Media Release - 23/3/05
What is Happening in the Five Forests
Current Logging and History of the Forests
Wednesday 23 MarchThe Five Forests sit centrally in the South East Corner Bioregion and have a long history of logging and attempts to protect the area. The first community proposals to have all public land in the Five Forests declared a National Park began in 1977.
Intensive logging began around this time and the degradation of the forests their catchments and coastal lakes, continues to this day under the Integrated Forestry Operations Approval (IFOA). This agreement, between the Commonwealth and State Governments, was supposed to be reviewed by 2004. This review has not occurred.
In 1999 the community based Murrah/Bunga Koala Recovery and River Restoration project received funding from the Natural Heritage Trust to implement an ecological approach to forest management on private and public land. Since that time the NSW Forestry Commission and the National Parks and Wildlife Service have worked to stop the project, but have not succeeded.
In 2001 as a result of community research the only documented Koala population on the far south coast were nominated as an Endangered Population, likely to become extinct in nature. Around this time the NSW Forestry Commission released research that found eucalyptus dieback in every catchment in the Five Forests. In 2004 Koalas were again nominated by the Australian Koala Foundation, as Vulnerable across their historic range under the Commonwealth's EPBC Act (1999).
In early 2005 an independent scientific review of literature on Bell-miner associated dieback pointed to forest management as the culprit behind the decline of eucalyptus forests.
Despite this research, the NSW Forestry Commission has started to log over two thousand five hundred hectares in the Five Forests. Half of this area is in Cuttagee catchment in Murrah State Forest, where breeding Koalas were last located in the region.
On Sunday March 20 2005 more than 150 people from many areas of the Bega Valley Shire and beyond, attended a meeting at the Murrah Hall to hear about logging operations being implemented by non-adaptive land managers in the coastal forests around Bermagui.
The meeting was unanimous in calling for an immediate halt to all logging operations in the Five Forests. Several actions are being planned and implemented that are aimed at stopping the further destruction of our flora, fauna and degradation coastal catchments and implementing sustainable forest management.