Letters and Articles on Forest Issues
91 Can't see the wood (removing dead wood destroy’s habitats)
90 The Real Story in the Forest (not published)
89 Plantations would pay (there is no logic to Government policy)
88 Manipulating legality (changing the law to suit the loggers)
87 Chipping away at the truth on timber (response to 84 - pro woodchipping and "forest management")
86 Chipping away (anti woodchipping, with stats of forest lost)
85 Minister Tehan presides over logging "mistakes" (not published)
84 Checking a green trust (problems with the National Heritage Trust)
83 East Gippsland Regional Forest Agreement (not published)
82 When fire can be healthy (response to #79)
81 Bushfires (response to #79)
80 Greenies are also fighting the fires (response to #79)
79 Where are the protesters now? (Why aren’t greenies fighting fires?)
78 Fire not the only danger to bush (Poor land management and weeds are killing our parks)
77 Different memory of the meeting (Response to #76, recollections of Goolengook meeting different from Mrs Tehan)
76 Mrs Thatcher to a T (Interview/profile of Maree Tehan - her experiences with ‘radicals’ in the forest)
75 Fires highlight RFA faults (Parks and reserves cannot be replaced)
74 Man charged over log protest (Is DNRE actually the Police ?; they behave like them)
73 Land clearing tie to greenhouse gas (Yes, Australia's deforestation is up there with the worst of them)
72 We're not radicals, but lovers of nature (GOOD profile of 'normal' protesters, displaying & maintaining their rage)
71 Lessons too late for gum trees (Profit is the hidden agenda for Bannockburn clearing ?)
Professor Frank Fisher, Director, Graduate School of Environmental Science, Monash University, Clayton. The Age (Your Say) 14/6/98
One of the real miseries of environmental scientists' awareness is that publicising what we know inevitably casts us as whingers and spoilers. With that I guess you know the tone of what's coming:
" ... comforting tradition(s) of winter ... the woodpile ... a noble seasonal tradition ... (The Sunday Age, 31/5).
Aside from being an extensive source of atmospheric pollution, with all its discomforting implications for asthmatics and other human, animal and plant conditions, there are hidden problems associated with the "noble tradition" of removing wood from the countryside.
Most wood burned (inefficiently at that) in suburban fireplaces does not come from purpose-planted woodlots. It is stripped from all manner of countryside where it served as habitat for numerous animal and insect species -- some threatened.
A friend puts it this way: "A dead tree is only half through its life." Dead wood is a bank account, a larder or funding source for many native animals. It is often their only refuge in paddocks and road verges "tidied" efficiently into inhospitability. Sure fallen trees and branches provide for rabbits, too, and reduce tillage areas, but there are other ways around these problems.
And, yes, we can possibly retain a genetic memory of our wildlife species but, without their native habitat, the species these genes represent are meaningless: a panda without its great bamboo forests might as well be a black-splodged polar bear or a virtual white grizzly.
So I'm sorry for yet another sad story, but our voracious and uncritical urban appetites are just too costly - ultimately for all of us. There are other ways to enjoy our wood. Consider the great trees in the winter mists of your local park from the warmth of a good coat, or by jogging or cycling through them.
And, really, must I be branded as a member of the "hair-shirt brigade" when I suggest that these things might be enjoyable?
90 THE REAL STORY IN THE FOREST
Peter Campbell, letter (not published), 6/6/98
There is a loss of biodiversity when our native forest are cleared by industrial forestry, as anyone who has seen a burnt logging coop will testify. Unfortunately, full biological inventories of logged forests are not made so we don’t really know what we are losing.
Peter Sheehan (4/6) seeks to discredit facts on forest destruction and yet omits any facts of his own - a slick piece from the well-oiled PR machine that strives to tell the public all is well in our forests. However, monoculture eucalypt plantations are not biodiverse. A tree farm is not a forest.
Our remaining unprotected high conservation forests need urgent protection form the subsidised forest industry that is pillaging them to produce a low-value product that is no longer viable on world markets. Let’s get sensible and make our own paper rather than exporting our forests as pulp, and our jobs.
Tom Tootell, Albert Park. The Age (Your Say) 6/6/98
The Department of Forestry's logic leaves me in despair. If native forests (for timber, woodchips and firewood) were priced correctly, then farmers throughout Australia would have an alternative cash crop (especially in drought).
