AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION: ENVIRONMENT GROUPS CALL FOR STRONG CLIMATE ACTION

A marked absence of any real focus on environmental matters by either of the two major political parties in the current drawn-out federal election campaign prompted a strategy meeting to be held by NSW North Coast environmental groups recently.

At the head of the list of concerns is the almost total lack of any proposal for meaningful action on climate change.

Carbon emissions need to be reduced urgently. Protecting forests is an important and effective form of carbon sequestration that the government could act on immediately.

It was pointed out that the 20 million trees program, promoted under the current government's Direct Action policy, would be more than offset by the number of trees being destroyed by the Pacific Highway upgrade in the Clarence Valley alone.

The dumping of the NSW Native Vegetation Act and proposed relaxing of restrictions on land clearing in NSW, under the State Government's new Biodiversity Bill, will further exacerbate the problem, and positive actions to promote revegetation of the landscape were identified. 

In particular, the meeting reminded all political parties that, “Forests are the lungs of the earth.. They take in the carbon dioxide we emit, store the carbon and give us life-giving oxygen in return. They are vital to mitigate the impacts of climate change with the urgency required to halt the demise of the Great Barrier Reef”.

The meeting agreed that an effective way to achieve immediate positive results would be to:

• stop logging of native forests on public land.
• stop clearing of native forests on private land, and
• stop proposed burning of forests to generate electricity.

At the same time politicians were urged to support the imposition of a carbon trading scheme that would provide landowners with an alternative income stream to logging, Furthermore, landowners should be rewarded for protecting and rehabilitating native forests, protecting biodiversity, and restoring wildlife corridors and stream buffers.

Actions that reduce atmospheric carbon would not only help the Great Barrier Reef, and other ecosystems under threat from climate change, but also help replace the habitat of hundreds of threatened species already facing extinction through habitat loss, including Australia's iconic Koalas.

-          John Edwards

FOREST LOSS A CONCERN FOR WORLD WILDLIFE FUND

According to a recent report on forests by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) there are eleven deforestation hotspots in the world including the Amazon, Borneo, Sumatra, the Congo Basin and East Africa. At current rates of deforestation 80% of global forests could be lost by 2030.

Eastern Australia is one of these hotspots.  About 70% of the forests of eastern Australia have already been cleared or disturbed and only 18% of forests are under some form of protection.  Forest loss in Australia is primarily the result of clearing for agriculture/grazing and mining as well as unsustainable logging.

According to the report between three million and six million hectares of rainforest and temperate forest could be lost mainly across NSW and Queensland between 2010 and 2030.

In relation to Queensland, WWF pointed out that the watering down of environmental protections by the former LNP (Liberal-National Party) government led to a sharp rise in land clearing, with 275,000 hectares cleared in the past financial year - a tripling of vegetation loss since 2010.

The NSW government plans to amend land clearing protections – a promise made several days before the March 28 election.  This means a watering down of protection which does not appear to be consistent with a $100 million pledge to protect the state’s threatened plants and animals.

Dermot O’Gorman, chief executive of WWF Australia, says WWF is deeply concerned about NSW. He says the existing laws have been shown to have been effective in saving hundreds of thousands of animals and that effective protection of biodiversity needs to be continued.

  

“Maintaining forest protections is vital at a state level.  We’ve lost the large majority of the eastern Australia forest, which means the remaining forests are even more important to maintain,” Mr O’Gorman said.

“If business as usual continues, we will see more Australian species disappear, as well as the continuing decline of our water, topsoil and local and regional climate.”

The NSW Government needs to think very carefully before it waters down laws which are helping to protect the health of the natural world which provides important services to humanity.

-          Leonie Blain

This post was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on May 11, 2015.

Forest Destruction at Glenugie near Grafton

One can hardly fail to appreciate the irony of the claim made on a new sign, erected beside the recently opened Glenugie section of the Pacific Highway, which states that “Your forests are in safe hands”. The very area where the sign now stands was an operating forest just two years ago. In fact, the seven kilometre upgrade saw some 80 hectares of the publicly owned Glenugie State Forest cleared to bare earth to construct the motorway, and more will go before that section is completed.

Photo: J Edwards

And that is just the start of the destruction. Another 500 hectares of forest, much of it publicly owned, will be destroyed across the Clarence Valley alone as this motorway progresses. Huge areas of forest will also be lost to the south and north of the Clarence Valley.

When we realise that the distance between the outside of the concrete drains on either side of the motorway is only 38 metres, we have to question why a corridor upwards of 100 metres wide needs to be cleared of vegetation, some of which took hundreds of years to grow.

The environmental failures at Glenugie do not stop there. Despite wildlife underpasses being praised at the opening a few weeks ago, we find mesh fences directing wildlife into standard concrete box culverts, which are unlikely to attract more than the occasional goanna.

The fences themselves are the worst feature, with a barbed wire topped death trap for owls, gliders and flying-foxes. Standing less than 1.5 metre high, which an adult kangaroo could clear from a standing start, the lower mesh section will bar the way of most other terrestrial wildlife, including the kangaroo's joey which will be parted from its mother while she dodges the traffic, putting motorists at risk.

When we consider the assurances made during the consultation process, about how concerned the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) is about protecting iconic species such as the endangered coastal emus, this latest evidence to the contrary is extremely disappointing. Our native wildlife deserve much better.

- J Edwards

 The text of this post was originally published in the "Voices for the Earth" column in

The Daily Examiner on 12^th December 2011.