Concerned Residents of East Gippsland
The far eastern tip of Victoria, known as East Gippsland is an extremely important stronghold of this diversity and of old growth forests. Of the 550 eucalypt species in Australia, 43 live in East Gippsland.
East Gippsland supports over 300 rare and threatened species. However, some of these endangered species have barely a toe-hold in the remaining intact areas; the Tiger Quoll, Powerful Owl, Tuan, and Victoria's most endangered mammal, the Long-footed Potoroo.
The Errinundra Plateau has rich rainforests extending along creeks and gullies, blanketed in by wet sclerophyll forests. Age old eucalypts tower over a luxurious understorey of tree ferns, conical-shaped sassafras, pomaderis, mountain pepper and cushion-like mosses of exceptional diversity. These areas are currently being clearfelled.
As the drainage patterns on the plateau are shallow and slow moving, wetlands and swamps were formed which are now important 'libraries' of pollen records. Recent studies to the fossil pollen show that there have been more changes to certain plant communities on the plateau in the last 20 years than there have been in the last 12,000.
The fact that there has been greater disturbance to certain vegetation types on the Errinundra Plateau in the last 25 years than since the last ice age, coincides with clearfelling and woodchipping which also began 25 years ago.
It appears that East Gippsland is covered in trees. However, if we scale this picture up into one that encompasses all of Australia, it shows only a meagre 3% of the land is covered in eucalypt forests and of this, only one fifth remains in its original state. Despite this, the timber industry claims that too much public forest is "locked up" in National Parks. Their propaganda explains they only take a small slice of the cake each year, and then put it all back, yet their small slice of the cake is the same precious piece that has so far escaped the ravages of the axe and chainsaw, graziers, the match and mining companies. As for 'putting it all back' - 12,000 years of uninterrupted evolution is hardly going to be recreated in a logging cycle of 60 years.
Clearfelling to supply Japanese paper factories with cheap woodchips is the appalling yet unquestioned method of timber extraction which persists today. This system of logging sees almost every tree cut down in areas of up to 120 ha. The sparse scattering of seed or habitat trees left on the site are napalmed afterwards. These fires are deliberately intense and would be comparable to the worst of last summer's NSW fires. Thus the complexities and richness of a living forest are transformed into a 'responsibly managed' incinerated wasteland.
The predicament we see today stems from a blend of a brutally exploitive woodchip industry and reckless government legislation.
Another three to five years of this forest pillaging is likely to see the remaining unprotected old growth forest and unique native communities transformed in to a sea of bracken and wattle. From the top of the food chain to the soil microbes, logging causes major structural damage to the delicate ecological associations and intricacies of these primeval forests. Trees may eventually be coaxed to return, but such an extraordinary and finely tuned system could take centuries to recover, if ever.
Victoria's first forest blockade took place in 1984. The protesters were a multicoloured crew of 'hippies' fresh from the Down To Earth Confest. Sarongs, headbands and dreadlocks were their mark of distinction. Their tenacity and conviction resulted in the creation of the Errinundra National Park some four years later.
However, just out of earshot, chainsaws continue to annihilate the connecting Sassafras rainforest beyond the Park boundaries!
In years to come the world will view native forest logging as we now view the slaughtering of whales for pet food. The last of these ice age relics in East Gippsland are truly deserving of being worshipped - not woodchipped!