Forests should be priced at replacement cost. We should have a vision not to import native forest timber from Third World exploiters and develop a vigorous environment-friendly plantation industry in Australia and build up a value-added export trade.
Colin Smith, Glen Waverley, The Age (Your Say) 6/6/98
Marking World Environment Day, we should take note of the sequel to Senator Bob Brown's recent acquittal on a charge related to obstruction of clearfelling at Goolengook in East Gippsland. The court found that it was the clearfelling - rather than the obstruction - that was illegal. The logging was within 200 metres of the Goolengook River, and thus in contravention of the Heritage Rivers Act.
The response of the Kennett Government was to amend the Heritage Rivers Act to give retrospective legality to the clearfelling. Some 800 hectares in the vicinity of four rivers are now opened to logging. In some cases logging is permitted as close as 100 metres.
The 200-metre limit is maintained, however, in areas where it does not presently inconvenience the clearfellers! This sort of cynically contemptuous action subverts the whole notion of conservation reservation. And those responsible know it.
87 CHIPPING AWAY AT THE TRUTH ON TIMBER
The Age (letter), 4/6/98 Peter Shehan., Department of Forestry, University of Melbourne, Parkville
"Stop Amcor woodchipping Gippsland." So begins yet another letter to your columns (2/6). A bald premise that woodchipping equals permanent deforestation and some sweeping and unprovable statistics, followed by a Tandberg sketch to reinforce our prejudices. We can relax in our wooden chairs in our wood-framed houses and read our wooden papers and blame that voracious timber industry.
This comfortable thesis is wrong. The public native forests in Gippsland from which pulpwood has been harvested over the past 50 years have all been reforested. Some are now in national parks and the rest is in state forests. They all have a substantial biodiversity complement and, in their current tenure, all options except deforestation are available for their future. In terms of the total area of forest and the net impact on biodiversity, there is probably an overall benefit, as both Amcor and the state have established thousands of hectares of eucalypt plantations on uneconomic and abandoned farmland in the Strzelecki Ranges. The plantations are now so diverse that some visitors will not believe that they are not original native forest.
Compare the impact of occasional wood harvesting on biodiversity to permanent clearing for agriculture. Worse still if the use of the agricultural land is unsustainable. We are sad for the Gippsland farmers enduring yet another "drought" and as the last of their topsoil blows away. Land degradation is extensive in Gippsland and much worse in many other parts of Australia. It is a huge economic problem for the nation and by far our biggest environmental problem
None of this is new to the heavy hitters of the conservation movement but it is not surprising that, unlike Dr Patrick Moore, cofounder of Greenpeace, they are not prepared to acknowledge I "Woodchips" is too useful as a rallying cry to admit that forestry has a comparatively minimal impact on biodiversity or that it can even be beneficial.
The Age (letter) 2/6/98, Doris Johnston, Mornington
Stop Amcor woodchipping Gippsland. Each year 70,000 hectares of Australian native forests are cleared for woodchips. This is equivalent to 31,000 MCGs and represents a tragic loss of biodiversity and Australia's 5 per cent of native forest cover.
85 MINISTER TEHAN PRESIDES OVER LOGGING "MISTAKES"
Liz Ingham 19/3/98 (not published)
Marie Tehan, Conservation Minister, wants to appeal Bob Brown's court victory (The Age, 18/3). Senator Brown won his case because the logging he obstructed was taking place within an area protected by law under the Heritage Rivers Act 1992.
Tehan claims the Act is "open to interpretation", but the Act's text and maps are as clear as day. Both the letter and spirit of the law should have prevented the logging of this reserve. What isn't clear is how the logging was 'accidentally' planned inside a reserve in the first place. A Conservation Department should know its own laws.
It should also be noted that a colleague and I objected to suspicious unlegislated changes to Heritage River areas in 1996. As a result, plans to log in the Snowy River Heritage Area were stopped, and the reserve boundaries redrawn. When the Goolengook, Bemm and Errinundra Heritage Areas were later clearfelled, Ms Tehan's action must therefore have been deliberate.
Tehan's comment about "poorly drafted" legislation is ominous. Does she intend to re-draft it in parliament? Perhaps the Conservation Minister should change her logging plans to suit the law, not the law to suit her logging plans.
