rainfall

Article about Brown Mountain on the Anarchist media net says that the logging of Brown Mountain will be done by public servants who would be otherwise deployed in our poorly tended ecosystems if they were not sent off to log. However EEG disagrees on this point. See related important corrections to original article in comments below it inside. They also make interesting reading.

(This article was originally published at http://www.anarchistmedia.org/current.html)

Only 8% of Victoria’s old growth forests remain

Considering just 8% of Victoria’s old growth forests remain, you would think the Victorian State government would continue its seven month moratorium on logging at Brown mountain in far east Gippsland. You really have to wonder who the Environment Minister Gavin Jennings is kidding when he states “the old growth forest surrounding Brown Mountain is not top grade old growth forest and did not warrant protecting”.

It is hard to know who to believe about the real worth of the old growth forest surrounding Brown Mountain when a VicForests spokesperson says the area to be logged is “exceptional forest” and “seventy five percent will become high-grade saw logs”. If it is exceptional old growth forest, you would think the state government would be falling over itself to protect it.

Trying to appease some very angry environmentalists, the Victorian Environmental Minister has set aside 400 hectares of old growth forest around Brown Mountain to offset what will be logged. The only problem is century old trees will be logged while much of the 400 hectares set aside was logged in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Just in case you think hundreds of privately employed timber workers are going to lose their jobs; the logging will be carried out by the state’s timber arm VicForests.

Our taxes at work against us and the environment

Yep folks that’s right, no private contractors jobs are at stake and the employees who work for VicForests who will be doing the logging could be re-deployed into other jobs in the state’s commercial arm VicForests. It seems the decision to log the old growth forests at Brown Mountain has more to do with the state government protecting its tough pro-logging image than it has to do with the state making any money out of logging the old growth forests at Brown Mountain. If the Victorian Environment Minister didn’t believe the ALP wasn’t going to garner a few extra votes, the moratorium on logging at Brown Mountain would still be in place." [See inside; this statement has been contested.]

This article was originally published at http://www.anarchistmedia.org/current.html

Today is a dark day for native vegetation and the environment

Website - http://livingwiththebush.org/dp/
Today (Thursday 3rd Sept) Brumby bulldozed amendments to the Dandenong Ranges and Yarra Valley Regional Strategy Plan.

This was pushed through both houses of parliament with less than one days notice so the Government can soon remove vegetation protection to allow:
- clearing of all trees and vegetation within 10m of a house
- clearing a 4m wide strip of all vegetation along each property boundary
- clearing any vegetation except trees between 10m and 30m from a house;

from all of Victoria except the 20 urban councils around Melbourne proper.

Devastating impact

This will have a devastating impact in many areas of Victoria where many communities live with in a bushland setting.

And the evidence is that doing this will not make us safe from bushfire.
There are examples from Black Saturday of houses without any nearby vegetation that burnt, of fires that raced through short grass fields to ignite buildings. Houses located more than 380 metres from continous bush were lost.

Vegetation can also act as an essential windbreak, reducing the wind that intensifies fires, and may provide protection from radiant heat as well as slowing down or stopping embers.

Yet the Brumby government intends to allow this clearing until the final recommendations of the Bushfire Commission are released next year.

This will encourage unneighbourly behaviour

By then everyone who has been endeavouring to clear their block for any reason, including gaining a better view will have done so. We will have lost forever even more of our biodiversity and dumped more green house gases into the atmosphere.

The Living With The Bush Coalition has been formed to campaign against this proposal. We believe that this unfettered clearing is fundamentally flawed in that it will not protect houses from bushfires, may in fact increase the danger by creating more intense fires and will destroy the reason so many of us live with the bush.

Read our charter, "Living with the Bush"

You can read our charter at as well as more information on this issue, why we have reached this position and what you can do.

If you support the views expressed in the charter please consider endorsing it, either individually or as on behalf of a group.

You can register your support at the website.

With a large community outcry I hope we can get these unilateral changes modified to something that will protect our lives instead of just removing trees.

