Echo, 1 September 2023:
Aunty Alison and Aunty Lauren on Gumbaynggirr Country at Newry State Forest. Photo supplied
Gumbaynggirr Elder Uncle Micklo and the oldest and most senior Gumbaynggirr Elder living on Gumbaynggirr Country Uncle Bud Marshall brought a successful application to the Land and Environment Court (L&EC) that halted logging at the Newry State Forest on 22 August. They were supported by Gumbaynggirr elders Aunty Alison and Aunty Lauren.
The Judge accepted an undertaking from Forestry to stop all logging in the forest to allow for a site inspection by Gumbaynggirr Elders of sacred and significant sites in the forest that the NSW Forestry had been logging. It had been arranged for the elders to go for the inspection on Friday, 1 September, however, at the last minute they were contacted by NSW Forestry to cancel the site inspection.
The Judge also accepted an undertaking that the stop on logging should extend to the substantial hearing set down for November 14, 16 and 17 in the L&EC.
‘Last night (31 August) Forestry said they were going to call off the site inspection, then they said they wanted to delay for another two weeks. They are due back in court on Tuesday (5 September) and the site inspection is supposed to have taken place,’ said Al Oshlack, from the Indigenous Justice Advocacy Network who helped organise the stop work order. [my yellow highlighting]
‘We had a driver organised and they were going to go out to a number of sites in Newry Forest today (Friday, 1 September). Everyone is really upset because they have been locked out for a long time by Forestry with fences and cameras etc in place.’
Mr Oshlack told The Echo that Forestry appears to use a person named Mr Potter to sign off on their cultural heritage requirements. However, Mr Oshlack said they have been unable to find any Gumbaynggirr people who either know Mr Potter or who have been consulted about sacred and cultural sites in the area by Forestry NSW.
‘We have been asking around to find out if anyone knows who Mr Potter is but we haven’t been able to find anyone who knows this person so far,’ Mr Oshlack said.
‘I spoke to Gumbaynggirr people who have been looking for him and they said “We went to five different Gumbaynggirr families and no one has heard of him.”….
The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 September 2023:
Professor Helge Bruelheide, professor of botany at the University of Helle in Germany, was stunned by what he has seen exploring the forests in and around the promised Great Koala National Park on the state’s North Coast this week.
“It is spectacular. All the variants of this Gondwana rainforest – cool and warm, temperate rainforest and also the subtropical rainforest – is something that is so unique globally that you wouldn’t find it in this particular combination elsewhere,” said Breulheide, one of the leading scientists in his field, who visited with 30 of his colleagues from around the world as they prepared for a conference on forest preservation to be held in Coffs Harbour next week.
Professor Helge Bruelheide at Border Ranges National Park, north of the proposed Great Koala National Park.
“It’s incredible walking through the forest and seeing a different tree every 5 meters. It is unique in the world. And it is also ancient, what we have seen remnants of a vegetation that is long gone on Earth. Australia is a bit of an ark conserving this fantastic biodiversity.
“I mean, I knew that from the books but touching it and seeing these wonderful trees is something different. We were completely shocked that this was being logged for paper pulp and timber. Particularly this type of forest, we really couldn’t understand that.” [my yellow highlighting]
It was not just the fact of the logging that stunned, but Bruelheide, but the nature of it. Rather than so-called single-stem logging that is common in places like Germany, where single trees are targeted and removed, loggers here take out whole sections, leaving behind a few trees in compartments (a section of forest identified for logging) that have been identified as critical feed or habitat trees for some endangered species.
“I feel like I was time travelling back to the 60s when this was all over the place,” says Breulheide of what he saw inside a patch of the Moonpar State Forest identified on the Forestry Corporation website as Section 345…..
Overview of a Moonpar State Forest Section 345 in May 2023
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| Moonpar State Forest Section 345 IMAGE: via @CloudsCreek, 7 May 2023 |
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| Closer view of segment of Moonpar State Forest Section 345, May 2023, showing felled native trees. SNAPSHOT: Google Earth Pro |
| Click on images to enlarge |
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