Logging machinery and other combustion machines are driving koalas out of their habitat at Bellingen/ Gleniffer'sTuckers Nob forests.
#biodiversity #bellingen #gleniffer #GlenifferRoad #NSWLogging #cars #sprawl #FCNSW #TheGreatKoalaNationalPark #SaveTuckersNob
The government promised a koala national park. Then their loggers moved in
"Logging inside the Great Koala National Park assessment area is four times more intense when measured by area than in nearby state forests outside the park, and environmentalists say the targeted areas are wreaking maximal environmental damage...New analysis suggests the NSW government’s own logging arm is trashing the forest inside the proposed park." >>
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/the-government-promised-a-koala-national-park-then-the-loggers-moved-in-20241104-p5knro.html ($ wall)
#logging #MidNorthCoast #TheGreatKoalaNationalPark #NSW #biodiversity #wildlife #koalas #loggingIndustry #LoggingImpacts #destruction #FCNSW #breaches #SaveTuckersNob #subsidies #bushfires #risks #crime #violence #ResourceFrontiers #offsets #ClimateEmergency #governance
Forestry Corporation of NSW has ‘a pattern’ of illegally damaging the environment, scathing judgment finds
"A court has released a scathing judgment against the New South Wales’ state-owned forest agency, finding it had “a pattern” of illegally damaging the environment and had refused to accept the “true extent of the harm that it has caused”."
"The Land and Environment Court fined the Forestry Corporation of NSW (FCNSW) $360,000 for offences related to the logging of 53 eucalyptus trees in environmentally significant forest near Eden, in the state’s south, after the black summer bushfires."
"The court accepted an EPA submission that the agency had “a pattern of environmental offending, has not provided any compelling evidence of measures taken by it to prevent its reoffending, and does not accept the true extent of harm that it has caused by its offending...Justice Rachel Pepper agreed that any penalty imposed on the Forestry Corporation “must serve to deter it from future criminality”.
“The government is ultimately responsible for the Forestry Corporation, and have a duty to protect the people and environment of NSW from this rogue state-owned corporation."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jul/31/forestry-corporation-of-nsw-has-a-pattern-of-illegally-damaging-the-environment-scathing-judgment-finds
#harm #LoggingIndustry #LoggingImpacts #NSWlogging #FCNSW #StopLoggingKoalaHabitat #breaches #law #governance #criminality #SaveTuckersNob #BiodiversityCrisis #FCNSW #StopNativeForestLogging
Save Tuckers Nob forests
Save the Bellingen koala habitat.
Save the biodiversity habitat of the promised Great Koala Park.
Save the habitable climate niche.
#StopNativeForestLogging #SaveTuckersNob #BellingenLogging #NSWlogging #FCNSW #ClimateEmergency #ExtremeHeat #BiodiversityCrisis #destruction #governance #SettlerSociety #extractivism
Saving koalas from extinction on the Mid North Coast of NSW
"The Bellingen Environment Centre (BEC) has called on the Government to suspend all logging within the proposed Great Koala National Park as consultation for the Koala Park begins in Coffs Harbour."
“If logging is allowed to continue within the boundaries of the proposed Great Koala National Park, koalas and a large number of other critically threatened and endangered animals will suffer.”
“The industrial logging that we are seeing at Pine Creek is an environmental and economic disaster and not only a major threat to koalas, but it’s also a serious waste of taxpayers’ dollars and undermines the $190 million NSW Government Koala Strategy.”
“Labor needs to listen to health and environmental scientists, not a single industry, and place a moratorium on logging immediately."
>>
https://www.newsofthearea.com.au/conservationists-accuse-labor-of-dragging-their-feet-on-great-koala-national-park
#PineCreek #NativeForests #LoggingIndustry #NSWForestry #koalas #extinction #TheGreatKoalaNationalPark #BellingenLogging #SaveTuckersNob #BiodiversityCrisis #ClimateEmergency
Logging and koalas do not mix
Spoiler: End native forest logging altogether, seek World Heritage protection for these forests.
"Koalas cannot read maps, and do not understand human zoning. If their habitat in plantations is cleared, they die – just as we’ve seen in Victoria, where deaths of koalas in blue gum plantations have made national news."
"For a koala-protecting National Park to actually protect koalas, it must be based on the identification and reservation of high value habitat – such as hardwood plantations. If we leave all plantations out, some of the best habitat in the park will continue to be logged. Without plantations, the park will be filled with holes, severing critical corridors and hampering the movement of koalas."
