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The Forum > Article Comments > Crime, fiction and political intrigue > Comments

Crime, fiction and political intrigue : Comments

By Chris James, published 3/10/2008

A story that could be a TV drama - with the arrival of the A-Team a more insidious side of the timber industry began to emerge.

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And so the pro-logging fraternity flanked by their spin doctors and greedy vested interests continue to try and hoodwink those of us who truly care for the well being of the eco-systems that support us.
Their continued bogus so called science is contributing to devasting climate change and economic collapse. The writing is on the wall but wood chips get in their eyes and all they see is their own biased justifications.
Answer me these questions Mr Poynter and other forest rapers:
Is most of the mountain ash taken from the central highlands going to Geelong, being wood chipped and sold to Japan?
Is the timber harvesting (forest raping) being subsurdised by the Brumby goverment? If so...please explain.
How much per ton are the "harvesters" paying?
Are the loggers really happy being exploited by greed from those who are really benefitting from the destruction of our native forests.
No logging in water catchments ought to be allowed.
Posted by keithcolin, Wednesday, 8 October 2008 10:11:42 AM
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Ah the argument of science. Science is an extraordinary art, it can be bought and sold depending on who is looking for what and how much they are prepared to pay. Science can justify almost anything but it cannot create feeling. Standing in a logged forest, with the streams contaminated, the slash and trees still smoldering, the remains of a yellow bellied glider charred at ones feet with the once rich soil so cooked, dead and dusty nothing moves.

Science cannot tell us anything here, our human spirit, our connection to country, our love of the land is what will eventually stop this wanton destruction and no matter how much the native forestry defenders call ‘science’, evidence dictates that feeling is prevailing, measurable by the current enrollment of forestry students at Melbourne University and The Australian National University- single digit figures with courses having to be closed down. Forestry in this country is a race to the bottom enforced by rules very few have agreed too. Your science Mr Poynter and Mr Rheese is very, very unpopular and until your forestry science fosters life instead of death, native forestry's days are numbered.

But as we are discussing science, fans of it such as Mr Rheese and Mr Poynter may like to hear the findings of the latest science of the government by Professor Garnaut, in his final report that will shape Australia’s response to climate change, Prof Garnaut has made the following recommendation on the logging of native forests;

‘There is significant global potential for emissions removal (or carbon sequestration) through revegetation of previously cleared land and increasing the stock of carbon in forests, wooded land and soils. Management of existing forests for ecosystem services, rather than simply for fibre production, would significantly reduce emissions from degradation and deforestation.’

Some might say the forests have finally been seen for the trees...or will this be inconvenient science for you two?
Posted by environment for everyone, Wednesday, 8 October 2008 10:42:12 AM
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Ah, the well intentioned but misguided beliefs of someone who doesn't understand that science is nothing more than a tool to give us answers to questions that some people don't want to ask because they may not like the answers!
Science can tell us almost everything we need to know in the logged and burnt forest described in the last post: mountain ash is adapted to infrequent disastrous fires which create almost exactly the same conditions as logging followed by fire, with dead fauna and polluted streams, but with the knowledge that the soil properties, flora and fauna will all return.
Scientific research done properly can't be bought and sold; that accusation only applies to the people who try to manipulate it for pro- or anti-positions.
As for Garnaut, he's actually an economist trying (successfully for the most part) to understand science and come up with economic responses to environmental problems. Is he saying there should be no more logging of our native forests? I doubt it. He's urging that protection of all forest ecosystem services - which by definition must include timber production - needs to be built into forest management plans.
Posted by Bernie Masters, Wednesday, 8 October 2008 10:57:45 AM
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This quote from Richard Flanagan's article in The Monthly says it all for me. Clearly, forest fires do not reproduce ['almost'] the same conditions as logging.
‘The hellish landscape that results from clear-felling - akin to a Great War battlefield - is generally turned into large monocultural plantations of either radiata pine or Eucalyptus nitens, sustained by such a heavy program of fertilisers and pesticides that water sources for some local communities have been contaminated by Atrazine, a controversial herbicide linked with cancer and banned in much of Europe. Blue-dyed carrots soaked in 1080 poison are laid on private plantations to kill native grazing animals that pose a threat to tree seedlings. The slaughter that results sees not only possums, wallabies and kangaroos die slowly, in agony, but other species - including wombats, bettongs and potoroos - killed in large numbers, despite being officially protected species’ .
Flanagan is describing Tasmania but this is indicative of an overall disrespect for our national heritage.
Posted by Dr Chris James, Wednesday, 8 October 2008 11:33:24 AM
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Timber production is NOT an ecosystem provision Mr Masters. Ecosystem provisions are natural byproducts of terrestrial and ocean systems engendering life on earth; water, air, carbon storage and sequestration. Logging does not occur naturally but rather is a by product of mans quest to extract the earths bounty for gain. This is the most amusing misnomer the native forests loggers purport, that their industry is somehow ‘natural’. Terms like ‘harvesting’, ‘sustainable’ ‘naturally fire occurring’, please Mr Masters, for anyone that has studied the montane forests of Vic or Tas they should know that wet, aging forests subject to fires do not behave the same as a logged wet forests subject to regen. burns.

