SINGAPORE HAZE - Environmental Offsets - Appendices 4 & 5

SINGAPORE HAZE - Environmental Offsets - Appendices 4 & 5

APPENDIX 4

Aboriginal Cultural Heritage destruction in the Leard State Forest – one issue that has not been addressed so far in the “offsets” debate is that CULTURAL HERITAGE CANNOT BE ‘OFFSET’!

We ask Minister Hunt to declare an emergency section 9 temporary protection stay of works until these matters and our section 10 application can be appropriately determined before it’s all too late. 

Statement From Gomeroi Elders

Gomeroi culture and heritage pays the price for bungling and cultural management failure. Gomeroi people implore Minister Hunt to declare an emergency stay of works to protect and investigate Whitehaven’s actions.

Outrage, insult, disrespect and shock poorly describe the feelings of Gomeroi Elders and community regarding Whitehaven Maules Creeks mining actions. We are angry that they try to marginalise and disparage our concerns and rights to protect ancestral burials and sacred sites on the basis of perceived Teflon coated approval and apparent community manipulation.

Our Elders and Gomeroi Traditional peoples should be shown more respect. Whitehaven infers that we are a minority – this is extremely malicious as it is an attempt of a mining company to misrepresent the truth. Yes we agree that they have some Gomeroi and other Aboriginal people who have signed off to say that the salvage program*stage one, has been completed and the bulldozers can move in.

What they fail to say is that our Elders and community – well over 70 people directly and many more others hold concerns about what is happening and so many of us signed the s9 and s10 ATSIHP Act application and stay of works appeals at both State and Commonwealth levels.

We appreciate that Senator Moore recently spoke out on ABC radio about this unethical tactic saying:

“ It’s not enough for a mining company to say it has the support of a majority of traditional owners if no one knows who’s involved. “That is the best way to create more division and more anger if a company can say, ‘We had the majority and that ends the discussion,’” she said. Senator Moore’s enquiry hits the nail on the head-­‐ “Exactly who are the majority? A majority of what? What constitutes the group? And who, indeed, are the authorised elders who can speak for that community and there does seem  to be some confusion and some concern about that.”

The question not asked is why is there a divided community? And what part have Whitehaven played in deepening this? One aspect is this-­‐The poverty levels in our community are well documented and no one would disagree that Aboriginal people should be paid to work with mines in the work undertaken to protect culture and heritage.

However, what Whitehaven fails to say is that they are paying Aboriginal people at least $600 a day to be part of a stage two process and are on roster for this stage subject to agreeing to sign off on areas of concern to enable the bulldozers to move in. It is on this basis that stage one salvage has been completed and they have sign off. The archaeological management of this process is in dispute and we are yet to have this matter resolved-­‐ however due to the bulldozers the dispute resolution which should have been afforded to us has failed by  Whitehaven’s earthworks clearances-­‐ we are angry that areas under formal dispute can be bulldozed with such disregard. This is hardly the intent of Corporations contributing to Close the Gap economic initiatives and wellbeing for communities and hardly the intent of the approval which has conditions associated with Whitehaven’s  obligations under Aboriginal cultural heritage.

We do not want the Whitehaven’s behaviour to be made into an internal community struggle to take the attention off them resulting in our culture and heritage being further destroyed. We acknowledge the hardships in our community and what economic improvements mean for families…..it’s just that this becomes when manipulated by  companies  at  the  cost  our  culture  and  heritage  and  for  some  in  our  community-­‐  the  hardships  in  our community should not be used and taken advantage of by companies like Whitehaven.

What Whitehaven fail to tell the public is that they have had repeatedly in writing from our Elders and community who are concerned about our burial sites and cultural and spiritual places of importance -­‐requests for our Elders and concerned Gomeroi people to attend the Whitehaven mine site voluntarily in order to undertake ceremony and try and protect or salvage sites and cultural materials which will be destroyed by Whitehaven mining. What they fail to tell the public is that our concerns are so great that over 20 of our more experienced people including Elders have asked and were prepared to go to work and salvage as much of our culture and heritage within the rail corroder voluntarily -­‐ forgoing $600 a day in order to protect and save what we can as  protection and salvage before the bulldozers went in.

Our requests were ignored……. dozers went in last weekend – 11 and 12 January 2014.

