Rally fights roads

By Lia Bichel
KEYSBOROUGH environmental activists armed themselves with picket signs and headed to Parliament House last week to prevent future roads from damaging reserves and ecosystems.
Keysborough’s Save Coomoora Reserve Coalition teamed up with environmental groups from across Victoria to create the Save Our Bush Alliance (SOBA).
The Save Coomoora Reserve Coalition’s spokesman Damon Anderson told the rally last Wednesday, 24 February, that SOBA wanted to alert the community to the “clear and present danger being posed to our natural heritage by the State Government’s transport plan”.
Mr Anderson said he was concerned about the Dingley Bypass destroying Keysborough’s Coomoora Woodland Flora and Fauna Reserve.
The $74.6 million Dingley Bypass is scheduled to begin in late 2010 and open in early 2013.
Mr Anderson said if works for the Dingley Arterial proceeds, it would destroy much of Coomoora, and “what little remains would be fundamentally compromised thereby endangering the ecological integrity, biodiversity and sustainability of this small, but significant, flora and fauna reserve”.
“Our long term goal is to preserve and enhance the quality, integrity and sustainability of the nature reserve, cultural heritage sites and wetland in terms of the environmental, historical, educational, recreational and scientific significance,” Mr Anderson said at the rally.
“Only two months have passed since the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen identified habitat loss as one of the main causes of global warming.
“Yet our State Government remains hell-bent on recklessly bulldozing our few remaining green spaces to build freeways and bypasses.
“If the Government fails to protect our bushland and develop alternative modes of transport, ‘Victoria, the Garden State’ will rapidly become ‘Victoria, the Greenhouse Gas State.’”
Mr Anderson said about 300 people attended the rally.
“I think we got our message across,” he said.