Last Friday morning my neighbour James alerted me to this boy who he followed across the Barrage. He was a young dispersing male looking for a new home,from Lismore to Ballina LGA. Koalas often just keep on their merry way even with a car @Matt_KeanMP @greencate @KateRWashington pic.twitter.com/UL5V5K3WvR— Maria Matthes (@talkingkoala) August 25, 2019
Showing posts with label Northern Rivers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Northern Rivers. Show all posts
Tuesday 27 August 2019
More koala news....
Labels:
flora and fauna,
Koala,
Northern Rivers
Friday 16 August 2019
Northern Rivers landowners can breathe a sigh of relief, council rates will not rise sharply this year
Northern Rivers local governments and landowners have had a reprieve - for now.
One increase in NSW Government charges on local councils will not go ahead and Clarence Valley Council will not have to find an additional $260,000 this financial year.
However, there is no guarantee that by July 2020 the emergency services levy hike will not again be back on the books and, there is also no guarantee that the Berejiklian Government's plan to abandon unimproved value as the baseline for land rate calculations is either dead, buried or cremated.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 August 2019:
The NSW government is backflipping on a controversial plan to force councils across the state to pay for a $14 million emergency services levy hike.
The Berejiklian government wanted the state's 128 councils to share the financial burden of the increase in the emergency services levy to fund reforms to workers’ compensation for firefighters suffering from work-related cancers.
The move follows a radical proposal to change the way NSW council rates are calculated, that would drive up costs for owners of expensive apartments, and steep increases in waste management fees in some council areas.
The emergency services levy hike was opposed by the local government sector, which voiced concerns that the increase, which varied in amounts between areas, would force councils to cut funds to services and facilities.
Local Government NSW president Linda Scott said that councils' share of the emergency services budget was embedded in council rates, with additional costs recovered through insurance premiums.....
In 2017, Premier Gladys Berejiklian's shelved plans for a new system to fund fire and emergency services in response to backlash over sharp increases in what some property owners would pay.
Labor's local government spokesman Greg Warren said the decision to grant NSW's councils a year-long reprieve from the levy increase was "little comfort to councils across the state".
"This is another backflip from the government on this issue, they've simply kicked the can down the road.....
Ms Hancock said the government would continue to "consult with local councils to better manage the impacts of the emergency services levy, especially on their annual budgeting cycles".
Ms Hancock said the government would continue to "consult with local councils to better manage the impacts of the emergency services levy, especially on their annual budgeting cycles".
Friday 2 August 2019
The NSW Northern Rivers Gasfield Free status is something the Australian Prime Minister wants to abolish
At 2:19 mins into this interview Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison signals his intention to pressure the states to lift their coal seam gas moratoriums and those existing outright bans on further exploration or gas extraction.
New South Wales and Victoria are firmly in his sights.
This means the Gasfield Free Northern Rivers is on Morrison's hit list.
https://youtu.be/RKkGg_eCIQQ
Labels:
Coal Seam Gas Mining,
Northern Rivers
Wednesday 31 July 2019
One of the reasons regional living is so good is the size and strength of community spirit
The Clarence Independent, 25 July 2019:
Iluka Bowls Club’s president, Ray Flaherty (4th form right, front), Ann and John McLean (centre with white t-shirts), pictured with bowls club directors and members. Image: Contributed
Iluka Bowls Club has offered to provide land for the proposed ambulance station in Iluka.
Estimated to come with a $10million price tag, the NSW Government is currently working on “detailed service planning” and “site acquisitions studies” for the proposed station, Clarence MP Chris Gulaptis said after the NSW budget was released in June.
The bowls club’s general manager, Nicola Donsworth, said the land is located next to the netball court on the corner of Denne and Spenser streets.
“It would be a perfect central location, with two street accesses, next to the helicopter landing area on the sports oval and next to the skate park and, and as we know, the majority of our town’s population is ageing.
“It may be necessary to rezone the land but it might be an offer that the council and state government might find difficult to refuse.
“We are hoping that if this offer is viable it may speed up the process and get this ambulance station established.” Ms Donsworth said the club’s board is in favour of the idea, subject to the club members’ approval.
Ambulance Action Group spearheads, Ann and John McLean, welcomed the offer.
“The need for an ambulance station in Iluka has become more important than ever,” Ms McLean said. “Response times are getting longer.
“There have been many incidents where paramedics have been sent from Grafton and Evans Head, due to there not being an ambulance available in Yamba or Maclean.
