In a six week frenzy of destruction, during March and April, four coupes totaling 90 hectares of Goolengooks best forest were clearfelled. It is estimated to have cost the police and NRE up to $2 million to carry out the operation. The royalty gained from the destruction of these timeless forests was a piddling $100,000. …
OVERLOGGING – NOW UNDERPRICING For the past two years, CROEG has been working to get figures released under FOI to show what prices our forests are going for. After many refusals, delays and denials of the existance of documents, the papers were finally released in late February. As we expected – the Department of Natural …
Using East Gippsland as an example, a reduction in sawlogs does not mean an equal reduction in woodchips – f’rinstance, while there’s been a 20% drop in sawn timber (from market forces), the chip volumes have increased 100%! In Tambo forests next door, they’ve had a 700% increase in chips! Next year’s plans for log …
The opportunity to walk through such a varied landscape is unparalleled in Australia and possibly unique in the world. There is almost certainly no other place on earth with the potential to walk from the ocean to the alps through predominantly undisturbed wilderness. This 300 km long track proposal has been worked on for several …
No one could have made a bigger mess of the problem than has just been announced. Small voluntary cut back over umpteen years, introduce cable logging in steep old growth forests, hand out another huge swag of subsidies to a dying industry, allow unlimited woodchipping to continue, consider large consumers of wood like charcoal plants …
The figures are as flawed as they have been for the past 30 years and this ‘solution’ is only pushing the problem further down the track. In not too many years, the government might be forced to admit to another stuff-up – too late. In the meantime, they’ll be going hammer and tong as ever …
When greens and loggers join forces to try and find solutions, keeping away from government and pollies, it shows that there is no confidence in NRE or Bracks to sort out the mess. The one thing we both agree on is that the NRE are an incompetent lot of dills and the logging industry has …
At 5am on Tuesday 5th of March 2002 – the five year long blockade of the ancient forest masterpiece called Goolengook was broken up by police and NRE. Two people remained in a lock-on device and a tree sit, slowing down the legalised vandalism of this area. NRE say they will start logging immediately they …
Don’t be deluded, the latest logging ‘cut-backs’ are little more than a huge spin-doctoring excercise. It’s business-as-usual for the big boys with a few small players out of the show. Not one tree will be saved. Their slight reduction in the small end of the industry doesn’t mean a reduction in area, it’s just a …
Environment and Heritage Robert Hills been replaced by David Kemp. Kemps been described as a “severe rationalist”, and has a manner that some say is condescending and disinterested. In his maiden speech in 1990 he said that Australian Governments had been steered by minority pressure groups and that they instead need to listen to the …
