Report on 25th April gathering at Melissa's
For our April gathering we met at Melissa Hirsch's home in Sunrise.
Simeon Michaels told us about his kayak from Sydney to Hobart to draw awareness to the issues around Gunn's planned pulp mill in the Tamer Valley. The mill is being sold to the public on the grounds of jobs, despite its environmental damage. The chair of the inquiry into the mill resigned due to undue pressure from the ALP state government, and the second threatened for the same reason. When Gunns threatened to withdraw from the process because it was being too thorough the state government took it over and is considering pushing the mill through without any public hearings or enquiry into the environmental damage that locking in wood supplys for 30 years will cause. Sim's focus of his paddle has been on showing how jobs are linked to the environment, how the benefit from tourism of a clean Tamer valley exceeds that from one massive, polluting, pulp mill. www.paddlewithsim.com.Robert Rosen from Rainforest Rescue talked about their new project to use Carbon credits to regenerate rainforest in this area. Benefiting the environment both through the carbon sequestered, the biodiversity created. They have been working with people such as SCU to get a handle on the amount of carbon actually stored in bio-diverse forest soils.
Kirstie Fisher of Sustainable Futures told us about their council health check up, and the change of focus of Sustainable Futures from a planning consultancy to one focussed on supporting councils in their sustainability.
Rachel Bending of Slingfings made a suggestion that we meet earlier, and to have the more formal part of the meeting towards the beginning of the evening. There was general agreement to try this at least for winter.
William offered us his house for the next gathering of the Byron Sustainable Ventures Network which will be on Thursday 31st May at the early time of 6pm
Present: Melissa Hirsch (FiberArt - hosting); Mitra Ardron (Natural Innovation - organising); Jannine Barron (Natures Child); Rachel Bending (Slingfings); Simeon Michaels; Catherine Somers (Spellwear); Wadzy (Sustainable Cities and Farms, BayFM Generator); Kirstie Fisher (Sustainable Futures); Robert Rosen (Rainforest Rescue); Robert Moussalli (Best Organic Business); William (Stirling Solar); Justin Toohey (J.Toohey & Assoc); Therese Toohey;
Posted by mitra at April 8, 2007 5:30 PM
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