By Kath Gannaway
WARBURTON environment group members joined forces to hold a torch up to carbon protection issues last week.
Members of My Environment, Shire of Yarra Ranges councillor Samantha Dunn and other local community members joined members of the Wilderness Society for the Warburton leg of GetUp’s National Climate Torch Relay.
GetUp, an independent movement which claims 280,000 members, is hailing the torch which is energised by solar power, a wind turbine, a lemon battery and people power, a symbol of the nation’s determination to avert dangerous climate change.
The torch is on a nine-week relay which will culminate at Parliament House in Canberra on 12 October coinciding with the presentation of the Climate Protection Bill.
The relay started within the Cement Creek water catchment out of East Warburton and was carried along Warburton’s main street before being presented to Yarra Ranges mayor Tim Heenan.
Wilderness Society organiser Seamus Balkin said Cement Creek was chosen as it is one of Melbourne’s water supply catchments which has been earmarked for logging from December this year.
He said the catchment contains forest identified as the most carbon dense on earth and his call for an end to logging in the water catchments was loudly echoed.
“The amount of carbon stored in forests like these is so much more than it was thought in the past,” My Environment founder Keith Sarah said.
Cr Dunn said 1.6 million Melburnians have signalled their opposition to logging in the catchments and urged people to lobby the government on the issue.
“Knowing what we know now, reading that report,” she said referring to the Australian National University’s Green Carbon Report released in August, “ … if we didn’t think these forests were valuable enough, it is abundantly clear now how valuable they are.
“It is time to stop logging in these catchments.”
Warburton resident Bianca Rich said it was a privilege to live in such a beautiful environment and called on the current generation to ensure it remained for future generations.
“As a Warburton resident I saw the climate torch relay as a great opportunity to raise our awareness as a community to the urgent issue of climate change,” she said.
The Climate Torch completed another leg in the Yarra Valley on Thursday when Healesville environment groups brought it down from Mt St Leonard by horse, bike and people-power to Healesville railway station.