What is commonly known is that commercial activity in the forests is exacerbating fire risk for a number of reasons. Logging creates densely stocked, even aged forests that, by 30 years of age, are much more flammable due to massive fuel loads, according to Professor Lindenmayer’s research. In addition to the forests them selves being of greater fire threat after being logged, post logging fires also add an enormous risk, routinely escaping their coupe boundaries and often being found to reignite months after the DSE have considered the coupe safe. This is being fostered by drought and generally warmer seasons, so logging puts massive fire risk into our catchments. Interesting fact, wildfire benefits the logging community in so many ways, not least of all the free for all forest salvage log that takes place after a forest has been burnt but additionally logging contractors are handsomely paid to keep their logging machines on stand by during fires unlike the CFA volunteers and farmers that offer their personal machinery freely at huge personal risk.
Posted by environment for everyone, Wednesday, 8 October 2008 11:42:01 AM
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Still no apology from Dr Chris James for falsely accusing MWPOYNTER of a slur, an accusation that a casual reader of the comments would know, should have been directed to me. Such an accusation is a bit rich seeing her article is riddled with slurs on the timber workers, their families, their communities and the many businesses that operate lawfully and sustainably within the forest sector.
Dr James uses her communications skills to cherry pick quotes from green apologists and journalists supporting her view about forestry. She falsely labels timber folk as criminals, saboteurs and a full range of ‘not so nice’ people as portrayed in the TV series “Underbelly”.
She uses quotes from another TV program, Four Corners that went to air during the 2006 Victorian election; but she deliberately misses the “underbelly” tactics of the greens:
“SALLY NEIGHBOUR: They also revealed some of the greenies' own tricks - like planning a graphic photo display about the effects of logging, using dead possums from a collection the forest campaigner kept in his freezer.
Do you remember that discussion?
GERALDINE RYAN, FORMER VOLUNTEER, ENVIRONMENT VICTORIA: I remember that was more than once. That he...he used to collect, if a possum was a road kill or an animal was a road kill, would collect them and keep them in the fridge. It was just again...to make it, sort of, real to the public.
SALLY NEIGHBOUR: What, animals out of the forest campaigner's freezer?
GERALDINE RYAN: Yes.”
Thus to describe the author of this article as a spin doctor, is totally defensible.
Dr James attempts to justify her vitriolic piece by quoting Richard Flanagan who is of course a fiction writer and as National Senior journalist Piers Akerman recently pointed out the “TRUTH has suffered a major setback” in the article quoted see http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,24310573-5006550,00.html
Flanagan is not averse, like some of James’ supporters, to make outrageous claims of “rape” and “rapists”. Such terms should be offensive to all fair minded people wishing to have an informed discussion.
Posted by cinders, Wednesday, 8 October 2008 1:55:08 PM
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