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The Forum > Article Comments > Preserving our forests should be a top priority > Comments

Preserving our forests should be a top priority : Comments

By Dimity Williams and Katherine Barraclough, published 23/12/2016

The magnificent old growth forests of East Gippsland are a national treasure. Yet state-endorsed logging continues in this region, undermining the rich tapestry of plants and animals that support human health.

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Logging ancient forests is like burning works of art in the fireplace. Once gone what will replace them is not as aesthetically pleasing, biologically diverse or carbon absorbing. A good example in Tasmania is the tourist drive to the Big Tree Reserve in the Styx Valley. About 5km along stands of magnificent swamp gums (Vic mountain ash) have been felled on both sides of the road. What once seemed like an enchanted wilderness now looks like a war zone. With global warming, local drying and woody weed infestation those 70m tall trees are unlikley to come back in the lifetime of anybody today.

Old growth logging is essentially mining of living things. We don't pretend iron ores bodies will grow back like a Magic Pudding but foresters do. You'd think by the 21st century it would be all plantation timber. The fact that plantation blue gums don't make good enough timber seems to be an admission they can't do it sustainably. Many split logs from ancient trees go to the chipper to make paper which within weeks rots or burns back to the atmosphere. We are treating national treasures as if they were a backyard vegie patch.
Posted by Taswegian, Friday, 23 December 2016 8:08:53 AM
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Taswegian, you are so correct.......................
Logging old growth is sheer stupidity.
Posted by ateday, Friday, 23 December 2016 8:38:19 AM
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Forests are a resource that do grow again, if harvested. With so much forest now locked up with little in the way of fire breaks to control bushfires, it is almost certain that places like East Gippsland will experience a major fire sometime in the next few years. That will be far more devastating to threatened species than a bit of controlled logging.
Posted by Bren, Friday, 23 December 2016 9:19:31 AM
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These two are "Doctors for the Environment". I doubt that they are any different from any other 'ratbags for the environment' - totally obsessed, unbalanced and annoying.
Posted by ttbn, Friday, 23 December 2016 9:37:33 AM
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these Doctors for environment should move to Indonesia where true vandalism is taking place.

'Sadly, the survival of these creatures is in jeopardy as their habitat is degraded for logging and mining.'

can't see their own hypocrisy as they fly the planet, use mobile phones and have more comforts than any other generation.
Posted by runner, Friday, 23 December 2016 10:08:51 AM
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This is the same sort of emotionally disturbed, diabolically dumb, ideological imperatives that lead to those disastrous bush fires that wiped out millions of hectares of native forests and many critically endangered plants and animals! Many of which have never really recovered or have been supplanted by introduced opportunistic feral species!

These landless, banner waving, slogan shouting, rent-a-crowd, misfits have already been allowed to do far too much harm to our forests!

Pacifists one and all, who'll bash and brain you if you dare disagree with their mindless mantras/broken record rethoric!

Trees store carbon whether horizontal or vertical! But not when they are all but burnt to the ground; as a end consequence of ecological extremism!

Native peoples have been selectively logging their old growth forests for millennia, and to the overall benefit of flora and fauna!

Robust young forests collect vastly more carbon, while old growth forests collect much less in any fair comparison that quite deliberately, and it should, exclude already stored carbon!

It's what you collect now, not what you stored over a 100 years ago that matters!

Its this myopically focused, for rank political purpose, typical errant nonsense, that prevents more intelligent sane rationalists, from effectively addressing climate change!

Well done, you should feel proud of your achievement! More barbequed glider possum anyone? My Koula is a little underdone! And the snake is charred beyond recognition!

What would we do without these environmental activists and their, lock it up and leave it, charred earth outcome? Go back to cave dwelling and running your food down with a stone tied to a stick, perhaps?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Friday, 23 December 2016 10:34:47 AM
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