This press release by KeepHaweabeautiful appeared on Scoop Independent News on June 7th, 2019.
When we learnt about the proposed rapid urban development of our loved rural landscape in Hawea, we like many folk in the community fell victim to chronic distress at the reality that the place in which we reside and live has come under assault. Using abrupt and sudden physical desolation to clear land for development, common practice which has already consumed so much of our unique landscapes.
We created KeepHaweaBeautiful as a way to navigate this experience. A deeply felt uneasiness around the nature of this proposal. From our perspective, it was simply more of the same desolation created by large-scale developments. This proposal in particular seemed to deviate quite dramatically away from the communities interests.
Our beloved, natural landscapes are rapidly changing at a pace that no longer matches our ability to comprehend it. These landscapes offer a familiarity & stability. We hold relationships to them, which underpin and enhance the essence of a community. Understandably when an existing, peaceful organic community rhythm, which supports a sense of trust & familiarity to raise children and maintain healthy physical, spiritual and mental well-being is threatened, by negative transformation. There is a natural sense, that a way of life is under attack.
The new normal for children growing up in the Queenstown Lakes District is living with rapid development, abnormal is the stability of our landscapes & communities. When our children observe the rapid culling of trees in the Upper Clutha to make way for development, they are not witnessing a harmonious respect for nature, or tree coppicing as a method to manage trees as a resource. The story we would prefer to be telling them. Reluctantly we have to burden them with the truth, which is that these actions are the antithesis of community and environmental respect.
(Read the rest of this press release at its original source HERE.)