Forwarding RUGS notice

WOMBAT FOREST ASSEMBLY

May 1st, 2004

Daylesford Secondary College (Smith Street, Daylesford)

URGENT CALL TO ACTION FOR ALL RECREATIONAL USER GROUPS!!
(By the Recreational Users Working Group)

What’s it all about?

Community Forest Management is a pilot program initiated by the State Government to involve the community in forest management. A potentially good thing. CFM, itself, IS NOT A THREAT to recreational users of the forest. It is an opportunity for anyone interested to make a positive and constructive contribution to the sustainability and health of the forest, whilst ensuring a range of time-honoured recreational activities, pursuits and commercial projects can continue to be undertaken – within sustainable parameters – for the good of all. CFM, itself, has great potential for shared outcomes to be realised. It presents no threat to recreational users – if recreational users proactively participate in CFM.

So why all the fuss then? Crucial deadlines are nearing!

Recreational Users, as a huge sector in the broader community, have not been proactively and genuinely included in the Wombat CFM process thus far. Neither have they been overtly excluded from the process, but the result is the same – WE’VE HAD NO SAY IN IT, UNTIL VERY RECENTLY. Whose fault that is, is irrelevant now. What happens from here on is what really counts! RUG has been very active representing your interests! We now have some say. But we need your active involvement and personal support on May 1st - or it has all been for nought.

Crucial decisions are being made on May 1st and June 19th that will set in place the machinery of this CFM process – it will be formalised. Set in concrete. We need to ensure we have our place in this process. We need to ensure that it is fair for all recreational users – and that frameworks up for vote will ensure that our ongoing say in CFM is assured. CFM has great potential to break the prevailing culture within bureaucracies that have proved to be antagonistic and non-consultative for many recreational users in the past. BUT CFM ALSO HAS POTENTIAL TO BE HIJACKED BY THE GREENS WHO HAVE MADE NO SECRET OF THE FACT THAT THEIR AGENDA DOES NOT INCLUDE US. THEY HAVE BEEN PART OF THIS PROCESS FROM INCEPTION – WE HAVE NOT. That has changed – and we’ve almost caught up, but we’re not there yet. We are now seriously involved in the process – but to ensure that this continues strongly and fairly, WE NEED ALL RECREATIONAL USERS AT DAYLESFORD ON MAY 1ST TO VOTE ON KEY PROPOSALS. YOU MUST HELP US TO ENSURE THE BEST OUTCOME. WE NEED VOTES!

WE CANNOT EMPHASISE STRONGLY ENOUGH THE NEED FOR YOUR VOTE!!
PLEASE GET AS MANY PEOPLE TO DAYLESFORD AS YOU CAN. THIS IS A CRUCIAL DAY. WE CANNOT AFFORD TO DISENFRANCHISE OURSELVES.