DEAR News Of The Area,
Really! Who are the hypocrites here?
While Steve Dobbyns claims to be an independent forest industry expert (Opinion, NOTA 22 March) he disappointingly trots out the same rubbery figures and denialist rhetoric that has already failed to convince those on the ground who are concerned about native forest logging.
His suggestion that anti-logging campaigners protesting about the current clear-felling of mature hardwood plantations are being hypocritical, is both an uninformed reading of the situation and misleading.
The provisional area of the proposed Great Koala National Park, which was based on the best available scientific data of the most viable koala hubs to ensure connectivity and species survival, was always going to include some mature ‘plantation’ hardwood forests.
That is an unfortunate function of plantations being integrated within the native forest network and areas of core koala habitat being contained in original retained native forest remnants within plantation areas.
It was always going to require the adults in the room sitting down and negotiating a compromise solution.
That is why there were calls right from the start for a moratorium on logging within the proposal area until this process could be completed.
Sadly, despite the accepted information regarding the dire state and predictions regarding the future of NSW koala populations, the ‘new’ Labor Government and the Forestry Corporation’s and logging industry’s claimed concern for the future of our iconic marsupial; all we have seen is a ‘full steam ahead’ harvest program of industrial clear-felling right in the heart of some of the region’s best core koala habitat, along with the continuing destructive ‘selective’ logging forays into adjacent non-plantation native forests.
To NOT rally against the current harvesting situation would be even more hypocritical!
Regards,
Dave WOOD,
Boambee East.