What should we do?
"We have to restore the areas lost to logging and the Black Summer bushfires and flag more forested areas for inclusion – especially unburnt habitat. And the government has to end logging within the proposed park area. If we want a viable alternative, the government should begin new plantations outside the park area and buy out existing logging contracts inside the park. Logging and koalas do not mix."
"We should give up on the idea of protecting koala “hubs”. Instead, we should prioritise the protection of koala populations unaffected by fire and in untouched forest areas wherever they are, whether inside or outside of these hubs.
Every bit of habitat on public land should be ruled in, as this is what counts, not zoning. Local communities – not just the forest industry and environment groups – need to be included in negotiations. The government should also consider community efforts to seek World Heritage protection for these forests."
Tim Cadman, Danielle Clode
>>
https://theconversation.com/a-home-among-the-gum-trees-will-the-great-koala-national-park-actually-save-koalas-217276
#conservation #logging #Koalas #LoggingIndustry #NSWForestry #extinction #SaveTuckersNob ##restoration WorldHeritage #Biodiversity #ClimateEmergency #EndNativeForestLogging
Fossil fuel fanned fires are consuming native forests and plantations
Logging also makes forests more flammable
"Our research...shows that between 2001 and 2021, severe wildfires worldwide destroyed timber-producing forests equivalent to an area the size of Great Britain. Severe fires reach the tree tops and consume the forest canopy."
"Plantations, like some logged and regenerated native forests, can be highly flammable...This is especially problematic where logging makes forests more prone to burning in a high-severity wildfire.
"...Logging makes forests more flammable. This has been documented in parts of southeastern Australia, where intact forest always burnt at lower severity than harvested forest across the entire footprint of the Black Summer fires. Forests that have been subject to thinning also are at risk of high-severity wildfire."
https://theconversation.com/fire-is-consuming-more-than-ever-of-the-worlds-forests-threatening-supplies-of-wood-and-paper-216643
"Where possible, fast-growing timber species should be introduced in plantations, sparing large tracts of old-growth forest elsewhere to support biodiversity and carbon stocks. However, timber plantations are highly flammable. Shifting production in fire-prone regions from monocultures of highly flammable timber species (for example Pinus radiata, Eucalyptus globulus) towards heterogenous mosaics of less-flammable species of varying ages will be vital in reducing timber losses through burning."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01323-y
Logging makes forests more flammable:
Nonlinear Effects of Stand Age on Fire Severity
https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12122
Forests that have been subject to thinning also are at risk of high-severity wildfire.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aec.13096
Logging elevated the probability of high-severity fire in the 2019–20 Australian forest fires
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-022-01717-y
Re-establish koala populations on fragmented habitats
"Where you've had a population grow from a small number of individuals, there's always potential for inbreeding."
"Drones with thermal cameras have been used to count the koalas and sound recorders are being installed in national parks, and on Crown land and farms along a 100-kilometre stretch of the river. We put the data through a computer and it takes hours and hours and hours of recording and just chops out the little snippets where it thinks there's a koala — then those little snippets get manually verified."
Best practice would be to refrain from logging koala habitat in the first place.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-06/narrandera-koala-colony-model-for-re-establishing-populations/103009652
#StopLogging #NativeForests #biodiversity
#koalas #wildlife #telemetry #habitat #fragmentation #NSW #technosphere #SoundEcology #TheGreatKoalaGhetto #SaveTuckersNob
Silencing biodiversity
Biophony is the collective sound produced by all living organisms that reside in a particular biome. It is not about a 'decontextualized single-species recording model'. Bernie Krause is recording "the “Great Animal Orchestra,” a constantly shapeshifting constellation of individual voices in motion, and he termed their symphonic soundscape a ‘biophony’ — all of the “sounds originating from nonhuman, nondomestic biological sources.”
In 1988 he recorded the so-called selective logging of a timber company:
"The outcome was a spectrogram with a remarkable density throughout all frequency bands, as could be expected for a habitat replete with the most diverse animal life. In 1989, he returned to the meadow after the operation had been completed for a second session under the exact same conditions and at the exact same time. In keeping with what had been promised by the logging company, the place still looked as though it was teeming with life — “I was delighted to see that little seemed to have changed,” as Krause remarked. Back in the studio and after a look at his spectrogram, he had to revise that impression: “Gone was the thriving density and diversity of birds. Gone, too, was the overall richness that had been present the year before. The only prominent sounds were the stream and hammering of a Williamson’s sapsucker.” The ear, then, turned out to be capable of detecting the true state of the habitat much more precisely and truthfully than the eye ever could."
