Greenpeace Australia Pacific

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Greenpeace Australia Pacific
Type	Non-Governmental Organisation!
Founded	1977, Australia
Headquarters	Sydney, Australia
Industry	environmentalism
Products	Lobbying, research, consultancy.
Revenue	$13 Million AUD (2005)
Employees	65?
Website	www.greenpeace.org.au/

Greenpeace Australia Pacific!! (GPAP) is one of Australia's largest environmental organisations, and is a member organisation of the Greenpeace international network.

In 1974 La Flor, from Melbourne, Australia, skippered by Rolf Heimann, a children's author set, out for Mururoa via New Zealand as Greenpeace IV but arrived after the final nuclear test for the year.

An activisit group, the Whale and Dolphin Coalition, formed in Sydney by Australian photographer Jonny Lewis and French businessman Jean-Paul Fortom-Gouin, invited Canadian Bob Hunter, Greenpeace co-founder and its first president, and his wife bobbi, Greenpeace's first treasurer, to Australia in 1977. They needed their expertise honed in the North Pacific against the Societ whaling fleet.

Greenpeace's first direct action in Australia opened on August 28, 1977, at Albany, Western Australia against Australia's last whaling station. Over the next three weeks, Lewis, Fortom-Gouin, Bob Hunter and Australians Tom Barber and Allan Simmons used Zodiacs to place themselves between the harpoons of the three whale chaser ships and sperm whales up to 30 miles offshore. There were two near misses with harpoons but no injuries.

The Whale and Dolphin Coalition then morphed into Greenpeace Australia with animal rights campaigner Richard Jones registering the entity and Sydney journalist Jodi Adams becoming Greenpeace Australia's first coordinator. The organisation's first assets included a Zdoiac from the Albany campaign.

Australia's harpooned their last whale on November 20, 1978. The Cheynes Beach Whaling Company ended operations the next day.

In early 1998 Greenpeace Australia and Greenpeace Pacific teamed up to become Greenpeace Australia Pacific (GPAP). The campaign against whaling has been very successful, and the issue has had some support from the Australian Government since the late 1990s.

The organisation also campaigns against nuclear weapons and nuclear power, deforestation, the release of genetically engineered organisms into the natural environment, climate change, toxics, bottom trawling and overfishing. It uses tactics of non-violent direct action to draw attention to what it considers significant threats to the environment, and then lobbies for solutions.

Solutions include clean energy, protection of ancient forests, establishment of marine reserves, protection of biodiversity and government and international regulation of environmentally destructive practices.Greenpeace is also about saving the whales