30 results for tag: Old Growth Logging

The Age, Letters & Tandberg – Response to 6 March 2014

The environment Tony Abbott was going to plant trees to combat climate change. Now he threatens them by his cavalier attitude to our national parks. The ''green army'' will face confusion. Jean Tansey, Berwick   I think it is time we sent Mr Abbott the Dr Seuss book The Lorax. Bob Greaves, Mount Eliza   Next Mr Abbott will be telling us the Japanese whalers are the ''ultimate conservationists''. Annie Wilson, Inverloch   Change, variability (''Environment boss quits, drops bucket'', 6/3) … With the documented effects on weather patterns, oceans, ice caps, vegetation and fauna, it is clear that the correct phrase is climate crisis...

An amendment to the state’s logging laws is a threat to endangered species, say environmentalists

Oliver Milman  The Guardian, Thursday 27 June 2013 17.47 AEST The Victorian government has amended the state's logging laws in a move conservationists fear will transfer control to the timber industry and could doom endangered species such as the Leadbeater's Possum. The Sustainable Forests (Timber) Amendment Bill, which passed the lower house on Thursday, reduces the regulations binding VicForests, the state-backed forestry business. The bill removes the second part of the two-stage process that VicForests has to go through in order to secure and log tracts of Victoria's native forests. Once allocated an area of forest to log, VicForests will no ...

Is it too little, too late to save the Leadbeater’s possum?

Tom Arup. June 14, 2013.   Environment editor, The Age http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/is-it-too-little-too-late-to-save-the-leadbeaters-possum-20130614-2o7ro.html Leadbeater's alone have a deep connection to Victorian history. Their loss would be a black mark on the soul of the state.    There are big problems to be solved to save Leadbeater's possum, Victoria's endangered faunal emblem. And it is good a new group formed by the Napthine Government has been charged with considering some of them.   The Leadbetter's possum.   But it is hard not to conclude that to date the state government has been dragging its ...

The gathering tragedy in our forests

May 29, 2013 David Lindenmayerhttp://www.theage.com.au/victoria/the-gathering-tragedy-in-our-forests-20130529-2naih.html   Victoria's forests are beset by problems - and time is running out to provide solutions. Mention forest issues in Australia and almost everyone thinks of seemingly endless battles in Tasmania. Yet few people realise that large parts of the Victorian forest estate are in far worse shape than Tasmania's. This is because of the tiny fraction of remaining old growth, the rapid rate of overcutting of dwindling sawlog resources and the widespread use of antiquated and highly damaging clearfelling methods. Furthermore, the ...

Scientist: Australia taking ‘calculated actions’ to push Leadbeater’s possum to extinction

Oliver Milman, The Guardian June 06, 2013 http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0606-gen-leadbeaters-possum.html Australia's leading scientific expert on the endangered Leadbeater's possum has publicly lambasted the Victorian state government, claiming it is the first ever domestic administration to take "calculated actions" that it knew could wipe out a threatened species. In a letter published in the respected journal Science, Prof David Lindenmayer, of the Australian National University, states that "government-sanctioned legal logging of the reserve system will signi?cantly increase the chance of extinction of Leadbeater’s possum." The letter, ...

Victorian law change abandons native forests to loggers

Lisa Caripis, Research Fellow, Centre for Resources Energy and Environmental Law at University of Melbourne The Conversation, 27 May 2013 https://theconversation.com/victorian-law-change-abandons-native-forests-to-loggers-14113 At the end of this month, the Victorian Parliament is expected to pass a Bill giving industry long-term control of timber resources in Victoria’s native forests. The government says the changes are important for the state’s economic prosperity. But the Bill removes important safeguards and regulatory oversight of native forest logging. If enacted, the Bill will leave Victoria’s forests – and the creatures living in ...

Loggers Will Own Victoria’s Forests

By Nicholas Croggon. 7 May 2013. Published on newmatilda.com (http://newmatilda.com) The Victorian Government is on the verge of handing over control of the state's forests to an unprofitable, poorly-regulated logging corporation - potentially for decades, writes Nicholas Croggon In recent weeks, we have heard a lot about Tasmania?s new Forest Agreement [6], and the struggles to adequately protect Tasmania?s native forests from logging. However, what you might not realise is that in Victoria, things are also about to change. The State Government has put forward a new bill, to be debated in Parliament today, to provide "security" for Victoria?s ...

VicForests attacked over logging plan

Tom Arup Environment editor, The Age. May 16, 2013. http://www.theage.com.au/environment/vicforests-attacked-over-logging-plan-20130516-2jp28.html Victoria's state-owned timber company will reduce logging by 25 per cent in the bushfire-ravaged mountain ash forests of the central highlands – but will wait until mid-2017 to make the shift. The ash forests are home to Victoria's endangered faunal emblem, the Leadbeater's possum, whose numbers fell to well below 2000 after the Black Saturday fires ravaged its habitat and have not recovered. VicForests has been under pressure from scientists and environmentalists over the impact of its logging, which ...

Fears for Leadbeater’s possum

April 9, 2013 Tom Arup http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/fears-for-leadbeaters-possum-20130408-2hhde.html The Napthine government has quietly dumped controversial proposed changes to the state's timber code allowing loggers to seek exemptions from laws protecting endangered species. The move paves the way for larger changes to rules covering endangered species and logging, which are being foreshadowed under a yet-to-be-finished ''forest biodiversity project''. It comes as monitoring of endangered species populations in the state's key central highlands forests - including Victoria's endangered fauna emblem the Leadbeater's possum - is believed to ...

The decline and fall of the forest’s grand old masters

December 10, 2012. Bridie Smith. http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-forests-grand-old-masters-20121209-2b3ln.html RESEARCHERS have put the globe's big old trees on a par with animals such as whales, lions and tigers that have low populations and are vulnerable to decline. Following a stocktake of the world's large old trees, Australian and American researchers have found that such trees - the largest living organisms on the planet - are declining at all latitudes. ''Just as large-bodied animals such as elephants, tigers and cetaceans [such as whales] have declined drastically in many parts of the world, a growing body of ...