16,000 sign on to protect forests

By Pip Hunter

SYDNEY — The damp but determined Fast for the Forest team announced on October 23 that they had collected 16,000 signatures calling for a moratorium on the logging and woodchipping of old growth forests.

Lisa, who has been fasting on the steps of Parliament House for 36 days, told Green Left Weekly that as community awareness grows about the loss of up to 60 hectares of state forest per day, so too does opposition to the destruction.

The forest campaigners are concerned about a new licence (the terms of which have not been made public) recently issued by the federal minister for resources, David Beddall, to Boral, which will allow it to take a further 500,000 tonnes of woodchips from NSW forests.

"With the knowledge we have on the global situation of deforestation and the resulting soil degradation and water quality loss, we are creating horrendous hardship and a sad future not just for coming generations but for the many species of flora and fauna reliant on these complex forest ecosystems", said Lisa. NSW has the highest mammal extinction rate in Australia.

"Many people do not realise that the most protected areas in national parks have either been previously logged, or are unsuitable for logging, while our most beautiful and pristine forest areas, with the oldest, largest trees, and therefore the most established and evolved habitat ecosystems, are being destroyed daily for the short-term profits of vested interests."

Lisa says that farming communities should be given financial assistance to regenerate degraded land and to increase plantation timber crops and fibre crops for paper.

From GLW issue 164