Category: Wilderness Defence

Wilder­ness defence

Workshop and Building Weekend, this weekend at Bilston Glen

You are invit­ed to the Bil­ston Glen Work­shop and Build­ing Week­end!

This Week­end — Fri­day 30th to Sun­day 2nd
Come down for the whole week­end or for how­ev­er much you can man­age.
Learn new skills and help us with some of our on-going projects in Bil­ston Glen

You are invit­ed to the Bil­ston Glen Work­shop and Build­ing Week­end!

This Week­end — Fri­day 30th to Sun­day 2nd
Come down for the whole week­end or for how­ev­er much you can man­age.
Learn new skills and help us with some of our on-going projects in Bil­ston Glen

What’s on:
# Learn how to climb
# Habi­tat enhance­ment for birds (rel­e­vant info — www.rspb.org.uk)
# Gar­den­ing
# Treeplant­i­ng
# Build­ing new sleep­ing spaces
# Dig, dig, dig
# Urban For­ag­ing (tour of the finest bil­ston skips!)
# Small par­ty on the Sat­ur­day night

Come to the woods, bil­ston always needs you!

Also in a cou­ple of week’s we’ll be hav­ing a bil­ston evening at the For­est Cafe. More info to come.

Links
http://bilstonglen-abs.org.uk
http://www.myspace.com

Bilston Glen Sunday Free Cafe and Outdoor Cinema

You are invit­ed to the Sun­day Free Cafe, Last Sun­day of EVERY month

Next café — Sun­day 25th Novem­ber
Our usu­al free food, acousitc music, and spe­cial­ly this sun­day…
Bil­ston Glen OUTDOOR cin­e­ma!

You are invit­ed to the Sun­day Free Cafe, Last Sun­day of EVERY month

Next café — Sun­day 25th Novem­ber
Our usu­al free food, acousitc music, and spe­cial­ly this sun­day…
Bil­ston Glen OUTDOOR cin­e­ma!
We’ll be show­ing some films about the Span­ish Civ­il War and the Ura­ni­um min­ing in lap­land. Maybe more films too… if you want to watch some­thing then please bring it along!
See you in the woods!

see our

Climate Change crew shut down Simcoa plant near Bunbury

Novem­ber 20, 2007 — A group of activists con­cerned about Cli­mate Change occu­pied the Sim­coa sil­i­con plant at Kemer­ton, 160kms south of Perth, for sev­en hours on Mon­day…

Simcoa action 1Simcoa action 2Novem­ber 20, 2007 — A group of activists con­cerned about Cli­mate Change occu­pied the Sim­coa sil­i­con plant at Kemer­ton, 160kms south of Perth, for sev­en hours on Mon­day…

SIMCOA ACTION — Two peo­ple locked them­selves onto a con­vey­or belt of the plant, with two oth­ers on the gate — forc­ing the clo­sure of oper­a­tions.

Details are sketchy at this stage, but it seems two of the group were charged with Tres­pass and will appear in the Bun­bury Cour­t­house this Fri­day at 9.30. They say they will both plead guilty and ask that sup­port­ers gath­er at the Cour­t­house for poten­tial fur­ther non-vio­lent direct actions against Sim­coa.

A spokesper­son for the activists said the group forced the sil­i­con plant to shut down for sev­en hours forc­ing 160 work­ers to stop work. The group say Sim­coa’s for­est destruc­tion equals cli­mate chaos.

The Japan­ese-owned com­pa­ny Sim­coa has an annu­al allo­ca­tion of 150,000 tonnes of “3rd grade” jar­rah logs for mak­ing into char­coal which is used in the process of mak­ing sil­i­con. The Labor gov­ern­ment intends to con­tin­ue sup­ply­ing Sim­coa with jar­rah. At present the gov­ern­ment lets Sim­coa have this jar­rah at around $4/tonne.

Sub­sti­tutes that Sim­coa could use, like plan­ta­tion tim­ber can­not com­pete with this price and as a result jar­rah is still being plun­dered from our forests at alarm­ing rates. Sim­coa also con­sumes 8% of W.A.‘s elec­tric­i­ty, at very reduced rates!

The jar­rah logs, which could be used by saw mills to val­ue-added the tim­ber, are turned into wood­chips. Then the whole lot is turned into char­coal to make sil­i­con.

