Restore Lake Pedder: Paddle for Pedder! 2023
Restore Lake Pedder wanted to reach out in Rewilding Earth to update readers on our progress, since it’s been a while between the first post and podcast we shared here in 2021. We recommend those interested check out this Guardian article published in September 2022 as it is a good resource with updates since those original Rewilding Earth pieces.
PADDLE FOR PEDDER!
We’d be thrilled if you can join us in the 2023 worldwide Paddle for Pedder! March 4-5th 2023.
Why global? The flooding of Lake Pedder, the heart of Tasmania’s wilderness, initiated a global green political conservation movement – the restoration of Pedder in the biodiversity and environmental crises, will be equally pivotal!
We are asking everyone who supports restoring landscapes, rivers, moorlands, and wetlands to grab your mates and a sign/banner/shirt saying “Restore Pedder” and head to your local waterway or restoration location over the weekend of March 4-5th.
Simply take a photo of yourself with the restore Pedder message, post it to social media and tag us @restorepedder or send us an email la************@gm***.com, and share your restoration story with us. You can register your Paddle location and time here.
OPPORTUNITY TO RESTORE LAKE PEDDER
Presently, there is a mighty window of opportunity to restore Lake Pedder, as the Tasmanian and Australia Government decide whether or not to approve over $100m in ‘strengthening’ works on the aged dams impounding Lake Pedder. These dams are ‘high risk’ as they are built on the active Edgar Fault line and are highly susceptible to failure, causing catastrophic damage and loss of life downstream. The community down river has had no transparency around these risks until October 2022. Even so, the risk assessments and flood mapping have been kept behind closed doors.
The obvious, and only fool proof risk removal is to dewater the impoundment and restore the original Lake Pedder.
Lake Pedder needs your support – The week following the Paddle for Pedder event, Restore Pedder supporters will be in Canberra to lobby the Federal Government not to invest $100m+ of taxpayers money into aging ‘high risk’ dams built on an active fault, but to alternatively invest in removing the catastrophic earthquake risk by dewatering the impoundment and restoring Lake Pedder.
With your help participating in the Paddle we can demonstrate to the Australian Government that they need to catch up with the rest of the world and rapidly upscale rewilding. It’s the UN decade of ecosystem restoration, Australia needs a large project; Lake Pedder it must be!
In 2022 over 150 people took part from Pakistan and London to Melbourne, Darwin, and Tasmania. Can you help us double the number of Paddle locations in 2023?! (You can view a past, epic Paddle adventure here).
Help us restore this global icon!
An avid bushwalker and landscape photographer, Tabatha Badger is a member of the Lake Pedder Restoration Management Committee and the campaign communications coordinator. Tabatha has been drawn to the restoration of Lake Pedder as a symbol of hope that we can restore and protect our valuable wilderness.