Editorial, The Age, 4/3/98
The Federal coalition pulled off an innovative and ultimately successful political manoeuvre before the last election by linking funding of a $1.25 billion Natural Heritage Trust with the part-sale of Telstra. This ploy undoubtedly helped build electoral support for the Telstra sale, and it lent the incoming Howard Government increased credibility on environmental issues.
The environment, of course, deserves government priority in its own right. None the less, the promised financial spin-off from the Telstra sale has been welcomed by environmentalists as a way to regain lost ground. But this idea, which was born of politics, has become tainted by allegations of political manipulation.
Ninety per cent of the first $200 million in grants distributed under the Natural Heritage Trust have gone to coalition-held seats. Members of the Liberal and National Parties are reported to have headed at least half the state panels overseeing this distribution. The Federal Opposition has complained that provincial ALP seats have received a fifth of the amount spent on coalition seats - an average $50,000 compared with $243,000. The federal auditor-general, Mr Pat Barrett, is conducting a preliminary inquiry to check allegations of political bias in the grants.
The Government has defended the grants, saying that Labor electorates received only a small percentage because the coalition held 40 rural seats to Labor's three. Mr Howard also said that areas with huge environmental challenges, the Murray-Darling Basin in particular, were overwhelmingly in coalition-held seats.
But with the resumption of Parliament this week has come revelations that the Environment Minister, Senator Robert Hill, approved a $52,000 Natural Heritage Trust grant to the Woodhouse Pastoral Company, linked to the Baillieu family, which is closely associated with the Liberal Party. Senator Hill approved the grant after it had been rejected by the Victorian regional assessment panel. The Opposition is claiming political favouritism and wants a Senate committee to investigate the operations of the trust. Democrat and Green senators say they want the entire environmental funding process reviewed.
Certainly, the public is entitled to a better explanation Of the Natural Heritage Trust grants process and the outcomes so favourable to coalition-held seats. We need to be told all the details of the minister's intervention in the grants process leading to the Baillieu grant. In the absence of such detail, suspicions will remain that some of the grants in the grants may have been used as a political slush fund.
83 EAST GIPPSLAND REGIONAL FOREST AGREEMENT
Liz Ingham, 10/1/98 (not published)
Thousands of hectares of forest are burning in the Alpine National Park (The Age, 2/2), graphically illustrating a major fault in the East Gippsland Regional Forest Agreement (RFA).
If parks and reserves are destroyed by fire, they cannot be replaced because the RFA has locked all public forests outside parks into providing the logging industry with clearfell areas for the next 20 years. The RFA specifies that the Commonwealth will only agree to reserve boundary changes that 'ensure there is no net deterioration in timber production capacity'.
In contrast, if areas planned for logging are burned by wildfire, reserves can be re-zoned to allow timber quantities to be maintained. For example, a reserve for the rare Spot-tailed Quoll in East Gippsland's Yalmy region was given to the logging industry when the RFA was signed and 'replaced' with forest of no known value. It was one of only a handful of quoll reserves known to contain the carnivorous marsupial, but planners were struggling to fill timber quotas.
Brigite Muir and Senator Bob Brown joined hundreds of protesters last year trying to stop illegal logging of the Goolengook Heritage River area (which should be federally protected). Did you know they were also praying for rain?
Martin Daley, Highett, The Age (letter) 19/1/98
Chris Blackwood, Logging contractor, chided "green groups" for not fighting the recent Alpine bushfire and questions whether conservationists have a "genuine and practical interest in our forests" (14/1). As I have some experience in forest conservation issues and campaigns I would like to point out that:
* Many rural conservationists are volunteers for local CFA units
* Fire always was, is now, and always will be vital to the health of forests in this country.
White Australians, after 200 years, have not accepted the inevitability of fire. We still plan and build in ignorance, and in place of reason have created fire phobia and the cult of the firefighting hero. This hysteria has led to exceptionally high fuel loads that result in intense and uncontrollable fires that alter forest structure. These changes compound the problem.
