What about East Gippsland?

Double Standards? It's distressing to hear of "PNG logs going to foreign interests" (30/7)but what of Australia's forests, magnificent and diverse, cleared, not for furniture as often claimed, but to be burnt on site to make room for monocultures suitable for paper. It's difficult to find supporting arguments for any logging of Australia's small proportion of remaining native forests to provide woodchips for the export market when you see satellite photos of Australia, when you read the list of endangered species at risk from logging and when you see the stockpiles of woodchips that cannot be sold. Forests, poor in valuable timber are razed and burnt, and reseeded with more desireable timbers, turning biodiversity into monocultures, abandoning endangered species to extinction and sacrificing our children's natural heritage and potential long term carbon credits for short term gains. Why be concerned for PNG and yet remain silent about the forests of south eastern Australia which are being cleared to turn state parks into agricultural land.

Loads of Chips

Vicforests continually claims that their need to clearfell Victoria's Native Forests is to provide timber for construction, and that woodchips are a byproduct. Yet soon they will raze a section of forest that is predominately Manna gum (ideal for arboreal mammals) or Peppermint gum, in areas where Department of Sustainability and Environment surveys have found a number of vulnerable species including bandicoot, for a small proportion of Messmate Stringybark which is that is both suitable for construction and accessible for removal. The timber that is not required, or which is too difficult to remove, will be burnt. Five trees per acre will be left standing to provide the seeds to regenerate a forest of many species of trees, grasses, shrubs, wildflowers, mosses, ferns and fungi, which provide breeding sites for birds, mammals and insects, and protection and feeding grounds for reptiles and marsupials. It is difficult to imagine how five trees will restore a diverse forest.
Is Vicforests condemning our unique animals to extinction simply to keep a few loggers in jobs?
We tell our school children that on average they will have 5 to 7 career changes in their lives, and that change is an opportunity for growth.
Why do we need to protect loggers as a species to the detriment of our natural assets and tourism potential?
And which of these is the eco-terrorist? The committed tree sitter braving all weathers to bring attention to a cause, or one who supports their cause under cover of darkness assisted by a steel picket afraid of being identified in a photograph, but brave enough to attack a tree with a chainsaw?

See photos of Australian Paper's Maryvale Mill here