The Beagle Editor,
While I commend Eurobodalla Shire Council for securing a grant to build & position nesting boxes for the endangered Gang Gang cockatoos that visit our local forests I ask, does the Council have the courage and foresight to go further and fight to keep the natural hollows still existing for the Gang Gangs and all the other wildlife? Our local forests have been “harvested”, a.k.a. deforested, by Forestry Corporation NSW in accordance with their “let’s take everything” business ideal. And then we had the bushfires that burned hotter in the logged areas than in the unlogged forest. And then, as the surviving plants and animals struggled to recover from this devastation, Forestry Corporation NSW has relentlessly pursued their log at any cost policy, even into the less fire impacted areas that hold our precious reservoir of surviving native species. Species that need an intact functioning forest ecosystem, from under the earth, through a biodiverse understorey to crown cover tree tops.
What of the impacts on honey producers and tourism industries or locals and visitors who use and value the existing forest. Forestry Corp NSW seems to treat these groups with contempt as they view the forest as THEIR resource alone. All around Mogo has been harvested, the earth ripped, and “rubbish”, including feed trees such as Banksia and Casuarina, bulldozed into piles and left, half burned, smouldering for weeks, awaiting the next bushfire to clean it up. A Forestry spokesperson explained “this is to promote preferred species such as Spotted Gum and Ironbark”. A few habitat trees are left to struggle on. Logging will turn it into a monoculture of same aged trees, with little biodiversity NOT a forest.
At my boundary where there was once a rainforest gully there is now a thick, dense regrowth of Black Wattle as the Earth tries to heal it’s wounds. If we get another fire through here in the next few years, how much hotter and uncontrollable will it be with this dense, extremely combustible fuel load? Will we be sending our volunteer fire fighters to deal with it?
One compartment remains – 146, on Dog Trap Road, Mogo. It is only 1 Km from the area around Deep Creek Dam (saved from logging to stop sedimentation of our drinking water), and the Botanic Gardens. It has deep southern fern gullies and was less impacted by fire, it has recordings of threatened species such as Swift Parrot, Gang Gangs, Glossy Black Cockatoos and Greater Gliders. It has the mountain bike trail, something that will bring a continuing economic benefit to our community and that has been granted millions of dollars in funding. Do riders want to go through a tall, living forest or a burnt, bulldozed hell? This is a local tourism asset and we are allowing it’s (taxpayer subsidised) destruction by Forestry, who consistently ignore conservation rules. It is left to community volunteers and organisations to try and protect, monitor and report breaches because all levels of Government fail utterly to do so. The undermanned EPA can prosecute after the event but that is of no use to the wildlife that relied on the hollows and food sources, they are all gone. We can put up the artificial nest boxes for the Gang Gangs to replace the natural ones that were, or are about to be, bulldozed, but for what, if there is no forest to feed in?
I ask locals and visitors to please drive up Dog Trap Road, Mogo, to Mitchells Road and see what we will lose, see the before and after for yourselves?
I ask why the taxpayer funded report by the Natural Resources Commission has not been released; its contents are kept secret by “Cabinet-in-Confidence”?
Please add your voices to SAVE THE FORESTS.
Kind regards
Lynne Freeman
Mogo