The Aboriginal approach was to learn how to use fire to manage fire. They instigated frequent low-intensity fires in cooler seasons that reduced fuel but preserved and enhanced moist zones such as rainforest that are natural fire buffers and refuges. For the record, these are not opinions from an ivory tower. I helped fight a fire in East Gipps land in 1996 and the Ash Wednesday fires devastated my family with the repercussions still being felt today.
Jill Redwood, Goongerah, The Age (letter) 17/1/98
Having lived, worked and fought fires in the Gippsland forests for 20 years, I would like to answer the claims by loggers that conservationists do not fight fires (14/1).
Chris Blackwood says the only heroes who fight fires are those who have a "practical interest in forests" such as loggers, government workers and locals. I personally know dozens of environmentalists who are out there with the best when a fire threatens. And their passion and "practical concern" for the forest goes far beyond protecting it for its exploitable resource.
The majority of conservationists living in these areas are in fact as robust and fit as the best firefighters and perform, superhuman feats out on the front line. They just don't wear "I am a greenie" emblazoned on their overalls. The combination of sweat and ash after days battling to save a forest renders all firefighters the same colour. Mr Blackwood may be shocked one day to discover we are working right alongside.
80 GREENIES ARE ALSO FIGHTING THE FIRES
Matthew Walters, Box Hill, The Age (letter) 15/1/98
Chris Blackwood (14/1), laments the absence of forest-protester type greenies at the Caledonia/alpine National Park bush fires. I appreciate Mr Blackwoods frustration. A third generation logger, he feels a strong attraction to the Gippsland forests. Like me he loves them and doesn't want too see harm done to them. Like me, he felt a moral compulsion to assist with the fire-fighting efforts.
I too have strong ties with the land. I have been involved in a number of forest protests, and so am regarded by the less-informed as a "long-haired", "rent-a-crowd" greenie. 1 am a geographer and a past employee of the government department that is managing the fires. I am a founding member and past state secretary of the Australian Greens.
I contacted Mr Blackwood by telephone to mention that I too was at the fires, doing voluntary first aid work. I'm pleased we have spoken, because we both consider ourselves greenies, reminded ourselves we had a lot in common: forest protester and logging contractor.
79 WHERE ARE THE PROTESTERS NOW?
Chris Blackwood, The Age (letter) 14/1/98
I am writing with regards to the bushfires in East Gippsland I cannot believe the green groups who are intent on protecting our forests yet - while the bushfires are raging - are nowhere to be seen! Up there fighting the fires are community people, forest workers, Department of Natural Resource and Environment people, and basically people who have a genuine and practical interest in our forests.
These same Green groups spent months in the Goolengook forest blockading a logging contractor from performing his normal daily duties, and as a consequence put him and his workers in a situation of not being able to earn money to support their families. Now the fire season is upon us, this contractor will be the first one in the forest when called upon by the DNRE.
If the green groups would like to be taken seriously, they need to get out in the forest and protect them as timber workers do.
78 FIRE NOT THE ONLY DANGER TO BUSH
Craig Hinton, Seaford, The Age (letter) 13/1/98
Death of a Park (The Age, 10/1). Yes, there are many dead plants and animals, with many more to follow in the next few months. Some of these plants and animals may never return. Rest assured, however, the Alpine National Park is not dead. Even now, safe in the soil or raining down from the dead trees, millions of seeds await the first rains. Bulbs and the like will reshoot. Animals will migrate from surrounding areas.
My concern is what life will return this time. Driving Up to Licola on New Year's Day, I was dismayed the hillsides choked with blackberries along a nearby creek, many other introduced weeds were evident. Unfortunately, these seeds will be mingling with those of eucalypt and wattle and will form part of the new forest that emerges from the fire.
The true threat to our bush is not fire, but the poor management of the lands in and around our parks. Public and private land managers in these areas must be made accountable for the control of weeds if we are to have high quality bush in the future. There must be effective well-funded programs to control the growth of these weeds following fire, clear-felling or building a road.
Nowhere is safe. Oxalis is growing at Wilsons Promontory. Couch is creeping into Bulga Valley. The Mornington Peninsula National Park is being overrun by Polygala and mirror bush. Time is short if our bush is to be preserved. The death of a park may come, but it will not be heralded by a blazing flame, but a strangled whimper.
