A picture speaks a thousand words
Nothing says it like these photos, showing what a forest should look like, and what many forests in the South East of New South Wales look like today.
A pristine forest, Gulaga NP, SE NSW. Photo courtesy Ms Nina
Pristine forest, Victoria. A rare sight today outside of National Parks.Photo courtesy Jude Deland
Clearfell logging, near Mogo, SE NSW, September 2009
Habitat is destroyed, and regrowth forests are drier.These forests are often logged on 15 or 20 year cycles
Logging, Brown Mountain Victoria.
This massive tree, hundreds of years old and once home to thousands of animals, was felled to make woodchips.
clearfell logging Victoria. Photo The Wilderness Society
Photo Tony Whan and Lisa Stone
All in a Day's work
Almost 200 truck loads every working day take around 2000 logs to the chipmill at Eden. That's a million tonnes of woodchips a year that are exported to Japan for the paper industry. Incredibly, although the parent company, Nippon Paper in Japan makes a healthy profit, the logging agency, ForestsNSW, loses money hand over fist. Last year it lost $14.4 million, a tab that was picked up by the NSW taxpayers.
Photo Lisa and Tony
Photo Lisa and Tony
The Eden Chipmill
A million tonnes of logs a year are processed by this chipmill alone.
It is the size of a large city block and the pile is around seven stories high
Post logging burn - intentionally lit. Brown Mountain Victoria. Photo courtesy Jude Deland
Devastation in the south east forests
Prue Acton from SERCA in a ravaged landscape after logging for woodchips. No question about what SERCA will be campaigning on, she said.
Gulaga, 2009
This fire was deliberately lit by ForestsNSW in extremely hot and dry weather conditions and got out of control, burning large areas of the national park.
Detritus
Left behind after a logging operation. Photo Lisa and Tony
Koalas - too good to lose.
The koala above was photographed in Mumbulla forest on the south coast. Despite a government report that confirmed a small healthy colony of around 50 koalas, ForestsNSW intends to log this forest in March 2010. The one below is already gone, along with its critical habitat.
Sustainable forest management?
This landscape is the result of a logging operation by ForestsNSW. Large, old habitat trees are legally required to be left for animals and birds, but in practice, this is rarely the case. Photo courtesy of Lisa and Tony.
Waste on the forest floor
The Eden chipmill once claimed to use the 'waste' from high value timber logging, but in practice it uses only who logs and always has. The Crowns and butts, the 'waste' are then burnt on the ground.
