The Australian Forests and Climate Alliance (AFCA) condemns Koala deaths from a private plantation clear-fell operation in Victoria but wants the public to know that wildlife carnage is business as usual for native forest logging.
AFCA spokeswoman, Frances Pike says “The industrial logging machinery that crushed, maimed and killed Koalas in the Bluegum Plantations also crushes, buried alive and kills wildlife during logging of public native forests.”
‘Massive slaughter by industrial logging is ongoing in our precious and precariously diminished native forest estate. Sanctioned both by the Federal and State Governments of New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia, it’s routine across four States.
‘Wombats are buried alive in burrows. Reptiles, amphibians, ground dwelling birds – anything that can’t run or fly fast enough – is crushed beneath the wheels and tracks of forest roading and harvesting machinery. The wheels and tracks alone are two metres high; industrial harvesters are built to clear 200 hectares of forest a month.
‘Despite the paper policies used as a screen, the reality is masses of animals are killed on a daily basis, with Koalas included in casualties.”
‘Yet the direct slaughter of a logging operation pales in comparison with the indirect impacts when animals deprived of habitat starve, or perish from exposure.
‘And people marvel at our extinction crisis. This season I witnessed logging in rainforest still going on as helicopters fighting the fire in a rainforest 500 metres away flew overhead. In the regions where this is happening people know that it doesn’t matter what is happening to the native forests of this country; it’s always business as usual for logging.
‘Now the logging industry is lobbying to get funds to go into even more, including in national parks, in the name of ‘salvage’ logging and hazard reduction.’
‘Logging for ‘salvage’ can dangerously delay or prevent a forest ecosystem chance of full recovery; thinning or burning forests as a means of ‘hazard reduction’ is often ineffectual or increases forest flammability. It might be acceptable in limited circumstances only, dependent on ecological processes specific to a forest ecosystem.
‘Neither the Federal government nor one of the four states with Regional Forest Agreements has the courage to stand up to the logging industry and just say:
No. 12 million hectares has burnt, much of it native forest. The priority now has to be the recovery and the restoration of the native forest estate.
AFCA is calling on governments to immediately end logging in native forests, or at least pending an informed assessment of the reality of the situation we now face.
every life counts. humanity will not survive without biodiversity. we need live koalas, bees & trees. end all logging of natural forests now!
The world over is mourning the monumental losses Australia has endured with bushfires and logging, for the impact its had on our unique and treasured wildlife.
We are fed up, with your lack of justice for animals in your hunger for the almighty dollar. It has to stop before it’s too late.
Charge the owner with wilful cruelty to animals. Stop the use of mechanical harvesters. Stop treating our public forest estate as a plantation for wood chips. Use smarter plantation practices and stop this horrific slaughter!
The police need to step in and start arresting and locking up with hefty fines, loss of their jobs for government and their advisers crimes committed causing horrific suffering and deaths to critically endangered wildlife.
How can you call killing hundreds of koalas business as usual ??? Do you do Environmental Impact research. That farmer new those animals were there and you need to require the owners to allow people to come and remove them,It should be a law !! The world is so angry that this is happening,change the way you do things, your tourist dollars are going to go away quickly!
Why are we logging our precious forests??? For wood chipping!!! Absolutely disgraceful.. Australia is a dry, ancient continent; we need our trees and our water. Get rid of ScoMo and his ilk.