Meet The Woman At The Centre Of Tasmania's Salmon War

Frances Bender owns one of Australia’s biggest salmon farms – now she is fighting for an industry she believes is in danger of destroying itself and the environment. Samantha Trenoweth finds out why.

- Samantha Trenoweth

It is a bitterly cold, grey morning in Hideaway Bay in southeastern Tasmania. Frances Bender is up early, out on the water. She’s holding a plump silver and pink salmon, just hauled from the depths of these icy waters. “This is a beautiful fish, as beautiful as you could hope to find anywhere in the world,” says Frances, the 56-year-old executive director of Huon Aquaculture, Australia’s second largest salmon producer. “To grow a fish like this, we need healthy marine environments, and if we don’t act now, we risk losing not just these pristine environments but also the community’s trust, which would be a tragedy for the industry, for Tasmania and for Australia.”

Frances Bender is a passionate woman. Passionate about salmon, about her industry, and the people who work for her. But mostly she’s passionate about the environment – so passionate she is taking both the state and federal governments to court. “She’s the most determined person I know,” says her husband and business partner, Peter. “She won’t back down.”

Frances has been driven to the Supreme Court in a fight to save her business and the jobs of more than 2000 fellow Tasmanians. An increasingly tall stack of scientific studies has indicated salmon farms in Tasmania’s ecologically fragile bays and inlets are taking a devastating environmental toll. Frances and Peter believe it’s possible to run a sustainable business but that the government is not providing the regulation the industry needs, leaving less cautious farmers free to overstock pens, pollute waterways and threaten the future of the industry. Frances and Peter, along with Tasmanian green groups, are demanding tougher restrictions.