“This is often caused because the paramedics are being utilised to transport patients from Maclean to Lismore or the Gold Coast.....
The budget papers list the ambulance station as commencing “prior to March 2023”.
Sunday 21 July 2019
Coraki still without a local doctor
According to Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016 Census data Coraki and neighbouring Woodburn have a combined population of over 2,000 residents and 499 families.
Half of those residents living in Coraki are over 45 years of age and half of those living in Woodburn are over 42 years of age. While children make up almost 19 per cent of the population of both villages.
Yet the Northern NSW Local Health District cannot even supply a sessional doctor for the health centre at Coraki.
The Northern Star, 20 July 2019, p.7:
Ray Hunt is more frustrated than most about living in a town where the hospital has no doctor.
“If you cut your toe, you can’t go there,” Mr Hunt said.
His late wife Anne used to be the “boss” of the original Coraki Campbell Hospital, before it was closed.
The two-year-old, $4 million Coraki Campbell HealthOne facility looks modern and slick and offers dentistry and dietary appointments but services are limited without a doctor.
Down the road on Thursday, about 10 people gathered to voice their frustration about no sign of a doctor for Coraki.
Eighty-five-year-old Tubby Daley was there. He was born in Coraki. He doesn’t drive so when he needs to see the doctor he has to use limited public transport to get to Casino or Lismore.
Peggy Gooley takes her sick husband regularly to Casino and District Memorial Hospital.
Mrs Gooley failed to understand why they couldn’t have a doctor on rotation, even if the doctor was only in Coraki for two days a week.
A list of 241 names of residents who would use a GP shows the solid customer base in Coraki.
Jennifer Sherwin wore a grim reaper outfit to emphasise how Coraki residents felt about the absence of a doctor.
Ms Sherwin believes the contracts the Northern NSW Local Health District is offering are too restrictive.
Northern NSW Local Health District chief executive Wayne Jones said efforts had been made to recruit a GP for Coraki Campbell HealthOne, however there had been no successful applicants....
Labels:
Coraki,
Health Services,
Northern Rivers
Wednesday 19 June 2019
SNAPSHOT: Employment, underemployment & unemployment in NSW & Northern Rivers Region - April & May 2019
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Labour
Force, Australia, May 2019:
·
Australia's
trend estimate of employment increased by 28,400 persons in May 2019, with:
·
the
number of unemployed persons increasing by 5,800 persons;
·
the
unemployment rate remaining steady at 5.1%;
·
the
underemployment rate increasing to 8.5%;
·
the
underutilisation rate increasing to 13.6%;
·
the
participation rate increasing to 65.9%; and
·
the
employment to population ratio remaining steady at 62.5%.
In New South Wales, May 2019
Total employed person – 4,167,000 persons of which est. 31%
are employed part-time
Total underemployment rate – 12.2%
Total unemployed person – 197,500 persons of which est. 68%
were looking for full-time work
Total unemployment rate – 4.5%.
State Electorates in Northern Rivers, April 2019
Clarence Electorate – 58,169 employed persons, unemployment
rate 8.2% and youth unemployment rate 20.5%, with negative annual employment
growth of -2.7%
Lismore Electorate – 83,833 employed persons, unemployment
rate 6.1% and youth unemployment rate 10.2%
Richmond-Tweed Electorate – 115,668 employed persons, unemployment
rate 4.5% and youth unemployment rate 8.9%.
Labels:
employment,
Northern Rivers,
under employment,
unemployment
Friday 7 June 2019
Northern NSW residents are still over-represented when it comes to smoking cigarettes
The Daily Examiner, 4 June 2019, p.7:
Northern NSW residents
are still over-represented when it comes to smoking cigarettes.
Despite years of
warnings and anti-smoking campaigns, statistics taken in 2016 reveal 20.3 per
cent of population in the North Coast Local Health District is smoking.
The rate has remained
largely unchanged for years as a report released by the Cancer Institute showed
the number of smokers in 2011 stood at 20.4 per cent
This contrasted with
statewide smoking trends which showed the number of smokers had dropped
considerably over the past decade, down from almost 20 percent to just 15.2 per
cent in 2017.
There was a clear
difference between metropolitan and regional areas, with city health districts
recording bigger falls and one regional health district, Western NSW, recording
an increase of four per cent since 2012.
Males aged 25-34 were
the most likely to be lighting up as 25.9 per cent of the group were smokers
compared to 11.8 per cent of women the same age.
