The Greed of Chalice Mining — now they want to do an open cut Nickel-Copper-Platinum Group Element (Ni-Cu-PGE) mine and destroy Julimar Forest

 Forest (a flash fiction of 200 words)

 

            John Kinsella

 

 

Stepping through the forest door, Kris and Los forgot to close it behind them. Admittedly, it was a permeable door that allowed forest creatures to pass back and forth relatively unhindered, and even for seeds and shoots and rhizomes to find a way through or under or around. But the door was to prevent people stealing the forest. This did not mean that people couldn’t live with and interact with the forest — to the contrary, and there were peoples living with the trees who respected the forest for what it was, and the forest in turn respected them.

 

But forgetting to close the forest door allowed the 'green miners' to find a way in without any restraints. Kris and Los were deep inside when they remembered their error but, rushing back along a shady path, encountered many bereft creatures saying the end had come. Kris and Los asked how so? Because these miners want what's under the forest so they can profit more from humanity surviving longer.

 

Kris and Los reached the broken, gaping door, and yelled at the miners, We will not use those batteries anymore! With no profits to be made, the miners vacated, leaving wreckage behind them.

****

AND please sign this petition. Get active please people, and don't let this happen. The destruction of a forest is NOT good for the biosphere. This is an appalling case of greenwashing and these greedy people are trying to convince you it's for your good when it's purely for their own good!

Chalice Mining's Relentless Efforts to Influence Locals

What's the correlation between Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Chalice Mining's ongoing attempts to buy a place within local community? The company's concerted efforts to inculcate itself into the region are part of its 'fait accompli' approach to asserting a mine in Julimar before the mine actually exists. This would be as much about reassuring markets and investors as it is about actualities, but the ease with which they have gained a foothold is disturbing and a very real threat to Julimar forest and the world ecology. Claims that it will help the planet through 'green metals' mining while destroying (then 'rehabilitating'?... euphemism!) a native forest are ludicrous and very much part of the 'reset' of environmental values in which an either/or scenario is being foisted on us: i.e. 'green tech' as our saviour, even if it means the (extensive) loss of natural environment. Of course, loss of natural environment damages climate and means rapid extinction events. Where people are making profit (and vast profits at that), you can be guaranteed the well-being of environment is not their primary thought!

On the Scales of the Dragon: the Metamorphosis of Chalice Mining as It

            Sweet-talks Toodyay in Preparation for Its Conquest

                        of Old Environmental Values with the New

                                    ‘Environmentalism’ of Capital

 

‘Apply Now’ written over

            ‘green metals’

                        low-carbon-tech scales

of the dragon

            revaluing

                        value,

            each beast of burden

and predator,

            each declaration

of ‘We will...’;

                        behold each

            donation

to local causes,

            each contribution

                        to the bigger picture:

ergo, playground equipment

            for child-citizens. Take

                        the spirit of occasions,

take Chalice mining —

                                           new values

            ‘environmentalists’: witness

that advert

            for ‘local employment’

                        qua

‘Initiatives

                    to protect

            and rehabilitate

                                         the environment’:

rehabilitate prior to erasure

            of forest

                        takes initiative...

a child-like

            cathexis.

                        Ahead of the game.

Cart before the burden.

That’s the spirit?

 

 

            John Kinsella

 

Another Poem In The Effort to Protect Julimar Forest From Mining

 

Silently Into the Sea of the Forest: Chalice’s Plans for Julimar Forest

 

‘And silently they crossed the threshold. And close by garden vines covered with green foliage were in full bloom, lifted high in air.’ 

            Argonautica (Book II)

 

 

Silently into the sea of the forest

 ‘soft’-tracked vehicles will creep,

no wheels to crush undergrowth

they hope in future to delete.

 

Silently into the sea of the forest,

gently gently off-track — no tyres

pressing their case, just metal expecting

what’s flattened to shoot back into place.

 

Silently into the sea of the forest

those drilling rigs are determined to go —

to reach down further than roots

and mirror the hollow of sky.

 

 

            John Kinsella

Was out at Julimar Conservation Park on Sunday with Tracy. A few photos and a poem in support of the mixed woodlands/forest (below). This article from Landscope is useful regarding some of the colonial incursion/history of the place and its importance in the now. I don't agree with some of the approaches in the article (especially regarding four-wheel driving), but the piece does highlight the importance of the 'park'. It is vital we keep focus on the forest and the threat it is under from Chalice Mining. Also see this article at Hike West regarding the threat to environment from Chalice.

