Toondah Harbour: should a wetland home to endangered birds become $1.3bn worth of shops, high-rises and a marina?

Robert Bush, a member of the Queensland Wader Study Group says the proposal would be ‘extinguishing… part of an internationally recognised Ramsar wetland site’. Photograph: Dan Peled/The Guardian

The incoming tide is covering the mudflats and sandbanks at Toondah Harbour and creeping up the mangrove branches.

Ospreys and sea eagles are fishing and a cloudless sky is framing Cassim Island – a bank of mangrove-covered sand – in a tranquil scene a watercolour painter would die for.