In fact, the only age
group in which women out-smoked men was in the 55-64 and 65-74 categories and
in both cases it was only a one per cent difference.
A higher proportion of
women reported smoking while pregnant, with Northern NSW recording a rate five
per cent above the state average of 8.3 per cent......
Labels:
health,
Northern Rivers
Friday 12 April 2019
Is NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian intending "to make it a priority to finish off effective protection of the natural environment – something started years ago under the Coalition State Government"?
On Thursday 4 April 2019 the local Knitting Nannas held a protest knit-in outside the electoral office of NSW Nationals MP for Clarence, Chris Gulaptis.
Below is the text of their letter to Mr. Gulaptis dated the same day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Knitting Nannas Against
Gas
Grafton Loop
c/- PO Box 763
Grafton 2460
knaggrafton@gmail.com
4th April 2019
C O P Y
Mr C Gulaptis MP
Member for Clarence
11 Prince Street
GRAFTON NSW 2460
Dear Mr Gulaptis
Dissolving of Office of Environment and
Heritage
The Grafton Nannas are very concerned about
your Government’s recently announced intention of doing away with the Office of
Environment and Heritage as an independent entity.
We have long been worried about the
Government’s lack of concern about protecting the natural environment for
current and future generations of humans as well as for other life forms.
Government policies over recent years have
been seen by many in our community and elsewhere as being a de facto war on the
natural environment.
For example:
- Changes to vegetation laws which have led to a large increase in clearing of habitat which is important to the survival of native flora and fauna. This weakening of the former laws is also likely to lead to increased topsoil loss and general land degradation.
- Changes to logging regulations which threaten the sustainability of native forests which belong to the people of NSW – and not to logging interests. These changes include limiting pre-logging fauna surveys, an inevitable increase in clear-felling, and reduction in the width of buffer zones along streams.
- Failure to protect the health of rivers, particularly those in the Murray-Darling Basin. For years the NSW Government, as well as the Federal Government, has been pandering to the irrigation industry while ignoring the need to protect river health by ensuring that flows are adequate for river health. The drought is not an excuse for this folly.
- Other examples include the cutting of funding to the National Parks & Wildlife Service and penny-pinching changes to its structure as well as the failure to ensure that the existing weak environment laws are enforced and appropriate penalties imposed on those who breach them.
We are aware that the Premier recently stated that her Government
would make the environment a priority.
Since hearing that OEH was to lose any of
the limited independence it currently has and is to be pushed into a
mega-Planning Department, we are left wondering about what the premier actually
meant about “priority”. Did she mean
that she intended to make it a priority to finish off effective protection of
the natural environment – something started years ago under the Coalition State
Government? It looks very much like that
to the Nannas.
Yours sincerely
Leonie Blain
On behalf of the Grafton
Nannas
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sunday 31 March 2019
More evidence of Australia’s national extinction crisis
Twenty years ago my garden and the street in which I live rang with the sound of frogs calling after dark - at times it was deafening and drowned out the sound of the television news presenter.
Frogs of different species were in my letterbox, in the garden trees, catching moths on the window sills, hopping about on my patio and frequently in the house.
No more.
Anyone living in urban areas of the NSW Northern Rivers region would be aware that fewer frog species and fewer numbers within those frog species have been part of garden, park and nature reserve landscapes over the last twenty years.
Loss of habitat due to land clearing, drainage or development, depredation by introduced species, over use of herbicides/pesticides by councils and homeowners, decease in available food sources and disease are taking their toll on local frog populations.
When one sees the scale writ large it is terrible to behold.......
The
Guardian, 29
March 2019:
A deadly disease that
wiped out global populations of amphibians led to the decline of 500 species in
the past 50 years, including 90 extinctions, scientists say.
A global research
effort, led by the Australian National University, has for the first time
quantified the worldwide impact of chytridiomycosis, or chytrid fungus, a
fungal disease that eats away at the skin of amphibians.
The disease was first
discovered in 1998 by researchers at James Cook University in Queensland
investigating the cause of mysterious, mass amphibian deaths.
Chytridiomycosis is
caused by two fungal species, both of which are likely to have originated in Asia,
and their spread has been facilitated by humans through activities such as the
legal and illegal pet trade.
Forty-two researchers
worked on the new study,
published in Science on Friday, which pinpoints the extent of the disease and
how devastating it has been for frog, toad and salamander species.
