GECO UPDATE April 2007

State Election Promise
Forest has been saved!
Yes it doesn’t happen very often but finally 40 000 hectares of forest in East Gippsland  has been selected for protection. This does not include all old growth and so unfortunately our work to protect old growth forest in East Gippsland still must go on (I was hoping for retirement).

Significant areas that have been chosen include:

• The Goolengook forest block.
• A link between the Snowy River National Park and the Errinundra National Park  of  5000 hectares going mostly through the Goongerah forest (but does not encompass the whole catchment and yes there are some significant  old growth areas  that have been left out all of which are scheduled for logging by June 30th.,  hopefully the forest industry aren’t that efficient).
• There is also two portions of the Yalmy forest  protected that abuts the Snowy River National Park.
• There is a lot of small scattered areas the make up the rest they are comprised of some sections of Rainforest Sites of Significance including; Cobb Hill, Dingo Creek, Bungywarr, Sassafras Basin, Goonmirk Rocks and Martins Creek. The Big Tree and Ferntree are other GECO hotspots that made it in.
  This has not been tabled in parliament yet.

So that’s the Good news, whoops I’m suppose to keep that till last, oh well the truth is its not all good, far from actually.

Click here to have a look at the map of the promised areas....

 If you have looked at the map of proposed reserve you will notice there are many holes.  We are trying to get the government to fill these in however, more pressure may be needed. Letters to the environment minister are always a good idea! Ideas are always a good idea too, especially if  carried out by the person with the idea.

Areas Scheduled to Be Logged
There is still many old-growth coupes scheduled for logging. All coupes in Goongerah that lie out of the proposed reserve have safety zones on them, with at least one being logged now. There are also coupes on the plateau, eight in Martins Creek and five in Kuark (wet forest and rainforest south of Goolengook) all ready to disappear right now.

What Can you do?
There are no pre-logging surveys in any of East Gippsland’s forest. Foresters mark the coupes with some vague idea of vegetation types and then they are logged. Rare plants??, Rare animals??? Who knows? Who cares? We care and I’m sure you do or you wouldn’t be reading this. If you love walking in untracked old-growth forest, why not come here and maybe help save some forest while enjoying the bush. If you don’t find anything legally significant at least you have made some sort of record of what the forest was like before it became a tree farm. Maybe one day when humans or some other species are more enlightened they may use your information to restore the forest.
We’d like to look at the type of forest ie; wet, damp, rainforest present, how many hollow bearing trees, any plants that stand out. Spotlighting and/or hair tubing for endangered animals is also needed. If any of this appeals to you please contact us for priority areas and other needed communication. There are only a handful of us here and there is a lot of unprotected forest out there.

NEW AREAS TO BE LOGGED
Vic Forest has just release their new coup list for East Gippsland. In regards to the far East, (which is excluding Bairnsdale and Tambo, hopefully someone out there is onto it), there is many new areas of old – growth forest up for logging. Some stand outs include:

• The head waters of the Yalmy River
• Brown Mountain which seems to be coupes that go taken off years ago because of the endangered Long Footed Potoroos found there. This area had a proposed old growth walk going through it with funding and all so it comes as a bit of a surprise!
• Survey Road/Bonang River, just when you thought there was no forest left there is it’s just behind those ugly clear-fells, two brand new coupes one bordering the National Park.

There are more but I don’t want to depress you to much. If you would like to write submissions about this you can access digitized maps from Bairnsdale DSE, due date is the 25th of May.

So hopefully lots of people will come to save the last remaining old –growth an experience you’ll never forget. I know that’s a sales pitch but no one can say not true can you?