Endangered Species | Her(m)etic Hermit

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Logging plan poses threat to precious koala colony

The Struggle to Save the Planet Continues

[heartclearing.jpg]

LOGGING is set to start within weeks in a forest that supports the last known koala colony on the NSW far south coast.

The NSW Government is yet to release data from a comprehensive survey of koala habitat and population in Mumbulla and Murrah state forests, near Tathra, even though some trees have been marked for removal.

The two-year koala survey, which could be published this week, is believed to contain strong evidence of koala occupation in several parts of the eucalypt forest.

Sources painted a picture of fractious debate between staff from the Department of Environment and Climate Change, which managed the koala research effort, and Forests NSW, the government agency that will manage the logging operation.

One source described a map of the area that had been drawn and redrawn in search of a compromise between felling trees and maintaining enough forest to allow the koalas to survive.

The NSW Greens and south coast environment groups are campaigning for a moratorium on logging in the koala habitat.

“The koala population on the NSW south-east coast is at a critical level,” the Greens MP Lee Rhiannon said.

“Yet the NSW Government is prioritising the interests of the logging industry over the ongoing survival of this much-loved native animal.”

The logging operation, due to begin in early March, would involve taking some high-quality timber and some timber for woodchips.

Most of the timber from felled trees in the region goes to a mill in Eden, which exports woodchips to Japan.

As well as the remaining koala population, which has been identified by sightings, droppings and scratch marks on trees, the forest is known to provide a home for endangered long-nosed potoroos.

The Environment Department is ”committed to the protection of koalas and their habitat”, a spokesman said.

The department had engaged in ”what is arguably the most extensive koala survey of its type ever undertaken in Australia, in parts of the Mumbulla and Murrah state forests which are believed to contain koala habitat”.

”The survey results will be used in current negotiations with Forests NSW to ensure the longer-term protection of critical koala habitat identified in the survey,” he said.

The marsupials are listed as a vulnerable species in NSW, but there is controversy over how many are still alive in the wild.

The Australian Koala Foundation has said its research shows there were only 43,000 to 80,000 left on the Australian mainland, based on data from more than 1000 forests surveys.

The group is heading a new push to get the species listed as ”endangered” via the threatened species committee.

But many other researchers think the foundation’s koala population figure is a serious underestimate, and say that in some areas koala populations are not in decline.

by BEN CUBBY January 25, 2010

From The Sydney Morning Herald via http://media.causes.com/ribbon/714694

Survey Road blockade halts six logging machines

Logging in the controversial survey road area has been halted by tree platforms and tripods attached to six logging machines. Four people were arrested at the logging coupe.


Banner says it all: Gliding into extinction	tripod over logging machines prevents work from continuing	all that remains of the old growth forest at survey rd

Media Release Thursday 26th March 2009

Four people charged in bid to stop illegal logging

Today, four people were charged for being inside a ‘Public Safety Zone’, and for obstructing logging in a stand of old growth forest being clearfelled in East Gippsland.

Protesters have also charged the DSE and VicForests with a greater crime of destroying a forest that, by their own laws, must be given protection. They have also allowed machines to operate in the logging area while the tree-sitter was suspended 40 metres above the ground in the danger zone. This is in clear breach of the Occupational Health and Safety laws.

Since Tuesday, a group of 20 forest conservationists have prevented clearfelling in the upper Delegate River catchment.

“This particular old growth forest was recently surveyed by trained biologists and the result showed very high density of tree dwelling mammals”, said spokesperson for the group Carmel Roberts. “The DSE is neglecting their responsibilities to protect endangered wildlife habitat, even though it clearly states in their Forest Management Plan that where high numbers of threatened species are found, habitat must be protected.

“The DSE are saying they are unable to protect these species’ habitat despite the logging being in clear breach of their legal obligations. The government puts more value on a months work by a few people than protecting endangered wildlife from extinction.

“In 2006, Premier Brumby made an election promise to protect the “last significant stands of old growth”. These forests are the very the last refuges for our rare species.”

