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Environment and Heritage Robert Hills been replaced by David Kemp.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 …
he promised five yearly review of the East Gippsland RFA looks like being delayed another year. Its shaping up to be a rank job an attempt to sanitise whats totally on the nose. The States do their own assessment, pretend theyve honoured their environmental duty, have token public input, give themselves a tick, and dont …
The Japanese economic downturn has seen orders for East Gippsland woodchips drop dramatically. The logging industry is now looking perilous. Strong rumours suggest this will be long term and serious. Coupled with this is the planned government cut-backs in log volumes due to past overcutting. Chip trucks lying idle in Orbost, a blockade of the …
The Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) sprang from the Earth Summit conference in Rio de Janiero in 1992 where Australia signed a ‘Global Statement of Principles on Forests’. The federal and State governments (excepting Tasmania) then signed onto the National Forest Policy Statement six months later. This policy stated that there would be a comprehensive, adequate …
It’s not guns and hunting like it was with the Thylacine, but the Spot-tailed (Tiger) Quoll is knowingly being annihilated by logging, poisoning and NRE’s latest “protection” plans. Spot-tailed Quolls, the largest meat-eating marsupials surviving on the mainland, are on a slippery slide to extinction. They have gone >from rare to vulnerable to endangered in …
