A community group fighting against a proposed gold mine in Central Otago has received more than $22,000 in donations since the death of Sir Sam Neill.<\/p>\n
Sir Sam was a prominent and vocal opponent of Australian company Santana Minerals’ fast-tracked Bendigo-Ophir gold mine near Cromwell.<\/p>\n
After his death, his family listed the group Sustainable Tarras among four causes for suggested donations in his memory.<\/p>\n
Chair Suze Keith said donations ranging from $10 to $1000 had poured in from hundreds of people around the world.<\/p>\n
“We’re absolutely overwhelmed at the generosity of people trusting us with their funds despite it being a very bittersweet situation,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It’s just been so encouraging. We are quite a small community group and when we started becoming aware of the proposed mine and what it involved two and a half years ago, we were really uncertain about what we could do about it. Because of the Sam effect, we’ve been able to really step up our effort to a level that we would have never imagined we would be able to achieve.”<\/p>\n
Altogether the group had raised more than $72,000 on its Givealittle page from more than 700 people.<\/p>\n
Keith said the money would be used for legal fees and sourcing experts as the fast-track process continued.<\/p>\n
Keith said Sustainable Tarras had already consulted 16 experts in its submission on Santana Minerals’ application.<\/p>\n
“At the start of the year, we thought right, we’ll do a really good application and that will be our effort but actually, seven months later, we’re still donkey deep in a process that’s asking more and more of our experts,” she said.<\/p>\n
Sir Sam called the proposed mine “toxic”, “horrific” and “a threat to Central Otago’s pristine landscapes”.<\/p>\n
Other local advocates had welcomed the potential boost to the Central Otago economy and the jobs the mine could deliver, saying it would be a positive move for the region and a continuation of the area’s mining legacy.<\/p>\n
In an Instagram post, Sir Sam said he had received a “shocking and disturbing” level of threats and abuse as a result of his stance.<\/p>\n
Santana Minerals has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A community group fighting against a proposed gold mine in Central Otago has received more than $22,000 in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-540661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}