“Since the devastation caused by the bushfires, East Gippsland’s forests are now even more critical to the survival of Victoria’s native species than before. Rare native wildlife could have been made locally extinct in other areas due to the fire damage.”

“Old growth forest habitats such as hollow-bearing trees, are critically important for the survival of these threatened species in Victoria. The logging industry can survive in plantations and regrowth, endangered wildlife can’t.”

Media Release Wednesday 25th March 2009

Logging stopped in rich mammal site

This morning a group of 20 forest conservationists are preventing the clearfelling of one of the last stands of old growth forest in the upper Delegate River catchment in East Gippsland.

Members of the group have prevented six logging machines from working using a complicated series of tripod structures, cables and a tree platform.

“This particular old growth forest was recently surveyed by trained biologists and the result showed very high density of tree dwelling mammals”, said spokesperson for the group Carmel Roberts. “The DSE’s own policy states that areas containing high densities of tree dwelling mammals, must be protected. The DSE are saying they are unable to protect these species’ habitat despite this prescription.”

“In 2006, Premier Brumby made an election promise to protect the “last significant stands of old growth”. These forests are the very the last refuges for our endangered wildlife.”

“Old growth forest is critically important for the survival of these threatened species in Victoria. The logging industry can survive in plantations and regrowth, endangered species can’t.”

23 january 2009 - ABC Online

The Member for Gippsland East, Craig Ingram, is calling on the Victorian Government to bolster its Safety on Public Land legislation.

Twelve anti-logging protesters appeared in the Orbost Magistrates Court yesterday, after recent tree-sit protests in logging coups at Stony Creek and Brown Mountain.

A number of charges were withdrawn, and the court also recognised that protesters were not conducting illegal activity, merely by being present in a logging coup.

Their bail conditions only restrict them from re-entering the coups in which they were arrested.

Mr Ingram says the laws need to be strengthened to protect the right of East Gippsland workers to do their job.

“It’s my view that the Government must address this, and if the legislation is not strong enough to ensure that they can move the protesters on, and I use the comparison with a construction site, it’s not okay for people just to wander in at their own desire and go and do a tree-sit at a workplace, because it’s a workplace,” he said

Logging on hold over species ‘find’

Adam Morton (the Age)
January 29, 2009

ANTI-LOGGING campaigners have won a two-week reprieve in far east Gippsland after claiming to have discovered four threatened species in old-growth forest earmarked for harvesting.

Scientists working on behalf of Environment East Gippsland say a survey last weekend found endangered glider, owl and crayfish species in a coupe at Brown Mountain.

Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said it was outrageous that it was left to self-appointed “forest defenders” to survey the area for threatened species. “The Department of Sustainability and Environment must be hanging its head with shame … these are fabulous Victorian wildlife and the Brumby Government is aiding and abetting their onrush towards extinction,” he said.

Senator Brown called on the Federal Government to investigate whether Victoria had breached the Regional Forest Agreement by allowing rare and endangered species to be destroyed.

Bureaucrats responded by ordering logging be delayed for at least a fortnight while claims of a large population of greater gliders were investigated.

But VicForests, the state-owned commercial forestry business, cast doubt over some of the claims.

Its regional manager, Barry Vaughan, said a crayfish specimen presented by conservationists was not the endangered Orbost spiny crayfish, but the relatively common Bidawal spiny crayfish.

Despite this, a precautionary 100-metre buffer would be placed around a rainforest creek as a precaution, he said.

He said two owl species — the sooty and powerful owls — had access to “ample protected vegetation” in adjacent native forest. “The claims are worthy of investigation, but we are confident that harvesting will continue,” Mr Vaughan said

MEDIA RELEASE 19th January 2009

BLOCKADE TO PROTECT OLD-GROWTH FOREST BUILDS

Blockades to protect the iconic old growth forest near Stony Creek escalate this morning, with conservationists establishing tree platforms and roadblocks to protect the area.

Three conservationists occupy a 30 metre high tree platforms in the canopy of the ancient forest, with another two attached to a road block, stopping logging from continuing.

