"Whether for fuel breaks, salvage logging, or private land logging, native forest logging hasn’t stopped in Victoria. It will continue for many years, and the logs cut from these operations will be sold commercially."
"Fire management in Victoria amounts to de facto native logging industry, conservationists say. On Thursday conservationists and the Victorian National Parks Association expressed shock after discovering a dead greater glider in an area where trees had been felled by FFMV."
"Logging in Victoria’s native forests ended at the beginning of this year but Prof David Lindenmayer, a forest ecologist at Australian National University, said: “There’s a de facto logging industry now emerging under the guise of fire suppression.“To me, when you cut down big trees and put them on a truck and take them to a sawmill … that is logging.”"
First the thylacine, then the koala, then the kookaburra...
"The tree hollows kookaburras need to breed can take a hundred years to develop. Every forest patch felled means hollows are lost. Over the past 200 years, nearly 50% of our forest cover has been felled. Urban development all along Australia’s east coast has continued."
The “guuguubarra” laughed for 16.3 million years. "That once-ubiquitous call will be heard no more."
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.”
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.
Environmental rights: Big corporations vs disadvantaged communities
"Legal advocates warn that federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton's pledge to defund the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) is a "retrograde step" that would ultimately disadvantage everyday Australians. Defunding the EDO will reduce Australians' access to legal representation. It's really important that communities are able to enforce their environmental rights."
Koalas stuck between highways and loggers #After the timber is logged, the koalas are on their own."
"With the koalas' plantation home being harvested for timber all week, animal advocates predict the marsupials will flee to the closest patch of bush which is unfortunately located on the other side of a busy freeway."
Dying and dead wildlife on a remote Australian timber plantation. Eagles were soaring.
"Disturbing video shot ...at a remote Australian timber plantation has sparked an investigation. Footage and images to Yahoo News Australia showing dead and dying wildlife strewn across a track in a recently logged Tasmanian forest."
"Deforestation can also make droughts worse by making conditions drier...When the forest is losing more carbon than it is absorbing from the atmosphere, that shows we’re on the edge of this tipping point.”
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."