“RILA IS DEAR!” JOIN EFFORTS TO PROTECT NATIONAL PARK

In Sep­tem­ber 2007 con­struc­tion of what is hailed as “a new mega-ski area” began inside and around the bound­aries of Rila Nation­al Park in Bul­gar­ia. The park is one of the largest in Europe, a haven for nat­ur­al forests, endan­gered species, and clean waters. A good indi­ca­tor that these areas are in grave dan­ger is the exclu­sion of the Rila Buffer Zone, an area around the Nation­al Park, from the NATURA 2000 net­work of bio­di­ver­si­ty com­mis­sioned by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. Despite ample sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence, the Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment pri­or­i­tized polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic con­cerns, vio­lat­ing the cri­te­ria set by both nation­al and Euro­pean law.

SEVEN LAKES AREA OF THE RILA MOUNTAINS
In Sep­tem­ber 2007 con­struc­tion of what is hailed as “a new mega-ski area” began inside and around the bound­aries of Rila Nation­al Park in Bul­gar­ia. The park is one of the largest in Europe, a haven for nat­ur­al forests, endan­gered species, and clean waters. A good indi­ca­tor that these areas are in grave dan­ger is the exclu­sion of the Rila Buffer Zone, an area around the Nation­al Park, from the NATURA 2000 net­work of bio­di­ver­si­ty com­mis­sioned by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. Despite ample sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence, the Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment pri­or­i­tized polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic con­cerns, vio­lat­ing the cri­te­ria set by both nation­al and Euro­pean law.


At this moment the Park’s chalets and lodges are being trans­formed into hotels and con­do­mini­ums. Paths marked as trails on the Nation­al Park map are now roads. Trucks speed down from the moun­tain­tops, haul­ing away tim­ber ille­gal­ly cut to cre­ate ski slopes. No man­age­ment plan exists for the chair­lift being con­struct­ed into Nation­al Park ter­ri­to­ry and the envi­ron­men­tal assess­ment pro­vid­ed by devel­op­ers is no longer valid. Unfor­tu­nate­ly lit­tle is being done to stop this project. Although the local munic­i­pal­i­ty was recent­ly fined 5,000 euros for ille­gal road con­struc­tion, the sanc­tion seems to be a slap on the wrist con­sid­er­ing the tens of mil­lions sup­pos­ed­ly invest­ed in the project.

RILA LAKES DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
Sites on the Inter­net already pro­mote prop­er­ties near the Rila Moun­tains as the lat­est loca­tion to buy vaca­tion homes in Bul­gar­ia. Loca­tions, like the Rila Lake hol­i­day apart­ments (http://www.mirela.bg/en/project.php?id=44949), are in zones just exclud­ed from pro­tect­ed sta­tus by the Bul­gar­i­an gov­ern­ment. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, prospec­tive for­eign buy­ers are large­ly unaware of the con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing these areas. Not only could they become silent accom­plices in the destruc­tion of Europe’s wilder­ness, they may also lose their invest­ments pur­chas­ing ille­gal prop­er­ties.

SUPPORTER OF NATURA 2000
LET NATURE REMAIN IN BULGARIA, a coali­tion of 17 envi­ron­men­tal and social NGOs are lead­ing the move­ment against the ille­gal activ­i­ties in Rila Nation­al Park. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, their strug­gle is by no means easy. When activists tried to hand out infor­ma­tion near the Rila Park Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter, they were con­front­ed by a group of men armed with guns and knives. They threat­ened the lives of the par­tic­i­pants as well as the jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the action. Although police arrived before any vio­lence, it was the envi­ron­men­tal­ists that they warned, rather than the attack­ers. They were told, “Next time, we may show up too late.”


Despite the threat, the coali­tion remains firm in its con­vic­tion con­struc­tion in the park must be halt­ed until a full inves­ti­ga­tion can be made of the pro­jec­t’s envi­ron­men­tal impact and the area’s sta­tus with­in the NATURA 2000 net­work is resolved. To pre­vent fur­ther destruc­tion you can sign the peti­tion for Rila and com­plete an online let­ter to the Euro­pean Union at http://forthenature.org/petitions. To find out more about the destruc­tion of nat­ur­al areas in Bul­gar­ia, see their web­site http://forthenature.org or find about WWF’s cam­paign for Bul­gar­i­a’s pro­tect­ed sites. You can also con­tact, Cve­ta Hris­to­va, For­est and Pro­tect­ed Areas Pro­gram, Za Zemi­a­ta, cveta.hristova@gmail.com, cveta@zazemiata.org.

