The Friends of Durras is a voluntary group of residents and like-minded people from Durras, just north of Batemans Bay on the NSW South Coast.

The Lake

Welcome - or welcome back - to the Friends of Durras website.

 

We plead guilty to having neglected this website for some time, although we’ve never stopped working to preserve the beautiful Durras Lake and the surrounding Murramarang National Park environment - as you can see from the newly-posted documents below.  We are now recommitting to keeping this website as up to date as commitments allow, and have a couple of major initiatives in development which we will be revealing in coming months.

In addition to housekeeping activities such as writing submissions to various State and local government enquiries on environmental and conservation issues, assisting in invasive and exotic weed mitigation in Murramarang National Park, protection of nesting endangered bird species and the never-ending rubbish collection so vital for Park health, the major foci for the Friends of Durras over the past two years and continuing into the future involve contesting:

  • the sweeping changes to planning regulations proposed at both local council and State government levels, which potentially threaten existing protections for vulnerable natural environments and effectively promise a free pass for unrestricted commercial development;
  • the State Government’s downgrading and/or removal of protection for the marine environment through attacks on the Marine Park networks;
  • the introduction of hunting (involving the use of gun and/or bow and arrow) into NSW National Parks, possibly as early as the end of June; and
  • the introduction of logging in NSW National Parks (a prospect supported by the Shooters and Fishers Party and some Government Coalition members.  State Government ministers currently deny having any plans for logging National Parks - but then, they promised there would be no hunting in NSW National Parks, didn’t they?).

Here is a link to the media releases issued by the Friends of Durras in opposition to hunting in NSW National Parks.  These have been picked up by print and electronic media, and we have received very positive feedback for our involvement on this issue.

And we will be adding, very shortly, a history of the Friends of Durras, produced for our ‘quarter of a century of environmental protection’ celebration in 2010.

 

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