Forestry Tasmania Claims are Wrong

MEDIA RELEASE

17/5/09

OVER 50% OF UPPER FLORENTINE TALL EUCALYPT FORESTS THREATENED BY LOGGING

Still Wild Still Threatened are today calling on Premier Bartlett and Minister David Llewellyn, to instruct Forestry Tasmania to correct the public record and precisely state the extent of planned logging in tall eucalypt forests of the Upper Florentine.

Letters to the Premier and minister’s offices were sent yesterday requesting clarification of data on the Land Information System Tasmania (LIST) website that shows the area available for harvesting in the Upper Florentine is almost double what Forestry Tasmania claim.

“The release of maps and data, compiled from information on the LIST website, has proved clearly that the protected area of the Upper Florentine is significantly smaller than Forestry Tasmania claim it is. The data also shows that 53% of tall eucalypt forest is available for logging and 56% of old growth tall eucalypt forest is available for logging.” Said spokesperson Ed Hill.

“Forestry Tasmania is still denying the facts, that over half the tall forest in the catchment is readily available for wholesale destruction, and that large areas of land within the catchment are protected solely to boost protected land percentages as they are non forest of no commercial value to Forestry Tasmania.”

“Forestry Tasmania has confirmed that the data we are using from the LIST is the same data they are using, why then are they still sticking by their figure of 90%, when our data shows this is clearly not the case”

“The State government must instruct Forestry Tasmania to correct the public record and inform the public of the extent of their logging plans for this ancient wilderness forest.

Elected representatives have a responsibility to verify, with the appropriate maps and data from the L.I.S.T website, Forestry Tasmania’s claims.”

“If the figures that we have compiled from the data are correct as we believe, we request that the State Government corrects Forestry Tasmania’s figures.”

“Data we’ve compiled shows that only 5ha or 20 percent of the Eucalyptus regnans forest within the catchment is protected.

Eucalyptus regnans are the tallest flowering hardwood trees on the planet and a recent study undertaken by the ANU and published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that these trees are the best in the world at storing carbon.”

“Logging rotations of 30-80 years will never allow Eucalypts that were 400 years at the time of logging, to fully recover and store carbon to the levels it was prior to logging”

“This data and report show how Forestry Tasmania really values our carbon rich old growth forests, as nothing more than a barrier that stands in the way of their desire to establish plantation like regeneration forest.”

“Forestry Tasmania says that extra areas of forest will be protected as significant sites worthy of protection like karst formations, caves, giant trees and endangered species such as wedge tailed eagles are identified.”

“It is well known that the Upper Florentine valley is riddled with special features such as these, and it highlights Forestry Tasmania’s complete disregard for these features as they have done no ground surveying of the area for special values and intend to survey as they log the area.”

“One has to wonder why Forestry Tasmania wants to log an area with so many special features, and how many of these special features will they fail to see before the bulldozers destroy them.” Concluded Mr. Hill.