Page 803 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 8 March 2016
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I am extremely pleased to hear this good news, as this is one of the areas I campaigned on in the 1990s. There have been campaigns to protect these particular forests for over four decades. In the 1970s the higher areas were protected as national parks—Mumbulla Mountain and Mount Gulaga, or Mount Dromedary—but the lower forested areas with their important tracts of old growth forests have continued to be logged for woodchips. Since the 1990s logging of these coastal forests has been highly controversial with extended community blockades and protests in the area.
Many Canberra residents have participated in these forest blockades and protests over the years, and many people from both this city and this region have taken a very active interest in this issue. Personally I went to these forests in 1995, and my chief of staff, Indra Esguerra, was also heavily involved in these activities. Many other people who call Canberra home have also fought hard to raise the profile of these forests and ensure protection of them. Last week local south-east forest campaign group Chipstop spokesperson Harriet Swift said:
It is especially pleasing that Mumbulla, which is so important for the local Aboriginal community, will now be safe.
Mumbulla logging was found by a court to be illegal in 2011 because it was a gazetted Aboriginal place. The logger contracted there to the Eden chip mill was compensated with $18,000 to stop logging despite the logging being found to be illegal, but the local Aboriginal community received no compensation for the damage done to their priceless heritage.
Logging proposed for Tanja was deferred twice because of community protests and the discovery of koalas. These reserves are significant to the local Aboriginal community. The New South Wales government will now work with the Aboriginal owners of the neighbouring Biamanga National Park to ensure they have a proper say in how these reserves are managed.
Inalienable freehold title to Biamanga and Gulaga was given to the Yuin people in 2006. With the vesting of title, the parks were rededicated back to the government for the purposes of national parks under 30-year leases. The leases provide Aboriginal owners with financial benefits in the form of rent as well as increased involvement in land and cultural heritage management. Although they are separate national parks, Biamanga National Park and Gulaga form part of one continuous cultural landscape.
The New South Wales government has provided a $2.5 million subsidy package to facilitate the sourcing of timber from alternative south-east New South Wales state forests. Unfortunately this does not mean full protection for the neighbouring old growth forests in the region, and in fact, given that the woodchip quotas to the Eden chip mill have not been reduced, logging will undoubtedly intensify in these other forests.
Environmentalists, and the Greens, would have preferred to see the forests receive the strongest protection as a national park. However, the creation of flora reserves is certainly a wonderful first step. On behalf of the ACT Greens, I would like to congratulate all those conservationists who have campaigned so hard over so many years to protect these wonderful forests of the south coast.
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