Thread by @FootnotesGuy

This insane. @abcnews runs a story about all the endangered wildlife from a UNDERGROUND coal mine extension.

Just 17 hectares of land will be cleared.

Ahem...

JUST 17 HECTARES!!!

The poor bats and koalas!!!
1/

Of course 17 hectares is NOTHING compared to what's required for wind farms.

The 'direct impacts' to the bats is from 630 hectares of land that will WON'T BE CLEARED, but may gradually subside, over years. 2/

I looked up the subsidence reports. The area under the mines may drop a meter. If a 630 hectare area gradually subsides a meter, maybe a meter and a half over the course of many years, I'm pretty sure most of the bats and koalas will be fine. 3/

Here's the NSW government deciding it's ok to clear 190 hectares of native vegetation for a wind farm.
More than 10X that for the coal extension... Explicitly including:
-large patches of remnant native vegetation
-an endangered ecological community. 4/

This is for the Hills of Gold Wind Farm. Along with the 190 hectares of cleared land, the 62 turbines will emplace about 125 vertical hectares of lethal hazard for birds and bats along these ridgelines, including adjacent pristine nature reserves. 5/

Here's some of the habitats impacted. Including some endangered or critically endangered.
At least 14 threatened fauna species.
45 hectares of koala habitat.
Oh, and 17 hectares for the Large-eared Pied Bat. 6/
ipcn.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/…

How does ABC cover Hills of Gold? A bunch of bickering jealous farmers standing in the way of development. "Wind Wars" they called this episode of Four Corners. Not a mention of the Large-eared Pied bat, or any other species in this segment. 7/

An UNDERGROUND coal mine doesn't have to clear the habitat of the Large-eared Pied bat. But ABC considered the risk of rockfalls from the land slowly subsiding justifies some heart-throbbing feature pictures of this species. 8/

And yet the ABC doesn't blink for hundreds of vertical hectares of turbines spinning at one third the speed of sound, and think about what impact the collision hazard, noise, infrasound, as well as land cleared has for these creatures. 9/

Anyway, I've never felt more pissed off with the national broadcaster. The bias is insane.

@abcnews can we please get some more even-handed coverage of the ecological impact of energy infrastructure?

Article by @hamishcole4 is here.
10/10
abc.net.au/news/2025-05-2…