07 October, 2010

For the chop

Jill Sanguinetti, Narbethong
The Age (letter), 7 October 2010

When will people understand that scouring our native forests and turning them into virtual silvicultural plantations through monocultural seeding amounts to permanent loss of habitat?

The .05 to 1 per cent of forests logged in any one year (Letters, 6/10) refers to all forested areas in Victoria - including privately owned land, degraded remnant forests, national parks and dry, open woodlands in the west of no interest to the timber industry.

It is small pockets of mature, biodiverse, wet forests where the endangered species actually live that are disappearing at an alarming rate.

VicForests focuses on mature mountain ash forests in the Central Highlands. It says that 66,000 hectares are available for logging there - and that it plans to clear-fell 5500 hectares of that next year. At this rate, it will all be gone in 11 years. How sustainable is that?

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