Yarra Ranges councillor Jeanette McRae met with Bernie Mace and other Myers Creek Road residents Toby Eccles and Mal and Yvonne Sissens on Monda Track. They told Cr McRae the forest on the right of the track would be a mirror image of the coup on the left if proposed logging went ahead.
By Kath Gannaway
A CALL for VicForests to be disbanded was given overwhelming support at a public meeting in Healesville last week.
So too were calls for logging to cease on Mt St Leonard, for the Department of Sustainability and Environment to be made more accountable for logging audits and breaches of the logging code and for a community rally as a show of strength within the broader community for major reforms to the logging of native forests.
However, a dissenting voice from Toolangi resident and contributor to the original Forest Agreement Geoff Biggs said the environment groups mis-represented the logging industry.
The meeting, a joint venture of the Save Mt St Leonard Group, MyEnvironment, Healesville Environment Watch (HEWI), The Wilderness Society and Warburton Environment, came as both Yarra Ranges and Murrindindi councils voted to write to the State Government demanding current and future logging stop on Mt St Leonards and adjacent to the Bicentennial Trail.
A number of senior VicForests staff and representatives from the timber industry attended the meeting and said they were keen to find out more about residents’ concerns.
HEWI chairman and Greens candidate for McEwen Steve Meacher told the Thursday night meeting at Memorial Hall that the network of coups in the Toolangi area were indicative of what was happening across the Central Highlands.
Among the 148 coups proposed under VicForests’s Timber Release Plan now before DSE are two on the north-east side of Myers Creek Road that environment groups say will scar the face of the mountain.
Residents of Myers Creek Road were among the estimated 250 people at the meeting.
Chairman of Save Mt St Leonard Group Bernie Mace said proposed coups reached from Myers Creek Road almost to the top of the mountain and included part of the Bicentennial National Trail. He said a coup that was logged in 2008 on Monda Track had been expanded in May this year removing a buffer of trees and understory changing the profile of the mountain.
“If this were to happen on Track 11 (the track to the Bicentennial Trail) it would be a catastrophe,” he said.
Mr Mace said clear-fell logging had robbed Central Highlands of the mature mountain ash trees which had been the dominant vegetation.
“We know the code of forest practices says they are not supposed to cut anything pre-1900 but, sadly, there is plenty of evidence that that still happens,” he said.
Luke Chamberlain, Victorian forest campaigner for The Wilderness Society, also spoke saying woodchipping was now driving the industry. “This is not forestry, it is open cut tree mining,” he said.
David Walsh of VicForests said he was not invited to provide input.
“VicForests has an ongoing relationship with a number of representatives from community groups and we will continue to work with these groups to address issues relating to timber harvesting,” he said.
