Native Forests
making a stand.
Wikipedia describes Old Growth Forests this way…… ‘An old-growth forest, sometimes synonymous with primary forest, virgin forest, late seral forest, primeval forest, first-growth forest, or mature forest—is a forest that has attained great age without significant disturbance, and thereby exhibits unique ecological features, and might be classified as a climax community.[1] The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations defines primary forests as naturally regenerated forests of native tree species where there are no clearly visible indications of human activity and the ecological processes are not significantly disturbed. Barely one-third (34 percent) of the world's forests are primary forests.’
From the Australian Government’s website Forests Australia with regard to Native forests
’The area of native forest that was available and suitable for commercial wood production in 2015–16 was 28.1 million hectares. Of this area: 6.3 million hectares was in multiple-use public native forests 21.8 million hectares was in leasehold and private forests. Australia's native forest timber and wood-based products are mostly sourced from multiple-use public forests in New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia.
In July I hosted a fundraising screening of The Giants for the Bob Brown Foundation; lobbied the federal Minister for Forests ( to no avail- read his response here to a request for a meeting) and joined many on the streets of Brisbane to protest in support of a ban on Native Forest logging. The Australian Labor Party National conference was to consider a proposal from Labor Environmental Action Network. Instead this was diluted into support for a review of the National Forest Statement of 1992.
Meanwhile back in Tasmania we await the decision by the Minister for the Environment on whether they will allow MGM to expand their tailings dam into the world heritage proposed Tarkine forests. The majority-Chinese owned company says a new tailings dam is needed to extend the life of its 85-year-old zinc, copper and lead Rosebery mine. If the dam is approved, the company expects to clear up to 285 hectares – roughly equivalent to 350 football pitches – of rainforest and other terrain for the dam and a 3.5km pipe that would carry toxic waste from the mine across the Pieman River. ( the Guardian July 26 2022 ) If they go ahead with this , they will flood with toxic waste Australia’s largest temperate rainforest and the second largest temperate rainforest in the world. Previously this proposal supported by the Morrison government was stopped pending further considerations.
Some thoughts from the trees.
Once we were many. Our roots connected this land. With every breath of the planet we too breathed out and our breath enabled more life.
Once we spread across the lands, a green velvet carpet teeming with life. The worlds songbirds evolved in our branches, the towering floral canopy rich with nectar. Dark worlds below ground alive with networks that fed, warned and nurtured all in the forest. Waters ran clear, the air was pure and inside our trunks we marked the passing of millennia.
We are the last vestige of Gondwana on this now separated continent. We once spread from The far north to the far south connecting subterraneanly. Our lineage dates back 60 million years and our limbs hold the memories of each of those days. We are kin to the Antarctic Beech in Queensland and to the Gondwana forests of the Daintree. These places have been declared part of the worlds heritage for some reason we have been neglected . On the top of the Mt Reed the Huon pine still lives, hanging on to last remnant of what once was. That one pine that Lagarostrobos franklinii singular but many, not so far from me stretches over one hectare. It comes from one father tree that has cloned itself from branch and seed and is 10,500 years old. Today the area has been isolated and protected from loggers and sightseers. Only those that study it for climate change information are allowed into its midst.
I am 500 years old. I am a mother tree as my mother before me and hers before that stretching back those 60 million years. I climb 50 metres and stretch my branches to the crown of the canopy. I am one of the only deciduous trees in this rainforest. Nothofagus Cuninnghamii, the Myrtle Beech they call me. My leaves turn golden and pepper the ground falling amongst tree ferns that are 700 years old, my roots bunch and twist around me, my bark cloaked with fern and a myriad of moss found only on my skin in this place. The fungi below me and on me glow blue and orange and pink. They feed me and connect me to all around me. My kin surround and are with me. My neighbours support me. We exist n the last refugia of its kind on this earth. And it is shrinking.
Beyond me I have seen the loggers come, splaying us on barren land, hauling the trunks away and burning the branches or leaving them to rot and return to the earth. Not all the wood they take from us turns into shelters, 70 percent is turned into paper or pulp.It is the road they are interested in. A road that will mar the claim of a pristine wild place. They aim to tame it and claim it for themselves. I hear this in the wind, I feel the sound of machinery, the tearing and ripping into this place leaving large holes in my canopy. Worse still the sound of mining below the surface and the rape of the land to extract minerals not meant to be isolated. They poison the waters as the lurid blue holding dams like some ghastly pustule overflows and weep s toxins into the creeks and rivers that run though this ancient land. The masked owl, the blue land crayfish, the quolls, the swift parrots and the eagles are dying.
The wind also brings news of protesters who barricade themselves to the machines, who climb the trees and live in our branches. They climb the hills and live among us, measuring, monitoring, marking and bearing witness to what is now , and what may not be for much longer. They say that the dam will be expanded and the soon 285 hectares of hills and valleys will be consumed by more of this toxic dam. I will surely die. We will be no more. Our gifts will be lost.
The unions say it is about jobs, yet in a world devoid of wild places we would generate so much more meaningful and ready employment. They say it is to secure a greener future, to extract the minerals to fuel the batteries for electric vehicles. Are you prepared to rob me to pay another? The carbon I store, the biodiversity within and around me and the oxygen I exude so much more of value to you as you will gasp for your last breath.
Somewhere someone must decide our fate. I hope they have broad shoulders and their conscience can live with being the destroyer of something so precious to a future we may never achieve.