Save Westernport Inc

Save Westernport Inc. is an independent community group that aims to safeguard Westernport’s unique marine and coastal ecology. We recognise that the land and waters of Westernport belong to the Bunurong people of the Kulin Nation, whose sovereignty was never ceded.
We formed as a volunteer community group of local residents in response to giant energy company AGL’s ill-advised plan to import and process LNG at Crib Point on Westernport’s western shore, in the heart of its accredited Ramsar wetlands of significance to rare and endangered species of migratory birds.
Since our earliest days we have worked hard to represent and protect Westernport to ensure a healthy environment for all life. We aim to encourage responsible economic activity and promote a sustainable future for Westernport’s rare environmental assets, and the communities that surround them.
Our principle goal is to protect and enhance Westernport’s sensitive marine ecosystems by opposing inappropriate industrial activity that risks polluting the water, air and land in and around the Bay. Our current focus is to stop a plan by energy giant AGL to import and process LNG in Westernport. We are concerned that the project’s cumulative impacts would increase turbidity and threaten to degrade the bay’s seagrass meadows that provide the essential foundation for the endangered invertebrates and juvenile marine species that populate its wetland ecosystems. By encouraging an awareness of Westernport’s rare silver mangroves and seagrass beds we hope to also promote an apppreciation of the extraordinary environmental and economic value of their capacity to biosequester carbon. Their vital contribution is the focus of current studies by Prof Peter Macreadie at Deakin University’s Blue Carbon lab.

Location

Hastings 3915