Creating Rainforest Reserve – Petition
A petition is now active at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/strzelecki/ to ask the Victorian State Government to honour its election promise to create a rainforest reserve in the Strzelecki Ranges and protect sensitive areas from logging.
The problem is that the previous Victorian Government hit on the bright idea of raising revenue by selling off state-owned forests to private enterprise. When it was pointed out to them that they couldn’t sell Crown Land they quickly arranged perpetual leases for the logging companies. Some of the land should never have been sold (leased) because of its ecological values and it took a few years of active lobbying to get the Government and Hancock Victorian Plantations (largely owned by the US John Hancock insurance/superannuation giant) to acknowledge that.
A deal was organised between Hancock, the community and the Victorian Government through the State Environment Minister to buy-back the most important bits of the rainforest – identified by independent consultants -for $7 million.
Everything looked sweet, then the Minister and the Premier resigned.
The company seized the opportunity to lobby the new Minister and try to screw a better deal.
All we are asking is for the State Government to honour the agreement it made, which was part of its policy platform at the last election, to pay $7 million for an 8000 hectare reserve based on the ‘Cores & Links’ in the Strzeleckis to be managed by the Trust for Nature. That was the policy as agreed with the community and the company – and that’s what we want to see implemented.
Hopefully the petition will help to push the Government into a decision because things have been rolling along in limbo for way too long.
Please sign the petition and alert others to the issue!
Written by Phil Westwood
Friends of Bass Valley Bush Inc Landcare Group
http://bassbush.htmlplanet.com
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