Please forward this on to your networks to help build the Living with the Bush Coalition,

best regards
Louis Delacretaz
0407 300 188

Not so long ago, a giant thermal rain-bearing wind carried moisture inland from giant forests on the eastern coast of Australia. The giant thermal has disappeared along with the rain. Read why.
See also, "Deforestation drys continents - new theory explains how" Also see, at end of article, a short report about DSE from defenders of the forest at Brown Mountain.
This article was originally published on the Natural Sequence Farming Forum

On the east coast of Australia there used to run forests that were hundreds of feet high in places and travel for miles inland from the coast.

There were houses all along the east coast that were covered in mould, on the east side of the house.

A great thermal existed called the Tanami Wind. This was the exact process that occurred as described in the articles quoted by Sheila about forests creating rain (Deforestation drys continents - new theory explains how). This thermal wind was produced by the great forests along the east coast that drew moist air from the sea sending it thousands of miles inland carrying life-giving rain.

Its the reason that Australians developed the cavity brick wall.

TODAY THIS FOREST NO LONGER EXISTS....The vegetation has all but been removed....which cooled the land and created the thermal wind which was caused by the temperature gradient between the warm sea air and the cooler air over the vegetated landscape.

In Mataranka in the NT the ancient Dreamtime stories of the Mangarayi and Yungman tribes describe a wind sweeping in from the east that created the area.

This short article about a tragic transformation in recent Australian history, was contributed in response to candobetter articles and reports about the role of vegetation, especially forests, in create rain and the relationship between desertification and deforestation.
Author: Duane, Assistant to Peter Andrews, of Natural Sequence Farming.

Editor's note: This process is ongoing and our governments are so plugged into the dead-end of industrial growth and financial rope-tricks that they are unable to stop the insane state of logging. Their actions are so indefensible that they avoid scrutiny by secrecy.

Here is the latest on the Brown Mountain destruction:

Dated 16-9-09: "Yesterday we received a 'NO' from the FOI unit to a request to access the DSE's own Brown Mt wildlife survey report that was sent to the minister. They are still playing politics with our old growth forests. Extra pressure is needed at this critical time." email sheila[AT]candobetter if you want to help.

I see that poor old Wilson Tuckey is ('No fuel, no fire' policy must be enforced: Wilson Tuckey, Farm Weekly, 11/02/2009)frothing at the mouth again over trees.

He just cannot see the point of them. Perhaps desperate for company, he's got the attention of the media with the usual dog-whistles. And the media take advantage of this desperate old pollie; they are always on the hunt for conflict, especially if they can hang it onto a raw bona fide tragedy.

Of course, our media wouldn't want to look at the big picture, would they, or that just might mean they would have to stop barracking for growth, suburbs on newly cleared bushland, continuous population growth and a thimble-full of very expensive water per person on the driest continent in the world (apart from Antarctica).

What causes forest-fires? Apart from record heat-waves, interference with forests causes them.

Sustainable forestry in Victoria

Fire-stick farming

When stone-age people learned how to use fire, they probably nearly set the world on fire and permanently altered climate. So the Australian aborigines were probably not unique in what they are thought to have done with their 'fire-stick farming', assisting a drying of the continent which was perhaps already in train. (Ref. Mary White, After the Greening, the Browning of Gondwanaland, Kangaroo Press 1994; Peter Andrews, Australia on the Brink, and Tim Flannery, The Future Eaters) Some people think that the Australian Aborigines greatly reduced Australia's carrying capacity by getting rid of the earlier, wetter forests, and promoting eucalypts and acacias.

But the Aborigines had nothing on Europeans. In the early years, the only voluntary visitors to these shores were natural scientists and artists. Then along came the gold-rush, erasing entire forests for building, heating and cooking materials. The gold-rush permanently impoverished many areas in Victoria, botanically and zoologically and altering their rainfall and hydrology. Today, in such places, still pitted with old mines, thin trees struggle, there is virtually no topsoil, and massive evaporation.

European Australians have been interfering with forests by logging for years.

