Koalas face habitat loss pressure by deforestation and sprawl. The verge of the road is their new home now.
"Urban koalas and ones in rural areas are not doing so well, they are continuing to decline at an alarming rate.This is a classic sign of loss of habitat and these animals having to struggle in areas where habitat has been removed...The number of koalas being hit by cars recently has been concerning..."
What’s so bad about a road?
Roads are forest killers.
"A road means access. Once roads are bulldozed into rainforests, illegal loggers, miners, poachers and landgrabbers arrive. Once they get access, they can destroy forests, harm native ecosystems and even drive out or kill indigenous peoples. This looting of the natural world robs cash-strapped nations of valuable natural resources."
Where will all the microbats go when the NSW forests are logged and clear-felled?
Decline of rare UK bat linked to tree felling for British empire’s fleets
"Rife deforestation 500 years ago aligns with western barbastelle slump, finds study of bat DNA."
"The examples of flora and fauna disappearing because of human excesses over the past 50 years are manifold, but research has found that the decline of a characterful bat began in the UK when its trees were felled for shipbuilding 500 years ago."
"“These bats usually roost in mature oak and beech trees, and move around every few nights – so they benefit from areas with substantial woodland cover. Our findings reveal that the northern and southern British populations have declined over several centuries, beginning about 500 years ago. This coincides with a period of widespread tree-felling to supply wood for colonial shipbuilding. It is likely that the decline we found was triggered by this loss of woodland – which has continued since that period.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/14/decline-of-rare-uk-bat-linked-to-tree-felling-for-british-empires-fleets
A ‘zero-deforestation’ approach overseas
while logging continues in NSW
"The Committee had recommended the Government prevent UK businesses from trading in commodities linked to UN-defined deforestation in all cases, regardless of whether the deforestation was illegal or permitted by local laws. This ‘zero-deforestation’ approach would encourage consistency in trading such commodities across UK and European markets, increasing protections for areas at risk of deforestation."
"But in its response to the Committee’s report, The UK’s contribution to tackling global deforestation, the Government said it believed “the only way to achieve zero global deforestation in supply chains is to work in partnership with producer countries – and that working in partnership requires us to uphold and respect national laws.”
Australia is a world leader in species extinction and declines
Yet the koala’s feed trees keep falling...
"Since time immemorial, the Gumbaynggirr Nation has cared for country and we know that the Dunggirr is sacred to the First Nations peoples of Bellingen Shire."
"Koalas cannot read signs or distinguish boundaries between native forests, state forest plantations or your backyard."
"Over decades locals and tourists have come to know about the Gleniffer koalas, through registered sightings and expert evidence. Yet the koala’s feed trees keep falling, even though Forestry Corporation of NSW (FC NSW) has no social licence."
"After operating within our Shire for over three decades, FC NSW have deliberately withdrawn any connection with the community and take no responsibility for the cumulative damage that the corporation has inflicted on our community’s waterways, roads and bridges".
"...We need to rethink the age-old argument between plantations versus habitat.This requires courage because we all need to have these conversations regarding the remnants in plantations and the wildlife therein."
Hope for NSW forests: Court decision upholds community’s right to challenge native forest logging
Weak laws failing our forests , EDO
"In the shadow of claims made by the NSW Forestry Corporation, communities have been led to believe that they have no rights to challenge decisions about industrial logging in NSW native forests or seek action over unlawful conduct when logging destroys hollow-bearing trees and critical habitat for threatened species."
"But two recent court decisions have shattered those claims after EDO’s client successfully ran an argument which hasn’t previously been tested in the courts. After 20 years of resistance by the Forestry Corporation, it is now legally recognised that communities with a special interest have the right to hold the state-owned logging agency to account over its forestry operations in native forests."
Images of politicians and tourists seen cuddling the threatened marsupial are ubiquitous. The mascot, usually placed on a stump, has to pose and represent the 'brand' Australia.
Due to habitat destruction the animals are deprived of a living habitat and have to flee. The fragmented habitat they have to negotiate is crisscrossed with roads and dangerous canines.
Here in Bellingen, where Tuckers Nob public forest is being industrially logged, all images cropping up are of disoriented koalas on daytime roads. There will be nothing left to cuddle soon.
"Tarkeeth State Forest 'plantation' excluded from protection, and high quality habitat, but outside the 'provisional assessment area' for the park - to be clear-felled with no consultation"
"In Coffs Harbour Local Court the forestry contractors Michael Luigi Vitali and Rodney James Hearfield were found guilty of assaulting Graham and his companion Andre Johnston that afternoon on the road on the Dorrigo Plateaux three and a half years ago. No conviction was recorded."
Let's slow environmental destruction and achieve climate adaptation
"The planned 114 new fossil fuel developments threaten not only the climate, but also these very planetary life support systems that enable survival in an increasingly turbulent world. Our policies, regulations and development decisions are enabling new shale oil and gas, LNG, coal and petrochemical industries"
Logging operations to continue between NSW and Queensland after judge rejects environmentalists' court bid
"Environmentalists have lost a legal challenge to a forestry agreement between the NSW and Commonwealth governments, meaning logging operations can continue within a vast coastal area between Sydney and the Queensland border."
