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last updated 13 January 2004
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Trade deficit spurs call for local production |
By Philip Hopkins |
The Age (article) |
Australia's forest industry has renewed its call for more local pulp and paper manufacturing plants after another massive trade deficit in forest products in 2002-03. Australia had a trade deficit of $1.8 billion in forest and wood products last financial year, the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics show. |
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Sawmillers join forces to build sales |
Philip Hopkins |
The Age (article) |
A group of sawmillers has signalled a new direction for Victoria's $1.8 billion timber industry with a joint venture that enables wood to be processed faster and more cheaply using new generation equipment. Terra Timbers, based at Bairnsdale in East Gippsland, is a coalition of six local sawmillers that began operating earlier this year after six years of planning. |
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Yarra cleans up its tract |
Margaret Simons |
The Age (article) |
The platypus has returned to the eastern suburbs, swimming happily under some of the city's busiest streets. Native fish stocks are improving. Murray cod have been caught near Heidelberg. Over the past 30 years, quietly and without fanfare, the Yarra River has been getting healthier. In the inner suburbs it is now probably in better condition than at any time since the gold rush. |
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Armchair view of the fires |
Mark Poynter, Doncaster East |
The Age (letter) |
In dismissing broad-scale fuel reduction burning, Gavan McFadzean (Opinion, 15/12) demonstrates a knowledge of forest fire that appears to be limited to boiling a billy. How or why fires get into national parks is irrelevant, whilst McFadzean's use of historical comparisons of fire severity are invalid in view of the different social circumstances and today's advanced technological fire-fighting methods. What is important is the ability to minimise the threat to forests and the community by reducing fuels and being able to respond to bushfires. |
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It's very dangerous to let foresters manage forests |
Gavan McFadzean. |
The Age (article) |
Don't be taken in when the logging industry feigns concern about bushfire risk, writes Gavan McFadzean. Alan Oxley ("Our forests must be saved from environmentalists, not loggers", on this page last Monday) argues the logging industry's case for greater access to our forests - not for logging, of course, but to prevent a repeat of last summer's tragic bushfire season. |
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Australia's largest tree dies |
AAP |
The Age (article) |
A giant Tasmanian eucalypt believed to be Australia's largest tree had been declared dead after being burnt in a forestry operation, authorities said today. El Grande, which stood 79m tall with a girth of 20m, fell victim to a forestry regeneration burn in the upper reaches of the Derwent Valley, north-west of Hobart, in April. |
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Not just about fire |
Craig Reichenbach, Briar Hill |
The Age (letter) |
I get the impression that Alan Oxley (Opinion, 8/12) would feel more comfortable if all of our natural forests were replaced with blue gum plantations. But he has a good point: in more than 200 years of European settlement, our most effective method of bushfire management has been to simply chop down trees. However, rather than pushing the agenda of the timber industry under the guise of "superbushfire" prevention or sustainability, it would be more honest and constructive |
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Our forests must be saved - from environmentalists |
Alan Oxley |
The Age (article) |
As our unlogged forests become denser, fires burn with greater ferocity. California and eastern Australia have shared experiences since European settlement. Developments in the Golden State were usually leading edge - in technology, social change and environment. We adopt or adapt many things pioneered in California. We are now sharing a new experience - the effect of devastating wildfires, or |
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Greens take aim at Gunns customers |
By Leon Gettler |
The Age (article) |
Environmentalists have escalated their battle against Tasmanian timber and logging group Gunns by going over the company's head, direct to its powerful Japanese customers. The Wilderness Society has recruited Greenpeace, with its extensive international connections, to take the fight to the big Japanese paper manufacturers and buyers of woodchips. |
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Greenpeace takes on Gunns logging |
Leon Gettler |
The Sydney Morning Herald (article) |