They found evidence that
at least 501 species had declined as a result of chytrid fungus and 90 of those
were presumed or confirmed extinct.
“The results are pretty
astounding” Benjamin Scheele, a research fellow at the ANU and the project’s
lead researcher, said.
“We’ve known that
chytrid is really bad for the better part of two decades but actually
researching and quantifying those declines, that’s what this study does.”
The scientists
identified declines in amphibian species in Europe, Africa, Central and South
America and Australia because of the disease.
Scheele said there were
no declines in Asia because species had evolved to be naturally resistant.
The impact of the
disease has been hardest in Central and South America and in eastern Australia,
where it flourishes in cool and moist conditions. It does not survive at
temperatures above 28C.
In Australia, chytrid
fungus is present in upland areas along the Great Dividing Range, down to the
Otways in Victoria, and the edges of South Australia and Tasmania.
It is also found in some
of the cooler mountain areas of Queensland.
Scheele said in Australia alone, there were 240 species
of amphibian, 40 of which the researchers believed had suffered population
declines as a result of chytrid fungus.
Seven of those 40 are believed to be extinct. One of
those is the mountain mistfrog, which was last
year added to a group of species the Australian government has been
assessing to determine whether it should be moved to the national list of extinct
wildlife.
Other species, including both the southern and northern
corroboree frog, have suffered because of chytrid fungus, but large-scale
captive breeding programs have worked to prevent their extinction..... [my
yellow highlighting]
Labels:
Australia,
extinction,
flora and fauna,
global crisis,
Northern Rivers
Thursday 28 March 2019
Cometh the rain, cometh the cane toads
Cane Toad eggs & tadpoles Image: The Conversation, 31 August 2011 |
The Daily Examiner, 25 March 2019, p.13:
With a solid drop of
rain falling in the coastal area of the Clarence Valley last Friday night, cane
toads will be taking up this much overdue opportunity to reproduce their kind,
much to the disappointment of those who are working hard to control this pest.
Landowners can help by
simply inspecting their dams, ponds and any temporarily flooded areas for toad
spawn (long strings of eggs that do not float and resemble jelly shoes laces)
or toad tadpoles (typically jet black in colour and seen ‘grazing’ in shallow,
warm water schooling in tight schools or clusters).
The consistent effort of
CVCIA volunteers and increasing effort by landowners at Micalo Island has seen
numbers of toads plummet over the last three seasons and this season to date
round-ups have collected an average of 328 toads compared to 397 and 764 in the
2017/18 and 2016/17 seasons, respectively.
The best time to inspect
such water bodies is during daylight hours when the sun is high and visibility
into the water is at optimum levels and anyone who believes they have found
toad spawn is encouraged to remove it immediately while other signs of toad
breeding should be reported to either Clarence Landcare on 66435009 or CVCIA
Landcare on 0477616210 or email scott@cvcia.org.au.
This Friday night CVCIA
Landcare’s effort will return to Yamba Golf Course where volunteers will meet
in the southern car park at 7.30pm and any interested persons are most welcome
to come along.
Adult Cane Toad Rhinella marina Image: Australian Museum |
Labels:
Northern Rivers,
noxious pests
Tuesday 19 March 2019
Knitting Nannas from across NSW took their protest to Sydney on International Women's Day
United
to Protect Our Water
101 Knitting Nannas from around NSW converged
on Parliament House in Sydney on International Women’s Day (March 8) to protest
about water mismanagement and the lack of effective government action to protect
river and groundwater health. The theme of the protest was “No Water no Life”.
The Nannas came from Loops (local Nanna
groups) in the Northern Rivers, Grafton, Coonabarabran, Dubbo, Midcoast, New
England-North West, Central Coast, Gloucester, Hunter Valley, Illawarra, and
Sydney.
The Nannas have long been very concerned
about unwanted water impacts around NSW – issues which have been raised with
elected representatives over a number of years.
· These include impacts on urban water catchments from coal mines - the Wallarah 2 mine on the Central Coast and the Hume mine in the Southern Highlands as well as the long-wall mining in the Illawarra which leads to massive water loss into mines.
· The North West of the state is also impacted by coal mines which use vast amounts of water – Whitehaven’s Maules Creek mine and the proposed Vickery mine.
· Then there’s the threat to groundwater from Santos’ gasfield in the Pilliga State Forest. This project is slated to extract 35 billion litres of groundwater – most of it in the first five years.