On Monday 13 January, our Elders and some Gomeroi members of community tried to go the entrance of Whitehaven’s mine to undertake ceremony for the desecration of our ancestor’s burials and destruction of our women’s area. We were shocked that we were denied access down a public road by Police stating that if we went any further we would need a Whitehaven escort. When one of our respected Elders Uncle Dick Talbott asked Brian Cole Whitehaven manager for access -­‐ he denied With Mr Cole saying “There is nothing down there for you.” The Police then threatened to arrest our Elders and members of the community if we went down any further from the blockade on the public road. What right does Whitehaven have to deny Traditional People access along a public road? What right does Whitehaven have to deny Traditional people the rights to ceremonial and religious practices on public lands?– These repeated denials of rights, requests and our concerns have been belittled and ignored by Whitehaven and trivialised by the Department of Planning and Infrastructure. We have been  excluded from participating because we are considered to be activists or argumentative or problematic and unconstructive and a minority voice. Yes we are angry and yes we have stood up and will continue to stand  up to what we have experienced as Corporate bullying and standover disempowering tactics when it affects our culture and heritage.

We ask Ministers, government officers and Whitehaven-­‐ why would our Elders who include some quite frail and unwell and why Gomeroi community members at risk of being excluded from economic benefits from  working with Whitehaven would stand so firm and be subjected to such insults and disrespect and  marginalisation if the areas and our ancestors burials were not so important to us? No one in their right  mind would willingly be subjected to the pain and insult Whitehaven have demonstrated unless we had no other choice. It was not and has never been about the Charlie (money).

We are deeply concerned that Whitehaven with Mr Vaile a former Deputy Prime minister of Australia as a director fails to respect and demonstrate processes which acknowledge the rights of Aboriginal people -­‐the oldest  living culture on the planet -­‐and even if this is too difficult to grasp-­‐ cannot even recognise one of the few  freedoms guaranteed by the Australian Constitution – the fundamental right of every person to enjoy their culture, heritage, religion and language, both individually and in association with others and the right to freely exercise our religion and rights to protect our culture and heritage.

If Mr Vaile with his experience, as a director of Whitehaven cannot lead and advise Whitehaven to operate ethically and respectfully – what hope do we have with any other foreign owned mining and gas company aiming to also destroy vast tracts of lands and waters which impact our culture and heritage? We fear for the protection and recognition of our culture and heritage and rights to protect and practice our religious spiritual lores

We fear that we as Gomeroi people cannot receive justice or a fair treatment in Australia due to failed leadership and administrative mismanagement. Prime Minister Abbott says he is going to take definitive action against “red” and “green” tape to create efficiencies for businesses but what is he and his government going to do about taking definitive action for “cultural” tape to ensure our culture and heritage and our religious rights for ceremony is protected and corporations operate ethically?

The silence and inaction of Prime Minister Abbott and Premier O’Farrells governments is confusing and mystifying. The impact of inaction would not be so devastating for us if it didn’t result in the desecration of our ancestral burials and places so important to us. We believe the whole matter needs investigating and needs to be investigated urgently before it’s too late.

Our Elders and concerned Gomeroi people have not heard from Federal Minister Hunt nor State MP Hazzard which is extremely upsetting. The reason why we have taken our concerns to the media is because – our elected decision makers and their staff and Whitehaven are not listening.

We ask Minister Hunt to declare an emergency section 9 temporary protection stay of works until these matters and our section 10 application can be appropriately determined before it’s all too late.

We will be having a series of spiritual ceremonies and rolling range of protests which is building momentum until this matter is addressed.   Our message is simple-­‐ we will not be going away and we will not be silenced.   An upcoming event is being held on Friday 24 January in Gunnedah and an invitation and details will be  forwarded shortly.

Contact Dolly Talbott on behalf of the Gomeroi Traditional Custodians-­‐ Elders and community in Gunnedah   0413 131 983 

Fresh protests hinder Whitehaven's Maules Creek mine March 5, 2014

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/fresh-protests-hinder-whitehavens-maules-creek-mine-20140305-3466a.html#ixzz2wGhQjLrO .

A protester has tried to block access to a coal loader at a Whitehaven Coal operation at Gunnedah to protest the company's Maules Creek mine development in NSW's northwest.

Protesters oppose clearing part of the Leard State Forest for the new $767 million mine near Boggabri.

