Ah, so the trees are sick, so lets chop them down! I hope my local GP doesn't take this idea on board when I next visit him with the flu.

Having just spent some time wandering around the Barmah / Millewa red gum forest, I can attest to the fact that the trees in that area are sick. Large areas have been reduced by logging to being nothing more than spindly sick regrowth, dotted with the stumps of any tree that was considered big enough to be worthy of a chainsaw which doesn't offer very much in the way of nesting and breeding holes for wildlife out there.

The author misses one important word altogether. It's 'flood'. Due to the drought the floods necessary for the health of the red gum forests haven't been happening, so placing the forests under even more stress. Placing the forests in National Parks is the best option to give what is our national heritage a chance to recover.

As for employment, I notice that the local garden shop is selling bags of red-gum chips for the garden. Personally I'd like to take my dollars out to the forests to see them at their best as a tourist and buy pine wood chips if necessary. If we keep stomping on the red gum forests, the tourists won't come, and trees that don't grow in the end won't provide employment to the logging industry.

You don't know what your talking about , the reason Barmah looks so appalling is lack of knowledge and arrogance and media that listens to Greenies like you , you have conned the citizens of our Country .

To grow healthy Red Gums at Barmah to thrive in drought conditions would require a tree spacing of about 12 meters plus .

Redgum Forrest's are thinned by ring barking .

What a load of misinformed, disingenuous propaganda.

60% of the redgum forest is dead due the declaration of the National Park? It seems the local council disagrees:

<< Yanga National Park still magnificent: councillor

Posted Mon Jan 5, 2009 9:47am AEDT

Balranald Shire Council in New South Wales has questioned a claim that 60 per cent of the trees in the new Yanga National Park have died.

The New South Wales Forest Products Association made the claim while criticising the Victorian Government's ban on logging in 100,000 hectares of Victorian River Red Gums. >>

http://tiny.cc/teG2h

"After four years, one small camping area has been established, yet the forest remains padlocked." ?

<< Thursday, 28 May 2009

65,000 hectare Yanga National Park yours to explore

The Deputy Premier and Minister for Climate Change and the Environment, Carmel Tebbutt, today welcomed the first visitors to the magnificent Yanga National Park in the state’s Riverina – home to 19,000 hectares of river red gum forests.

Ms Tebbutt launched visitor facilities at the park which protects some of the most threatened ecosystems in the state. >>

http://tiny.cc/c2pwR

Spare us the mendacious bleating of this industry shill.

Yes CJ, somebody is either telling porkies or at least bending the truth about the condition of the red gums in the Yanga National Park.
Have you been to Yanga recently? I notice your links are at least six months old. It should not be difficult to establish the condition of the red gums. Cause is another matter.

Oh Shazbaz, thanks you have made my day! There is no question that the river red gum forests are under stress. Some people would see climate change as being the cause, some people logging, some people drought and some like me, a combination of all three. But you have cut straight to the cut. It's because the naughty media have been listening to people like me. Damn it, we have been discovered! We weren't telling people that the moguls like Ruper Murdoch don't even twitch a finger with out consulting organisations like the Wilderness Society.

But anyway, I suspect the industry would defend to the death it's management practices in the Barmah/Millewa forest though even you say it looks appalling, yet this article slags off at the parks for trees lost there.

Bit of biology too. When a gap appears in the forest, a lot of seedlings spring up. The strongest survive. Thinning may be overkill. Dead trees provide habitat for native animals and you also won't find parks removing them without cause.

Sorry won't be able to respond for a while, I'm off to a park (chain saw free) where the regional centre nearby treasures it's attraction and where I'll be spending my money. I'll be visiting the Murray forests again too, but after the next flood. Like Lake Eyre, you pick your times.

Thanks for this informative local prospective on the management of forests that you have detailed first hand knowledge about. So often in the forest debate local knowledge and experience is dismissed in favour of articulate comment from well funded urban ’experts’.

Such an example is found in the Natural Resources Commission Preliminary Assessment Report on Riverina Bioregion Forest: river red gums and woodland forests, where it recorded that the experts predict visitation to Yanga National Park to reach 50,000 visits per annum. However the NRC’s found that the local community and industry queried the size of this projection. The reasons for their disagreement centred on the remoteness of the region, the number of national parks closer to major population centres and the perception that the regional tourist market is already well serviced.

This report (page 53) also has photos of healthy and dead and dying forest in the National park. It details the silvicultural techniques for management of the river red gum in the region, with clearfelling excluded and harvest based on single tree or small group selection and thinning. The Commission found that forest “Condition is likely to continue declining, and the forests are in need of water and possibly active silviculture to survive the current drought”.

The river red gum forests support both intrinsic and direct use values for a diverse range of communities and groups. These include communities with direct economic and employment links to the timber industry, timber mill owners and operators, local and regional landholders, Aboriginal communities, recreational users and tourism operators.

The NRC is currently seeking public input into the assessment report before 23 October 2009, before proceeding to the next step of looking at future management and even more forest lock up. It is important the commission fully considers the detailed local knowledge of people like Ken O’Brien.