Investor Notes for Chalice Mining’s Persecution of Land at Julimar

‘sombre woods’

The Argonautica

With settler familiarity the forest is brow-beaten

by four-wheel drives and pig hunters. Pigs are the lament-

excuse-justification for blood-letting, a way around

circumventions. And then there’s the farm turned

into a minefield — a mine in a field, or rather

the exploratory drills for a mine in a field

that will dilate into the forest if the company

has its way with relevant government agencies —

the lamenting and unravelling of ‘green tape’. In case

you shoulder wonder about deployments of language

for investors, try ‘Gonneville Intrusion’ as the name

for these activities. Or, ‘strategic deposit’ of ‘critical

minerals.’ Intrusion strategic critical deposit. And

‘expand footprint’. Definition. Seven rigs — diamond

and reverse circulation. Farmland entrée. And then...

and then the full run of revelation with missionary zeal.

And this poem-addendum to petition that lives in the mind

of the forest and its readers — the wandoo and jarrah

and marri trees in full awareness of what lies

beneath in the ‘complex’, speaking with words

that will be extinguished before they can find

a way past investor vocabularies, before they

can upset degrees of separation, the consequences

of portfolios. Oh, blue leschenaultia

and kangaroo paws were still flowering

and a light breeze was a sombre ocean

in the mixed woodland when we visited

over on Sunday — as the company’s advance 

gathers pace, as the ‘maiden resource’

PRs its heroics, buys into community,

spreads news of inevitability, of success.

John Kinsella

Save 'Julimar State Forest'/Julimar Conservation Park from Chalice Mining!

I have just put this petition up at Change.Org for any of you willing to sign (see below plus link). Addressing governments, especially when they are so embedded with the mining industry, is a forlorn and fraught process, but every peaceful method must be tried:

Chalice Mining is attempting to develop a nickel, copper, cobalt and PGE mine at the 'Gonneville deposit' near the 'Julimar State Forest'/Julimar Conservation Park, Western Australia. Their end of 2020 statement claims — 'Julimar PGE-Ni-Cu-Co-Au discovery' [is] 'advancing rapidly to maiden resource'. The company is targeting the 28 000-hectare Julimar Conservation Park as part of their 'exploration' and potential exploitation of the 'deposit'. As cited in the Financial Review (November 9th, 2021) regarding exploratory drilling in the forest, 'Mr Dorsch said he was expecting approval to drill soon and the company was “raring to go”.'

Despite claiming it's all for the well-being of the world (minerals useful for carbon-reducing technology — 'green technology'), the destruction of the ecologically vital and unique Julimar forest will be a crime against the environment and the biosphere. The forest must be protected against such a flagrant rapacity that is ultimately based on nothing more than profiteering and indifference to environmental world-health.

The forests and bushland of Western Australia are already under great pressure from mining, and we plead with you to prevent this activity. We have an obligation to all life on this planet to prevent the damage and destruction of remaining habitats.

Link to Protect Julimar Forest petition. [Note the anti-tree propaganda in the Financial Review article, aligning the area with middle-class wealth (which is untrue), attempting to divide and conquer via mining labour demographics when it's the mega-wealthy who most benefit from such mining.]

Also, I beg you all to consider the threat to the Manning Ridge from mountain-biking proponents. See and look at 'concerns'. And here is a poem in support of that campaign:

Manning Ridge, Beeliar Regional Park, Whadjuk Noongar Boodja

Parrot bush is a flowering of white-tailed

black cockatoos is a flowering of limestone 

is a flowering of the essence of terrain. 

Mountain bikes are not biodiverse, 

mountain bike trails are not circulatory 

systems, mountain bikes and the trails 

made for them to traverse bring no rare species 

back from the brink, bring no warmth 

or comfort to country. Mountain bikes

compress the ridge, break the back

of habitat. When riders ride into their future

they delete the future for so much else.

Bandicoots and lined skinks know I visited

as a child, trying to hear what they had to say —

their memories are passed on through

limestone, through woodlands

and shrublands. I won’t forget

their gifts. Now I speak out.

Parrot bush is a flowering of white-tailed

black cockatoos is a flowering of limestone 

is a flowering of a future.

Remember. Act. Remember.

John Kinsella

And for all the protesters resisting the tree and village-destroying expansion of the horrific Garzweiler lignite mine in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany:

Graphology Lambent 28: for the protesters against the Garzweiler lignite mine

False light false warmth the pit dilating

to consume trees and villages, filling

atmosphere with false signs false breath —

that dirty heat that warms only death.

But those of you sitting to block ‘progress’

will bring life with every delay — you redress

our failure as the cranes migrate.

John Kinsella

The destruction of habitat and contamination of the biosphere are such a multiplex concurrence of 'events' that unless we resist all of these assaults at once, and say enough to all such behaviour and activity, they will overwhelm the planet.