Earlier this month a protest gathering in the Clouds
Creek State Forest was attended by local residents, political candidates, and
representatives from local environment and community groups. The action was
called to protest Forest Corp's plan to log the forest early in 2019, including
use of “intensive single tree selection” (aka virtual clear-fell).
Clouds Creek's forests are some the most fertile in
NSW, supporting tall wet sclerophyll and rainforest communities which,
unfortunately, have experienced dreadful over-logging for many decades. Old
stumps measuring upwards of 2 metres diameter indicate what used to be, but
today trees greater than 700mm are a rarity, with only widely scattered old or
deformed trees remaining which were unsuitable for timber.
As part of the Regional Forests Agreement, signed in
2000, all rainforest and old-growth forest was mapped and protected. However,
immediately prior to the signing, and knowing those old-growth forests would be
“locked up”, the then Forests NSW moved into Clouds Creek and absolutely
decimated them.
Protestors at the time managed to blockade and save
some areas that are now part of the Nymboi-Binderay National Park, but much of
the old growth was lost in that 1999 blitz.
In 2010 to 2012, Forests NSW returned for another
round of harvesting, this time supposedly legally, but still managed to
interpret the clause calling for a maximum 20% basal area logging rate, to
allow rates as high as 80%, which after the trampling and destruction of
smaller vegetation by industrial logging machines, is virtually clear-felling.
Following that old-growth logging episode, Koalas
which were relatively common in the mid1990s, judging by the fauna surveys
undertaken at the time, were found to be virtually non-existent in a 2017
survey conducted by the Office of Environment and Heritage.
Another previously common forest resident, the Greater
Glider which was recently added to the threatened species list, also could not
be found during the 2018 pre-harvest survey by Forests Corp.
With Government planning to extend the Agreements for
another 20 years, and more logging planned, is it any wonder residents and the
broader community are appalled by what is happening,
- John Edwards
This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on January 28, 2019.
