John Lazarus, Byron Bay
Council passed a final Report on the bypass at last Thursday’s meeting. Unfortunately, we have to deal with these councillor/bureaucrats’ philosophy that traffic is more important to them than the survival crisis that we, and all other species, are facing.
Both Cr Lyon and Ndiaye criticised the residents’ court case, and the morning protest action, for the cost blowout.
They ignored the fact that Council falsely alleged in the court case, and to the public, that there were no Critically Endangered Species on the site, and that it was the residents who forced Council to belatedly comply with the Federal law of PRIOR reporting impacts on threatened species, and the subsequent cost of required compensatory sites.
The report, and these two councillors, also claimed that the protesters were inappropriately at fault for the delays.
I guess we are fortunate that these two councillors weren’t at the first major 1970s forest blockade in the world, in the hills behind Byron, as we would have been in an even worse environmental crisis than now.
This bypass site had the highest density of critically endangered Mitchell’s Rainforest Snails on the planet, and its clearing permanently increases our carbon emissions.
The report contains misstruths and propaganda, and Cr Ndiaye’s criticism of the protest action shows how far sections of the Greens have descended from prioritising environmental values.
The first big forest protests in the world were in the hills behind Byron and drove change in an era when there were no Environment Ministers in any world government, when there was no environmental protection legislation (or even broad comprehension of the need to protect our environmental heritage and our life-on-Earth support systems).
This development’s greenhouse gases will permanently contribute to increased intensity of bushfires and floods, and the erosion of Main Beach. Byron Council and these councillors are acting like science deniers. It appears that our Shire’s long history of environmental priorities is being slaughtered by this bureaucracy.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
