Green groups join forces to fight plans to fill in Port of Brisbane's Swan Lake to build a carpark Swan Lake at the Port of Brisbane is the most important wetlands in the Brisbane area for black swans. More than 150 bird species - over 1000 birds -, use the lake which the Port of Brisbane hopes to bulldoze to build a car park Picture: Tim Marsden Source: News Limited SEVEN conservation and animal rights groups have formed an alliance to fight moves by the Port of Brisbane to bulldoze a lake to make a car park. Dubbed Swan Lake by birdos, the wetland was made 14 years ago as a community and open space area and to handle run-off. It has since become populated with birds and is the most important wetlands in the Brisbane area for black swans. Cramped for space, the port now wants to fill in Swan Lake to make way for 20,000 to 30,000 imported cars which are parked there at any one time. Birds Queensland spokesman Mike West said members were furious about the lake being filled in as were groups like the RSPCA, Queensland Conservation, Wildlife Queensland and Animal Liberation. "People have gone crazy about this," he said. Pelican and Seabird Rescue people are even doing a Joni Mitchell song based on the lines 'don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot'. Mr West said more than 150 species used the lake which was currently carrying more than 1000 birds. "Where the hell are they going to go?" he said. If the birds wanted to live somewhere else, they'd go. I suppose if they are forced out, they will try other wetlands. They'll get hunted out of them and go from place to place and just die. There is one endangered species there but that's not the point. As a society we can't keep bulldozing everything just because it suits us. A port spokesman said his organisation had little room to park cars bar the 11ha block that included the 3ha lake. "It's a growing port and vehicle traffic is growing more rapidly than anything else," he said. We've got cars stored on grass in areas of the precinct that they shouldn't be. The port would offset the loss of the lake by investing more than $250,000 in environmental rehabilitation projects in partnership with Bulimba Creek Catchment and Landcare. Brisbane handled more than $50 billion in trade annually which was equivalent to 20 per cent of Queensland's gross product. The port took 95 per cent of the State's motor vehicles, all meat exports and half of the state's total agricultural exports and was the nation's third largest port. Mr West said Swan Lake was critically important to wildlife because most of Brisbane's freshwater wetlands had been filled in.