19 February, 2009

LETTER: Catchment cry

Robert Stephen, Monbulk
Letter to the editor, The Age, 19 February 2009

Every year we clear-fell 150 hectares of Melbourne's prime water catchment forest near the Thomson reservoir. We lose 20,000 megalitres of water (one full Maroondah dam) every year due to regrowth, which uses vastly more water than old growth.

Clear-felling turns wet sclerophyll forest into dry sclerophyll forest and drastically increases the risk of fire. To save our water supply and reduce catchment fire risk we must stop clear-felling our water catchments, especially the Thomson.

Link

See also: Stop logging Melbourne water catchments


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Peter, in the interests of fairness why don't you reproduce article 'Fire, rain and our water' by Gary Sheridan and Patrick Lane Age 18/02/09.

Anonymous said...

Hi Peter,
Phillip Dalidakis in press release 18/02/09 said currently 350 ha logged out of 157,000 ha forested catchment. Asuuming 20% loss of yield in logged coups get 1/20th of 1% loss of total water yield attributable to logging. The result of not logging could well be fire and consequences to water yield are here more significant!

Peter Campbell said...

Anon 1: post me a link for the article.

Anon 2:

Logging decrease the quality and quantity of water from our catchments, as as do bushfires.

So we need to stop the logging the catchments and take fire prevention measures to protect them.