Save our forests

Today, June 4, 2014 there was a Snap rally to protest at Mining giant Whitehaven Coal is sending an army of bulldozers to flatten the ancient Leard Forest located in the North West of New South Wales. The rally took place at midday at Governor Phillip Tower, 1 Farrer Place, Sydney. Dozens of protesters at Whitehaven Coal's Maules Creek Mine have been arrested. A total of 82 protesters have been arrested and removed from Leard State Forest.

On Friday 8 November at 11 am Healesville Environment Watch activists will deliver a bill for $61m to VicForests on behalf of the people of Victoria. Please join these environmentalists if you can outside 473 Burke Street - VicForests offices.

"Oakeshott has been very vocal about the need to "challenge the power of money in politics" yet he seems to have been strongly influenced by the desperate native forest logging industry to support forest furnaces. We are very disappointed with his actions on this." (Prue Acton, Australian Forests and Climate Alliance.)

VicForests must this week pay Environment East Gippsland $630,000 in legal costs which it incurred defending its wrong action in planning to destroy wildlife habitat forest in Australia. This, and a pending case also mentioned in this article, is a welcome indication of independence in Victoria's judiciary, despite wide corruption of the democratic system in Victoria and the rest of Australia.

VicForests are spending a lot of time in court and they still owe outstanding court costs to Environment East Gippsland. The environmental Davids who have been fighting these outstanding battles on our behalf are in need of our financial and political support.

VicForests argued on Tues – day 2, that the economic case for continuing the logging of endangered species’ habitat outweighs the precautionary principle. In effect, they are saying, jobs are more important than species and ecosystems. The anticipated costs of the case have ballooned due to the necessity to respond to VicForests’ economics argument and other unexpected costs including increased transcript costs because VicForests have requested real time electronic recording of witnesses. Of course, they have access to government funding.

A very serious threat has emerged since Valentine's Day! And Fed Parliament is voting on the motion today! If Oakeshott's proposal gets up, the forest furnaces poised for building in several states would become a driving force for decades more destruction of Australian forests, woodlands and wildlife. It would be the same type of unstoppable destruction that the export woodchip industry has caused since the 1970s. There will be no let up in demand for electricity once this insanity is allowed.

VicForests up before the Supreme Court - again - for alleged illegal logging, thanks to the amazing avatars of Environment East Gippsland. Dig into your pockets, folks! EEG does more for you than your taxes!

On Monday VicForests’ logging contractors were INSIDE a protected National Site of Significance for Rainforest. A small group of protesters had been holding up logging since last Thursday (8th Dec). The blockade was broken up Monday. This government run logging monopoly called VicForests is again forcing ordinary people to take legal action to stop this criminal activity of rainforest logging in our own state forests!

URGENT: Please lend your support by attending at Supreme Court to Victorian Government prosecution of Brown Mountain protesters. Wednesday at 10:00am, (10 November 2010) the Department of Sustainability and Environment will proceed with its prosecution of the individuals charged with protesting at Brown Mountain. meet outside the Magistrates’ Court at 9:15am, corner of Williams and Lonsdale Street Melbourne. A forest- lawyer will be there to meet you and direct you to the relevant Court room. This is a political cause of deepest importance. The Victorian Government and the ALP's involvement in forest crimes goes back years. The forest protesters are our bravest democratic and environmental activists. We must support them for all that they do for the rest of us.

The ALP’s 2006 election promise was to protect ‘the last significant stands of old growth planned for logging’.
But environment groups say that most of what has recently been identified for protecton was either in existing protection zones, had already been logged or was degraded forest unwanted for logs or woodchips anyway.

Congratulations Jill Redwood, leader of Environment East Gippsland! In a landmark decision today, the Supreme Court has found that the government has a responsibility to look for and protect endangered wildlife before logging in the contentious Brown Mountain forests of East Gippsland. “This judgment has implications for all native forests that are set to be destroyed by logging,” said EEG spokesperson Jill Redwood. “If we hadn’t sued VicForests, Brown Mountain would have been illegally logged by now. And Brown Mountain is just one area. The government is logging publicly owned forests every day without endangered species surveys.” EEG Website for more updates

A new you-tube film about the forest protectors' camp and community at Goongerah, South East Gippsland, near Brown Mountain...

Fuel-reduction occurs on many occasions without being called that and often is not accounted for in bushfire inquiries. Nor is the impact on wildlife habitat, notably hollow trees.

The long trial for the wildife on Brown Mountain has come to an end - all except the final decision by Justice Osborn, which all await with baited breath. This is a land-mark trial where real-life avatars have come out and opposed the 160 year old treatment of Victoria's forests and animals as colonial spoils for the taking and Victorians as mere servants to the State.
Read inside a fascinating summary of the arguments and evidence from either side: Vic Forests (for logging) and Environment East Gippsland Inc. (for nature). Revelatory of Department of Environment and Sustainability.

