Do a Google Earth search on Tasmania and observe that half the entire island has been cleared of its native vegetation.

Drive around the cleared areas – up the Midland, Tasman, West Tamar and Bass highways and observe the abundance of cleared land. Note how much of it is unproductive.

A tree!     How did that get there?

(Freycinet National Park in the background)

(Photo by Editor 20110928, free in public domain, click photo to enlarge)

 

Forestry argues the concept of ‘locking up’ native forests.  Forestry argues that by governments locking up native forests, Forestry is denied the opportunity to log them.

Well the above photos show part of the ‘unlocked’ half of Tasmania – long logged, used, abused and now mostly abandoned.  Why destroy Tasmania’s desperate remaining virgin forest habitat?

Observe that the current legal hope rests with the IGA – Tasmanian Forests Intergovernmental Agreement of 7th August 2011). Our leaders ‘The IGA Parties’ (Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Tasmania’s Premier Lara Giddings) to that agreement have breached its clauses and if it were illegal, thus acted illegally.

What is to be the genuine way of protecting Tasmania’s heritage from governments that do not respect Old Tasmania’s values, enough to respect and protect that heritage for perpetuity?

A dead tree and many yellow Gorse weeds  (Ulex europaeus)

In springtime as one flies into Hobart, the countryside is blanketed with the bastard yellow plague

It conveys a message of neglected and abandoned country

~ a message which Tasmanian Aborigines would likely be saddened by, knowing what quality country thrived before.
(Photo by Editor 20110928, free in public domain, click photo to enlarge)

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What has become Forestry’s truthful “sustainably managed” concept? Sustainable for whom? Where can Forestry point to exemplify ancestral respect in a forest of Tasmanian forest ancestors?.

This is the native forest that once blanketed the region above

Wild, rough, untamed and rich in wildlife and biodiversity

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Tasmania Map of Cleared Land in 2006

The white areas are private land and almost all cleared of native vegetation

The light green areas are State Forest and subject to logging, burning, poaching, mining, etc.

Try to find the area designated ‘Aboriginal land’.

(Source:  The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, © Commonwealth of Australia,

^http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/publications/protecting/pubs/tas-wilderness.pdf)

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>Open enlarged map for detail (1.1MB)

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But then there remain a few wild virgin forests of Tasmania that as yet have not been logged, burned, mined, abused and livestock-defecated upon by colonial exploitation.  But you have to know where to look…and you’d better be quick, if you what to remember what was once majestic …

 

Tasmania’s Styx Valley Forests – not like anywhere else

 (© Photo by Rob Blakers with permission)

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Tasmanian Giant Eucalypt

In Mount Mueller Forest –  currently at risk of logging 

For more information visit www.observertree.org

 (© Photo by Rob Blakers with permission)

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