Bob Brown Foundation

🚨 The federal government has just gutted Australia’s already-weak environment laws, handing big, foreign-owned salmon corporations a free pass to keep polluting Tasmania’s oceans and waterways.  

Legislation enabling a targeted exemption was hastily pushed through parliament, allowing industrial salmon farms to continue suffocating the rare and ancient Maugean Skate in its only home in Macquarie Harbour, pushing it towards extinction. 

Not on our watch.

We're taking the government to the Federal Court to challenge this brazen death warrant for the skate.  

This case is a huge undertaking with a potentially enormous financial cost.

But we refuse to stand by while politicians rewrite national environment laws to protect the corporate interests of multinational salmon farms. 

Can you chip in today to power our campaign to get toxic fish farms out of Tasmania’s waters? 

With your support, we will take action in the courts, on the water, and in the streets. 

The problem 

Toxic farmed salmon is destroying Tasmania’s marine environment. 

These factory farms of the sea can have hundreds of thousands of salmon crammed in one pen, with all their waste, feed, antibiotics and chemicals dumped into our oceans and waterways. 

The sea floor beneath these pens can become a wasteland, with all the pollution in the water causing algal blooms and oxygen dead zones.

Owned by multinational corporations that pay no tax, all these factory farms do is cause damage, suffering and death on Tasmania’s unique waterways.

From pushing the Maugean Skate to extinction in Macquarie Harbour to smothering seagrass beds with curtains of algal sludge in the state's south, this industry’s damage spreads far and wide. 

Seabirds are shot and tangled in nets, seals are targeted with small grenades, and the marine environment is treated like a dumping ground for effluent and plastic waste from these massive floating industrial structures.

As the greed of the industry drives relentless expansions, over 1 million farmed salmon have died between February and March this year from a disease outbreak, with rotting carcasses and balls of fat washing up on local beaches. 

It is a horror show. 

And yet, Labor, with the backing of the Liberal party, has changed the laws to protect the destructive foreign-owned salmon industry, not our marine environment. 

“Our seas are polluted, animals are dying, and our government is ruling for the corporations, not the people." — BBF Campaigns Manager, Jenny Weber.

The solution 

Get toxic fish farms out of Tasmania’s waters — now. 

The state of Washington in the USA recently banned fish farms because of their environmental damage. 

Tasmania must do the same.

Our campaign 

In addition to our legal challenge taking on the government's outrageous new law, we are the only organisation in Tasmania taking peaceful, direct action on the water to expose and confront the salmon industry’s destruction. 

In March, our shocking footage of live salmon being sealed in bins with dead fish amidst a massive disease outbreak led to Huon Aquaculture losing its RSPCA certification. 

These victories are powered by people like you.

But to push this destructive, polluting industry out of Tasmania's waterways, once and for all, we need a huge wave of public support.

Pledge today and help us stop toxic salmon.

The funds we raise through this crowdfunder will support several critical parts of our campaign to Stop Toxic Salmon.

• Helping to fund our new action in the Federal Court challenging the rushed legislation exempting industrial fish farms from environment law.  Our legal team will argue that Albanese’s carve-out for polluting salmon farms does not apply to Macquarie Harbour, and we are also asking the court to rule that, after a 16-month delay, the Minister for Environment must revoke the 2012 approval of fish farming in Macquarie Harbour.
• Powering our actions on the water in our high-speed campaign boat. Only by being on the water did we capture the shocking footage that led to the RSPCA dropping Huon Aquaculture's certification of their cruel salmon farming.
• Driving actions on the streets. We're gearing up for a giant 'Vote Fish Farms Out' flotilla and rally in Hobart before the federal election. At the same time, we will be continuing defiant protests targeting supermarkets that sell toxic Tasmanian salmon.