June 2017 News - 4t CONSULTANTS

Surface Water Course – Enroll Now!

4T will be running our certified Surface Water Course on 1st August 2017, in Emerald.

This course is an accredited unit in the Certificate III in Water Quality Monitoring Course.

The course is suitable for students of environmental studies, landholders and employees/contractors to the resources and agriculture industries. If you or your employees are taking water samples for compliance purposes, this course will satisfy the requirement that persons undertaking sampling must be “appropriately qualified”.

If you are interested in participating, please contact our office for pricing and enrollment forms.

Phone: 07 49824100 Email: admin@4t.com.au

Fitzroy Basin gets a pass mark

For the third year running, the Fitzroy Partnership for River Health Report Card has give the Basin a Grade of B (Good) for river condition in 2015-2016.

Even better news was that for the first time, no catchments were graded ‘Poor’ in the ‘Toxicants’ category.

CQUniversity Research Fellow Dr Nicole Flint commented that ‘Ecology’ category data is a critical omission. Ecology data is only available for four of the 11 freshwater catchments.

“Increasing and expanding the range of data available for habitat indicators such as riparian condition, and biological indicators such as macroinvertebrates and fish, is a high priority,” Dr Flint says. “While biological indicators can be relatively expensive to monitor, they provide a more comprehensive picture of the river condition than can be determined from water quality sampling alone.”

Having been monitoring throughout the entire Fitzroy Basin for 20 years, we couldn’t agree more. Ecological monitoring can be expensive, but not as expensive as the consequences of not having the correct data to inform planning decisions.

Get ready for a new planning system

Speaking of planning, the Qld Government’s new planning system came into force on July 3. The new system will hopefully enable genuine community engagement in the planning system, and stronger provisions for development decision makers.

One of the aims of the new planning systems is to allow for greater community input into planning decisions.

“Development must not come at the expense of community participation and engagement, so new measures have been introduced to provide greater transparency and certainty for Queenslanders.”

You can learn about the planning system via the online learning hub.

CH Wildlife Carer Group

Even though our rescued joey Peter Roo is now healthy and leading the life of a grown-up red kangaroo, the work of the CH Wildlife Carer Group continues, and they still need your support.

To support the CH Wildlife Carer Group financially, with your time or other resources, please contact them directly:

24/7 hotline: 0475 288 301

Email:             chwildlifecarers@gmail.com
Facebook:      Central Highlands Wildlife Carers
Website:     chwc.org.au