Jerry Casburn provided feedback to members on the Board deliberations from the meeting held on Thursday 29th October 2020. The following were the key points:-
a 28 year history. The company started with kerbside collection ad now operates across the country. The company makes over 250 products products from benches and seats to walkways and fencing. This eliminates waste and reduces the landfill of past eras. It also works to protect wildlife, especially the contamination of oceans and waterways.
ke on McLaren Vale's project with Southern Koala Rescue in the Onkaparinga Hills. She described the work they are doing and the help already provided to the couple, Mish and Wade, by Unley Rotary. Specifically Brendan Kenny and to a more limited extent Jerry Casburn, plus Stephen Baker with financial advice and guidance on incorporation.Posted on October 28, 2020
By Frank Bures
Late last winter, just before the world shut down, my family flew from Minneapolis to Mexico City, then drove two hours west toward the city of Valle de Bravo. From there, we continued on to Santuario Piedra 
Herrada, a nature preserve situated in the forested mountains of central Mexico.
Herrada, a nature preserve situated in the forested mountains of central Mexico.
The next morning, as the sun rose behind the mountaintops, we began our hike up a mile-long trail. The air was cool, and the sky was obscured by patchy clouds. Higher up the path, we noticed the oyamel fir trees start to take on a different appearance. They looked solid. They looked so heavy that they might fall over. They looked like they had been colonized by some strange creature.
When we reached the top, we could see that in fact it wasn’t one creature that had colonized the trees, but many: Millions of orange-and-black monarch butterflies covered the branches and trunks of the now orange-tinged trees, huddling together for warmth as they have done every winter for thousands of years. When the sun emerged from behind the clouds, the insects, warmed by its rays, filled the air, and the beating of their wings sounded like a soft rain.
In a few weeks, those same butterflies would take off from these hills — Santuario Piedra Herrada is one of a handful of places where monarchs gather to spend the winter each year — and fly to Texas and other parts of the southern United States, where they would lay their eggs on milkweed plants. Those offspring would then fly north as far as Canada to lay their own eggs. After a third generation, at the end of the summer, a fourth, “super” generation, whose life span is as long as nine months (as opposed to its predecessors’ two to six weeks), would embark on a journey back to Mexico, following the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains until reaching the hills around Piedra Herrada.
No one knows how the instructions for this 6,000-mile round-trip journey — one of the longest known migrations of any insect species — pass from one generation of monarchs to the next. What we do 
know is that everywhere along this butterfly’s route, the habitat it needs to survive is disappearing. The plight of the monarch has made news in recent years, and from schoolchildren to scientists, people are trying to help. Chris Stein, a ranger with the National Park Service, is one of them.
know is that everywhere along this butterfly’s route, the habitat it needs to survive is disappearing. The plight of the monarch has made news in recent years, and from schoolchildren to scientists, people are trying to help. Chris Stein, a ranger with the National Park Service, is one of them.Harnessing the power of Rotary
In June 2015, Stein, who was then superintendent of the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, invited Marlene Gargulak, the incoming governor of Rotary District 5960 (parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin), to park headquarters to discuss the loss of vital habitat for monarchs and other pollinators.
At his office in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, Stein gave Gargulak a presentation on the monarch migration and showed her maps detailing the habitat loss facing the butterflies at every stage along their journey. Then he asked her, “What do you think Rotarians could do?”
Gargulak’s idea was to ask clubs to improve pollinator habitat in their own communities. “Or better yet,” she said, “let’s ask all the clubs, in all the districts from Canada to Mexico, to each do a project. We can’t wait until the butterflies get to Minnesota or Wisconsin to help them. If we’re going to do the corridor, we’ve got to have everybody. We have to do a big project.”
Operation Pollination
As 2015-16 governor, Marlene Gargulak visited all 63 clubs in her district, speaking at each one about the pollinator crisis and asking them to sign on to a “pollinator pledge” to take action. She sent letters to the governors of all 74 districts across the eastern monarch’s territory asking them to do the same thing. The District 5960 conference that year included a sale of pollinator plants. In July 2015, Gargulak attended a meeting with former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale, a resident of Minnesota, at which they discussed ways to increase pollinator habitat. The next month, she and Stillwater Rotarians Craig Leiser and Bev Driscoll met with U.S. Representative Betty McCollum of Minnesota to kick
off Operation Pollination, a broad effort open to anyone interested in increasing pollinator habitat. The Rotarians also helped form the St. Croix Valley Pollinator Partnership, which brought together small-business owners; a baseball team; government agencies such as the National Park Service, Forest Service, and Fish and Wildlife Service; and private companies, including Andersen Corp. and Xcel Energy. In 2016, the partnership received a grant of $200,000 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, allowing it to restore native habitat on nearly 1,000 acres of land and establish a 5-acre seed plot for milkweed and wildflowers at the St. Croix Correctional Center.
Stillwater, Minnesota, a city on the St. Croix River, signed the pollinator pledge. Across the river, the city of Hudson, Wisconsin, established a pollinator park. “The fellow who was in charge of the parks at the time said, ‘I just didn’t think it would work at all. But by gosh, the plants came up, it looks pretty, and butterflies and bees came!’ ” says 2011-12 District Governor Judy Freund, who has also worked to promote Operation Pollination beyond the district through the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group.
With the district grant, along with funds from the city, a local watershed group, and nearby Rotary clubs, the Lakeville club had more than $14,000 to pay for plants, seeds, fencing, signage, and other needs. In the summer of 2016, the Rotarians went to work, preparing the site and planting the seeds for a dense patch of native plants, including wild lupine, tall blazing star, rattlesnake master, prairie onion, and butterfly weed (a type of milkweed). The city maintains the 8,000-square-foot garden, and the air is filled with bees and butterflies all summer long.
To date, much of the Operation Pollination activity has taken place within District 5960, at the northern end of the monarchs’ route. Rotarians there want to work with clubs and other entities all along the migration corridor. Stein says that National Heritage Areas are a natural partner; these public-private partnerships have a total combined area larger than the state of Texas and are run by local organizations with support from the National Park Service. Of the 55 U.S. National Heritage Areas, 36 have expressed interest in joining Operation Pollination. A dozen have already signed pollinator resolutions and are seeking partners for projects.
Coffee Chat at Impressa, Unley Shopping Centre
Twice monthly, 10.30 am on a Friday, is good for a chat with Rotary friends and a caffeine fix!
Next get-togethers are Friday 13 & 27 November, and 11 December.
