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BAILLIEU’S BITTER SWILL

Monday 29th April 2012
The government’s announcement that it will spend $1.8M to survey for endangered wildlife in Eastern Victoria is like throwing a teaspoon of sugar into a cauldron of bitter swill.

Environment East Gippsland says that this shines the spotlight on the environmental hypocrisy of the Baillieu government.

“The government might be offering $1.8M to look for endangered wildlife but it continues to prop up the logging of its forested habitat to the tune of over $50M a year”. (see VicForests’ Annual Report) said Jill Redwood from Environment East Gippsland.

“Mr Baillieu is going to send biologists out to look for endangered wildlife, while at the same time he is weakening the current environmental laws so that critical habitat can be legally clearfell logged”.

“Recently, most of the Special Protection Zones that had been in place since the 1990s were handed to the logging industry”, said Jill Redwood. “These now de-listed Protection Zones were to preserve the known habitat of the same rare animals they will be looking for. They are in fact being clearfelled right now without any wildlife surveys having been carried out in them”.

“This Baillieu/National Party government is shameless about its plans to gut the environment and the laws that have protected it. Everyone in this state should be outraged”.

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Rare Potoroos - search and destroy

The discovery by VicForests contracted surveyors of the endangered Long-footed Potoroo (LFP) only kilometers from its known range is not at all surprising. Bemm River and its ‘epicentre’ Bellbird Creek are very close by.

What is surprising is VicForests’ claim to be looking after these rare animals, after the Minister in charge of logging, Peter Walsh, recently set about changing the laws so that it can continue to clearfell the forest habitat of these animals even where detected.

VicForests was forced to carry out pre-logging wildlife surveys when they lost the 2010 Supreme Court battle that cost them in the order of $2 million to argue against. Up until this time, government approved clearfelling of prime threatened wildlife habitat had gone on relentlessly and in ignorance of what was being destroyed.

Environment East Gippsland has been trying to obtain VicForests survey data under Freedom of Information for almost a year now.

The home range of the LFP is still very small in relation to the range of most of our wildlife. They occupy the same type of rich wet forests that the logging industry has been targeting for over 50 years. The Potoroo seems to survive in the small areas that remain unlogged, but where found the government only protects a nearby gully or stream buffer - NOT the forest proper where it was found.

The LFP eats exclusively fungi. This is provided by a healthy mature forest with diverse understory and plant/fungi associations. It needs slopes, ridges and gullies through the year.

If a Potoroo is found passing through logged regrowth adjoining a mature forest it doesn’t mean they can survive and flourish in thin regrowth after a healthy mature forest is clearfelled. Yet this is implied by VicForests.

In the past, where we have found LFPs, VicForests has refused to protect the detection site, but rather protects an area off to the side where it won't prevent logging occurring. But this isn't the 'best habitat', just convenient for the logging industry and VicForests.

Jill

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This short video explains how forests and our climate are so closely connected. Forests are our greatest land based carbon stores, shade the earth, moderate our climate and provide clouds and rainfall.

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