Protect Tasmania’s Old growth Forests

*Sum­mer Cam­paign Update and Events 2008*

Tasmania angel on tripod*Sum­mer Cam­paign Update and Events 2008*
*South­ern Tas­ma­nia *

Hi all -

Its going to be a great sum­mer to come to Tas­ma­nia and be involved in the cam­paign to pro­tect Tas­ma­ni­a’s old growth forests!

It has been a huge year for the forests of Tas­ma­nia, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the nation­al empha­sis on the pro­posed Bell Bay pulp mill. Despite huge com­mu­ni­ty oppo­si­tion to this pro­pos­al, it has been approved by both Fed­er­al and State Gov­ern­ments and build­ing of the facil­i­ty is sched­uled to start in Jan­u­ary 2008. How­ev­er the com­mu­ni­ty cam­paign against this envi­ron­men­tal­ly pol­lut­ing mill which will have a huge appetite for native forests con­tin­ues.

So too does the unprece­dent­ed lev­el of destruc­tion of our south­ern Tas­man­ian old growth and high con­ser­va­tion lev­el forests. The cam­paigns to pro­tect the south­ern forests of the Weld Val­ley, the Styx Val­ley, and the Flo­ren­tine Val­ley con­tin­ue on and 2007 has seen more com­mu­ni­ty based cam­paign­ing and direct action than ever.

Since the destruc­tion of Camp Weld — the Pirate Ship Block­ade — in Novem­ber 2006, the whole of the val­ley has been declared an exclu­sion zone, shut­ting out the gen­er­al pub­lic, how­ev­er activists have not been deterred and have con­tin­ued to keep the spot­light on the destruc­tion. This year saw clear-felling on the World Her­itage bor­der in the Weld Val­ley, and forestry plan to build a road and bridge over the Weld Riv­er to open up 2000 hectares of untouched ancient for­est for log­ging. This is the largest piece of rain­for­est in South­ern Tas­ma­nia. This is planned to start in the next few months.

A road is also planned to be pushed 3km into the Pic­ton open­ing up 2000 hectares to log­ging which used to be nation­al park. Old growth log­ging is also con­tin­u­ing on in the Arve, Esper­ence and Lit­tle Deni­son Regions. The mora­to­ri­um on the Flo­ren­tine Val­ley ends at the time of the Fed­er­al elec­tion in Novem­ber, mean­ing once again this majes­tic for­est will be under attack. With the recent glob­al focus on cli­mate change, now more than ever we must pro­tect our ancient forests as they play an inte­gral role in cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion through their role of stor­ing car­bon.

We are all work­ing incred­i­bly hard in Tas­ma­nia to pro­tect these ancient forests, how­ev­er we need your help. Please con­sid­er com­ing to Tas­ma­nia this sum­mer and sup­port­ing our cam­paign. Walk in the bush, wit­ness the majesty of these forests before they are gone. Learn new skills, get informed about the issues and how you can help. Below is a list of sum­mer events that you can take part in.

Can’t come to tassie but still want to help?? Then con­sid­er hold­ing a film night or fundrais­er. Dis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion and raise aware­ness in your own area. Become a mem­ber of the Huon Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre and be updat­ed reg­u­lar­ly. Make a dona­tion. Check out the web­sites. Be part of what is an incred­i­ble com­mu­ni­ty cam­paign! Email: centre@huon.org or campflorentine@gmail.com for more infor­ma­tion.

*South­ern Forests Con­ver­gence
Jan­u­ary 18th — 20th
For­est Skill­share.*
Learn about the south­ern for­est cam­paigns, forests and cli­mate change and how you can help.
Speak­ers, work­shops, films, music.
Camp­ing. No Dogs.

*Gun­n’s n Doz­ers
Lose Your Exclu­sion Tour
Jan­u­ary 21st — 28th
Com­mu­ni­ty Action Week*
Address­ing Tas­ma­ni­a’s South­ern Forests Exclu­sion Zones.
Includ­ing an RTS and Music Event.

