PROTECT THE TALL EUCALYPT FORESTS Actively Conserving Marysville Environs

FOREST CAMPAIGN

Welcome to the Central Highlands. Thankyou for visiting our community and our forests.

What’s Happening to your Forests

Concerns relating to biodiversity, tourism, water yield, and the over logging of the local forests for woodchips, have brought Residents of this community in consultation with the Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE). Woodchips account for over 80% of the timber extracted.

ACME, the local environment group, together with other groups, is supporting a blockade and associated campsite on a new logging road. This road will open pristine new areas for clear felling adjacent a popular State Park.

Due to the failure of the Department to respond adequately to ACME’s concerns, ACME supports peaceful direct action to halt grossly unacceptable practices and draw public attention to mismanagement of public resources.

Logging operations are destroying habitat for many native animals, is causing unsightly scars on the landscape, reduction in water yield and massive increases in erosion, plus feral animal and weed infestation.

In the Central Highlands this summer thousands of hectares of forest is scheduled to be clear felled, wood chipped and burnt. The creation of new roads for logging vehicles will further fragment habitat linking Parks and Reserves.

A Better Future for our Forests

The forest campaign aims to ensure that ecologically sustainable forest management practices are put in place. Forest management must support the long-term environmental, social and economic wellbeing of forests and communities. ACME demands a strategy to move the timber industry to primary reliance on sustainable managed plantations. Current DNRE policies provide no incentive for this to occur.

The objectives of the local campaign include:

• Extend the Yarra Ranges National Park to include the Taggerty River Valley to Marysville.
• Extend Cathedral Range State Park to protect the Upper Cathedral Valley, Southern approaches (including Cerberus Road and the Keppel Creek Valley).
• 500m non logging buffers on all tourists routes including the Acheron Way and Lake Mountain access roads
• Formalise and implement community consultation including all stakeholders equally represented – addressing Ecologically Sustainable Forest Management.
• A comprehensive survey by an independent body of Marysville’s water catchment and the effects of logging on water quality.
• Extend buffer between logging coupes and areas of cool temperate rainforest from only 40 metres to 350 metres, to ensure the protection of cool temperate rainforest from myrtle wilt and fire.
• The linking of Yarra Ranges, Eildon National Parks and Cathedral Range State Park with Wilderness Corridors.
• A refocus of Government resources to explore and develop alternative economic initiatives including plantation forestry and eco tourism.

Positive, Responsible Forest Protest

Campaigners have developed standards in conduct and behaviour. They are committed to maintaining the highest standards in safety, communication, fire protection, hygiene and environmental protection at protest sites.

Negotiations have also commenced with Victoria Police to develop an agreement on behaviour, which will reduce conflict, eliminate violence, and provide a constructive environment for ongoing dialogue.

The proposed agreement includes; rejecting violence or damage to property, even handed policing and prompt investigation of acts or allegations of violence by any party, an acceptance of voluntary arrest as a likely outcome of conscientious civil disobedience, and measures to enhance the physical safety of all parties.

What You Can Do

• Visit the areas at risk.
• Write to your local state and federal members of parliament to voice your concerns.
• Support the state wide forest campaign by joining an environment group and/or making a donation.

ACME, PO Box 84, Marysville, 3779