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The Wombat state forest is the water catchment for the western outskirts of Melbourne, including Sunshine. The region has been on water restrictions for more than a year. The Wombat catchment also supplies central Victorian towns and irrigation areas north of the divide. A newly formed group, Doctors for Native Forests, has warned clearfelling in catchments affects water quality and is a threat to public health.
Catchment protection visions in the regional forest agreement restrict the size of logging blocks and the proportion of forest that can be aged under 20 years. But the Department of Natural Resources and Environment is proposing to log much larger areas in three key Wombat forest catchments over the next three years.
In one catchment, Colbrook, which supplies western Melbourne, the area
proposed is 16 times the maximum. In another, which feeds into the Wombat
Reservoir supplying Daylesford, a logging block is twice as large and is
just 100 metres from the edge of the reservoir. The department
plans to log about 13 per cent of the Midlands forests, which includes
the Wombat forest, over the next three years. About half the forest between
Daylesford and Blackwood is on the plan.
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