BBF on Venture Minerals ‘Demand’

Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 12 November 2021

Picking on the wrong people

Media reports that a Western Australian mining company, Venture Minerals, is demanding $100,359 and will ‘cripple’ or potentially cause the ‘extinction’ of the Bob Brown Foundation are premature, Bob Brown said tonight.

“Our foundation has received nothing from this environmentally-destructive company. Clearly, it has better communications with media outlets. Its alleged Friday-afternoon letter of demand has not been delivered. They may have struck media oil but they have not reached our letterbox.”

“They are taking action for money but our motto is ‘action for Earth’. If this is another exercise in coercing the defenders of Tasmania’s wild and scenic beauty into jelly they are writing to the wrong people,” Brown said.

“We have a list of demands which will be more popular than in Tasmania – including that Venture Minerals take its drills and bulldozers out of the World Heritage valued Tarkine region,” BBF Campaign Manager Jenny Weber said.

TAKAYNA PROTEST DISRUPTS QLD MINING INVESTOR FORUM

Bob Brown Foundation conservationists Courtney Hayes and Kasey McNamara climbed onto the stage with a banner during Venture Minerals’ presentation, calling on investors not to fund proposed mining in Tasmania’s takayna.

“We have brought our protest against Venture Minerals’ plan to destroy takayna to the Noosa Mining Investor forum today. The company is promoting its proposed destruction of rainforests for a new tin mine while our message is ‘don’t fund Venture Minerals’ destruction of Australia’s largest temperate rainforest’,” BBF’s takayna campaigner Scott Jordan said from Noosa.

“Our stand for rainforest protection and no new mines in takayna are sure to have reached investors today, reminding them that Venture Minerals’ investment is risky business and will destroy a vast region of intact rainforest in this critical decade when the world needs to stop drilling, mining and contributing to the climate and extinction crises,” said Scott Jordan.

Simultaneously, activists are occupying the takayna rainforest site for the second day where Venture Minerals is carrying out exploratory drilling.

“We are in these ancient Mt Lindsay rainforests, with its vast, contiguous ecosystem, on behalf of this wild place and the wildlife that depend on it. Venture Minerals will not build this mine on our watch,” Bob Brown Foundation’s Campaign Organiser Erik Hayward said.

Venture Minerals plans a very large mine in Australia’s largest temperate rainforest at Mt Lindsay. High calibre remote rainforest with verified World Heritage values in the Meredith Range Regional Reserve is threatened by this proposed mine.