Old-growth forest near Stony Creek is being logged, despite the Labor Government’s 2006 election promise to protect the last remaining “significant stands of old-growth forest in East Gippsland”.

“This irreplaceable old growth Mountain Ash forest is a rich carbon store, and has valuable ecotourism potential to the community if left standing,” said spokesperson for the blockade, Lauren Caulfield.

“The forest surrounding Stony Creek forms an integral link between existing national park,s” said Ms Caulfield.

“The Brumby Government is claiming they will deliver a contiguous link between the Snowy and Errinundra National Parks, yet in a matter of weeks they have logged vital links, first at Brown Mountain and now here at Stony Creek”

“In a time of drought and climate crisis it is tragically short sighted to reduce Victoria’s old growth forests to woodchips bound for export”

At the 2006 State election the ALP promised to protect 41,000 of old-growth and iconic forest in East Gippsland.

For more information please contact:
Lauren Caulfield (03) 5154 0174

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From - http://www.geco.org.au/2008/protests09.htm#SURVEY

Extra Images - http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YWglIsIg1TQ/S3X3JcNteVI/AAAAAAAAANA/Pkozc-P87Mc/s1600-h/heartclearing.jpg

http://www.fsc-watch.org/media/strzelecki_koala.jpg

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http://candobetter.org/files/walking%20under%20the%20giants.JPG

For further enlightenment see –

The Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com

The New Illuminati

The Prince of Centraxis

(These sites have been locked by Today.com and this author no longer has access to his own blogs - Enlightenment Today

Imagine Nation – Artwork & Images )

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Monday, September 21, 2009

When A Tree Falls

How many hermits hear?

The trees keep falling for days. They smash to the ground without the least warning, loud thumps and apocalyptic crashes that startle you at the oddest times or rouse you from sleep.

Most of the birds and furry animals in that stretch of burnt forest are already dead, and all the charred falling tubes and chunks of Creation’s destruction are unlikely to hurt them any more – except by reigniting flames and starting the process afresh in untouched adjacent areas. The fire went out after only a couple of days on this side of the ridge; experiments with the neo-Reichian cloudbuster seem to indicate that ‘soft electrons’ can affect bushfires as well as the weather.

‘Smoke’ rhymes with ‘choke’ for good reason, no doubt. The smoke has just begun to subside. But now someone’s taken advantage of the confusion to light up an entire mountain, only a mile from where the flames have just been extinguished. It’s a place where I’ve seen bettongs – tiny foot-tall kangaroos - in the past, and sighted an even rarer Brush-tailed rock wallaby and surprising numbers of Parma wallabies.

Who knows? They may still be alive, despite the odds.

There have been lots of little differences around here in the last couple of months, including a few minor changes in the lifestyle of your her(m)etic correspondent. When I turned up on the main street of town in a ‘new’ fourteen year-old four wheel drive, gas powered panel van, various odd bods circled its white oblong seamlessness the first few times I parked on the main drag. They gave me suspicious glances and asked me where it came from.

One even kicked the front tyre, saying “Rich man, rich man!” like someone out of Borat’s Kazakhstan. “How did you get that?” Such is the nature of the charming little village closest to the forest I live, where a fourteen year-old vehicle is regarded as ‘new’ and a sign of some unspoken and secret guilt or transgression on the part of the owner.

As a result I tell no-one of the new ‘firefighter’ water pump, that recently took a day to set up in the little pump shed on the bank of the rainforest river near my shack. Such opulence is rarely understood or sanctioned by those hereabouts, even when it arrives as a result of government largesse. Thousand dollar grants were given to anyone whose dwelling was damaged by floodwaters, and even this unlikely stroke of good fortune can be grounds for resentment in these remote part – even though pretty well everyone was also given a thousand bucks as part of the government ‘stimulus package’. Some lucky taxpayers even received two such thousand dollar payments.

What a wonderful part of the world.

