Logging in Mumbulla State Forest - Koori media
14 Apr 2010
Three traditional owners led 100 protesters peacefully through the Mumbulla compartment due to be logged today.
Mumbulla is a mountain sacred to the Yuin people - the Traditional Aboriginal Owners. They have lived on the coast around Wapengo and Middle Lakes for many thousands of years, and regularly travelled through what is now Mumbulla State Forest to the Mountain for ceremonial and cultural purposes.
Title to those parts of Mumbulla Mountain, which were not state forest lands, was handed back to the Traditional Owners a few years ago and have been gazetted as Biamanga National Park. The Park is managed by a Board of Management upon which there are a majority of Traditional Aboriginal Owners, and leased back to the State of NSW as a National Park.
Mumbulla and Gulaga are twin sacred mountains to the Yuin, and sit in a wider cultural landscape of great significance to local Aboriginal people. The current Traditional Owners believe that their cultural association with the land between the two mountains, and between the sea and the mountains, should be respected and protected.
They do not believe that the RFA process achieved this, by permitting logging and ongoing desecration of sacred sites and the cultural landscape with its associated flora and fauna.
It was agreed that the loggers would not cut down trees within 100m of agreed points of sacred interest within the compartment currently being logged in Mumbulla State Forest. However, to the great distress of the community seeking protection for the forest, loggers have in fact broken that agreement and logged closer to sacred areas.
It is John Hibberd's understanding that many of the Traditional Owners are unhappy with the lack of communication and respect to their culture as shown by staff of ForestsNSW. [Note: ForestsNSW have addressed the BoM - including Traditional Owners - on a number of occasions during the past two years, but the discussions are usually about locating and protecting specific sites, rather than protecting and respecting the cultural landscape]
Many Traditional Owners are also highly concerned over the fate of Mumbulla's koalas and have been intimately involved in the RGBSat surveys right from day one In fact, it was two young koori who first saw a female koala and joey which re-ignited the whole issue around the Mumbulla koala colony.
There are also many in the koori community who believe that Biamanga National Park should be joined to Mimosa Rocks National Park and to Bermagui Nature reserve, through the transfer of Mumbulla and Murrah State Forests in their entirety to the National Parks and Wildlife Service. [Note: this has been a long-standing NP proposal by NCC NSW].
Quote: "The views of the Traditional Owners of this country must be sought; and respected through the protection of the wider cultural landscape in which Mumbulla Mountain sits with its sister Mountain, Gulaga".
John Hibberd
Executive Director Conservation Council ACT Region Inc.
(02) 6229 3202
0412 425 665