"On behalf of the alliance (The North East Forest Alliance), the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) argued the Commonwealth was required to assess environmental values and principles of ecologically sustainable management when it was renewed, but failed to do so".
"The hollows would have been visible when the tree was standing."
"Forestry Corporation NSW sentenced for felling hollow-bearing trees in Mogo State Forest. FCNSW was fined $20,000 and ordered to pay more than $84,000 in legal costs to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA)."
FCNSW "was also ordered to widely publicise the judgement on its social media accounts and through a paid advertisement in the local newspaper and the Sydney Morning Herald within 60 days of the judgement."
"Under the Coastal Integrated Forestry Operations Approval (CIFOA), the state-owned timber corporation responsible for managing more than 2 million hectares of public land is required to retain any hollow-bearing trees during harvesting operations. Such hollows typically form in trees more than 150 years old."
"Hollow bearings are protected in NSW legislation because they take so long to form, and more than 300 Australian native species rely on them for shelter.
The forests pledge
ITS TIME TO END LOGGING IN NATIVE FORESTS ACROSS AUSTRALIA
Half of Australia’s forests have been lost. https://theforestpledge.com.au/
Outrage as endangered species living in forest goes unnoticed by loggers chopping it down. 'Nothing to see here': Greater gliders, yellow-bellied gliders, koalas and powerful owls.
“Forestry Corporation admitted that they don’t do surveys for the nocturnal greater gliders at night! No wonder they aren’t finding any — they don’t want to find them, as it would seriously restrict their operations,” CEO Jacqui Mumford
"Endangered marsupials have been discovered inside a forest that was being chopped down by the NSW government, prompting calls for its operations to be suspended across dozens of sites across the state."
"After the Environmental Protection Agency was asked to intervene this week, NSW Forestry Corporation voluntarily asked its contractors to cease operations at the Styx River State Forest which borders the Cathedral Rock National Park, west of Coffs Harbour. It’s the second time since August the state-owned agency has been forced to down chainsaws because of the discovery of greater gliders."
Logging practices:
"It's basically dead" AI reveals the legacy of decades of logging in Victoria
"An AI-based analysis of 20 years of VicForests’ logging, researchers say, shows the scale of failed regeneration in Victoria’s state forests.The data, which has been shared exclusively with the ABC, suggests that 20 per cent of Victoria’s state forests have not regenerated after logging.... That’s almost 13,000 hectares of state forest the analysis found to be standing in a state of ruin."
"Now the state is shutting its native logging industry in a matter of weeks, and the forests that were once given to Victoria’s state-run logging agency, VicForests, are being returned to the public."
"By law, the logging agency is required to regenerate the areas it has logged and hand them back to the public in a healthy state. But until now, how much that has actually happened has largely been a mystery."
Restoration or destruction?
Elsewhere they start to restore and protect nature, in Australia the environment stays poor and is deteriorating
"Nature is dying faster than ever before in recorded human history with devastating consequences for people and the planet, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found in its review of the scientific research in 2019. In Europe, where more than 80% of habitats are in poor shape, the nature restoration law was proposed in a bid to reverse this trend and stop the planet heating."
"Legislation will set targets to restore 20% of EU land and seas by 2030, and 90% of degraded habitats by 2050"
Despite $246.9 million in taxpayer money, Forestry Corporation still lost $28 million
"The Nature Conservation Council of NSW has today released a new report from Frontier Economics which reveals for the first time that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been gifted to the taxpayer owned logging business Forestry Corporation NSW over the past five years."
"The NSW Government needs to come to terms with the fact that native forest logging is a dying industry and make a plan for a transition. How much more taxpayer money has to be wasted and endangered animals killed before this reality sinks in?" Statements attributable to NCC Chief Executive Officer Jacqui Mumford
>> https://www.miragenews.com/forestry-corp-loses-28m-despite-246-9m-taxpayer-1120847/
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 Human Rights (Healthy Environment) Amendment Bill 2023 will be introduced in the ACT Legislative Assembly today...The Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) made a submission to the legislative assembly and called for the proposed new laws to also apply to private entities."
"Private businesses are a major contributor to the destruction of ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity, through deforestation, land-grabbing, extracting, transporting and burning fossil fuels."
The Clarence Valley council considered a report lobbying for an end to native forestry logging.
"The report called for the council to write to the NSW government demanding the urgent development of a transition plan that would see native timber harvesting in state-owned forests move towards a sustainable plantation-based industry."
"The logs are getting smaller and smaller, the number of logs coming out of state forests is less and less every year and biodiversity is just going out the window."
"The debate comes as Victoria and Western Australia are set to ban logging in native forests in 2024."
"The motion was defeated as councillors spoke of their support for the timber industry"
Civil Disobedience in a Climate and Biodiversity Crisis
"Ultimately, peaceful political protest should be addressed by politicians. The current government has decided, by making disruption of ‘everyday life’ a criminal act, that it is a matter not of politics but for the police and criminal law. This will have serious implications for society, and for freedom of speech, whether or not you believe it is the right approach."