*TAZ
D.I.Y Gath­er­ing
Feb­ru­ary 8th — 10th*
Elec­tron­ic music, live per­for­mances, cabaret, films, work­shops and more.
Kids wel­come. Camp­ing. No dogs.

*For more infor­ma­tion:*
www.huon.org
www.myspace.com/stillwildstillthreatened
email:centre@huon.org or campflorentine@gmail.com
phone: 03 62641286

Huon Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre
www.huon.org

The Huon Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre is a grass­roots, not for prof­it, vol­un­teer run char­i­ty based in the Huon Val­ley, South­ern Tas­ma­nia. The cen­tre opened 6 years ago as a result of huge com­mu­ni­ty con­cern over the dev­as­ta­tion of local forests, which form a huge part of the majesty and mag­ic of Tas­ma­ni­a’s unique land­scape. Since then it has been at the fore­front of the cam­paign to pro­tect these ancient forests in South­ern Tas­ma­nia.

The Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre facil­i­tates a com­mu­ni­ty work­ing space, an eco-shop and library, a com­mu­ni­ty aware­ness rais­ing cam­paign, film nights, musi­cal events, fundrais­ing events, fes­ti­vals, direct action, lob­by­ing, infor­ma­tion
stalls, and the Black Sassy Art col­lec­tive.

The Huon Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre is one of the Gunns 20 defen­dants, and is cur­rent­ly being sued by the wood­chip­ping giant Gunns Ltd. for over half a mil­lion dol­lars for stand­ing up for Tas­ma­ni­a’s ancient forests.

Privatisation planning barbed wire destroyed (Athens, 11/11/2007)

After an open assem­bly of the dis­trict res­i­dents, with an atten­dance of more than 300 per­sons, that focused on the mat­ters of the pri­vati­sa­tion of the Filopap­pou hills, the tress­pass­ing, the fences and the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of the area (check out the sources for more infor­ma­tion), it was decid­ed that the fences and wires should be brought down by the res­i­dents their­selves, as it was realised despite the police pres­ence.

Filopappou demoFilopappou fence downedFilopappou gate pushed downAfter an open assem­bly of the dis­trict res­i­dents, with an atten­dance of more than 300 per­sons, that focused on the mat­ters of the pri­vati­sa­tion of the Filopap­pou hills, the tress­pass­ing, the fences and the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of the area (check out the sources for more infor­ma­tion), it was decid­ed that the fences and wires should be brought down by the res­i­dents their­selves, as it was realised despite the police pres­ence.

Sources (Greek only) — pho­tos: http://militant-entertainment.blogspot.com
http://filopappou.wordpress.com
http://www.indy.gr/newswire/oi-katoikoi-kslosan-perifraksi-stoy-filopappoy

Road builders raided, Digger diving done at Tara, Ireland

Novem­ber 9th

Dig­gers Ahoy!

Road builders offices raid­ed by cul­tur­al con­ser­va­tion­ists.

TARA CAMPAIGN LATEST!

THE TARA cul­tur­al con­ser­va­tion­ists halt­ed work on a con­tro­ver­sial sec­tion of the pro­posed new M3 on Thurs­day.

Novem­ber 9th

Dig­gers Ahoy!

Road builders offices raid­ed by cul­tur­al con­ser­va­tion­ists.

TARA CAMPAIGN LATEST!

THE TARA cul­tur­al con­ser­va­tion­ists halt­ed work on a con­tro­ver­sial sec­tion of the pro­posed new M3 on Thurs­day.
Twen­ty-one cam­paign­ers stormed the admin­is­tra­tive com­plex (Dunshaughlin)of the site con­trac­tors (SIAC, Fer­rovial and Eurolink.)near Tara Hill, occu­py­ing offices and film­ing sur­prised staff.

Then they went to a near­by con­struc­tion site and climbed on to bull­doz­ers, stop­ping road­mak­ing for an hour-and-a-half.

It was a sig­nif­i­cant esca­la­tion of the long protest, timed to coin­cide the old Celtic New Year’s Day.

One of the rea­sons for the action was the EU’s recent court rul­ing on con­trac­tors to stop, in view of the con­tin­u­ing dam­age to Ire­land’s World Her­itage Site.