They want federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt to halt the work because of questions over the approvals process.

Leard Forest Alliance spokeswoman Helen War said a 21-year-old man from Victoria early on Wednesday suspended himself from a tripod to block the gates to a coal rail loader at Whitehaven Coal's Gunnedah operation.

She said about 20 protesters were at the scene along with police and mine security guards. Ms War said Whitehaven Coal had presented "false and misleading information" about biodiversity offsets to secure approval for the Maules Creek mine.

She said Mr Hunt should halt the mine development while the accusations are investigated at a federal level or "we might lose Leard forest while the environment minister dithers".

A Whitehaven Coal spokesman said the protest "is yet another tiresome and contrived act of defiance by a small few" which has left many in the local community increasingly intolerant of.

 "References to Whitehaven Coal being under 'criminal investigation' are totally ridiculous and the company rejects this characterisation completely," the spokesman said.

The company has described ongoing protests against the Maules Creek mine as "a nuisance" but said it would not be deterred from continuing the project.

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‘SINGAPORE HAZE’ - Submission to the Senate Inquiry into Environmental Offsets

APPENDIX 5

Biodiversity Offsets in context: The war against nature   Sunday 29 December 2013

The war against nature, specifically the whales and dolphins, is set to rage beginning early 2014 as the US Navy will start training exercises, including deepsea explosions and sonar testing along the East Coast, Gulf of Mexico, Southern California and Hawaii, running them until 2019.

The US Navy announced that computer models predicted hundreds of whales and dolphins would die whilst thousands will suffer serious injuries, and millions will temporarily lose their hearing and suffer major behavioural changes, including getting lost.

We know that both baleen or filter feeding and toothed whales are of paramount importance to help maintain Earth's beleaguered marine ecosystems. Why since the 1986 moratorium on whaling have Japan, Iceland, Norway and Danish Faroe Islanders slaughtered almost 32,000 of these exquisite creatures? These countries exhibit a repugnant sense of entitlement to slaughter whales.

We are knowingly leaving our children impoverished oceans, and as Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society rightfully says: 'If the whales die, we die!'

Humans cannot live without nature. Nature, on the other hand, can totally exist without us. It’s time to end the war against nature now—and protect the remaining great whales, dolphins, rhinos, elephants, big cats, polar bears, grizzly bears, gorillas, bluefin tunas, sharks, sea turtles and my favourite the albatross from despicable poachers.

Dr Reese Halter, also known as the Earth Doctor, is an award-winning broadcaster, a conservation biologist, educator and author. This is an edited transcript of his comments on Ockham's Razor.

Image: A Kenya Wildlife Services ranger stands guard over an ivory haul. Dr Reese Halter believes there's a war against nature due, in part, to the increase in the illegal trafficking of ivory and other animal parts. (Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images)

In early 2014, training exercises by the US Navy are expected to kill hundreds of whales and dolphins, wounding thousands more. As Dr Reese Halter explains, this is just one example of an escalating war on nature that includes frenzied poaching, deforestation and animal trafficking.

There’s a crisis of epic proportion occurring on our planet. The war against nature has become a prolonged looting spree—plundering terrestrial and oceanic wildlife on a global tear never witnessed before. What kind of a world are we leaving for our children? What has happened to earthlings? Humans are so unconscious and detached from the natural world that the media headlines now report one heinous act against nature after the next, attempting to best one another in brutality and illegal sales of animal parts.

Dr Reese Halter

The destruction of nature including illegal harvesting of forests for an unquenchable palm oil market and trafficking of animal parts is valued in excess of $300 billion annually; it now rivals that of drugs, arms and human trafficking, combined. No wonder organised crime is running this lucrative life-ending business. And even more infuriatingly Japan, Iceland and Norway continue to hunt whales despite a 1986 worldwide moratorium.

Poaching has reached a frenzied level elsewhere. The pictures of magnificent rhinos dehorned while still alive in Kruger National Park, South Africa, are enough to make a grown man cry. These atrocities are crimes against humanity. Organised gangs, often from neighbouring Mozambique, of four to six men are well-armed and carrying devices facilitating constant communications. They infiltrate communities, buy information on rhino whereabouts and then devise two escape routes—while at the same time familiarising themselves with security structures and movements of park rangers. It's cold, calculated, ruthless murder. These depraved poachers shoot the rhinos in their knees, slice their Achilles tendons and spines, thereby immobilising them whilst sawing and hacking off  horns weighing seven kilograms with a street value of well over US$500,000. These colossal creatures are then left to bleed to death, slowly, in excruciating pain.

