NATIONAL PARKS ASSOCIATION OF NSW INC
PO Box A96 Sydney South 1235
Ph: (02) 9233 4660 Fax: (02) 9233 4880
31 October 1998
Eden Clearfelling Spin - A Pack of Lies
The National Parks Association today challenged the NSW government to stop the whispering campaign by its minders that there is no clearfelling of native forests in Eden now or in the past and that it is all a 'greenie' myth.
"This line has been tried on me and a number of journalists in a pathetic bid to justify the poor decision on the Eden forests", said Noel Plumb, Executive Officer of the NPA.
"Clearfelling for woodchips has not stopped at any stage, although some areas have been under a temporary moratorium."
"The Carr Government is now desperately close to failing with its promises to save the forests and end the conflict. Its Eden decision fails to stop clearfelling in the South East Forests and leaves crucial old growth areas unprotected. More than 15,000 hectares of old growth still remains in the clearfell zone and a third of all old growth is unprotected by reserves."
"We have already called on the Premier to review the decision and public doubt is growing that the Premier has been well advised."
"The campaign of lies and distortion by the government minders that has now started will further alienate public opinion."
"The $1 million dollar advertising campaign that the government has started in an attempt to assert that all is well with its 'NSW Forest Agreements' is futile in the face of a conservation movement and a concerned public determined not to accept broken promises."
"NPA invites any journalist to see recent photographs of Eden clearfelling or better still come on a trip to Eden with NPA and other conservation groups to see for themselves. One look at ABC TV's library footage of Eden clearfells will also demolish the rubbish now being peddled by the government's minders."
For further comment : Noel Plumb 9233 4660 or 018 975 075
Attached is a 2 page analysis of the definition and impact of clearfelling in Eden
CLEARFELLING IN EDEN’S FORESTS
30 October 1998 - Prepared for the National Parks Assoc'n of NSW by A. Wong B Sc - Res and Env Mgt
In the Eden Region, a coupe (a logging area of around 50ha) is logged in a single operation. Most trees are removed, and some trees are retained for seed trees, habitat trees, fauna corridors or streamside buffers. Afterwards the area is burnt. The NSW Forestry Commission (State Forests of NSW) claims this is not clearfelling and describes it as "integrated harvesting".
The Commonwealth Government's Resource Assessment Commission (RAC) Forest and Timber Inquiry (1992) states:
"Two basic harvesting methods are used in Australia: clear-felling and selective logging. In clear-felling, a coupe (the area to be logged) is logged in a single operation. In most cases some trees are left as seed or habitat trees, as corridors for fauna, or as buffers along streams." Pages 15-16, Final Report, Volume 1.
The logging in Eden clearly falls into this definition of clearfelling.
The 1996 State of the Environment Report (Commonwealth Government) states:
"Clearfelling is the localised removal of most or all trees followed by burning of debris.... Modified clearfelling keeps some trees for conservation purposes such as mammal habitat and to allow further growth of immature trees."
In the glossary it defines clearfelling as:
"the removal of all trees on a specified cutting area; in many cases some trees are retained for environmental protection or conservation reasons." (p.A-24).
The logging in Eden also clearly falls into this definition of clearfelling.
Clearfelling in Eden occurs in a checkerboard fashion, with alternate coupes clear-felled until the entire area of several hundred thousand hectares has been logged over the planned period of 40 years, although the natural cycle of growth and decay of most of the Eden old growth trees is close to 400 years. This has the effect of rapidly fragmenting the forest landscape, along with its formerly connected wildlife populations and ecological processes, well before the entire area is actually logged.
In Eden, the forest ecosystem is so heavily modified that habitat for virtually all species of animals is removed, full-scale erosion is allowed, and the hydrological cycle for water catchments is completely upset. Even when young trees regrow, the habitat for many species of animals is still absent for hundreds of years, and hydrological cycles are still massively changed. The retention of some habitat and seed trees in the logging area help in the return of some animals as new trees regrow, but do not prevent the loss of virtually all wildlife at the time of logging and for many decades afterwards.
The end result is an area of forest so severely damaged that it is ecologically and physically no longer a forest.
The State Forests of NSW agency suggests that 30% of the canopy is retained after logging. However, this figure, even when observed, includes streamside buffers, corridors and so on – , within the area actually logged the canopy reduction is much higher. It is also a fact that many of the trees retained within the logging area, such as ‘habitat’ trees, are lost due to the post logging burn and wind-throw. Streamside buffers and isolated rainforest areas are often severely damaged by escaped logging burns and accidental felling into these areas.
On the environmental effects of this type of logging, Professor Tony Norton and Sarah May (Australian National University) wrote in Ecology and Sustainability of Southern Temperate Ecosystems (CSIRO, 1994):
"Integrated forestry harvesting is defined generally here as the process of logging eucalypt forests for pulpwood, sawn timber etc, and the suite of activities (eg., roading, prescribed fire, silviculture) associated with this process." (p. 12)
This is the type of logging which the State Forests agency claims to occur in Eden. Norton and May continue:
"Many impacts [of this type of logging on forests] are significantly detrimental since they can (i) destroy and modify complex forest landscapes and ecosystems; (ii) destroy and modify the natural environmental heterogeneity of forest ecosystems; (iii) destroy, prevent or hinder ecological processes that are the basis for species' persistence and evolution; (iv) destroy or significantly modify the habitat of species; and (v) destroy individual organisms and significantly modify populations and assemblages of species. As a result of these changes, considerable genetic diversity is lost and the likelihood of the extinction of species may be increased. The detrimental impacts resulting from integrated forestry harvesting threaten many aspects of biodiversity including: various biological and ecological processes, genetic diversity, vertebrate and invertebrate fauna, rare and endangered species and assemblages, riparian environments and aquatic systems, and landscape diversity." (p. 10)
According to Professor Norton (in Forest Ecology and Management 85, 1996):
"In the case of old eucalypt growth forests that have been subjected to clearfelling, it may take several generations of the dominant overstorey (i.e. 1500-2500 years) to recover the full range of structural diversity present in the uncut forest (e.g. large live trees, large stags, collapsed large trees in various stages of decay). Clearly the nominal rotations of 60-120 years currently used in most timber harvesting plans in eucalypt forests are incompatible with the natural turnover of many eucalypt forests."
In Eden the planned rotation, ie complete clearfelling of the whole region, is 40 years
In a study undertaken for a Ph.D. thesis by Phil Gibbons from the Australian National University's Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, 'damp' forest in South East NSW (Eden Region) and East Gippsland were surveyed for trees with hollows in them. The study found that, on average, there were 22.2 hollow-bearing trees per hectare. In the Eden Region, only 5 living ‘habitat’ trees (trees likely to contain hollows), on average, are retained per hectare after logging. Not all of these will necessarily contain habitable hollows which take at least 100 - 150 years to form. Obviously retained ‘habitat’ trees can only cater for the future return (decades later) of a small proportion of the original wildlife.
Tree hollows in Australian eucalypt forests shelter and sustain some 400 species of wildlife, including birds, bats, owls, possums, gliders and reptiles.