T h e O b s e r v e r T r e e

Shame Julia Gillard Shame!

I cannot believe that the Australian government has put its name to a document (that it has the gall to call a “conservation” agreement) which will see more and more of our precious forests devastated. This document is in direct contradiction to the promise that was made by the government when Julia and Lara signed the Intergovernmental Agreement five months ago.

This World Heritage Area bordering forest in the Weld Valley is already gone, are we about to lose more just like it?

The most horrific part of it all is that while this conservation agreement condemns 40 coupes to be logged, Tony Burke has called it a “landmark conservation agreement signed to protect Tasmania’s native forests.”  It is amazing how they can spin the truth and turn it into lies! He claims that the agreement protects 99.5% of the area. With “a small number of coupes” to still be logged.

Firstly, I don’t know how Davina the devil or any other animals living in the 2000 hectares to be felled would feel about their forest being trivialized in such away. Secondly considering the little amount of old growth actually left I think 2000 hectares is a very significant amount. Thirdly, it is directly going against the promise that was made that all of the 430,000 hectares would be protected by the conservation agreement.

Tony Burke stated: “In accordance with the requirements of the Intergovernmental Agreement, which commits to honouring all existing wood supply contracts, these coupes have been excluded from the Conservation Agreement:”

The excuse of contracts  for wood supply (to Ta Ann) is really getting a bit old now – how many times do we need to keep reminding them that clause 27 states clearly that any contracts that can’t be met outside the 430,000 would be honored by way of compensation – not access to the forests for logging.

It is misleading to claim that 99.5% is now protected. The fact is that 100% of what was threatened by logging is still going to be logged. Basically what they have done is a tricky maneuver. Everything that wasn’t scheduled for logging is protected by the conservation agreement (i.e.: they are not going to be logging the areas they had not intended to log) and everything that was scheduled for logging, plus even a little bit more, is excluded from the agreement (i.e.: they are going to log what they had always intended to log).  Not one single hectare of forest that was scheduled for logging has been protected. So what has this agreement done for the forests? Nothing, except to take away the fast-fading hope that Julia Gillard would actually live up to her word.

This “conservation agreement” (it just feels so wrong to call it that) will see this coupe here Tn44B logged.  Pristine areas of forest in the Weld, Butlers Gorge, Styx, Picton…. all have been put on death row by this agreement.  Today’s announcement is a bitter blow to all of those who care about these forests. It is even more a bitter blow to the credibility of Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

I do not think that the general public will fall for the green-washing that is occurring here. No matter how many words like “conservation” they want to throw into the agreement, the evidence will speak for itself. This very Monday when logging resumes again here and in coupes all around the state, the evidence will speak for itself.

It is like I said in an earlier blog – it is ridiculous to log the forest prior to reserving it. It is like smashing something before buying it. This is exactly what they seem hell bent on doing. Fragmenting and damaging the area ear-marked for protection.

The government must be held accountable to the Australian public, and to the promises they have made to us. Yet the only ones they seem to be listening to are Ta Ann. All of these logging coupes excluded from the conservation agreement are to feed Ta Ann’s insatiable appetite for Tasmania’s native forest.

Yesterday morning at 6am I woke up to see a media release by the Huon Valley Environment Centre. Conservationists were conducting a peaceful demonstration at the Hobart wharf, where a Ta Ann ship was loading veneer made from Tasmania’s native forests. ‘Conservationists are today protesting about the ongoing logging in Tasmania’s high conservation value forests for Ta Ann, a Malaysian logging company. Ta Ann is receiving timber from old growth and high conservation value forests and they are exporting these forests to Japan to be sold under the false brand of eco-friendly flooring,’ Huon Valley Environment Centre’s Jenny Weber said, spokesperson at yesterday’s action.

Unfortunately the government don’t seem to be listening to the Australian public and today’s announcement is a clear demonstration that their loyalties lie with the profits of Ta Ann over and above the promises made to the Australian community.

As Peg Putt (Markets for Change) said today “It’s a black Friday for Tasmania’s forests, and one of severe disappointment to those who hoped for a breakthrough for conservation and an end to the conflict in Tasmania’s forest, in what has now become a deceptive and discredited process”

My offer still stands to Julia. Come and visit the ObserverTree this weekend while you are in Tasmania. Come and see for yourself the forest that you have now condemned to destruction.

In the spirit of yesterdays’ action by the Huon Valley Environment Centre, now is the time to get active. With so many of our precious wild forests on death row there is an urgency with which we must spread the word about what is going on here. It is time to get the word to the Japanese customers of Ta Ann, to the Australian and Tasmanian governments, to Harvey Norman and to Ta Ann that enough is enough. It is time to protect Tasmania’s ancient forests.

For more information check out some of today’s great media releases:

Senator Bob Brown

Markets for Change 

The Wilderness Society, ACF and Environment Tasmania

Huon Valley Enviornment Centre

 She looked at me in disbelief. “But, surely” she said “the forest will grow back?”  I was talking forestry politics with a woman who was giving me a lift. She couldn’t believe what I was telling her about the destruction of old growth forest here in Tasmania. She desperately wanted to believe the Forestry Tasmania propaganda, it was easier that way. But the facts, sadly, tell a different story.