Environmentalists have escalated their battle against Tasmanian timber and logging group Gunns by putting the heat on the company's powerful Japanese customers. The Wilderness Society has recruited Greenpeace, the most rambunctious of all environmental campaign groups and one with extensive international connections, to take the fight to the big Japanese paper manufacturers and buyers of woodchips. |
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Greens rail against red gum sleepers |
Kirsty Simpson |
The Age (article) |
The Bracks Government has rejected charges by environmentalists that it is contributing to the degeneration of one of the Murray River's "icon sites" by buying red gum sleepers from the area. The Government plans to buy up to 500,000 red gum sleepers to repair four regional passenger train lines, with some coming from centuries-old trees in sensitive river ecosystems along the Murray in NSW, the Victorian National Parks Association has |
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Trust urges end to alpine grazing |
Melissa Fyfe, Environment Reporter |
The Age (article) |
The National Trust has decided that mountain cattlemen are not as culturally important as the environment they damage. The National Trust of Australia (Victoria) has asked Premier Steve Bracks to remove summer cattle grazing from the high plains "once and for all", because of damage inflicted on the fragile alpine landscape. |
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Killer flood blamed on logging |
Matthew Moore, Indonesia Correspondent, Jakarta |
The Age (article) |
Army-backed illegal logging on steep slopes in a national park has been blamed for the devastating flooding that swept away houses in a popular tourist village in North Sumatra, leaving more than 250 people dead or missing. Rescue workers in Bukit Lawang village yesterday searched for bodies through a jumble of huge logs and the remnants of more than 400 houses that had lined the Bahorok River in the Leuser National Park. |
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Green 'nimbyism' has tragic results |
Mark Poynter, Doncaster East |
The Age (letter) |
For many years populist green campaigns designed specifically to stop the limited and highly regulated logging that occurs in Australian native forests have ignored the warnings of foresters as to the environmental implications of their objectives. Unfortunately, this week's flooding of a North Sumatran tourist village ("Killer flood blamed on logging," The Age, 5/11) tragically illustrates the consequences, as our rush to preserve our own forests effectively transfers our demand for hardwood timber |
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Greens sue timber union for 'torment' |
Fergus Shiel, Law Reporter |
The Age (article) |
Eleven environment protesters are suing a group of forest workers, the timber workers' union and its state secretary claiming they were held captive and tormented for five days during an anti-logging protest in the Otways four years ago. The six women and five men claim they were trapped by blockading and patrolling forest workers between January 25 and 29, 1999, at a logging coupe in the Beech Forest area of the Otways, near Apollo Bay. |
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Forestry faces growing plantation problem |
Philip Hopkins |
The Age (article) |
Australia's multibillion-dollar native-hardwood forestry industry faces a crisis if it has to rely on plantation-grown timber, a report has indicated. Plantation hardwood produces low-quality timber and products and a low proportion of sawlogs, says the study by Finnish consultants Jaakko Poyry. When sawn with conventional machinery, plantation logs split and the sawn product |
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Former foes seek win-win solution in Wombat Forest |
Chris Murphy, Lyonville South |
The Age (letter) |
On Saturday, September 13, 2003, I had the good fortune to witness and participate in a historic event. After decades of disputes, violence and protests in relation to forest management in Australia, 50 local people met to start the process of community management of the Wombat State Forest. People who only 12 months earlier were chaining themselves to trees sat down with the workers they disrupted, the departmental officers who authorised their arrests and |
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Saving forests is the best way to cheap, clean water, says study |
Karen Iley, Reuters |
Environmental News Network |
GENEVA — Major cities should focus efforts and funds on conserving forests, which naturally purify their drinking water, saving them from spending billions of dollars on water treatment facilities, a study published Monday showed. The study of 105 big cities by the World Bank and the ecology organization the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-International) showed that one-third of them . . . |
