A thin slice (only) of the annihilation of forests and wildlife taking place along coastal hinterland NSW, Oct 2011. YouTube links: Without sound but clear. With sound but less clear
More evidence: read (pdf)
Pre-existing logging practices allowed for the regrowth of trees over 15 years (it used to be 50), now this 'come-back' time for loggers can be less than 5 years in order to meet a flawed government 'wood supply' contract.
As a consequence intensive logging is NOW occurring across NSW for every 'stick of wood'.
This environmental catastrophe can only be stopped by you, the NSW people whose public forests are being devastated and sold overseas.
Your must demand of your state rep that they lobby the federal government to help NSW buy out the wood supply licence granted to the multi-national, BORAL. Then real governing could begin. Instead of clear felling the majority of our native forests, destroying vital carbon sink and home of NSW wildlife and ecosystems, long term investment and jobs could be made planting alternative building materials on degraded or unused land.
DEMAND an immediate halt to the wood supply licence destroying NSW native forests and to the conversion by stealth into mono-cultures that they will probably try to call 'plantations' for trading on the world stock market. The extinction of our wildlife is subsidising profit for multinationals.
DEMAND Commonsense. Why destroy existing native ecosystems and trees currently slowing climate change and turn them into barren carbon tax credit schemes that profit multi-nationals/some politicians ? Leave native ecosystems intact.
DEMAND life for Australian wildlife!
This year NSW and other Australian wildlife faces its greatest crisis - a final onslaught on native forests by the logging machinery of multinationals, causing impacts from which wildlife will never recover. Native forests are deliberately being converted to mono-cultures, single species forests that will benefit big business only.
In NSW, the government ignores the
Auditor-General’s reportTo meet wood supply commitments, native forest on the north coast is being cut faster than it is growing back. This means that the forest will not regrow but there will be a reduction in yield in the future.
Forests NSW continue to look for new sources of hardwood timber to meet existing commitments from private property and leasehold land.
Given that native forest operations ran at loss of $14.4 million in 2007-08, continuing to service wood supply licences raises concern re the financial burden of loss on Forests NSW. (editorial note: i.e. the tax payer)
For the North Coast, where more than two thirds of all sawlog volume is obtained, yield modelling assumes a high level of cut for 20 years in order to meet wood supply commitments agreed by the Government.
This means there will be less timber available in the long term.
Content summary: Sustaining native forest operations: Forests NSW [The Audit Office of New South Wales]. (Performance audit) April 2009 revealing forests stretched beyond capacity. Throughout Australia the major parties ignore the warning by Australian scientists - Australian logging is a major causal factor of the sixth greatest extinction crisis'Extinction crisis in Oceania' Professor Richard Kingsford of the University of New South Wales, lead author of the report into this study states:
"Earth is experiencing its sixth great extinction event" and "this threat is advancing on six major fronts" "Our region has the notorious distinction of having possibly the worst extinction record on earth. This is predicted to continue without serious changes to the way we conserve our environments and dependent organisms."
Threats in Oceania include:
Ø Loss and degradation of habitat is the largest single threat to land species, including 80 percent of threatened species.
Ø About 70 percent of remaining forests are ecologically degraded from logging.
Ø More than 2,500 invasive plants have colonized New Zealand and Australia - representing about 11 percent of native plant species.
Ø Invasive weeds, vertebrate pests, and fishes introduced by government, agriculturalists, horticulturalists and hunters.
Compiled by a team of 14 scientists after review of 24,000 articles this report was published in Conservation Biology. Comments from press release July 2009, Dan Gaffney, UNSW Faculty of Science of this planet. This is centred in our region.
In multiple states multinationals have contracts to wood supply that scientists say should have never been granted.
Ecologically inadequate, self-monitored codes of practice The process flawed from the outset..
"It was in Pitt Street in the city with little notice. The forestry department came up with a list of places, all proposal and counter proposal. There has been no real science as a basis of the Regional Forest Agreements on which these supply licences were granted. It was a quick political decision which had to be made. The Resource Assessment Commission used only xx indicator species in this area but generally it wasn't done. So any figures about what could/would be impacted had to be pulled out of the air. In many cases there was no soil nutrient data and this is what was necessary to establish any likelihood of biodiversity etc. Even the wildlife atlas can bring only a rough 5 km likelihood or not of species."
NSW scientist at the original negotiations
How the public and almost no other organisation can take legal action to prevent damage from logging given the way these wood supply licences are set up..
Because forestry has such broad codes of practice under these special regional forest agreements they get to make their own decisions about when or if they need a licence to operate from the relevant state environmental department. As well as that they do their own or no self assessment of already inadequate environmental practice.
"The only really legal question is after the event – for example a compliance action of sorts – which is of course retrospective and after the environment has been logged and damaged."
Senior solicitor, NSW Environmental Defenders Office, April 2010
leave thinly disguised clear felling across millions of hectares. The native plant and animal life remaining in small pockets is subjected to multiple impacts - no hollow trees in which to live and reproduce, total weed invasion of felled areas so no return of habitat, easy access by feral animals, populations so small that genetic problems arise - this causes mass extinction.
The country’s carbon sink is being felled. Wildlife is slaughtered daily along with hope for its future habitat. This fell and burn practice favouring single species forests means weed, feral animal and pathogen invasion on a scale never yet been seen, which will be impossible to control. These are the risks Australian federal and state governments are taking with a continent on the brink, already having one of the highest extinction rates on earth, on a planet out of control.
Talk to EVERYONE you know about this and MAKE YOUR MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT AWARE OF THIS.
GET THIS ON THE TALK BACK RADIO AGENDA AND IN NEWSPAPERS
THE FIGHT IS ON FOR YOUR COUNTRY YOUR WILDLIFE YOUR FUTURE
IMMEDIATE
LATER BUT GUARANTEED
On the Road 2011
It’s now or never to save the variety of ecosystems of this world. There is a growth industry in genuine alternative building/product material supply -so do not allow industry and government to get away with this short term sell out process that guarantees the destruction of native forests. Logging companies using big machines employ very few. Planting degraded land with the right crops employs many. Restore the damaged native forests that are the most efficient carbon sinks and give the wildlife that WE HAVE BROUGHT TO THE BRINK, a chance to recover.