A spokesman for the con­ser­va­tion­ists said: “This direct action has been tak­en by con­cerned cit­i­zens of the EU because the Irish gov­ern­ment is ignor­ing Euro­pean law.”
“Con­tin­ued attempts have been made to per­suade the gov­ern­ment to stop the work on this sec­tion of the M3 while a deci­sion is reached by the Euro­pean com­mis­sion.
“It was a very suc­cess­ful action and many mes­sages of con­cern were con­veyed to the senior man­age­ment at the admin­is­tra­tive site.
Con­nor McDer­mot, tech­ni­cal man­ag­er, when asked why the graves of our ances­tors had been des­e­crat­ed gave us no com­ment.
“Infor­ma­tion was gath­ered on ille­gal road build­ing activ­i­ties.
“It has come to light that fur­ther destruc­tion of this his­toric val­ley will be caused by 129 kilo­me­tres of slip roads as well as 79 km of motor­way and the fur­ther devel­op­ment that will inevitably hap­pen if this destruc­tion is allowed.

Cam­paign­ers call on all Irish net­works to acti­vate and sup­port the Save Tara Val­ley campaign,help urgent­ly need­ed.

More reports on front­line action soon.
Video link soon Tech sup­port need­ed.

http://www.tarapixie.net

Ogoni 9 Day — Rossport Endures to Prevail; Today Smelt Like Victory (photos)

Novem­ber 9th 2007
Not in our name !

Mayo Ogoni solidarity 1

Mayo Ogoni solidarity 3Novem­ber 9th 2007
Not in our name !

Today, to com­mem­o­rate Shel­l’s judi­cial mur­der of the Ogo­ni 9 and a look back in anger at the Gar­da baton-fest a year ago, some 400 activists jour­neyed from all reach­es of Ire­land to voice our out­rage out­side and inside Shel­l’s Bel­lan­aboy site, I was with the sec­tion of pro­tes­tors that first manned the front line at Bel­lan­aboy bridge at 6AM at the request of S2S when it was right­ly sur­mised that Shell and the Guards would attempt to steal a march by bring­ing the work­ers in ear­ly — for a while, before Gar­da weight of num­bers pre­vailed, we were effec­tive in blockad­ing and pre­vent­ing them from earn­ing their 30 pieces of Mam­mon sil­ver inside.

After being pre­vent­ed from join­ing the main group by a two deep line of Guards, we suc­cess­ful­ly scaled the gates of the refin­ery to be greet­ed inside with wan­ton vio­lence and rough han­dling by Shel­l’s thugs dressed in secu­ri­ty uni­forms.

What stim­u­lat­ed the title was an encounter with a Ger­man from Riegen and a cou­ple from the UK Mid­lands who had spent the pre­vi­ous 48 hours trav­el­ling over­land from main­land Europe and Eng­land just to attend today’s protest, what com­mit­ment?, even so, the peo­ple of Erris match it and, fur­ther afield, activists, who with a gran­ite sense of con­science turn up again and again in Bel­lan­aboy to bear wit­ness against a rogue cor­po­ra­tion and their shoe shine boys in gov­ern­ment who pave and grease their way?

Updates received via Text Mes­sage from Pro­tes­tors

6.47: Gate 2 blocked since 6am

7.10: Sit­u­a­tion tense for a group from Cork hemmed in near Gate 2 (gate near­est the bridge). On the road but the guards have half of it.

7.35: The refin­ery site has been occu­pied. One group of 30 peo­ple have entered and are now occu­py­ing the site com­pound. Mean­while on the road between the bridge and Gate 2, a group of 90 pro­test­ers pre­vent­ed a truck from from enter­ing the site for about 20 min­utes. The truck drove over one per­son­’s foot and an ambu­lance is on its way. One of the block­aders was arrest­ed around the same time.

8:08: The same truck that drove over the pro­test­er’s foot is still being block­ad­ed from enter­ing the quar­ry (around 40 min­utes at this stage).

8:35: There are cur­rent­ly two dif­fer­ent groups on the build­ing site and anoth­er two groups of block­aders at Gate 1 and Gate 2.

The pro­test­er whose foot was dri­ven over has been tak­en to hos­pi­tal. Guards were report­ed as being very rough while remov­ing peo­ple from the road at Gate 2 — stand­ing on peo­ple’s arms and chests and pulling them off the road by their necks. Local, John Mon­aghan had his cam­era pulled off him and thrown into the ditch by gar­dai.