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Scientist warns on catchment logging |
Fran Voss |
The Examiner |
A new report sounds the alarm about water flow from forest plantations, says FRAN VOSS. ST HELENS could be without water in 20 years if plantation forestry in its catchment is not reduced, a report has found. The report was compiled by Hobart-based David Leaman, a geohydrologist with 40 years' experience. http://www.examiner.com.au/story.asp?id=193103 |
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Forest giants fall to unquenchable thirst of farmland |
Melissa Fyfe |
The Age (article) |
In the Murray River debate, South Australia is often painted as the environmental basket-case. It's there that the river mouth is choking and hundreds of thousands of river redgums are dying. But the backyard of Victoria and NSW also has a tragedy in the making: the Gunbower and Pericoota state forests - on the riverbanks downstream of Echuca - are dying from a man-made drought. |
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Red gum madness |
Jill Redwood, co-ordinator, Environment East Gippsland, Orbost |
The Age (letter) |
At a time when our river red gums are dying of drought and salinity, about 44,000 red gum sleepers have just been cut and laid as part of the Bairnsdale railway upgrade. This is an obscene number of magnificent red gum trees that were sacrificed for, at best, 15 years of service. Ironically, much of the traffic on this line will be the log train taking East Gippsland forests to the export woodchip facility at Geelong. Next planned rail upgrades are the Mildura and Ararat lines. For Mildura alone, more |
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Burnt alpine ash to be salvaged by loggers |
Stathi Paxinos, Regional Affairs Reporter |
The Age (article) |
Loggers will soon start harvesting thousands of hectares of alpine ash damaged in last summer's bushfires in north-east Victoria and East Gippsland. Environment Minister John Thwaites said yesterday that a salvage program would be undertaken to harvest 500,000 cubic metres of sawlogs and an extra million cubic metres of low-grade timber over the next two years. |
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Investors spike Gunns in logging row |
Leonie Wood |
The Age (article) |
The battle over Tasmania's old-growth forests has taken a new turn with the logging and timber products group Gunns forced to call an extraordinary meeting amid shareholder demands for the company to ban itself from taking any wood products from certain forests. |
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Deep in the woods |
Andrew Darby |
The Age (article) |
Another conservation battle is looming in Tasmania. This time, it's to protect one of the world's last great temperate rainforests. Kevin Perkins's eyes are blue and piercing. They are also furious. At his eyrie of a workshop high above the Huon river near Hobart, Perkins crafts some of Australia's finest cabinet work. |
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How dirty work is killing giants of the hills |
Melissa Fyfe, Environment Reporter |
The Age (article) |
The Dandenongs have a dirty secret. An environmental time bomb has ticked for decades, but is now making itself visible: patches of lush, ferny mountain forest are dying off. Each day, 12.7 million litres of waste water and human waste is discharged into streams and delicate ecosystems in the ranges. The main culprits are 10,000 unsewered homes, with septic tanks that fail, are not maintained or are too old. |
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Call for spirit of the Franklin to save trees |
Andrew Darby |
The Age (article) |
Despite rain, cold and remoteness, more than 2000 people rallied near some of Australia's tallest trees yesterday to halt old-growth logging in Tasmania's Styx Valley. But speakers said they would succeed only if the campaign, like the Franklin River protest 20 years ago, took hold on the mainland. |
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Shameful ruling |
Sarah Rees, Elwood |
The Age (letter) |
In response to the Tasmanian Government's decision to log the Tarkine Rainforest, perhaps a more appropriate "asset vision" for the future of this forest should be as it stands, not as it falls. |
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Tourism Tasmania loses bid for anti-woodchipping domain |
James Pearce |
ZDNet Australia |
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ebusiness/story/0,2000048590,20274401,00.htm Tourism Tasmania has lost its bid to secure the rights to a domain name currently being used to criticise the Tasmanian Government's forestry policy. |
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Thirsty trees suck up water that would flow to Melbourne's taps |
Melissa Fyfe |
The Age (article) |