· But the most dramatic impact is the most recent – the Darling fish kills - the result of years of mismanagement and favouring of irrigators over the health of the river system.
· These include impacts on urban water catchments from coal mines - the Wallarah 2 mine on the Central Coast and the Hume mine in the Southern Highlands as well as the long-wall mining in the Illawarra which leads to massive water loss into mines.
· The North West of the state is also impacted by coal mines which use vast amounts of water – Whitehaven’s Maules Creek mine and the proposed Vickery mine.
· Then there’s the threat to groundwater from Santos’ gasfield in the Pilliga State Forest. This project is slated to extract 35 billion litres of groundwater – most of it in the first five years.
· But the most dramatic impact is the most recent – the Darling fish kills - the result of years of mismanagement and favouring of irrigators over the health of the river system.
The Nannas assembled in Martin Place where they donned their specially made t-shirts bearing a picture of a Nanna declaring “The Water Needs You” (in the spirit of the Lord Kitchener First World War recruiting poster) and their yellow, red and black suffragette-style sashes emblazoned with “No Water No Life”.
After a group photo under the big banner (“United to Protect Our Water”), the Nannas walked to Parliament House and ranged themselves along the fenceline. There they used their sashes to tie on to the iron railing of the fence in the manner of the suffragettes.
The brightly-dressed Nannas with their
banners and their singing and chanting attracted a great deal of attention from
pedestrians and those driving along busy Macquarie Street. A highlight of the
street performance was the powerful rendition by Nanna Purl Stockinstitch of
her poem about the death of farmer George Bender who was hounded by a CSG
company in Queensland. The Nannas hoped
that the pollies in our parliament heard and took note of the effect the
unconventional gas industry has had - and continues to have - on the lives of communities
in gasfields.
Various politicians met with the Nannas on
the footpath and were presented with their “knagging list” - the Nannas’
demands for action.
While the theme of the protest focused on the
major problems with rivers and water, the Nannas demands were much broader.
They included a call for immediate climate action, transition to 100%
renewables, a state-wide ban on gas extraction (including in the Pilliga),
proper protection of Aboriginal sacred sites and revocation of the draconian anti-protest
laws brought in by the current NSW Government.
The Knitting Nannas Against Gas and Greed are
hopeful that all of the state political parties will accept their calls for
effective action on these important matters. It should be noted that the Nannas,
who are very concerned about the protection of the land and water for future
generations, are non-party political and have a policy of annoying all
politicians equally – something we aim to continue doing!
- Leonie Blain
Grafton Loop of the Knitting Nannas Against
Gas & Greed
Friday 15 March 2019
Tweed, Ballina, Lismore & Clarence candidates standing in the NSW State Election on Saturday, 23 March 2019
These are the Far North Coast sitting members in the NSW Legislative Assembly (Lower House):
Geoffrey Keith PROVEST, NSW Nationals MP for Tweed
Tamara Francine SMITH, NSW Greens MP for Ballina
Thomas GEORGE, NSW Nationals for Lismore - not
standing for re-election
Christopher GULAPTIS, NSW Nationals MP for Clarence
These are all the candidates standing in the four state electorates and the positions they drew on ballot papers for the 23 March 2019
NSW State Election:
Labels:
Ballina,
Clarence,
elections 2019,
Lismore,
New South Wales,
Northern Rivers,
Tweed
Thursday 7 March 2019
Be A Voice For The Koalas Of The NSW Northern Rivers
In the beautiful Northern Rivers of NSW there is a dark secret.— Nature NSW (@naturensw) February 27, 2019
We can turn this story around for koalas if we act now. Sign the petition and be a voice for koalas 👉 https://t.co/vBHkdxIKD7 pic.twitter.com/Yq8Xbj072P
Labels:
flora and fauna,
Koala,
Northern Rivers
Tuesday 12 February 2019
New South Wales State of Play February 2019: widespread drought
All of New South Wales is drought affected to varying degrees in February 2019, incliuding the Northern Rivers region.
https://edis.dpi.nsw.gov.au/ |
Labels:
drought,
New South Wales,
Northern Rivers
Thursday 7 February 2019
Loggers still breaching their environmental obligations in Northern NSW state forests
North East Forest Alliance, media release,
1 February 2019:
EPA ENCOURAGES ILLEGAL
LOGGING BY REPEATEDLY LETTING FORESTRY OFF
The North East Forest
Alliance is claiming there is no justice for forests after the EPA on
Wednesday confirmed numerous breaches of the Forestry Corporation's Threatened
Species Licence in Gibberagee State Forest (east of Whiporie) but yet again issued
useless cautions and warnings rather than fines and prosecutions for these
serial offenders.
