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.

Park logging finally swept under the carpet

The brazen illegal logging of the Snowy National Park, along 60 km of its boundary during the January 2003 fires, shocked many people – even DSE personnel. An investigation was carried out into how this happened and where the logs went. The report has now been officially swept under the carpet. At the time of …

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UNWANTED burnt logs – damaged roads

The DSE tender process to find buyers for burnt trees has had “insufficient take up of the resource through expressions of interest”. They are quickly trying to sell off – at a good price we’d hope – half a million m3 of alpine ash sawlog trees and 750,000 m3 of chip log trees over the …

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State bushfire report knocks fire furphies on head

The release of the findings of the Victorian Bushfire Inquiry on 14 October should have put an end to the unsophisticated, self-interested and blame-apportioning comments that followed the 2002-3 fires. It is refreshing indeed to have the old furphies of fuel reduction, grazing, tracks and Aboriginal burning knocked on the head as ‘solutions’ to fire. …

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So where’s the Yalmy report Minister?

After the illegal logging of the Snowy National Park last summer, the public was promised a full investigation and outcome. But the joke now goes: How many DSE officers does it take to do an investigation? Five. One to notice logs were stolen from 300 ha of National park, one to go “damn, we shouldn’t …

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Morons with matches

Once again summer has arrived, and once again assorted gurus pop out of the…errr… woodwork to warn us about the danger of bushfires, and all the things we can do to protect ourselves and reduce fire hazards: make sure the pump works, clean out the gutters, shift the firewood off the front porch, give the …

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National Park logging crime FOI exempt

In February, when the Snowy National Park was illegally logged during the bush fires, we immediately put in a Freedom Of Information request for all relevant documents, to determine how this could have happened. We asked for: a.. Incident Management Log, b.. Any assessments done of Park values and significant trees, before clearing c.. Maps, …

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Fire fallout

Industry demands public money to salvage logs. Another logic-lacking media release put out by the logging industry in July called for more and faster access to log all the burnt forest. They claimed they needed government assistance to cart the logs long distances to their mills and maybe even money to help with storage (they …

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Visiting a blistered landscape

I drove over the fire-fried country between East Gippsland and the North East in early August, six months after the summer fires, with Kevin Thiele, EEG’s Public Officer, Botanist and Computer Trouble Shooter. The worst effected areas were very sorry looking – miles and miles of grey burnt earth, unidentifiable understorey-that-was, black trunks and bare …

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Bureaucrats lied over bushfires: claim

The Department of Sustainability and Environment manipulated media coverage of last summer’s bushfires in the state’s north-east into a “save a town a day” campaign that would portray it as heroic and improve its chances of greater funding, a federal parliamentary inquiry heard yesterday. In an unscheduled verbal submission, Channel Nine reporter Charles Slade said …

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Federal enquiry into the 2003 fires

“With all due respect, I do not think this was the biggest bushfire in 100 years I think it’s the biggest back-burn in living memory”Quote from Charles Slade, Channel Nine reporter in the Federal enquiry into the 2003 fires. Read more here

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