Facts and figures have replaced stunts in the debate over logging the city's catchment areas. The results put more pressure on loggers, Melissa Fyfe reports. Chances are you have probably noticed the campaign to stop logging in Melbourne's water catchments. Banners aplenty have been draped across freeways, including one, couched in the colloquial, that said: "Bracksy stop logging our water catchments, mate." |
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Plan to soften felling impact |
MICHELLE PAINE |
The Mercury, Tasmania (article) |
http://www.themercury.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,6368776%255E3462,00.html Tourists will be handed pamphlets explaining why 1080 is used to poison native Tasmanian animals if a plan by the Tourism Council and forestry industry is introduced |
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Giant tree damaged during burn-off |
Andrew Darby |
The Age (article) |
A tree thought to be Australia's biggest has been "cooked" in a supervised burn that went wrong in Tasmania's southern forests. The towering Eucalyptus regnans was discovered in June last year in an old-growth-forest logging coupe by University of Tasmania senior research fellow Wally |
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Playing with forest politics |
Sian Prior |
The Age (article) |
Ten Day on the Island Festival, Hobart, March 28-April 6. Visitors to the Haven exhibition at Hobart's Salamanca Arts Centre can read a quote from the late Tasmanian wilderness photographer Olegas Truchanas, who is the subject of a work by contemporary artist, Geoff Parr |
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Doyle still just doesn't get it |
Robert Humphreys, Balwyn |
The Age (letter) |
Robert Doyle is a slow learner of the first order, as he demonstrates when he insists on trying to cast the Australian Greens as some single-issue party (Opinion, 8/4). He and his fellow Liberals need to ask themselves why in Liberal heartland seats like Kew and Hawthorn at last year's state election, Greens candidates polled nearly 20 per cent of the vote. The reason is simple: a growing number of people - from both Liberal and Labor backgrounds - are discovering that the Greens are more in touch |
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Going green will not be Doyle's salvation |
Alan Moran |
The Age (article) |
The Liberals must build on the strengths of their past rather than try to mimic Labor, writes Alan Moran. Victorian Liberal leader Robert Doyle delivered an address at the weekend that he said was designed to "re-establish our relevance and credibility and restore people's faith in our party". In fact his speech to the Liberal state council meeting was a capitulation to populist beliefs that was devoid of any policy leadership. |
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Libs set off on a wild green chase |
Brian Handley, Moe |
The Age (letter) |
The Libs may believe they have exorcised the Kennett demons with the election of Helen Kroger as state president of the Liberal Party (The Age, 31/3) - but if it thinks an environment and education friendly platform is the ticket to power, then nothing is likely to save them from the political scrap heap. |
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Libs must reform, says new chief |
Darren Gray, State Editor |
The Age (article) |
The Victorian Liberal Party will pre-select candidates more than one year before elections and draft "expert" non-party members onto special committees to develop policies, under the reform plans of new state president Helen Kroger. Outlining a five-point vision for change, Ms Kroger said the party had to rejuvenate in order to be viewed credibly by the business community and overcome the perception in some sections of the general community that it had lost touch. |
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The last stand of a lost forest |
Martin Flanagan |
The Age (article) |
Martin Flanagan talks to two women who have been friends for more than half a century about the meaning of friendship. The two Joans have known each other for 70 years. They met in the 1930s, at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. I thought it would be interesting to interview them about friendship. Why do so many relationships break up nowadays? Why are so many people solitary? |
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Shooting the messenger on art policy |
Jane Rankin-Reid |
The Sunday Tasmanian |
http://www.themercury.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,6049122%255E3462,00.html NO prizes for guessing who's fired back at nationally prominent Hobart gallery owner Dick Bett's comments (The Mercury, February 22) about the State Government and local visual arts organisations' ineffectual policies and programs. |
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Writers pull out of State awards |
The Examiner |