My brother gave me a king-sized futon mattress that fills the back of the van, and I sleep in the comfortable lace-lined space reasonably often – on most weekends, in fact - when travelling to nearby towns to visit the kids. The older Jackaroo Deva has been put out to pasture. There was nothing left but rust to weld the roof onto and no garage would reregister the old workhorse, but it’s still a goer. It’ll make a good driveway vehicle for negotiating the many precipitous muddy streaks that run up and down hills around here and it can still cross rivers and streams far more readily than the ‘new’ van - but it’s currently stranded in town. I foolishly left the wondrous old beast in a friend’s backyard when I went to the Emerald City in search of a ‘new’ vehicle, and they drove it incessantly, even after the rego had run out - right up to the point where the muffler blew apart leaving an impressively warped steel can lying on the road.

Red-dreadlocked Rusty Fireye assures me he’ll have it fixed and that I’ll have it back soon. I have his thirty foot rainbow bus parked near my shack as collateral, I suppose. It’s virtually fossilised, but will probably make someone a great bedroom some day.

New Neighbour makes New Neighbourhood

There’s also a new neighbour or three in this remote little valley. Most of the region is up for sale, or has just sold, or both. The vacant block of land next door – about two hundred and forty acres – has changed hands for the first time in decades. I met the new neighbour on the day he arrived, driving one of two bulldozers he’d brought to the block up the new driveway he was building, followed and preceded by a pack of impressive Bull Mastiffs. When he climbed from the vehicle to introduce himself, wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Destroy Everything!’ I shook the smiling man’s meaty hand and welcomed him to the valley.

He’s a logger, an (ex) bikie, and purchaser of various sundry sun-dried blocks of forested land in the region. He’s set up a small sawmill on a place I pointed out – a flat piece of ground from which you can almost see the sea (you have to climb the hills another few hundred metres to really see the Pacific). He also parked his caravan in that same comfortable spot after experiencing a few freezing winter nights at the bottom of the valley. That’s where I plant trees which require a good frost before their fruit will set – ‘tropical’ apples and pears, nashi fruits, chestnuts, maple syrup trees and a few other imported species.

He’s more interested in hardwood, and has bought a block possessed of some of the hardest wood in the world; iron-hard Ironbark, steely by name and ferrous by nature. Uncle Jobie and some of the other local aboriginal tribal elders have often remarked that Ironbark is the only timber you can cut from these hills in an ecologically sound manner; they grow straight as spears, don’t form many habitat hollows, animals seem to avoid them and their oils impede the growth of other plants.

After repeated burning and two cycles of past logging, they’re also just about the only commercial timber left on his block, which is half surrounded by the far less trammelled parcel where I live and write this little missive.

It could all have been a disaster so easily, of course; but no – by some miracle he’s the kind of logger that doesn’t want to tear great holes in the canopy or touch the recovering rainforest at all. He’s aware of the habitat trees on the block, and unlike most loggers doesn’t cut these hollowed-out animal hotels down to make way for ‘healthier timber’. He’s actually aware that he’s cutting trees that take a human lifetime or longer to mature, and is looking after his soil and forest – so far, he’s a fair dinkum forester, not a logger at all! He’s even collecting native seeds to replant the small breaks he’s making in the canopy.

It’s hard not to make a mess with a bulldozer, but he waltzes around in his machines like a ballet dancer. The noise that comes from his machinery isn’t too bad. The other new nearby neighbours are building a hardwood house themselves, and certainly aren’t hypocrites (though they didn’t move way out here to have their peace disturbed and grumble a little when he’s out of sight). Wood is deservedly worth a mint these days; many people build steel-framed houses because it’s cheaper!

Mercifully, the dogs are well-trained and obedient – unlike the huge goats that have been fleeing from them and running onto my place. They were dropped into the forest by the pyromaniac beef fattener who lived up the road until the arson fines finally drove him out. I’ve seen goats completely destroy thousands of acres in drier country. The arsonhole managed to leave a herd of goats in the forest as a reminder of his stupidity, but I don’t expect they’ll last too many generations around these parts.

They’ll probably end up like the poor deer that were released into the bush after the pyramid scheme fantasies of their owners collapsed in broken bank balances and crocodile tears – an occasional dwindling danger on the road, gradually eaten from the region by dingoes, pythons and the occasional hunter.