77 DIFFERENT MEMORY OF THE MEETING
John Fraser, Hawthorn, The Age (letter) 7/1/98
As one of the over 3000 concerned citizens who have campaigned to end logging at Goolengook, I read your interview with Marie Tehan (The Age, 3/1) with considerable concern.
My memory of the events she describes in her meeting with loggers, differs markedly from Mrs Tehan's, and I was also there. First there is the matter of location. The meeting in question actually took place in Orbost, over an hour's drive from the stunningly beautiful rainforests of Goolengook.
The question asked by my friend did not contain the "F" word as Mrs Tehan claims. His actual words were, "If you take that much timber out, what will happen to the forest?" Mrs Tehan then rounded on my friend and said "You! Where are you from!" At no time did she address the actual question. Mrs Tehan also urged the loggers present not to listen to conservationists, and added that no government in Victoria's history had been more committed to forest industries than her own. This from the Minister for Conservation
Her categorisation of us as "extremists" seems strange, since our opposition to logging Goolengook, is in exact agreement with Victorian Government scientists who surveyed the area. As for whether my friend wore earrings, I really don't remember. And who cares anyway? I wonder if Mrs Tehan really knew who in that crowd were the protesters and who were the loggers ?
Jane Sullivan (excerpts from article), The Age 3/1/98
MARIE TEHAN was a controversial Health Minister and now she is a controversial Minister for Conservation and Lands. She can't seem to help it. She's been away on holidays for a couple of weeks and, as she picks up the telephone, she says firmly to someone to water the plants. Then she's talking about Port Phillip Bay, her big new year interest, and how this lovely summer Melbourne has made everyone realise what a precious asset it is.
She calls the bay an "unpolished jewel". It’s her first hint of colourful language. She talks of the bay in a measured, no-nonsense way, as she talks of most things. The bay is a major asset", there is a need for sustainable foreshore development" and "agreed action plans".
For Mrs Tehan, developing the bay is a priority for the Government; those close to the issue say she is driving plans for its rebirth. She knows it will be tricky to tamper with the lazy but loved bay, and she emphasises how Important the environment is and how carefully she will approach any change to the way it is managed.
Still, she's firm: "The bay hasn't been taken advantage of, and the Government is committed to a major increase in status and use of the bay.
Mrs Tehan brings her own style to her portfolio. Recently, she remembered a meeting with timber workers at Goolengook State Forest in Gippsland. Suddenly, protesters against the logging turned up. "They had earrings where nobody else has them" she says. "Some bloke got up and said I'm here to save the forest, why are you effing up the forest?'. All these timber workers swung around and all at once I became quite the heroine of the morning."
She's enjoying her own story, the workers versus the weirdos. Then, conscious she has a journalist with her, she goes into explanations of how to protect the forest and also allow the timber industry to harvest some areas. The extremists aren't accepting the umpire's decision. But they feel very strongly, and are always going to protest." It’s typical Tehan: a spark of relish for the drama of confrontation, then back to her world view. At the centre, the reasonable sensible people like herself people who get necessary things done. On the fringe, the extremists, sincere but strange; or worse, the people with barrows to push.
Liz Ingham, The Age (letter) 3/1/98
Thousands of hectares of forest are burning in the Alpine National Park (The Age, 2/2), graphically illustrating a major fault in the East Gippsland Regional Forest Agreement (RFA).
If parks and reserves are destroyed by fire, they cannot be replaced because the RFA has locked all public forests outside parks into providing the logging industry with clearfell areas for the next 20 years. The RFA specifies that the Commonwealth will only agree to reserve boundary changes that 'ensure there is no net deterioration in timber production capacity'.
In contrast, if areas planned for logging are burned by wildfire, reserves can be re-zoned to allow timber quantities to be maintained. For example, a reserve for the rare Spot-tailed Quoll in East Gippsland's Yalmy region was given to the logging industry when the RFA was signed and 'replaced' with forest of no known value. It was one of only a handful of quoll reserves known to contain the carnivorous marsupial, but planners were struggling to fill timber quotas.
74 MAN CHARGED OVER LOG PROTEST
The Age (article), 17/9/97
A 26-year-old man has been charged with making threats to seriously injure, making a bomb threat, being in possession of a weapon and assault in relation to logging protests at Goolengook in East Gippsland according to the Department of Natural Resources and Environment. Logging of the Goolengook area has been plagued by protests since it began on World Environment Day in June this year. The man has been bailed to appear at Orbost Magistrates Court on 20 November, the department said.