Withdrawal to protest against forestry described as unconscionable. The last-minute withdrawal of authors Peter Carey and Joan London from a $40,000 Tasmanian literary prize in protest against the State's forestry practices was unconscionable, organisers said yesterday. The Tasmanian Pacific Fiction Prize, to be announced on March 30, is part of the 10 Days on the Island cultural festival, which is sponsored by Forestry Tasmania. |
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Timber removal sparks inquiry |
The Age (article) |
Claire Miller, Orbost |
The State Government has begun inquiring into allegations that loggers took timber illegally from a firebreak cut along the edge of the Snowy River National Park when the bushfires were at their worst |
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Tasmanian timber giant carves out results |
Phil Hopkins |
The Age (article) |
Gunns, the biggest timber company in Australia, may be going from strength to strength but not everyone is happy about their success. Phil Hopkins reports. Almost 130 years after John Gunn founded his family sawmill in Tasmania in 1875 the family has left but the business is now the biggest timber company in Australia and one of the top 150 companies on the Australian Stock Exchange |
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Farmers to sue National Parks |
Linda Mottram |
abc.net.au |
This is a transcript of AM broadcast at 08:00 AEST on local radio. LINDA MOTTRAM: The recent fires that cut a swathe through New South Wales and Canberra look set to be the trigger for a court battle. The New South Wales Farmers Association wants to take legal action against the National Parks authorities. http://www.abc.net.au/am/s786724.htm |
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Fuel for thought |
Compiled by Vikki Leone |
The Age (article) |
The devastating effect of bushfires is, unfortunately, nothing new to Australia. |
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Tasmanian Fire Sale (cover story) |
Reporter :Graham Davis, Producer : Nick Rushworth |
Ninemsn.com.au |
Five years after the Tasmanian government signed the Regional Forest Agreement with the Commonwealth, the state is still engaged in a frenzied conversion of native forest into plantation. Ninety percent of the state's timber is now turned into export woodchips to make paper. The sustainability of this $1 billion a year industry is still the most hotly contested issue in the state. http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/cover_stories/article_1205.asp |
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Tasmanian Fire Sale |
Reporter Graham Davis, Producer: Nick Rushworth |
Ninemsn.com.au |
A new species of green activist has joined the long-running battle to save Tasmania's majestic native trees. Erika Ford’s favoured weapon isn’t the sit-in but her stockbroker -- using her shares in Australia’s biggest logging company to press for better forestry practices. Ford’s first corporate foray was against the Jabiluka uranium mine in the Northern Territory. Now her sights are turned on Gunns, the hugely profitable Tasmanian . . . http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/cover_stories/article_1205.asp |
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Sky watch on Huon pine |
Michelle Paine |
The Mercury (article) |
Aerial surveillance was in force to protect a fire-damaged Huon pine stockpile from poaching, Forestry Tasmania said yesterday. Managing director Evan Rolley said more than half the West Coast pile burnt by bushfire last month was expected to be salvageable. Mr Rolley said the remoteness of the South-West National Park, with just one access |
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Row flares as Forestry admits likely fire blame |
Margaretta Pos |
The Mercury (article) |
FORESTRY Tasmania conceded yesterday the Picton fire in the South-West was most likely caused by forestry operations. Forestry Tasmania managing director Evan Rolley said the cause of the fire was being investigated. "The harvesting contractor had shut down operations and left an hour before smoke |
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Apologise to Greens |
Michael Hampton, Marysville |
The HeraldSun (letter) |
Any forestry expert would tell Andrew Bolt that clearfell logging and the subsequent regeneration do not reduce the risk of fire ("Greens gone mad", February 3). Once logging operations are completed, many tracks are closed or become overgrown. You'd be lucky to bash through on foot, let alone by vehicle. |
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Give fire a break |
L. Anderson, Anglesea |
The Age (letter) |
What does it take for the Greens to wake up to the fact that firebreaks are a necessity in this country? How many national parks and state forests are lost because of the policy of abolishing or neglecting to maintain firebreaks? |
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Looking for truths in the burning bush |
The Editor |
The Age (editorial) |