These heartless thugs organise pick-ups, which hide horns and weapons for collection later on. They quickly change into fresh clothes and shoes—as boot prints can link them to the crime scene, when inspected at follow-up roadblocks. Large sums of cash are immediately paid to poachers upon delivery of rhino horns. Organised crime has established and structured nefarious business models, which operate locally and like the wide base of a pyramid it moves upward from regional to national couriers, buyers and exporters to their international counterparts, supplying international buyers who sell to international nouvelle riche consumers at the top. [THEY are what agencies should focus on!]

The price of the rhino horn varies from US$65,000 to US$100,000 per kilogram. At the top end of this range rhino horn per kilogram is about two and a half times more valuable than 24K gold. This voracious demand for rhino horn is coming from Vietnam, China and Thailand. In 2010, a rumour began circulating that a Vietnamese minister's relative was cured of cancer by rhino horn powder. In addition, Chinese medicine routinely uses rhino horn powder to purportedly cure a range of ailments, from rheumatism to ridding the soul of the devil.

The number of Oriental nouvelle riche is burgeoning. In Vietnam alone, since 2008 the number of millionaires has increased by 150 percent. At the same time, Vietnamese cancer rates are spiking by 30 percent annually—in large part due to horrendous Vietnamese environmental degradation. Sadly, rhino horn is now seen as a status symbol and it has become a magnet for the nouvelle riche. Ground-up rhino horn powder is being touted as a cure for hangovers, common colds and it's even being used as a party drug. In fact, scientists have irrefutably shown that rhino horn, which is comprised of keratin, is about as effective at curing cancer, common colds, or hangovers as eating a human fingernail (which by the way is also made up of keratin). There is nil medicinal value in rhino horn. Over the past 113 years the human population has soared from 1.6 to 7.1 billion. Rhino numbers, on the other hand, have plummeted from 500,000 to 29,000— a 95 percent decrease. And worse, since 2007 poaching rhinos has increased by 5000 per cent. At this crazed rate, rhinos will be extinct by 2022.

In September of 2013 in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, poachers annihilated 90 African elephants by poisoning their watering hole with cyanide. Earlier in the same month, they poisoned 40 elephants in an attempt to feed the insatiable Asian demand for ivory, which now fetches US$2200 per kilogram. To give you some idea of how quickly earthlings are exterminating elephants in 1980 there were about 1.2 million African beasts. Last year the estimate was at most 400,000 remaining. Since 2002, the African forested elephant population has plummeted by 76 percent. In Tanzania alone the population estimate in 2008 was approximately 165,000—today there are fewer than 23,000 elephants left.

The Obama Administration, led by Hillary Clinton has pledged to step up the fight to save the elephants. In September of 2013, six tonnes of ivory was seized in the US. Earlier in 2013, the Philippines announced that it had crushed 15 tonnes of elephant ivory. An even more maddening question is, how many more tonnes are being gobbled up each year on the black market? Unknown, vast quantities.

What has happened to earthlings? Humans are so unconscious and detached from the natural world that the media headlines now report one heinous act against nature after the next, attempting to best one another in brutality and illegal sales of animal parts. These unimaginable atrocities against nature: killing whales, dolphins, bluefin tuna, sharks, polar bears, grizzly bears, African lions, Sumatran and Indian tigers, South American jaguars to name but a few apex predators—are crimes against humanity! Without predators to keep prey fit and cull the old and weak, diseases will spread, ecosystems will crumble and the human race will perish.

