurs in the western part of Australia.

They're the only record for a number of dinosaurs in Western Australia and many of the prints represent groups that we have no other evidence for within Australia.

So in that context not only within Western Australia but then for Australia they are very significant.

DAVID WEBER: Could the gas hub that's proposed for James Price Point pose any threat to the prints?

STEVE SALISBURY: Definitely prints will be destroyed if the gas hub goes ahead but then there are obviously indirect effects of just opening that area up to this development.

With all the proposed dredging, the jetties and things that are going to go ahead, that's definitely going to affect the longshore movement of sand up and down the Dampier coast. And many of the best prints along that stretch of coastline may end up being covered by sand.

DAVID WEBER: A report for the State Government has played down the significance of the underprints saying there are better examples elsewhere in the Kimberley region.

There will be further studies before any construction takes place but there seems to be an acceptance that the prints will be destroyed if they're not removed.

Dr Salisbury:

STEVE SALISBURY: I mean there's nowhere in the world where you can go and look at the movements of 15 different types of dinosaurs along a stretch of coast that's 80 kilometres long. I mean it's phenomenal in terms of the sort of information we get out of it for understanding dinosaur movements.

DAVID WEBER: Dr Salisbury says he and other palaeontologists are making an appeal to the Federal Environment Minister, Tony Burke.

EMILY BOURKE: David Weber.