Protecting and restoring the Hocking BioRegion
Global environmental advocacy
Updated: January 31, 2012
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Protecting and restoring the Hocking BioRegion Global environmental advocacy Updated: January 31, 2012 |
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Past Hocking Voice Work:
Issues Latest News Arctic Refuge Dysart
About
Hocking Voice
Hocking Voice is an Athens, Ohio based organization dedicated to
restoring the Hocking River and its watershed, and to helping Hocking
citizens get involved in local, regional, state, national and global
efforts to protect and restore the environment.
Hocking Voice’s campaigns include planting trees on The Ridges,
dumpsite cleanups, encouraging Ohio University and Hocking College to
agree to use renewable energy and to cut greenhouse gas emissions,
stopping logging on the Hocking, Gifford and Zaleski State Forests,
protecting the Wayne National Forest, opposing Pres. Bush’s war
against the environment, saving endangered species from ODOT’s planned
bypass around Nelsonville and Lancaster, protecting Ohio University’s
The Ridges from harm and more. Legal
Victories
Hocking Voice successfully stopped the York Township Trustees
from building a road through the 50-acre beaver-created Minkers Run
wetlands in the Wayne National Forest in November 1997.
Hocking Voice filed an appeal to stop the Buckingham Coal mine
near Burr Oak State Park, the Trimble State Wildlife Area, Wildcat
Hollow and Wolf Creek State Wildlife Refuge.
While the Environmental Review and Appeals Commission lawsuit did
not succeed in stopping the mine, it did reduce acid pollution entering
Sunday Creek by 300 percent. Working
Bioregionally
Hocking Voice is organized based on a bioregional approach.
The group is organizing to unite the peoples of the Hocking River
watershed as a political force. Hocking Voice is dedicated to protecting and restoring the
water quality of the Hocking River and the forest ecosystems of the
Hocking Hills. Hocking Voice promotes sustainable businesses such as eco-tourism, non-timber forest products, renewable energy development, organic agriculture and other economies that can provide a living wage without destroying the environment. Active
Campaigns Stopping
President George Bush’s environmental onslaught
Though he did not get the popular vote, George Bush is already breaking
his campaign promises and working to gut America’s environmental laws.
Bush’s efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to
oil development, end the protecting of 60 million acres of national
forest and dismantle global warming and toxic pollution laws is
reprehensible and must be opposed.
Bush has reneged on the U.S. commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and
has backtracked on his campaign promise to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions.
Hocking Voice helping to organize a festival of resistance in
Athens this fall at the Court House.
We will have some fun while demonstrating opposition to Bush’s
environmental onslaught. Green
Athens Campaign
Hocking Voice is a regular presence at city council meetings calling
upon council to protect green space and to stop the out of control
development. Sprawl is
devastating Athens’ once green hills, as can be seen on OU’s 25
acres of former forest between Hooper Street and Richland Avenue that
has been strip mined for fill material and is being built into
apartments.
Please speak up at City Council Meetings Monday nights for the Daines
forest (at least what is left of it) and
Adena burial mounds that was logged and is proposed to be developed, and
the 900-acre Signal Hill area off Armitage Rd. that is threatened by the
massive golf course and upper income development of the University
Estates.
OU’s Walmart development and the Columbus Rd. destruction are
yet more examples of our public lands being exploited for corporate
profit at the expense of our fast diminishing green space and Hocking
River flood plain. Hocking
Voice will work to oppose such development by speaking at meetings,
filing appeals where possible and supporting other groups active in
preserving Athens-area green space. Stopping
the Ashland Marathon Pipeline
Ashland-Marathon wants to
build a high-pressure gasoline pipeline across the headwaters of the
Hocking River and through numerous state nature preserves, forests and
private nature preserves. This
pipeline would disrupt the scenic ecosystem that provides numerous
tourism jobs, and would poison the Hocking River, affecting the drinking
water in Lancaster, Logan, Nelsonville, Athens and more.
Hocking Voice is a constant presence at meetings and in letter
writings about the pipeline, and plans to file appeals to stop the
devastating development. Restoring
forests and wetlands
Hocking Voice lobbies hard to get state agencies to restore
forests and wetlands through increased land acquisitions, planting trees
and preserving and creating wetlands to replace those lost.
Hocking Voice lobbies hard against House Bill 441 that would halt
acquisition of Wayne National Forest lands.
The organization lobbied for state Issue 1's $200 million to be
used to buy green space rather than for development.
And Hocking Voice regularly plants trees on The Ridges (which the
organization also defends) and elsewhere. Halting
the Nelsonville and Lancaster Route 33 bypasses and calling for mass
transit
Hocking Voice is very concerned about the impacts of the proposed
bypass routes around Nelsonville and Lancaster.
Both go through public lands and endangered species habitat.
Hocking Voice was active in stopping logging in the Dorr Run area
of the Wayne National Forest in 1997 and plans to file an appeal of the
Ohio Department of Transportation’s proposed highway route through
that area. It is home to
both the federally endangered Indiana Bat and Timber Rattlesnake. Hocking Voice lobbies hard for train and bus mass transit around Ohio and particularly from Athens to Columbus and throughout the Hocking Bioregion. Protecting
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
One of Hocking Voice’s top priority in its federal lobbying
campaign is protecting the costal plain (1002 lands) of the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge as a permanent wilderness.
This is the heart of the only intact Arctic ecosystem left in
America and the last 10 percent of undeveloped Arctic coastline in
America.
But President George Bush is working to open the Arctic Refuge to
oil development. We must
act with strong vigilance if we are to save this amazing ecosystem from
imminent peril. Go to
to see a slide show and find out how to
do more to save the Arctic Refuge.
Ohio’s Senators and Representatives are critical in the
decision to open or to protect the Arctic Refuge.
Hocking Voice works to get citizens of the Hocking Bioregion to
write letters and make phone calls to save the refuge. Greenpeace
campus climate change campaign
Hocking Voice is beginning two campaigns at both Ohio University and
Hocking College for both institutions to agree to phase in renewable
energy and to agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent of 1990
levels by the year 2007. These
are national campaigns with Greenpeace being waged at universities and
colleges throughout the nation. Campaigning
to pass the Kyoto Protocol
Hocking Voice actively collects petition signatures, letters and
holds press conferences and demonstrations to support passage of the
Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States
by about a third by the year 2012.
Hocking Voice collected more than 500 petition signatures and
delivered them to Ohio Senator Michael Dewine asking that he support the
Kyoto Protocol.
Hocking Voice’s coordinator traveled to the Hague Netherlands
with about a thousand signatures from the Athens area to attend the
United Nations Conference on Climate Change as a Greenpeace
International Delegate. Protecting
Dysart Woods
Hocking Voice supports Dysart Defenders to save the last .004 percent of
old-growth forest remaining in Ohio with rallies, petitions, hundred
plus mile walks, legal appeals and much more (see www.dysartwoods.org). ------------------------------------------------ Please support Hocking Voice by becoming a registered member: Click here for the Membership FormBP: Burning the Planet fact sheet Why BP is also responsible for the Exxon Valdez disaster Satellite data shows alarming greenhouse rise in last 27 years. Please email to join the Hocking Voice direct action notification list so you can find out about demonstrations ahead of time. See an automated slide show and take action to save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from Bush's wrath. Greenpeace online action alert Ohio University's Ambling development destroys forest Solar
Energy: A Real Alternative
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pollution