Illogicalities and sleight of hand in bushfire accounting and management

The Burned Area Emergency Response Report (BAER) from a team of more than 60 scientists and specialists recommended that the government "must reduce logging volumes to reflect the reduction in habitat and timber resource". The reports acknowledged that only a small area could be safely salvage logged. However, this advice was ignored. More than ten times the amount of salvage logging stipulated in these reports was logged. Excess logging continued under the smoke-screen of pseudo-science. VicForests used the tragic Black Saturday fires as an excuse for a timber grab. The abundance of large trees with hollows is significantly reduced in forests after salvage harvesting. Salvage logging also reduces the number of places that typically support the highest diversity of tree-living marsupials and forest birds. Thousands of tonnes of high-quality sawlogs from Victoria’s bushfire-devastated Central Highlands forests (near Healesville) are being secretly shipped to China, against state government policy, The Wilderness Society has revealed. “VicForests is responsible for implementing the ban on whole log exports, but it appears they have allowed the system to be rorted. We find it very hard to believe that VicForests didn’t know this was going on” said The Wilderness Society’s Victorian Campaigns Manager Richard Hughes. Secret export of sawlogs destroys native forests, betrays Victorian communities A timber merchant has been accused of putting Victorian jobs at risk by sending thousands of tonnes of wood salvaged after the deadly Black Saturday fires overseas for processing. VicForests investigates timber claim Now the timber merchants, the pillagers and the plunderers who are stripping our Victorian native forests, are fighting over the spoils of their crimes! Our native forests are another natural asset being stripped to fuel China's economic growth.