"Over the past
decade NEFA have exposed the Forestry Corporation committing thousands of legal
breaches of their environmental obligations, with the EPA confirming hundreds
more breaches in the last few months from NEFA's audits of Gibberagee and
Sugarloaf State Forest", said NEFA Spokesperson Dailan Pugh.
"Yet the EPA have
never taken the Forest Corporation to court, despite commitments to do so, and
in January 2016 they made the political decision not to issue fines.
"With no
consequences for their blatant breaches of environmental laws, is it surprising
that the Forestry Corporation repeat them time and time again?
"If you or I went
around illegally cutting down oldgrowth trees (hundreds of year old), clearing
rainforest, and bulldozing roads through exclusions around threatened plants
time and time again we would be put in jail, but the Forestry Corporation don't
even get a fine.
"The EPA's
regulation of the Forestry Corporation is farcical, though the biggest problem
is that by their refusal to take meaningful regulatory action the EPA are
fostering what Justice Pepper described in 2011 as "a reckless attitude
towards compliance with its environmental obligations" Mr. Pugh said.
"On Wednesday, in
response to a NEFA complaint made 2 years ago the EPA confirmed that the
Forestry Corporation failed to adequately mark the boundaries of 50m logging
exclusion zones around numerous individuals of Endangered heath Narrow-leaved
Melichrus, and undertook logging operations and roading within their exclusion
zones.
"The EPA also
confirmed NEFA's complaints of reckless damage to hollow-bearing trees and
recruitment trees, while also confirming that the Forestry Corporation was not
following the requirements for selection of appropriate recruitment trees.
"Though we can't be
sure the EPA found all the breaches we identified because the EPA won't tell us
how many they found, and when the EPA invited us into Gibberagee to be show them
in March 2017, the Forestry Corporation wouldn't let us show the EPA and
ordered us out of the forest.
"When NEFA made its
first complaint over Gibberagee in March 2017 we hoped the EPA would take
action to stop the breaches, yet when NEFA did another assessment 7 months
later we found the same sort of breaches were continuing unabated. We are still
waiting for the EPA to respond to the last complaints.
"In October last
year the EPA confirmed over 86 breaches of the logging rules identified by the
North East Forest Alliance in Sugarloaf State Forest, south of Tabulam, at that
time the EPA issued the Forestry Corporation with a Warning Letter for 72 and
an Official Caution for 1 offence.
"The confirmed
breaches included roading through a wildlife corridor, nine cases of roading in
exclusion areas along streams, failure to retain the required numbers of
habitat trees, and over 70 cases of serious damage to, and inappropriate
selection of, marked habitat trees.
"While failure to
retain the required number of habitat trees is called one offence, in practice
the EPA found that they had retained 200 less hollow-bearing trees than were
legally required.
"There were
numerous other breaches that the Forestry got off scot free for, for example
the EPA confirmed clearing within the marked boundary of the Endangered
Ecological Community Lowland Rainforest but refused to take action on the
grounds that because the "forest structure and species present at this
location have either been totally removed or severely altered/damaged" it
precluded identifying what it had been like before logging.
"The EPA chose to
ignore that they and the Forestry Corporation had jointly mapped it as Lowland
Rainforest some 6 months before it had been logged and cleared.
"These offences are
a repeat of similar offences we reported a year earlier in the nearby Cherry
Tree State Forest. Despite the EPA's assurances they were going to take legal
action there for logging and roading 4.5ha of mapped Lowland Rainforest and
recklessly damaging hundreds of habitat trees, they let the Forestry
Corporation off scot-free.
"NEFA estimated in
that operation around 1,000 habitat trees were likely to have been damaged or
had excessive debris left around their bases, though the EPA justified their
refusal to take any regulatory action on the grounds that while it was "likely"
the damages "were as a result of harvesting operations", they
were not able to prove "beyond reasonable doubt ... that the damage was
[not] caused by some other means".
"There is no justice.
The EPA's sham regulation is encouraging the Forestry Corporation to repeatedly
break logging laws with impunity" Mr. Pugh said.
Labels:
#standup4forests,
environment,
flora and fauna,
forests,
Northern Rivers,
trees
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