Below are ‘short’ comments from our perspective on the long report and recommendations. Please, if you are also concerned, we need more ‘normal people’ (not ratbags like Redwood) to call up talkbacks and write short letters to the papers. If you do feel the need to try and balance the simplified calls with more old …
The first 10-year review of the Commonwealth’s environmental legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act)was made publicly available on 21 December 2009. It was conducted by Dr Allan Hawke throughout 2009. The final report makes 71 recommendations, covering numerous aspects of the Act’s operation from the significant to the relatively minor. …
Greg Barber, Greens member for Northern Metro, asked Environment Minister Gavin Jennings what controls have been put in place given the significant number of fires caused by salvage logging operations in November in the Central Highlands. These fires started when dry logs dragged across others on the ground, amongst logging debris, generated heat enough to …
Hats off to Minister Jennings for turning his Department into the ALP’s propaganda office. When the DSE asked part of the Department to do a survey for endangered animals in East Gippsland, the Departmental staff were so poorly resourced that they didn’t have enough time to do the work properly. Eventually, it was left to …
The Brumby government snuck out a media release at 7pm on Tuesday 10th November 2009. What was in it that they didn’t want the media to make a big deal about? It was about the area of old growth that it had promised to protect 3 years ago – but much reduced. There is now …
A hundred years ago the excuse was ignorance for destroying ancient forests. Now the only excuse is pure, cold-blooded, merciless politics, union corruption and political donations to the ALP. In March 2009, it was confirmed that an old growth tree cut down on Brown Mountain was older than Christopher Columbus and was young when Joan …
Nearly 40 per cent of old-growth forest earmarked for protection by the State Government since the 2006 election has been found instead to be young regrowth, poor quality vegetation and cleared paddocks. A survey by green groups found that about 15,000 hectares of Gippsland forest that the Government planned to turn into national park and …
The Victorian government has released a draft strategy for the future of the Forestry industry which includes lifting the current ban on burning native forests to burn as renewable energy and increasing timber contracts from ten to twenty years. These measures would undermine efforts to transform the logging industry into a climate-positive, value-adding, innovative, job-creating …
Last year almost a third of the native forest logs that came from East Gippsland was sold to the Geelong-based export woodchipper Midway. The state-owned logging enterprise, VicForests, sold them as dirt cheap, low-grade pulp logs. The Victorian Government has undermined its own forests policy that says public forest logs must be sold so that …
Radiocarbon dating has confirmed that a recently logged old growth tree on Brown Mountain was growing before America was discovered. “This is a significant find and should now see the government value and protect all our remaining ancient forests – not just as natural relics but as ancient carbon stores”, said Jill Redwood from Environment …