I was remembering this conversation after writing Day 24’s blog, in which I talked about the cycle of life and death in the forest. I talked about how all these trees will grow old, rot and fall over eventually. But they will live on in the ecosystem.  I wanted to address this question of ‘regrowth’ in relation to that idea.

There is a big difference between a tree falling in the forest and the entire forest being felled and burnt. Forestry Tasmania claims that the fire regeneration regime replicates the natural processes of the forest. This is a bit of a long stretch of the imagination! The reality is that yes, fire does play a crucial role in these landscapes – but the clear-fell, burn and sow routine can hardly be compared to the usual processes of this forest.

Firstly industrial forestry operations come into these forests – it is not one tree that falls, it is every single tree, plant, fungi, bryophyte, animal, animal dens, waterway and even the soil itself that is killed. Then to top it all off, napalm like substance is dropped from helicopters and whatever managed to survive the machines and chainsaws in obliterated in a high intensity burn.

When trees fall naturally in the forest, they are left behind to form important roles in the ecosystem as they decompose. Providing shelter for animals and insects, storing carbon and giving nutrients to the soil for future generations of trees. When an area is clear-felled all those trees are removed from the area to be taken to mills, made into veneer and furniture and shipped around the world. Instead of providing a home for a spot-tail quoll, they become somebody’s Harvey Norman coffee table.

This is what is so disturbing about standing in a smoldering clear fell. Something is greatly out of balance. There is nothing natural about it. The cycle of life and death has been obscured and perverted. The living forest is converted into a machine, churning out furniture and flooring. Leaving behind an apocalyptic dead landscape.

When the smoke fades and the ash settles, the forest starts its slow process of regrowing. But things have changed. The diversity of the forest has been manipulated into a virtual monoculture forest. This is particularly true for these types of forests here. The forest I am in is called ‘mixed forest’ – a unique interplay between eucalypts and rainforest. When they are felled and burnt they are changed forever. Rainforest species generally don’t like fire. That is what makes rainforests the way they are. Eucalypts on the other hand love to regenerate after fire. This is why fire is such a tool used by the forest industry to create eucalypt dominated regrowth that suits their logging desires. Meanwhile, the rainforest species such as sassafras, myrtle, leatherwood, celery top pine…. they are few and far between in these new regrowth forests.  Once areas of rainforest are burnt, they may take hundreds of years to recover (Kirkpatrick & Dickson 1984).

When fires go through these forests naturally they are very different from the high intensity burn offs of industrial forestry. There is interplay between fire and the landscape in which some vegetation types rely on fire to regenerate and they also provide the right environment to encourage fire. Fire is likely to stop along the boundaries of rainforest areas, because these species provide less flammable material. In this way the vegetation ensures its own survival through maintaining the correct fire regime. Button grass regenerates well if it burns every 5-10 years. Dry eucalypt forest generally have a higher fire frequency than wet forests and rainforest species are not that keen on fire. And if an area like this with eucalypts and rainforest has no future fire disturbance then eventually it will transition to pure rainforest.

This area of forest here is the perfect example of this complex balance. There has been a fire go through this area in the past. Possibly a very long time ago. Evidence of it remains in the landscape like a map of the past. You can see the big old Eucy’s scared black. Some hollow on the inside, the fire burning up through their guts. But they lived on. Around them young eucalypts grow, their seeds given a chance at life from the fire. This is what a natural fire disturbance looks like in the forest. Old trees that survived the fire grow beside the young ones. The gullies of pure rainforest that escaped the impact of the fire and the areas of young rainforest that has begun to grow since the young eucalypts enclosed the canopy creating the right conditions.

Go from here and walk down the logging road there, take a walk through the regrowth forest. It doesn’t take a scientist to see the difference. It is blatantly obvious. The trees grow together densely; they are all the same age. They compete for space and suck up water from the ground as they all struggle to consume the limited resource at once. They are all the same species. Or at best a few different types of eucalypt might grow together. Some tree ferns may have survived. But there is not much else. Invasive weed species are likely to have taken the opportunity to spread into the open area that was previously impenetrable.

So, when they say the forest regrows, I guess in a way they are right. But what they don’t tell you is that it regrows as a different forest, an anthropogenically changed forest that is incomparable to the ecosystem which it has replaced. The loss of our forests as they are naturally is a real injustice. It is the loss of life itself and an abrupt end to the cycle of life and death that has existed here since the beginning of time.

This is not to say that logged areas can never be regenerated. They can if we do it right, with conservation in mind not future logging operations. And with enough time. Given 500 years those clear-fells I can see down there in the valley may begin to look the way they used to a year ago before the chainsaws moved in. Forestry doesn’t really want to give them 500 years of course, they prefer 80 year rotations, and it’s more profitable I guess! That is why this area so desperately needs protection. So that these areas that are left can remain intact and those that have been disturbed can be given the chance to slowly regain a sense of what they once were.

(Photo of TN048A, a logged coupe at the base of Mount Mueller, just over the ridge behind me. Photographer:  Peter Maarseveen).