The debate over whether to burn the bush in order to save it is likely to rage for months. The bushfires burning across vast tracts of south-eastern Australia are far from extinguished but already the flames of a more infernal dialogue are being fanned. The issue of fuel-reduction burning - or prescribed burning as it is more properly called - will become a key political debate this year. |
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Greens Gone Mad |
Andrew Bolt |
The Herald Sun |
The new earth worshippers want their sacred forests left untouched, but it's not their homes that are burning. This madness must stop. More than 300 men from our despised timber industry are out fighting the terrifying fires that have roared through the state this past fortnight. I'm told these wicked tree-killers haven't seen many green activists helping them. |
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Take the heat out of the fire debate |
Yorick Piper, Victorian assistant secretary, CFMEU forestry division |
The Age (letter) |
The call for a rethink on forest management is neither part of a bash-the-bush agenda, Michael Fendley (Opinion, 22/1), nor is it seeking to pillage our wild areas (Andrew Cox, 22/1). It is a call for science and research, rather than emotive politics, to drive forest management decisions. |
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Greenie's court win leads logging review |
Melissa Fyfe, Environment Reporter |
The Age (article) |
The State Government will review its guidelines for logging near rainforests after losing a court case against an anti-logging protester. The Department of Sustainability and Environment yesterday admitted the case raised a "grey area" for how it interpreted the Code of Forest Practices for Timber Production. |
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The blame game behind bushfires |
Claire Miller and John Schauble |
The Age (article) |
Once the fires abate, arguments about the causes will flare. Claire Miller and John Schauble report. The parallels are eerie. In January, 1939, Victoria also stirred under the cloud of impending war. The long, hot summer followed a dry winter that left rivers at their lowest in 80 years. Hot, windy conditions persisted for days, culminating in Black Friday, January 13, when the mercury broke 45 and set a state record. |
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A burning issue for the US west |
By John Schauble |
The Age (article) |
The deaths of 20 firefighters and the destruction of almost three million hectares of wildland in the United States in the past year has put fire management high on the agenda. In 2002, there were 71,160 wildland fires in the US, burning through more than 2.8 million hectares, according to the National Interagency Fire Centre in Boise, Idaho. This is about double the 10-year average. |
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CFA captain slams Bracks over bushfires |
AAP |
The Age (article) |
A Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) official today renewed his attack on Premier Steve Bracks over the state's bushfire-prevention strategy. Captain Ralph Barraclough, from the Gippsland town of Licola, said the state's fire strategy was more about avoiding litigation than protecting landholders. |
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24/01/2003 |
Pinnibar fire burns hole in loggers' claim |
Mark Bek, Carlton North |
The Age (letter) |
It is sadly predictable that the loggers and some farmers should trot out their greed-driven and discredited arguments during the tragedy of a bushfire. They say logging and grazing in parks would reduce bushfire risk. Well why, then, is the largest Victorian fire now burning in the heavily logged Pinnibar region south of Corryong? And since when do cows eat bark, twigs and dead leaves - the fuel for fire? Bushfires are a fact of life in Australia, and we need to minimise the risks through strategic, scientifically based and well-funded practices. |
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National parks are a fire hazard |
Mark Poynter, Alphington |
The Age (letter) |
Victorian National Parks director Michael Fendley (22/1) misses the point about forestry activities and fire protection. Activities such as timber production provide both funding and a motive for roads and tracks to be kept open and maintained. |
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Jumping on the fire wagon |
Gavan McFadzean, Victorian campaigns manager, the Wilderness Society |
The Age (letter) |
The National Association of Forest Industries' statements calling for national parks around Melbourne to be burned to reduce fire risk (The Age, 22/1) have nothing to do with the current fire crisis, but are an opportunistic ploy to press their anti-national park case. Contrary to popular opinion, most fires start outside parks and burn in. The 1983 Ash Wednesday and 1939 Black Friday fires were mostly in regrowth forests recovering |
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23/01/2003 |