"The recurring pattern seemed to be that the ‘evil sounding’ spaces were those devoid of animal noises, while those full of life and sound tended to come across as far more agreeable"
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/everything-is-wrong-bernie-krauses-concept-of-biophony/
Biophony, Bernie Krause
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2017/08/biophony/
#BiodiversityCrisis #SoundEcology #biophony ##sound #NatureSounds #LoggingIndustry #LoggingImpacts #degradation #koalas #wildlife #habitat #ecology #biodiversity #extinction #NSWLogging #SaveTuckersNob
Tuckers Nob - Roads closed
The NSW forest corporation is ready to bulldoze koala habitat in the middle of the breeding season.
#BellingenLogging #roads #NSWForestry #StopLogging #NativeForests #koalas #SaveTuckersNob #ClimateCrisis #biodiversity
Logging The Great Koala National Park a “gift to the timber industry”.
"Greens and environmentalists question initial plan to pause logging in just 5% of NSW’s promised koala park. While the cessation of logging in the hubs was welcomed, Higginson said the lack of protection for the larger area was a “gift to the timber industry”."
“The informal protection for koala hubs and announcement of advisory groups pales in comparison to the revelation that 58% of critical koala habitat in the proposed great koala national park will still be subject to logging plans and that the park won’t be created until 2025 at the earliest."
“The forests that will form the great koala national park will continue to be logged while the government and advisory groups sort out the details of the plan.”
“But in order to stop the ongoing decline of our beloved koalas they must immediately stop industrial logging in globally significant forests such as Oakes, Clouds Creek and Moonpar state forests.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/13/greens-and-environmentalists-question-initial-plan-to-pause-logging-in-just-5-of-nsws-promised-koala-park
#NSW #NativeForests #governance #extractivism #LoggingIndustry #BellingenLogging #TheGreatKoalaNationalPark #SaveTuckersNob #koalas
Stop logging koala habitat in a biodiversity emergency
Sign the petition:
Destruction of Australia's National Icon - the Koala
On September 11, 2023, the Australian Government plans to strike at the very heart of our Nation – the rich koala habitat at the core of the proposed Great Koala National Park.
https://www.change.org/p/destruction-of-australia-s-national-icon-the-koala?source_location=search
#StopLogging #NativeForests #NSW #MidNorthCoast #BellingenLogging #biodiversity #GreatKoalaNationalPark #Koalas #petition #SaveTuckersNob
Making a killing on nature
Ever wondered how much money a single koala might be worth?
"At the moment, the price for the koala credit is about $400."
"A credit is the compensation a developer would need to pay in New South Wales for killing a koala's habitat — known as a "biodiversity offset"."
"Traded biodiversity 'credits' are key to Labor's environmental plans, but critics are not convinced. In New South Wales, a koala "species credit" can be bought for several hundred dollars."
"And there is no hard-and-fast commitment to stopping that native forest logging [nor] even a commitment to stopping the rampant land clearing that's happening in New South Wales and Queensland."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-10/labor-environmental-biodiversity-credits-investment-critics/101804974
#market #valuation #nature #ThreatenedSpecies #offset #biodiversity #extinction #koala #NSW #logging #SaveTuckersNob #BellingenLogging
New research shows: "Alarmingly, climate change is making bushfires more frequent."
Logging and 'thinning' Bellingen does too.
"We excluded deliberate burns such as hazard reduction (or prescribed) burns lit by fire authorities. We also excluded places that had been logged, because they’re known to be at a high risk of severe fire – and so including them would have skewed the results."
"Clearly, we must seek to limit the number of wildfires. An obvious response is to take more strident steps to tackle climate change. But even if humanity meets this huge global challenge, it will be a long time before we see demonstrable changes in climate conditions."
"More immediate options include managing vegetation to reduce flammability. For example, activities such as logging and thinning can make forests more flammable, so such practices should be halted in these vulnerable ecosystems."
"Greater efforts are needed to conserve biodiversity that is sensitive to fire, and to conserve ecosystems at risk of collapse. We must also embrace new technologies to detect wildfires as soon as they ignite, and suppress them as quickly as possible."
Logging elevated the probability of high-severity fire in the 2019–20 Australian forest fires
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-022-01717-y
What environmental and climatic factors influence multidecadal fire frequency?
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.4610
