IT'S TIME to Save the Southern Forests

John Macris

Conservation Officer

Its time to go interactive: this is both a reading and writing task. The following italic captions are the salient points to grace the letter, that bears your name, that tells the leader, who gets the message, that sways the outcome, that extends the parks that we built.

 

Interspersed between the suggested text of the letter that you are already poised to write, is some background on a few of the most sought after additions, and important events of the past few years. Its crunch time for the southern forests so please lend your support.

 

Dear Premier,

 

Please deliver on Community Reserve Proposals in Southern NSW

 

To explain this heading, local groups and the South-east Forest Alliance have been working over the past 3 years on proposals for a number of new or extended forest reserves in the southern region. This takes in Nowra to Narooma along the coast and Mittagong to Tumut on the tablelands. The community proposals, if implemented, would deliver the necessary core reserve system in Southern region, which was denied to the north-east and Eden regions last year due to the turbid political landscape. This time the Government should be able to do significantly better.

 

..I support the environment groups' National Park proposals for the Southern CRA region. This whole region was excluded from your Government's interim forest park creations of September 1996. A number of wilderness assessments in the area have been sidelined by the CRA process and are long overdue for completion....

 

These are two areas of concern with the GovernmentÕs forest process to date. While some long sought areas were reserved in the other forest regions in late 1996, Southern region missed out. Nominated additions to the Deua Wilderness have been awaiting assessment for 7 years, despite the requirement in legislation that a report should be completed within 2 years.

 

The rationale has been that wilderness would be incorporated into the broader forest assessment process, but now the Government wishes to put off any wilderness identification until after all other processes, including woodchipping agreements, are in place. This is not on, as the next point in your letter to Mr Carr states.

 

...I believe it is essential that the southern region wilderness areas, which are all overdue for assessment according to the Wilderness Act, be included in a public exhibition prior to your decision on the Southern Region. This was done as part of the 1996 interim assessment and 1998 Eden Region exhibition, and it is extremely important that the wilderness process not be over-run at this critical moment. A public review after the decisions on wood supplies is too late.....

 

The community reserve proposals cover around 16 areas of State forest and Crown land. Here are a few specific examples you might like to mention to the Premier to personalise your letter:

 

Greater Murramarang Tall forests of spotted gum and palm trees cloak the hills behind the tiny Murramarang National Park, providing a scenic backdrop and high quality habitat for threatened wildlife. The proposal would expand the national park from the present 500 metre wide coastal strip, to take in these inadequately represented forests, out to a new boundary at the Princes Highway.

 

Buckenbowra This area is described in the May 1999 issue of the Bushwalker. It features the largest area of rainforest in southern New south Wales, pristine catchments and moist forest ecosystems with direct linkages to Gondwana.

 

Meryla/Yarrawa additions to Morton South of Moss Vale and Robertson respectively, these areas feature remnant plateau forests which join the gorge systems protected by Morton National Park in Bundanoon Creek and northern tributaries of the Kangaroo River. The Yarrawa proposal would connect Morton and Budderoo National Parks, protecting an important natural corridor.

 

Deua/Tuross The National Estate listed forests of the Deua/Tuross area form the most extensive tract of unprotected old growth in New South Wales. The proposed wilderness additions would allow the protection as wilderness of a full topographic sequence of tableland, escarpment and foothill forest ecosystems, an opportunity denied in most other areas of the State due to the overwhelming human impacts of the past 200 years.

 

Badja State Forest in the upper Tuross catchment, is believed to contain the StateÕs largest population of the threatened Tiger quoll. The largest peat swamp in NSW occurs on the plateau edge of the wilderness at Badja.

 

Big Dubbo Hill The Alpine Ash forests of this area in the Tumut region were once protected within Kosciusko State Park. When the reserve was proclaimed as a National Park in the 1960s, the government of the day sliced out a large tract of these majestic tall hardwoods, placing them in state forest tenure for large areas to be logged. The remaining areas of Alpine Ash with old growth or wilderness values should be immediately returned to the National Park estate from which they were grabbed 30 years ago.In closing, this letter you have started is extremely important. The timing of the southern forest process (unhindered by approaching elections) gives us a rare opportunity to make a sizable gain for conservation and reform of forestry to a more sustainable activity in this region.

 

Address your letters to The Hon Bob Carr, Parliament House, Sydney.