My colleagues have clearly shown that both filter feeding whales like humpbacks and large- and small-toothed whales including the dolphins play an essential role in keeping the web of sealife intact and vibrant. The filter feeders fertilise the ocean with their nitrogen-rich flocculent fecal plumes, stimulating phytoplankton, enriching the marine ecosystem, and creating abundant fisheries. Toothed whales cull the old and weak fish and seal populations, preventing diseases from reaching epidemics thus ensuring a high level of fitness throughout the seas. Relentless scouring of the seafloor for the last remaining oil and gas deposits is delivering the coup the grace to whales and dolphins. In the spring of 2012 over 900 long-beaked common dolphins and black porpoises washed up in a mass mortality event on Peruvian shores. Government officials stating that the dolphins died of natural causes like morbillivirus did not convince my colleagues and me. The conservation group Orca Peru undertook 30 necropsies from three separate expeditions. What they discovered was indeed disturbing and contrary to the Peruvian Production Minister Gladys Triveno's claim on Radio Programas del Peru that 'the death of the dolphins were not caused by any human activity'.

Off the coast of Peru, oil production from BPZ Energy's Corvina and Albacora field, in fact, conducted a series of powerful seismic tests during the first half of 2012. Orca Peru scientists found that the dolphins and porpoises they examined exhibited bleeding in their middle ears as well as fractured skulls. In addition, lungs, livers, stomachs, bladders, skin, spleens and blubber all displayed gas bubbles. Those bubbles caused a mass destruction of tissues. In scientific parlance they revealed acute pulmonary emphysema or what scuba divers know and fear as decompression sickness or the bends. There was no evidence whatsoever of morbillivirus in any of the 30 necropsies. What happened to those magnificent Peruvian beasts appears to have re-occurred in September 2013, but this time along the West African coast of Ghana.

High tech marine airguns are used offshore for seismic oil and gas exploration. They produce high levels of low frequency sound by releasing high-pressure air into the water creating oscillating bubbles within the bandwidth of 70-140 Hertz. They are deployed as an array to maximise the power and focus the potent low frequency sonar. It is deadly for all whales and dolphins. Multi-beam echo-sounders searching for every last drop of gas and oil in Loza Lagoon, northwest Madagascar shattered the whales' ear-drums and caused a fatal mass stranding.

antebellum omnium :

31 Dec 2013 10:27:29am

The propensity of the psychopathic fraction of humanity to destroy, and their lust to murder, has always been there, ever since we climbed down from the trees and set to murdering one another. The history of humanity is one of endless bloodbaths, genocides and exterminations of one another, and an 'Eternal Treblinka' of killing and enslavement of other species. In between there have been numerous religious and philosophical efforts to craft a consciousness based on peacefulness, acceptance of others, mutual assistance and respect for all life. All, in the end, have failed. All the great religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, replete with peaceful exhortations to human fraternity, are, today, dominated by fundamentalist fanatics, driven by homicidal hatred of the Other, the infidel, the non-believer, and the carnage is growing in a 'Clash of Civilizations' long and carefully planned.
However, above all else, the destruction of the natural world and the consequent near term extinction of our species is being driven by greed. Insatiable greed in the global over-class, that confiscates the vast bulk of the spurious 'wealth' created by destroying the habitability of the planet for our species, and mere subsistence greed in the poachers, tree-fellers and butchers driven by harsh necessity to destroy in order to survive. This greed is the central driving force of the dominant social and economic system, Market Fanaticist capitalism, which shares with it the central drive of the cancer-the inherent and unalterable drive to perpetual growth, come what may. And like cancer, capitalism inevitably and inescapably, despite all its 'success' in turning diversity and life into dull, undifferentiated, loot, in the end will kill its host. In capitalism's case its host is humanity, and we are well into the end-stage of planetary cachexia.

·         John :

31 Dec 2013 11:05:09am

This is happening around the world and the eco-loonies are telling us to worry about CO2 emissions. [‘Eco-loonies’ can actually walk and chew gum at the same time - granted they are pursuing a false paradigm with their ‘carbon offset trading’- it is a zero-sum game - and don’t focus enough on the more urgent &totally avoidable crisis of habitat loss – my concern has always been that science and the Greens are LYING to us - their claim that by cutting CO2 emissions, we have “a window” of opportunity to slow down the warming of the planet is clearly ridiculous! Feedback loops are already kicking in big-time – the great planetary melt down is in process and NOTHING we do can stop it or even slow it down – we can only adapt – fast. My other gripe is that they focus almost entirely on the CO2 emissions of the fossil fuels industries in their arguments, whereas we must phase them out for myriad other reasons – they are simply  STUPID ways to generate electricity and fuel transport in the 21^st century! What we can do now, and what governments had an opportunity to do over a decade ago but they ignored it, is to retrofit the input of all coal-fired power stations with solar thermal heating of the water, which would greatly reduce the amount of coal needed and consequently, if adopted worldwide, negate the need for more coal mines, and carbon capture into algae ponds for fuel on the way out – perfect solution – the power station becomes base-load reliable and non-polluting  …...mb]

·         Peter :

31 Dec 2013 12:28:46pm

Fiscal planners are always rabbiting on about the need to "trim" fat from public spending. It is obvious that US military spending is the lowest of low hanging fruit for fiscal spending cuts. What does the military do do except develop new ways to kill huge numbers of humans and destroy the environment in the process and waste finite energy and raw materials in the process.