73 LAND CLEARING TIE TO GREENHOUSE GAS
By CLAIRE MILLER, The Age (article) 18/9/97
Australia could significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions simply by curbing its excessive land clearing, a former Government adviser said yesterday. Professor lan Lowe, the professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University, said Australia was clearing about 600,000 hectares every year - about half the rate of tree felling in the Amazon basin at the height of international condemnation of Brazil in 1990-91.
Professor Lowe said land clearing, between 60 and 80 per cent of which occurred in Queensland, accounted for about 30 per cent of Australia's greenhouse emissions. Professor Lowe, who chaired the advisory council that submitted the 1996 State of the Environment report to the Federal Government a year ago, said Queensland's decision to allow marginal, drought-prone land to be cleared for grazing did not make economic, much less environmental, sense.
He warned against Queensland continuing down the path of other states that are now suffering the effects of excessive clearing. The federal Environment Minister, Senator Robert Hill, said last night that while land clearing was slowing down, Australia had lost too much. He told The 7.30 Report the Queensland Government had been cooperative in developing measures to reduce clearing.
The Queensland Minister for Natural Resources, Mr Howard Hobbs, told The Age that Queensland had the right to be able to develop its land as other states had done, and it was doing so in a sustainable manner
Clearing out - annual deforestation in hectares 1981-1990
| Country | Deforestation (hectares) |
| Brazil (Amazonia region) | 2.1 million |
| Indonesia | 1.2 million |
| Zaire | 732,000 |
| Mexico | 678,000 |
| Bolivia | 625,000 |
| Venezuala | 599,000 |
| Thailand | 515,000 |
| Australia | 500,000 |
| Sudan | 482,000 |
| Tanzania | 438,000 |
| Paraguay | 403,000 |
| Myanmar (Burma) | 401,000 |
| Malaysia | 396,000 |
| Columbia | 367,000 |
| Zambia | 363,000 |
72 WE'RE NOT RADICALS, BUT LOVERS OF NATURE
Lewis Luxton, Connewarre, The Age (letter), Wednesday 10/9/97
Having spent much of the past fortnight at Bannockburn, in a vain attempt to halt the total destruction of 8.5 hectares of rare, very beautiful and ancient yellow gums, I saw the chairman of Barwon Water (who had ordered this carnage in order to build sewerage ponds) appear on television to brand his opposition as "the extreme, the radical element"
I considered some of my fellow protesters. There were at least a dozen farmers; a computer programmer; two teachers, one of them a school principal; a mason and an actor; a botanist and two plant nursery proprietors; a retired diplomat; a physiotherapist; a theatre sister; a retired Telecom technician; a journalist; a horde of schoolchildren and a maker of furniture, who splendidly faced the bulldozers on horseback.
Well, that last may have seemed a little extreme to some, but among the rest of us there was very little long hair, nobody fired up on mind-altering substances and not one international socialist. We are the new activists and we think ahead in generations, not just to the next balance sheet or the next sleazy, stage-managed election. We are becoming a force to be reckoned with and those with limited vision and large egos would do well to pay us heed.
71 LESSONS TOO LATE FOR GUM TREES
Stephen Murphy, Teesdale, Finalist, Victorian Landcare Awards, 1997
The Age (letter), Wednesday 10/9/97
The decision to clear 20 acres of old-growth woodland for sewerage lagoons at Bannockburn throws into question the State Government's commitment to Landcare. On one hand they are encouraging farmers to protect remnant native vegetation and plant trees, and on the other hand they condone the needless clearing of a rare species of yellow gum in a district where the woodlands are all but gone.
It is easy enough to hand over hard-earned public money for revegetation works, which provide good PR, but when it comes to protecting our dwindling areas of remnant vegetation, there seems to be a definite lack of motivation. It is likely that we will discover that there has been a hidden agenda behind this whole Bannockburn issue, and there is no doubt in my mind that the underlying motive will be profit.
When are our state leaders going to learn from the mistakes of past generations? Short-term profits earned from clearing our native forests for development, too often result in long-term repair costs of much greater proportions.