The bullbar view |
Michael Coldham, president, Four-Wheel-Drive Victoria |
The Age (letter) |
Four-Wheel-Drive Victoria rejects Michael Fendley's comments as bleating rubbish. Land management requires all and everything - including the maintenance of a track network throughout the high country, parks and forests for fire prevention, safety and recreation; the fuel reduction management programs, which include grazing and logging; and, more importantly, the will of government to allocate sufficient funding to parks and the Department of Sustainability and Environment to manage the land. It is a pity that Fendley, as director of Victoria's peak conservation body, does not understand what it is all about. |
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23/01/2003 |
The pine factor |
Simon Parker, Brunswick |
The Age (letter) |
The Victorian Association of Forest Industries and other assorted usual-suspect lobbyists who are so keen to capitalise on the Canberra tragedy are ignoring one crucial fact - the Canberra fires were so bad because of the pine plantations. A natural forest contains as much water-retaining vegetation as combustible material, and burns much more slowly than an artificially cleared and "managed" fore |
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A cattleman's fiery forecast |
J. P. Myhill, Kilcunda |
The Age (letter) |
Towards the end of last century, Victorian governments of both political persuasions pursued a policy of converting large areas of alpine Crown land into national parks, which involved revoking the summer grazing leases held by cattlemen. |
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23/01/2003 |
A humbler shade of green? |
David D. Westmore, Moreland |
The Age (letter) |
I wonder whether the greenies are going to apologise to all the victims of the bushfires now that their policies have been put into effect - namely, failure to have regular, controlled burning of undergrowth in our forests, failure to enable mountain cattle grazing to keep the forest growth under control, and failure to allow logging, which would probably provide some control over the nature of the bush. I think maybe the greenies have demonstrated that they are irrelevant and dangerous. Maybe the word "compromise" needs to enter the vocabulary of some people. |
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23/01/2003 |
Casting for a green herring |
Luke Chamberlain, Kensington |
The Age (letter) |
Blaming environmental groups for the bushfires demonstrates an opportunistic and ungracious lack of respect for those who have lost homes and family members in the bushfires. The only opportunity to be taken at this time is a tempered, consolidated review of bushfire precaution. However, rather than lending unbiased support to this process, the logging industry in particular seeks to use this opportunity to further their own agenda of logging more forests. Playing the blame game in this time of terrible tragedy is a dangerously irresponsible attempt to misguide the public and divert scrutiny from the long-term impacts of current logging practices. |
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23/01/2003 |
Fire happens . . |
Ben Howden, Northcote |
The Age (letter) |
Although it is imperative to understand the reasons for the disaster, there is an increasing tendency in the media, and society in general, to want to immediately point the finger whenever anything goes wrong - to ask "Who is at fault", "Who is to blame". This incites anger that may not be justified, and may not lead to the most constructive response to the problem. Sometime "it" happens - and there isn't always someone at fault. |
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Green groups blamed for fuel build-up |
Annabel Crabb, Richard Baker, Melissa Fyfe |
The Age (article) |
The forest industry has called for the right to clear trees in national parks, blaming poor maintenance and fuel build-up for the Victorian and Canberra fires. The chief executive of the National Association of Forest Industries, former ACT chief minister Kate Carnell, said state governments were being held hostage by the environmental movement and were increasing fire dangers by prohibiting the removal of trees and fuel from national parks. |
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Bid to curb fire peril |
Michael Gordon, Annabel Crabb - with Mike Seccombe |
The Age (article) |
The Howard Government will consider a national inquiry into bushfire prevention amid new questions about Canberra's preparedness for the weekend inferno that left four people dead and more than 400 homes in ruins. As residents of the national capital were warned last night to expect a return to extreme fire danger today, Prime Minister John Howard signalled his support for a major rethink on how the nation deals with bushfires. |
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This is no time to score points in a cynical blame game |
