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then they fight you, and then you win". Mahatma Gandhi
1) VicForests caught out burning sawlogs! 
VicForests was caught out recently by a group of angry residents, burning good sawlogs and residual logs in a clearfelled forest near Genoa in the far east. Click here to view the 2 minute news clip that appeared on Win TV news last week and click here to read the Weekly Times report.Not only does it appear that they had cut down this forest and then couldn’t sell the logs to the chipmill or sawmills, they also refused to sell it to the local licensed firewood cutters. The Beckers offered them much more per tonne than VicForests sell it for as woodchip logs. Locals said there were 500-600 tonnes and much of it was C grade sawlogs. It was torched all in one go. The Beckers said it would have kept them in business for three years. The land was excessively steep and with the rain that we had, loads of soil washed into the Wallagarah River. VicForests’ response to the media was inadequately feeble and dishonest. But this just tells us that there is a massive and sudden drop in the demand for woodchips and pulplogs now - which has driven the clearfell destruction for decades. This matches up with other evidence we are seeing and hearing about. This is very good news. 2) EEG pursues VicForests on FOI documents. Earlier this year VicForests was hurriedly offering over 800,000 tonnes of Victoria’s public forests to anyone who wanted to buy them as a cheap package deal – with the helpful suggestion that they could be burnt in power stations. Yep - pretty bad stuff, but this also shows that their traditional woodchip market is set to disappear. 
Anyway - East Gippsland’s surviving forests were to somehow have almost half of this volume hacked out from them. Where did VicForests pull these figures from? You guessed it!
Our FOI request for all documents used to calculate these mountains of ‘waste’ logs on offer, was mostly refused under some of the many convenient ‘exemptions’ they have under the FOI Act. But that’s no barrier to us! We will be doggedly pursuing them. VicForests also expects “full sovereign risk indemnity from the government” ! That means we tax payers - will compensate any successful bidder which doesn’t get the amount of ‘waste’ logs that VicForests promised it - which of course they can’t, because that volume is unlikely to be there (unless they knock over more protection zones, parks and reserves). That means VicForests invented a fulsome sounding figure and bunged it out there to make this offer more enticing. The tender document mentions:
EEG is determined to expose this farce. The story will continue. 3) Rio - 20 years on 
We have all given up expecting anything to come out of these events now but a huge carbon footprint and plenty of government lies and grandstanding. The recent Rio+20 saw a 10-day mega-conference and 45,000 people (and associated aviation fuel to get them there), produce a booklet called The Future We Want. It’s been lambasted for having no detail or serious will to deal with our deteriorating environment, worsening inequality and a global population, expected to rise from 7bn to 9bn by 2050. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton played the optimist and wanted to have a more prosperous future where “all people benefit from sustainable development." We know what that means. Greenpeace called the summit “a failure of epic proportions” and said "We didn't get The Future We Want in Rio, because we do not have the leaders we need. The leaders of the most powerful countries supported business as usual, shamefully putting private profit before people and the planet." That summed it up. Rio+20 was intended as a follow up on the 1992 Earth Summit, which put in place landmark conventions on climate change, biodiversity, poverty and social justice. Since then, global emissions have risen by 48%, 300m hectares of forest have been cleared and the population has increased by 1.6bn people. 4) We have an online shop! Enviro-friendly products for enviro-friendly people! 
Our great range includes terrific calico and coloured cotton shopping bags, a range of gift cards, and iron-on transfers. All products have original designs that carry a distinctive
enviro message. Coming soon we will also have Australian made organic cotton T-shirts, recycled paper notepads with a forest message, embroidered cloth badges and a new range of gift cards.Go to: www.eastgippsland.net.au/shop and have a browse. 5) Correction. 
Last Update we covered the story of an endangered Quoll that was found dead on the road near a DSE prescribed burn at Providence Ponds. The heading incorrectly read: Burnt quoll found after prescribed burn. It in fact hadn’t been burnt, but appeared to have been run over. The error was due to the editor not correcting the heading to match the article.
6) Articles in the June 2012 Potoroo #201. We will be sending out another E Bulletin update in a week or two with more info and news. And please don’t forget that now is the time to make a tax deductible donation if you can, to help with EEG’s work. Click here for easy online donations using GiveNow.
Jill and the team.
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Hello wonderful supporters,
For those who aren’t a member, a wee $20 will have you on board and you’ll receive the famous Potoroo. Just