This week I’m planting more rainforest, and walkways of coffee beans. The fruit is very tasty and a real adrenaline rush – and when you’ve eaten the fruit you still have the beans. Next season it looks like I’ll be planting more gum trees on the ridges, interspersed with Red and White Cedars, Black and White Booyongs, Red and Yellow Carrabbeans and other varieties of lost forest giants you’ve probably never heard of. I’ll be planting Tallowwoods and White Mahoganies, Bluegums and even Ironbarks back on the next door neighbour’s block.

These big hard trees grow incredibly slowly from a human perspective. The forests grow even more slowly, when they’re allowed to diversify and expand at all. The soils regenerate with positively glacial slowness, and when they’re depleted trees and forests become mere fading memories. You can’t possibly know what you’ve missed – can’t ever truly know what was here once it’s gone. The future for those who take and take without putting back, or without leaving time for recovery, is easy to see – just look at northern Africa. Just look at any desert where humans once lived in paradise, until their meat animals killed the remnants of productive forests encased in a diverse web of life. The trashed remnants of ecosystems rapidly disappear; the poor fools who ‘owned’ them thought they’d leave ‘just a little’ for themselves, but that’s not how it works, dude.

You always need to leave more than you think.

PS - The universe is infinite, regardless of the transient opinions of last century’s purblind sciences. In an infinity of eternity, any subset of eternity can also be eternal. Every living, breathing moment is eternity, and you are eternal.

Just an eternal thought.

PPS – Three events occurred in the last three months which could be termed ‘cryptozoic’.

1. Six weeks ago I was playing a lan game at with the kids at the internet access point of Wonder Boy’s remote community. “Dad, dad!” the ten year-old yelled when he went outside to take a leak. Such was the excitement in his voice I leapt to my feet while he called, ‘Quick! Quick!” and made it outside in time to see the brightly glowing disc that he was staring up at.

It veered across the night sky, apparently ‘just’ a brilliant glowing light a few hundred feet overhead. Then it turned to dive into a cloud bank and its shape was more clearly defined; a planar geoid, or flying saucer.

A few seconds later the other kids made it outside too, but by then the object had disappeared into the thunderheads.

2. Huge humanoid footprints appeared in the soft drying mud at the bottom of a newish dam I installed a couple of years ago (that still doesn’t hold water). One and a half times as long as my feet and twice as wide, the toeprints were very widely splayed.

The new next door neighbour saw them with me and only one explanation seemed feasible (aside from a pointless hoax that was unlikely to be discovered by me or anyone else, such is the remoteness of the spot). My new logger neighbour also told me that he and a friend had taken plaster casts of similar prints on another block he’s foresting on. In Oz the fashion is to call these big-footed beings ‘yowies’, but that’s a translational mistake made by most unedumacated Eurosurpers. The local Gooris call them ‘Yarra’, or ‘Yerren’ (sometimes in plural).

3. Driving along the bank of the Bellinger River, Wonder Boy leaned out of the new van and exclaimed, ‘Wow – what’s that?’ This time I wasn’t quick enough to see what he described as a huge, furry, beaked, finned aquatic creature about the same size as him, juggling a fish in its huge goose-like beak.

Nothing still exists (officially, at least) in Oz waters – but aboriginal legends of similar creatures abound, often called ‘Bunyips’ in other parts of the country.

It’s also noteworthy that a new species of tortoise was discovered (this time officially) in the Bellinger River less than a decade ago – the ‘Bearded tortoise’. The Bellinger River is very large, and has very deep holes…

The more things change…

- R.A.

Images - author’s

For further enlightenment see –

Enlightenment Today

Imagine Nation – Artwork & Images

The Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com

The New Illuminati

( Save the World from RamPage - TimeSpace - RingWood ) – These sites are about to disappear along with all the free Geocities sites, so be quick! Make copies if you like!

The Prince of Centraxis

From The Rainforest Home of the Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com

Posted by ram in 08:06:12 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Fires and Fireflies

Three Moons Later

my roof

A constellation of fireflies glides through the undergrowth before me, and behind me the hills are ablaze with fires of a far more destructive kind.