Michael Fendley, director, Victorian National Parks Association, Carlton |
The Age (letter) |
The 1939 Black Friday fires burnt an area 10 times that of Ash Wednesday, 1983. There was extensive logging and cattle grazing in 1939, but only a handful of national parks - and "greenies" had not even been invented. How frustrating it must have been not to have parks and environmentalists as ready scapegoats for the Black Friday inferno. |
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Canberra lessons for Melbourne |
Norman Endacott, Warranwood |
The Age (letter) |
One never thought of suburban Canberra as an urban/rural interface zone, in terms of bushfire menace - until now. And the Victorian Government must apply this lesson to the new far western suburbs of Melbourne, which seem to be spreading towards the forested hills at an exponential rate. The Wombat Forest and its Lerderderg and Bullengarook extension is starting to look like a dagger directed at the heart of those residential areas, and coming closer every year. |
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The 'benevolent logger' myth |
Andrew Cox, Moorooduc |
The Age (letter) |
Loggers and cattlemen are typically portrayed as the only decent, clear-headed types who can understand the bush. This perpetuates the great lie that those who seek to pillage our last few remaining wild areas for their own economic gain are somehow doing it for the good of all of us. |
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22/01/2003 |
Black wedges? |
James Hay, South Yarra |
The Age (letter) |
Why is the Bracks Government so keen to push for green wedge legislation in Victoria? The people of Sydney rejected their green wedge policy some 20 years ago because they could see it would put their lives at risk. Victorians do not want to go through the same agony that the Canberrans are at present experiencing. We do not want another Ash Wednesday. |
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Burning questions for the Greens |
Peter Myers, Watson, ACT |
The Age (letter) |
Fire-prone forests in National Parks should be taken out of the hands of the National Parks and Wildlife Service and given back to state forests to manage. The NPWS is full of Green ideologues, whereas forestry is full of foresters - more practical people, who know that it's better to harvest part of a forest than have the lot burned down. |
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20/01/2003 |
A fire plan, but no funds |
John Cribbes, Sale |
The Age (letter) |
In June 1997, the then Department of Natural Resources and Environment published a working paper (9703) showing that its fire plan would be of great benefit to the State. It got buried, never got the funds to implement it - and now, because of our politicians, native flora and fauna are being cremated at an alarming rate. So of course the fires are out of control- there is never enough fuel-reduction burning in the cool months because of the lack of finances. The Greens think they know about environmental management? Then why are they allowing National Parks to exist without properly funded management? |
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Pier-to-pub goes swimmingly |
Dan Silkstone |
The Age (article) |
The 23rd annual pier-to-pub swim went ahead with little disruption at Lorne yesterday, despite loggers clogging Geelong Road in a protest against the Bracks Government's decision to phase out logging in the Otways Ranges. Organisers said they were delighted with a crowd estimated at more than 20,000, which saw a record 4000 competitors attempt the 1.2-kilometre swim. |
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Science misused |
Denis Frith, Frankston |
The Age (letter) |
Robin Steward would like science to be directed towards protecting Planet Earth (5/1). As a scientist, so would I. However, I cannot think of any significant way this has been done to date. |
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The axe falls on woodchipping |
Richard Baker |
The Age (article) |
The divided community neighbouring the Wombat State Forest is to take over management of the area under a contentious trial announced yesterday by the Bracks Government. Acting Premier John Thwaites said woodchipping in the forest had ended last Wednesday as part of a Department of Sustainability and Environment review of the timber-harvesting arrangements for the Wombat region, north-west of Melbourne. |
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Protest standoff in forest 'prison' |
Michelle Paine |
The Mercury (article) |
Forest protesters remained locked in at the Weld Valley last night. About 20 people were at the new Weld River bridge for a second day, highlighting the failure of the State Government to act on a January 1 deadline to end clearfelling of selected forests as recommended in the Tasmania Together process. |
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