BY ALEX MILNE
MELBOURNE — A rally to save the Strzelecki forests is to be held at noon on August 27, outside Victoria's parliament. The rally is in response to the state Labor government's failure to keep its promises to "ensure full protection of all conservation areas in the Strzelecki ranges" and to "examine future opportunities for protection of native forest in the region".
Located between the Latrobe Valley and Wilson's Promontory, the Strzelecki ranges contain tracts of old growth and cool temperate rainforest. The forests are home to the many rare native animals, including the mountain bobuck, the greater glider and the sooty owl. An endangered sub-species of koala lives in the Strzelecki ranges.
Many of these animals depend on the hollows in old trees for their survival, hollows which take 150 years or more to form. Also, the disturbance of old-growth forests will hasten the spread of myrtle wilt, a disease which kills ancient myrtle trees.
The Strzelecki ranges were largely unmapped until the state Liberal government sold the logging rights to the area to the US-based John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company in the 1990s. Approximately 27,000 hectares of public native forest is leased to Hancock Victorian Plantations and treated as if it were private land.
For more information, phone Kim or Julie on (03) 5689 1213. Visit <http://www.hancock.forests.org.au/> or <http://members.dcsi.net.au/kimjulie>.
From Green Left Weekly, August 13, 2003.
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