8:57: The truck has since got past the block­ade of Gate 2 (leav­ing it blocked for just over an hour). 30/40 local peo­ple were active­ly involved in the block­ade. Guards report­ed as vio­lent­ly drag­ging peo­ple away — punch­ing peo­ple in back and stom­ach. Many guards report­ed as not wear­ing their iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers.

The block­aders have now joined the group at the main gate to the site and there is a line of gar­dai (now includ­ing the pub­lic order unit) between them and the com­pound gate. Two oth­er arrests have been con­firmed aside from the pro­test­er blockad­ing Gate 2. Fur­ther details on these two arrests to be con­firmed.

9:05: One group of about 20 pro­test­ers on the site attempt­ed to get past the inner gate (with spikes on top) to the site but suf­fered minor injuries (cut hands) as well as ripped and torn cloth­ing as the site secu­ri­ty pre­vent­ed them from get­ting across by push­ing them back against the spikes at the top of the gate. Two of the peo­ple who suc­ceed­ed in get­ting to the inner site were eject­ed from the site by site secu­ri­ty need­ed first aid but are now on their way up to join the group on the road by the main gate.

10:26: Six peo­ple have been escort­ed out of the com­pound after breach­ing it via a back entrance. The group man­aged to breach the inner perime­ter and stop work tem­porar­i­ly. There were minor scuf­fles but secu­ri­ty were ‘gen­er­al­ly nice’.

14:56: 16 peo­ple are cur­rent­ly on site. There are secu­ri­ty present but no gar­dai as of yet. The group is a mix of locals and sup­port­ers.

15:01: “Secu­ri­ty guards assault­ing pro­test­ers, grab­bing cam­eras, work con­tin­u­ing”

25,000 blockade world’s longest dam in India

Sol­i­dar­i­ty would be huge­ly appre­ci­at­ed as Indi­a’s Supreme Court looks like it is going to rule in favour of min­ing cor­po­ra­tion Vedan­ta to be able to mine the Niyami­giri Hills in Oris­sa, which will mean the death of thou­sands of peo­ple and will set a prece­dent for the min­ing of all of Indi­a’s forests.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty would be huge­ly appre­ci­at­ed as Indi­a’s Supreme Court looks like it is going to rule in favour of min­ing cor­po­ra­tion Vedan­ta to be able to mine the Niyami­giri Hills in Oris­sa, which will mean the death of thou­sands of peo­ple and will set a prece­dent for the min­ing of all of Indi­a’s forests.

25,000 farm­ers are to form a human chain around one of the worlds largest dams in protest against devel­op­ment by British min­ing cor­po­ra­tion Vedan­ta Resources PLC. Cen­tral to the con­flict are issues over water allo­ca­tion to the alu­mini­um indus­try and a baux­ite min­ing project whose effects Indi­a’s Supreme Court have been warned by its own inves­ti­ga­to­ry com­mit­tee would lead to “cul­tur­al geno­cide.” [1]

Farm­ers in Indi­a’s poor­est state, Oris­sa, have grad­u­al­ly been los­ing the right to water from the Hirakud dam since it began to irri­gate and pro­duce ener­gy for the region in 1947. Whilst they claim that today only 25% of their fields receive any irri­ga­tion, allo­ca­tion of water to heavy indus­try has increased by over 27 times with­in the past ten years. [2] The major bene­fac­tor of this is the alu­mini­um indus­try, Hin­dal­co and Vedan­ta, present in Oris­sa due to its rich baux­ite deposits [alu­mini­um ore] and the huge amount of water avail­able from the Hirakud dam. [3]

Vedan­ta is cur­rent­ly on the crux of win­ning a legal bat­tle grant­i­ng it the right to mine three mil­lion tonnes of baux­ite from the most bio­di­verse for­est region in Oris­sa, the Niyam­giri hills. The min­ing threat­ens many rare species of ani­mals and plants which inhab­it the region, as well as the exis­tence of an entire trib­al pop­u­la­tion, the Don­garia Kondhs.

