According to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change late last month, sequestering carbon dioxide is only one of the crucial climate-regulating attributes inherent to the world’s forests.

Is the sun really setting on VicForests?

In March 2024, the government made it public that VicForests would be dismantled by June 2024. But can we finally relax? It seems like VicForests is simply being re-badged and most staff and logging contractors are being moved over into DEECA and its subsidiary, Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMV). FFMV cut down huge areas of …

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The state government is increasing our bushfire risk right now

Opinion piece reprinted from The Age 16/7/22 I have worked in the forests of Victoria since July 1983. Today I’m the most highly cited forest ecologist globally and have written 48 books on the subject. One of the most difficult times in my career in that 40 years was after the 2009 Black Saturday fires, …

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The destruction of Cabbage Tree Creek

By Peter Fisher | 1 February 2020. In late March 2022, the state government’s unstoppable new burning empire set fire to the surrounds of this tiny area of incredibly unique and ancient palms in East Gippsland. It is part of an unproven, counterproductive, baseless and destructive land management regime. Natural disaster and man-made destruction is …

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Fire management out of control

The protective vegetation of ancient mahogany trees were destroyed as part of planned burn ‘management’. Some of these were hundreds of years old and posed no risk to anyone. Yet no one is accountable for this shameful vandalism.

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East coast Australia, the new Amazon

Australia’s east coast has been compared to the Amazon as a “deforestation front”. WWF’s The Living Planet report, produced every second year for the past 20 years, says global populations of vertebrate species have declined 60% since 1970. But koala numbers have disappeared at a much faster rate – more than 20% a decade – …

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