Tasmania's forest industry has rejected a Greens plan to ban logging in high conservation value forests.  The Greens says 300 jobs would be lost but more than 700 created through the strategy.  Even job creation is not enough to move the die-hard destructive mentality.  Both Labor and Liberals support Gunns pulp mill and neither is proposing any new forest reserves.
Trees up to hundreds of years old cannot be replaced overnight, despite how "sustainable" the logging is supposed to be!

EEG trial update. The Brown Mountain landmark trial has begun.

Avatar is a remarkable movie, about a fabulous world and an old story with some great new twists and perspectives. This is an exciting and skilled 3D graphics state of the art creation which puts the viewer on a new planet in the skin of an alien tribe. We discuss this experience and the political message of the movie.

Not so long ago, a giant thermal rain-bearing wind carried moisture inland from giant forests on the eastern coast of Australia. The giant thermal has disappeared along with the rain. Read why.
See also, "Deforestation drys continents - new theory explains how" Also see, at end of article, a short report about DSE from defenders of the forest at Brown Mountain.

Senseless slaughter of Victoria's Old Growth..another Brumby legacy for Victoria.

29 April, 2009: Loggers have desperately chainsawed magnificent stands of ancient Australian Eucalypts along Bungywarr Creek in East Gippsland as woodchips, allowing our natural heritage to be sold out to the Japanese for a dispicable $2.50 per tonne!

“Two protestors are ‘flying’ a platform located thirty metres up in the tree canopy”.. "this platform is cabled off to four logging machines, immobilizing them.”

First blockaded in 1994, Old Growth at Bungywarr Creek has been targeted by loggers ever since. Premier John Brumby simply cannot be trusted with Victoria's natural heritage.

VicForests' neo-colonial practice of logging old growth East Gippsland forests attempts to justify the native culling by claiming compliance with Australia's wood production Standard AS 4708-2007. But this standard is a Mein Kampf of ecological genocide for East Gippsland Forests.

I have to pinch myself to realise this is 2009 and not 1959.

This photo just in from the old growth forests of Brown Mountain in East Gippsland - home of remnant giant Australian natives dating up to 600 years old. This photo depicts the Brown Mountain Massacre yesterday (22 April 2009) by VicForests on its celebrated World Forestry Day. Publicly funded yet publicly out of control, 'VicForests' has become emblematic for 'state-sanctioned slaughter and arson'.

Brown Mountain - destruction complete! of 24 Apr 09.

Who's slaughtering Australia's old growth heritage faster - Queensland roadmakers or Victorian loggers?

World Forestry Day is another annual celebration of some cause that in this case captures 21st March each year. The concept sounds noble on the DSE site, but hang on a second! This is all about revenue FROM our native forests, not FOR native forests at all! So why not just rename this 'World Logging Day'?

"At the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) the forest issue was among the most controversial, polarizing developing and developed countries. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, intense negotiations among governments at UNCED resulted in the Non-legally Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of all Types of Forests, also known as the “Forest Principles”, as well as Chapter 11 of Agenda 21: Combating Deforestation."

Radiocarbon-testing has confirmed that a giant rare old-growth eucalypt located in its natural forest habitat on East Gippsland's Brown Mountain has been chainsawed by VicForests, despite it being scientifically confirmed to be at least 500 years old.

On Thursday 26th March 2009, four people were charged in their efforts to save East Gippsland old growth forests from being chopped down. Is this Victorian Premier Brumby's hypocritical law of conservationists being prime facie guilty of conservation?

Out of the media frenzy to get ratings out of the Victorian bushfires, a 'so-called' bushfire expert on an ABC 730 Report panel (David Packham) advocated a 6 to 7 fold increase in prescribed burning for Victoria.

See also: "Victorian bushfires by arson" of 26 Mar 09.

Since Black Saturday - Feb 7, 2009 - when Australia's worst-ever bushfires on the hottest day in Victoria's recorded history completely destroyed all infrastructure at Wildhaven animal rescue and release center, Alan and Stella Reid have had a few visitors, including Steve Irwin's father, Bob Irwin, and Maryland Wilson of the AWPC, and four kangaroos that also escaped with their lives. Allan Reid tells an incredible story of his own survival as the place burned to the ground leaving him and perhaps four kangaroos alive. Please consider donating money for hay and rebuilding.See alsoImportant Wildhaven Shelter in St Andrews NE Victoria perished needs rebuilding and video.

"If you purchase two copies of The Age this Saturday, soak one in the bath overnight and read the other. Think of the copy coming out of the bath, as the landscape prior [to the impact of repeated fires] and the dry paper, as the landscape is today." (Article by Duane Norris for Natural Sequence Farming)