Generous community
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A big thank you to the people of Tathra and Kalaru for their generosity last weekend during our annual door-knock appeal.
We managed to improve on last year by some $600, with a whopping $4450 collected in 2013.
Also, I would like to thank the following collectors who gave their time and effort for this great cause -
Jack Boyd, Marg Britton, Robin Brown, Cate Clarke, Nat Coman, Don Cotterill, Kevin Dowman, Anthony Eaton, Jo Fitzer, Kay Kemp, Cherly and Malcolm McKenzie, Deb Manning, Jan Pretty, Justin Price, Maureen Sommerville, Margaret Van De Scheur and Nienke Van Doorn.
We enjoy friendly competition among ourselves, and for the first time in nine years Don Cotterill did not collect the most money.
Congratulations to Deb Manning for raising the bar for next year.
Thanks again to all.
Andrew McPherson
Tathra/Kalaru coordinator
Red Shield Appeal
Act of kindness
I am writing in response to Sarah Kehoe’s letter of thanks (BDN, 24/5).
I appreciate the “thank you”, but I know I am not the only one in Bega to have handed in lost items.
Random acts of kindness happen every day in the Bega Valley, but it’s your acknowledgement, taking the time to thank me, that shows the Bega Valley is a thoughtful community.
It would be great to see and hear more positive feedback about other acts of kindness.
Forever remaining anonymous!
Bega
Cultural intolerance
There was a time when demonstrating one’s opposition to an event, business or initiative, was a matter of not supporting it with one’s patronage.
Today, however, the very people who preach the message of tolerance with respect to so many controversial cultures and practices are not satisfied with anything less than the utter destruction of community events of which they don’t approve.
HuntFest is not the initiative of some government department or big, faceless multinational.
It is the initiative of a local non-profit community organisation whose members seek to celebrate their love of hunting.
The men and women who make up this organisation have contributed to their community responsibly and productively for many years.
As anyone who has ever organised an event in a country town will appreciate, the money invested in HuntFest will have come from a range of fundraising activities requiring hard work and a not insignificant amount of money will doubtless have come out of the organisers’ own pockets.
I was not surprised to read Ms Cruttenden’s call to express pro-life feelings on posters hung on a fence opposite the HuntFest site (BDN, 21/5) in the days leading up to the event.
Readers may recall my family awoke the day before a hunting in national parks protest in Bega to find just such a pro-life “love note” hung on our front fence.
When my partner approached a high-profile member of The Greens on the day of the protest, asking if, on principle, he’d publically condemn the act of hanging this offensive sign on our front fence, his response was, “No, why should I? I didn’t do it!”
And now, coincidentally, there is a call to arms, encouraging people to repeat the sign-hanging strategy in Narooma.
Well fancy that!
HuntFest’s opponents claim their opposition is justified because of their perception it represents a threat to the amenity of Narooma and public wellbeing.
If harbouring such perceptions is in itself sufficient justification for destroying an event and the club organising it, where do we draw the line?
There is a “perception” in some quarters, that Candelo is populated exclusively by “hippies”.
Now as everyone knows (?) “hippies” are drug addicts and pushers, so clearly the Candelo Village Festival must have some underlying and malignant raison d’etre.
Drugs are a threat to the wellbeing of our children and our community, so perhaps we should hang posters at the Princes Hwy turn-off come festival time – “Hippies go home” or “This way to pushers’ festival”.
What’s that you say…it’s a ludicrous and offensive suggestion?
Yes, isn’t it!
Yet this is the strategy encouraged by HuntFest’s opponents, based on nothing more than their hatred of hunting and their perceptions of the threat it poses to the community.
If you don’t like the hunting culture, hunters or their activities, deny them your company and your patronage. That is your right.
Seeking to destroy a non-profit community organisation and its event, simply because of your perceptions and prejudices, is not!
The Bega Valley says no to violence.
Let’s say no to cultural intolerance and acts of sabotage too.
Garry Mallard
Bega
GMOs useful tools
I’m not an apologist for Monsanto and, so far as I’m concerned, Zoe Hope Zanelli is welcome to protest against that company (BDN, 24/5).
However, it is wrong and potentially dangerous to suggest that somehow or another the technology behind genetically modified organisms (GMO) is confined to and controlled by multinational chemical companies and should be banned.
Popular opinion is that GMOs are intrinsically linked to large scale commercial farming.
That’s not always the case.
As an example, the technology has been widely accepted by subsistence farmers in Africa to protect white maize from insect attack, which reduces yields by 10 to 45 per cent and worse makes the plant susceptible to a fungus that produces mycotoxins, making the grain dangerous to man and animals.
The adoption of the technology has meant small farmers face less cost, and less personal risk, in the use of insecticides and their crop is free from the dangerous mycotoxins.
Genetic modification is a proven useful tool in the development of higher yielding, disease and insect resistant food crops.
World food security is at risk and a changing climate will have its greatest impact on our major food producing areas.
We need to embrace every technology available to us.
In Australia we take our plentiful supply of food for granted.
We should not.
The agents causing plant diseases continually mutate breaking down the natural resistance in existing varieties.
Currently, a virulent strain of stem rust (Ug99), a disease capable of wiping out wheat crops, is working its way from Africa through the Middle East.
Very few of the world’s wheat varieties show resistance to it.
Researchers around the world are identifying resistant genes and working to incorporate them in new varieties.
To date that’s being done using traditional plant breeding technology.
Who knows, there may come a time when those traditional technologies won’t do the trick.
To turn our back on any potentially valuable technology would be foolish.
Alex Nicol
Bega
‘Sickness country’
Messrs Law and Rutherford (BDN, 10/5 and 17/5) may benefit from a clear reading exercise as what the NPWS say in the “Living with fires in National Parks” document is "For NSW, knowledge about traditional Aboriginal burning practices and their impacts is fragmentary, and assumptions about Aboriginal fire usage and impacts remain speculative."
The NPWS also refers to wildfires around Sydney in areas that had been burned in a wildfire only six years before and confirm the focus of their increased burning regime is the “sickness country” where soils have become more erodible and increasingly prone to mass movement.
Mr Law is correct however as it would be necessary to know what animals were there before logging took place to say they all died as a result.
What is known is that the species required to maintain forest health were either extinct or greatly depleted by the time integrated logging began and indeed one of these species, the long-footed potoroo wasn't discovered and described for another 20 years.
Unfortunately the loss of these species has degraded all lands and, as all native vegetation in NSW is in decline, the next logical land degradation outcome is an increase in mass movement events and with these a significant reduction in water quality in affected catchments.
Greenhouse gas emissions from deliberate fires greatly exceed those from fossil fuel used in Australia and the EPA's major concern is water quality, so whatever else may be said it's apparent the precautionary principle has been thrown to the wind.
Robert Bertram
Bermagui