Today is the lat­est con­fronta­tion between dif­fer­ent inter­est groups in a ‘water war’ which reflects grow­ing glob­al con­flicts over water short­ages in a dry­ing plan­et. Police have fired on and killed demon­stra­tors in pre­vi­ous mass protests in Oris­sa and it is like­ly that fol­low­ing the recent con­tentious pro-Vedan­ta deci­sions of Indi­a’s Supreme Court, con­flicts may well become more heat­ed.

Feel like ring­ing up Vedan­ta to tell them to screw them­selves? Good!

investorrelations@vedantaresources.com

Sumanth Cidambi
Asso­ciate Direc­tor Investor Rela­tions
Tele­phone: +91 22 6646 1444

Vedan­ta Resources plc
16 Berke­ley Street
Lon­don W1J 8DZ

Robin Walk­er & Faeth Birch

Fins­bury Com­mu­ni­ca­tions
52–58 Taber­na­cle Street
Lon­don
EC2A 4NJ

Tele­phone: +44 (0) 20 7251 3801

tak­en from http://www.vedantaresources.com/contactus.htm

Tara — Transport minister has transport problems

Novem­ber 2nd 2007

Dig­gers dived and Dempsey done

“trans­port prob­lems for dept of trans­ports noel dempsey”

Con­ser­va­tion­ists angry at what they call,‘The des­e­cra­tion of Ire­land’s cul­tur­al her­itage’ laid siege to a Trim hotel (Fri­day 2nd nov) where trans­port min­is­ter Noel Dempsey cel­e­brat­ed anoth­er gov­ern­ment decen­tral­i­sa­tion project.

Novem­ber 2nd 2007

Dig­gers dived and Dempsey done

“trans­port prob­lems for dept of trans­ports noel dempsey”

Con­ser­va­tion­ists angry at what they call,‘The des­e­cra­tion of Ire­land’s cul­tur­al her­itage’ laid siege to a Trim hotel (Fri­day 2nd nov) where trans­port min­is­ter Noel Dempsey cel­e­brat­ed anoth­er gov­ern­ment decen­tral­i­sa­tion project.

Fol­low­ing a morn­ing of suc­ces­ful dig­ger div­ing by 2 crews at Col­lier­stown and sol­diers hill,where 1 activist was arrest­ed for not giv­ing his name,then released an hour lat­er.

Some of the 40 Tara M3 pro­tes­tors dodged secu­ri­ty to enter the rear of the Knights­brook Hotel and golf resort where the recep­tion was tak­ing place,

At one point cater­ing staff — some Pol­ish — were sent to con­front them.

Ear­li­er, 10 con­ser­va­tion­ists harangued the vet­er­an politi­cian as he left the con­struc­tion site for the new Office of Pub­lic Works, where he had turned the first sod.

His day was fur­ther spoiled when it was dis­cov­ered that two tyres of his min­is­te­r­i­al Mere­cedes had been let down.

A spokesman for Tara Sol­i­dar­i­ty Vig­il said: “The graves of the ancient Fian­na have been bull­dozed, the bones dug up and the remains are still await­ing re-inter­ment to their orig­i­nal rest­ing place.

“It is bla­tant grave rob­bery and Irish peo­ple should be dis­gust­ed,

“Imag­ine if Glas­nevin (Dublin) had a pro­posed motor­way going right through it in 2000 years time.

“The aim was not to scare Mr Dempsey but to have a chance to com­mu­ni­cate our con­cern at his lack of inter­est in an alter­na­tive, cheap­er M3 route avoid­ing the Tara Skyrne Val­ley where there is poten­tial for a rail line and for valu­able tourism for gen­er­a­tions to come.

“This pro­posed UNESCO World Her­itage Park will thus be an asset to the peo­ple of Ire­land.”

Resis­tance is grow­ing from Ross­port to Tara, and our actions are increas­ing in their effectiveness,as is evi­dent from the gov­ern­ment cen­sor­ing www.tarapixie.net on pub­lic access inter­net ter­mi­nals. This means we are win­ning some­where and have raised major con­cerns with­in the halls of pow­er. As song,poetry and music were once again heard in the halls of Tara over Samhain. We hope all Irish and inter­na­tion­al net­works will ral­ly to the sup­port of the Tara Valley.Activists urgent­ly need­ed now num­bers are low after the Samhain celebration.As activists dig in for the win­ter support,food,warm gear and peo­ple needed.Hear the call.

http://www.tarapixie.net