September 11^th is a date with particular local meaning and resonance, one that predates the notorious events of 2001 by precisely one year. On that day in the year 2000 the remote valley where I’m writing this little screed was engulfed in a massive bushfire for the first time in nearly a century. Hundred foot high candleflames roared upward from massive ancient hollow-stemmed old growth trees like a vast satanic birthday cake, feeding choking black smoke into a Mordor-like cloud which hung low over the forest, lit from below by mad orange belchings and luminous flashes.

I toted a heavy backpack full of water about for days on end, spraying out small fire fronts and spot fires that the overworked brigades couldn’t keep up with, and batted out flames on the wooden walls of various houses and buildings just as they broke out.

Now some dimwit has lit up a small blaze in a patch of forest over a ridge in the next valley (torching a stolen car in the forest), and the fire brigades have taken their cue to light up the entire side of the forested valley opposite my home along a ten kilometre front in a ‘preventative backburning operation’.

westward from home

Many consider such behaviour a good idea, and in many places they may be correct; but around here, where a mosaic of recovering rainforest is interspersed with ridges of gum trees, regular burning simply decimates the fire-retarding rainforest and encourages the pyrophytic (fire-loving and fire-tolerant) plants. Without burning, the rainforest – which once covered all these lands in a massive unbroken canopy of water-retaining Old Growth - will grow to predominate and ultimately stop any massive fires from forming in the area, just as it has for millions of years. When the forest is burnt too regularly or fiercely – as it just about always is by ignorant and well-intentioned or perversely driven pyromaniac human beings – we’re just setting ourselves up for bigger and more disastrous fires in the future.

In other places where drier forest types predominate, prescribed burning makes a lot more sense – but even there the soil structure and microfauna are usually obliterated and the diversity is denuded by regular torching of biomass. The CO2 emissions barely bear considering!

As I write, the koalas whose spring mating calls have just begun to be heard again (for the first time since the last man-made fires of two years ago) have been silenced once more. They and a multitude of other endangered species with which you are probably less familiar are being burned, choked or driven out of the only areas in which they can possibly survive.

Almost all the fires I’ve witnessed in this area a have been started by human beings, with the exception of a single lightning strike whose resultant spot fire was put out by the accompanying and subsequent deluge. Every fire leaves the ecosystem and soil structure in a worse state, less resilient and less capable of recovering from drastic destruction – just like most of the rest of the planet. The threat of climatic catastrophe oft pales to insignificance before the daily reality of human-induced change, which amounts to nothing more than rampant destruction of the web of life that supports us all.

Meanwhile, as the firemen of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 imaginings are made all too real - actually incinerating the leafy pages of the book of life while imagining they’re doing the right thing - killing tens of thousands of endangered nesting quolls, glossy black cockatoos, lyre birds, koalas, phascogales, bandicoots, possums, various gliding marsupials (ranging from thumb-sized Feather gliders to huge Greater gliders), raptors, macro and micro-bats, a myriad of birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects (including this magnificent display of fireflies) and unheard-of unique plants, the world burns before my eyes while I water the tree nursery and mulch the rainforest plantings and vegetables. And continue to pull pyrophytic weeds like lantana (introduced by the last two centuries of Eurosurpers, so like and unlike me) that are growing under the forest canopy out by their roots, so they don’t wick any flames into the sensitive rainforest.

Life goes on, after a fashion – but on the surface, everything seems to recover; how can anyone who hasn’t seen what’s been obliterated possibly know what was out here?

When last I wrote in these pages (before being locked out of this site while its hosts overhauled the entire system for three months) the floodwaters were licking at the banks of my front yard, and had blocked all roads to the outside world. Let’s see what happens next, hmm? It’s likely that there’s about to be some noteworthy volcanic activity on the Pacific Rim.

Time to go see how the neighbours over the river are holding out; one couple who are building a house and three particularly vulnerable and currently vacant dwellings, whose owners have moved into town. No-one even informed any of them that their land, trees and sundry property were about to be burned in this ‘controlled backburning operation’.