Degraded forests
In response to the article Timber NSW cuts down Greens figures (BDN, 13/3), if Timber NSW thinks managing state forests for timber production is cheaper and better than managing national parks then on what basis do they judge their performance?
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NSW state forests are now degraded so badly - after decades of logging for woodchips - that twice the area has to be logged for the same yield.
During the first 30 years after logging, forests are dangerously fire prone, water catchments are depleted and erosion causes estuaries to be silted so oyster growers and the fish nurseries vital to marine fish stocks decline.
Not only are the big trees that koalas need to thrive gone, hollows for gliders take up to 100 years to form.
The road works bring in the winds that fan fire, while heavy machinery and trucks harden the ground causing more run off.
The whole ecology of our forests has been reduced to a shadow of its former health.
Take a walk where remaining lyre birds are active and anyone can see and feel the difference - leaf litter is constantly turned over, while understorey is opened up allowing the overhead canopy to close, safe from hot winds.
On the Far South Coast there may be less than 100 rare southern koalas, with the biggest recovering population near Mumbulla - where no logging nor fire has occurred for over 30 years.
Are we to stand by and let loggers and woodchipping continue to degrade our forests and fail to save the last koalas found around here?
I think not.
Prue Acton
Wallagoot
Load of rubbish
What a load of rubbish from Timber NSW, the native forestry industry’s lobbyists (BDN, 13/3).
National Parks and Forestry have totally different tasks - it should come as no surprise that their costs per hectare are different.
And to claim that Forestry Corporation “looks after” the state forests is more than a bit rich.
Its logging operations remove trees (and usually understorey as well) in close to clear felling operations, and can’t even sell them at a profit.
It spends a pittance on weed and feral animal control, does virtually no remediation, allows fire-prone dense regrowth to develop, and is not required to account for environmental impacts.
Pressures to keep cutting costs means less and less “looking after”.
The NSW Government is in effect paying to have the state forests and their catchments degraded, drying out their soils, while wiping out the habitat of animals and birds, and creating the conditions for worse bushfires.
Meantime, National Parks is expected with inadequate funding to put in place all manner of programs to protect the environment, and save wildlife and plants that are pushed towards regional extinction by regional scale habitat loss - often in forests where past logging has caused a lot of the problems.
Let’s have no more of these nonsensical cost comparisons.
Heather Kenway
Bermagui
Face value
Logging industry lobby group Timber NSW (BDN, 13/3) claims that Forestry Corporation management costs are lower than those for national parks.
It is one of the basic arguments in their campaign to have the same tenure for all public forests and to open up national parks for logging.
Supposing we took their figures at face value, what would that show us anyway?
They would show us that the Forestry Corporation spends next to nothing on pest and weed control, next to nothing on “fire management” and pays nothing at all for the damage it does to the environment.
But, even with its apparently lower costs, the Forestry Corporation still manages to make multi-million dollar losses year after year on native forest logging.
But we cannot take the industry claims at face value; there is more to it than that.
A growing sum of Forestry Corporation expenses - including some on roads and fire control - are separately reimbursed under the Community Service Obligation (CSO), by the Treasurer, as it happens.
That is the same Treasurer who (because of his Ministerial position) is a 50 per cent shareholder in the Forestry Corporation.
The CSO enables the Forestry Corporation to subsidise, conceal and shift costs to disguise the true dire state of its finances.
Since Mr Constance has been a shareholder in the Forestry Corporation he has presided over almost $30million losses in native forest logging.
That is $30million that NSW taxpayers have had to find from somewhere else.
As Treasurer he should be acting on behalf of the taxpayers as a whole, not just one destructive sectional interest.
No amount of spin from his industry allies can conceal that.
Harriett Swift
Bega