In a country that was already dry, we have proceeded like a race of termites. Those lovely little wooden houses in Brisbane stand where a great big forest once stood. Same story everywhere you find those cute little wooden houses. At first they have ornate wooden lace decorating them. Then they become plainer and smaller. You know that the forests ran out when the houses are made of brick. You go to a wilderness area to admire the trees, but they are only a tenth of the size of the giants that Europeans took down and exported back to England. The fig trees in Cairns are bigger than the trees in the Daintree.

Sustainable Logging

We hear all about sustainable logging; just a little bit here, just a little bit there...
It all exposes the land to the sunlight and begins the drying.

Even in a huge forest like this

The areas which succumbed to bush-fires in Victoria this year have been logged on and off for years.

And plantations are full of inflammable pines.

Apart from being wrong, blaming the 'greens' (some amorphous group designated the Enemy) overlooks just a few other factors.

Some inconvenient factors

The heat - global warming - exacerbated by land-clearing
The government forced population-growth that has overshot a water-supply which would have seen us through at 17m or less.
Result: a lot of dry, shadeless gardens - no defense against fire
The building of suburbs next to forests
The reduction of water to natural landscapes, for diversion to human industry
The reduction of water from suburbs, for diversion to industry.

The hydrological cycle - note the role of trees in causing rain and keeping water in the soil

We have to moisten our soils and our forests to mitigate the drying and to cool areas locally. Clearing land increases heat and fire risk. Houses can be rebuilt under the earth or they will need to be moved away from forests and the government must stop importing people to increase the size of this population, the size of which is already causing unsustainable demand on water which has now probably claimed lives.

Here is what logging does to forests:

Source: Woods Hole Research Centre, "Fire and Savannization"

Every year, accidental understory fires damage a large percentage of Amazon forest. This is the phenomenon we have called 'cryptic deforestation' (Nepstad 1999). These escaped fires travel slowly (10-20 meters an hour) and only reach a few inches in height, but they can be quite destructive to understory vegetation and kill many larger trees. Once a forest has burned, increased leaf shedding, an abundance of branches and other coarse fuel enhance its fuel load, and an open canopy ensures the fuel will be dry enough to burn. Since settlement is typically a one-way process, the ignition source - humans - is there to stay, and successive burns tend to be more intense and destructive.

Cryptic deforestation due to forest fires and logging may affect as much forest area as deforestation in most years — and even more during periods of prolonged drought. For instance, during El Niño years, up to 25,000 km2 of Brazilian forests may be affected by fire."

Clearing forests a cause of malaria; withholding DDT is a red herring

Oh, and in case you thought that not using DDT caused mosquito epidemics, consider this:
Mosquito epidemics can be caused by clearing forests. Preferred oviposition sites for anopheles are small temporary pools in full sunlight Many mosquitos need to be exposed to sunlight to harden their wings. These conditions were not so often possible when they lived in pools in rich forests, below tall trees and understory, which blocked out the light. Malaria epidemics, through history, occurred with the clearing of forests.[1] And so did soil depletion and the transformation of green and pleasant places into hot deserts.[2]

[1]References for Malaria:
Robert S. Desowitz, New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers,W.W. Norton and company, New York, London and Richard Carter and Kamini N. Mendis, “Evolutionary and Historical Aspects of the Burden of Malaria,” Clinical Microbiology Reviews, October 2002, p. 564-594, Vol. 15, No. 4, 0893-8512/02/$04.00+0, DOI: 10.1128/CMR.15.4.564-594.2002, American Society for Microbiology, http://malaria.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD023991.html. (For further information, the authors are linked to the following: University of Edinburgh, Division of Biological Sciences, ICAPB, Ashworth Laboratories, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, United Kingdom,1 Roll Back Malaria Project, World Health Organization, Geneva 27, Switzerland.)
See also www.tulane.edu/~wiser/malaria/Malaria-VectorBiology.ppt

[2] References for Forests and soil loss: John Perlin, A forest journeyThe Countryman Press, Woodstock, Vermont, 2005 and David Montgomery, Dirt, the Erosion of Civilisations, University of California Press, 1997.