Festival failings

Once again the festival mentality will descend upon the wildlife corridor that links the coastal nature reserves with the hinterland Wollumbin World Heritage Rainforests. Tens of thousands of Falls Festival patrons will trash one of the most biologically rich environments in Australia and line the festival developer’s pockets with millions of dollars.

We do not need to trade the environment for festivals. We can have both by moving the festivals to a location that is not biologically rich. We have a petition on Change.org (search for “move festivals”) asking the Government to tell the festivals to move (also accessible via CONOS Inc Face Book page).

As the state government has granted these festivals a five-year trial period, you would expect that the festivals would be on their best behaviour. However they have been unable to follow some of the government’s most important rules, particularly in terms of noise (as residents up to 10km away will testify). If this is their best behaviour, we dread any permanent approval to hold numerous festivals up to 50,000 people!

We congratulate the community and environment groups that will not fundraise there on an ethical basis, and others that similarly refuse to be involved there (musicians, artists, potential volunteers etc).

Festivals can be moved: An important wildlife corridor and 50 threatened species cannot.

Bob Oehlman, Conservation Of North Ocean Shores Inc.