What I would have posted: 

I’ve realised that that’s the major problem with people today is that they are not concerned about what truly is important, ie, our planetary life support systems.  A debate between James Hill (“Gaia worshiping religious cults” “single issue conservationist extremism”) and Shirley Birney has been very revealing – Russell Brand has also commented lucidly on this phenomena. The global elite ‘psychopaths’, the ones who are fuelling the illegal trade in endangered species, the ones who are erasing Borneo’s rainforests for palm oil plantations, the ones who have actively prevented the deployment of safe and inexpensive renewable technologies to maintain their lucrative fossil industries, are very good at deflecting attention from their life-ending ways by deploying countless weapons of mass distraction through their mainstream media mouthpieces. The March in March however was a watershed day in Australia – it has identified those who DO care about the planet and those who don’t – it has SPLIT the population - the broad ‘Left’, transitioning into renewables and grass-roots self-sufficiency, on one side and the ‘Negative Right’ – the Big-Business-as-usual and the apathetic sheeples, on the other. Now we all know where we stand.

The March in March - Part 1: HOW IT WAS – an overwhelming, unprecedented stand by the good and compassionate people of Australia delivering a resounding Vote of No Confidence in The Abbott Coalition government, against the cruel treatment of asylum seekers, off-shore detention, coal and CSG expansion, privatisation, environment and cultural heritage destruction – good humour and optimism prevailed. Part 2: HOW IT WAS PORTRAYED by Main Stream Media – virtually ignored but for a few risible, denigrating cartoons and comments.

Response from Vic Cherikoff:

In regards to cropping, around the Macquarie Marshes in central western NSW Portulaca was farmed. The seed was scattered naturally as plants of one season were harvested for food. The plants were pulled up for this and lots of seed would have gone all over the ground. However, there is evidence that channels were dug all through the marshes so that the following season’s rains would more effectively flood the Portulaca beds and promote the harvest.

You have no doubt read Bill Gammage’s book The Greatest Estate of Earth ( see https://theconversation.com/the-biggest-estate-on-earth-how-aborigines-made-australia-3787) and his comment: “Aboriginal people worked hard to make plants and animals abundant, convenient and predictable.” Is an excellent summary of land management by Aborigines.

And there is another very important element to this which will be addressed in my new book, Wild Food (currently in preparation). This is that farming in most parts of the world changed the nature of the species being cultivated. They were often selected for their germination rate, their palatability, their sweetness, fibre content and other features which were generally to the nutritional detriment to those relying on the foods grown. Not so in Australia. The plants HAD to stay sufficiently genetically diverse to cope with massive changes in fire regimes and water availability. The was no point in rearing or selecting for productivity when fire was absent or water was abundant because a new-born child could live to 70 years of age in the desert and never see rain. Peter Latz observed land that had been over-grazed for 100 years, once protected from domesticated pest animals, began to see the appearance of plant species that had long been forgotten in the area. This is a reflection of the biological capacity of the species preserved by traditional Aboriginal land management.

I am still impressed by what Aboriginal Australians left us as plant resources and ecosystems. I am also embarrassed that whites have wiped out so much of this irreplaceable resource in so short a time. I recently learned of an idiotic concept of our politicians called ‘biodiversity offset’ where genetically diverse country can be destroyed (by mining for example) as a tradeoff for protecting some other region or regenerating it as a shadow of its original richness. What stupid policy-maker thought of this dumb principle and which dickhead politicians voted it into law? Perhaps a course on ecology and environmental diversity should be essential training for public servants. How do you offset the clearing of mixed system native vegetation and destroying sustainable ecosystems??? By asking farmers to ‘preserve’ a few trees on private property? Spare me!