In
the Daily Examiner recently , I was appalled to read one person's assessment that new
laws aimed at protecting koala habitat would spell the demise of the timber and
agricultural industries.
I
realise it's everyone's right to have, and express their opinions, but how
anyone can spout that type of utter rubbish is beyond me. The agricultural
industry had been pretty successful in Australia for more than 200 years,
albeit at enormous environmental expense, but we all have to eat. However, to
suggest that stopping farmers from cutting down koala feed trees, which have
always been there up until now, would somehow cause the industry's collapse, is
ludicrous.
The
native forest timber industry, which the writer also claims will be threatened
with collapse if these laws are enacted, would have gone belly-up decades ago
if tax-payers hadn't been forced to subsidise it. By rights, having incurred
million dollar losses year after year for the past two decades, state forest
logging should have been shut down years ago. At least that would have likely
halted the downward spiral in koala numbers, and perhaps even allowed a modest
recovery.
Right
now, the NSW Government is spending huge amounts of money supporting a range of
programs and initiatives to save koalas under the Saving our Species program.
These include land acquisitions, feed tree-planting, monitoring and reporting
programs and distribution of information.
However,
while habitat enhancement is essential to the recovery of koalas, the fact that
there is still widespread land-clearing and logging on a scale that far
outstrips the habitat creation efforts of the Saving our Species' program, will
ensure the continued decline of koalas into oblivion.
Other
possible initiatives include investigations into captive breeding, training of
vets in the treatment of koalas, and support for wildlife carer organisations,
all seemingly last-ditch attempts to stave off extinction, rather than a
proactive approach to providing land for koalas to recover across their natural
range. The latter would be a logical approach, but we live in a world where
logic is in increasingly short supply – witness the panic buying of toilet
paper!
-John
Edwards
This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on March 23, 2020
