Greens Senator Bob Brown said, "the dam should be opposed because it would flood thousands of hectares of prime food-producing land near Brisbane, Aboriginal heritage sites and the main nursery for the world famous Australian Lungfish. I've told the minister there is no way he should allow the major breeding ground for the Queensland Lungfish or the Mary River Turtle, or Mary River Cod, to be obliterated." "If the rest of Australia knew what damage was being proposed on the Mary River, they would stand up and stop this dreadful dam!" Sunshine Coast Government MPs and environmentalists "called on the State Government to scrap the Traveston Dam after it yesterday revealed plans for desalination plants at Marcoola, Kawana and Bribie Island." Sunshine Coast Regional Council Mayor Bob Abbot "told thedaily.com.au the announcement confirmed what the Mary River council of mayors had been saying more than a year ago - that the Traveston Dam should be scrapped - and that alternatives such as desalination properly explored." Fiona Simpson stated, "this strategy and the Water Commissioner’s comments left no doubt that the Traveston Dam was a political decision and desalination was a better and more reliable option." A University of Technology, Sydney report stated that "the proposed Traveston Dam near Gympie could pump up to 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere each year" and “even desalination, itself a last resort in a severe drought, would result in fewer emissions at 280,000 to 350,000 (annual tonnes) to yield the same quantity of water". According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, "Eighty five per cent of Brisbane residents agree 'the Queensland Government should consider alternatives to building Traveston Dam' according to a poll released by the Australian Conservation Foundation". The independent expert Associate Professor Keith Walker says that the mitigation and offset strategies such as the Freshwater Species Conservation Centre were inadequate, risky and ill-defined and that the proposed fish and turtle ladders were unproven. "Don't Murray the Mary" Environmental campaigner Steve Posselt, who protested the dam by kayaking 861 kilometres (535 miles) to raise awareness of the environmental impact of damming the Mary River, stated that "Traveston Crossing Dam will be less than 2m deep over a great percentage of its area. Evaporation is somewhere between per annum. Wivenhoe Dam is not a deep dam and suffers similarly from significant greenhouse gas generation. The longer the water level is low between fills, the more vegetation regeneration occurs.