logging

VicForests sued for illegal logging Tuesday 25th August 2009

Today, Environment East Gippsland commenced proceedings against VicForests in the Supreme Court of Victoria.

A writ was filed with the court this morning and has just been served on VicForests.

“We ask the Court for a permanent injunction to stop VicForests from logging Brown Mountain” said Jill Redwood, Coordinator of EEG. “We also ask the Court to declare that the logging of Brown Mountain is unlawful”.

Brown Mountain is known habitat for at least five species of wildlife listed as vulnerable or threatened under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act.

The Court has not yet set a date for the hearing of the case.

Brave Victorians needed to stand up to Brumby's orcs

A small regional environment group is set for a David and Goliath legal battle against the Brumby Government’s planned logging of the 600 - 800 year old trees at Brown Mountain in East Gippsland.

Environment East Gippsland is applying for an injunction in the Supreme Court of Victoria this afternoon following the government’s announcement of its decision earlier today to log the area.

“The injunction will be extremely costly but someone’s got to do it. We can’t put a price on forests that are seven times older than Federation.” said Jill Redwood, Coordinator of EEG. [Candobetter Ed: Go to EEG Website to donate by PayPal or to send help by mail.]

“With the refusal of this government to protect the ancient forests and its endangered wildlife, it’s time to challenge this bloody-minded boys club in our courts.”

Forest warriors draw line at Brown Mountain

“There’s been open slather woodchipping in East Gippsland for 40 years but Brown Mountain is where we draw the line.”

“Coupled with other recent decisions against our environment, all Victorians can now see what barefaced disregard the Labor government is showing for our natural world.”

“The minister has congratulated the government for protecting the already protected peak at Brown Mountain, while logging the extremely wildlife-rich and ancient forests in its catchment.

Conservation order vital

The injunction relies on the area being critical habitat to a number of threatened species under both State and Federal legislation and requiring a conservation order to protect the area. In addition, the injunction relies on the logging being unlawful.

For comment: Jill Redwood (write to her via candobetter contact)
MEDIA RELEASE, Friday 21st August 2009, "Legal injunction set to stop logging"

Logging this massive forest represents huge CO2 sink destruction

News is just in is that a decision to log the huge forests of Brown Mountain will be made in a week or so and the loggers will go in immediately afterwards! Brumby is not planning to protect it! Be there Tomorrow at 10.30am on the steps of Parliament House Victoria. We want everyone who can come along - young and old.

Old Growth stops this land from drying and burning!

The more old growth we cut down the more drying of the land, reduced rainfall, increased temperatures and risk of more and hotter bushfires. Bushfires dominate in managed and thinned forest, not in old growth! Logging Brown Forest will cause more bad bushfires in Victoria. Campervan, 4WDS and cars needed. Contact 0413927044

Climate Change Activism - less talk - more local action on the big factors - defend the forests!

Crikey news 12 August 2009 carries a relevant opinion article today on the farce that climate action has become.

Emissions trading debate: is this the best we can do?
[...] the public don’t have the faintest idea how emissions trading works and are completely disengaged from the debate over model details. They just want something done about climate change and know that the experts think emissions trading is the way to go.

This entire debate is being conducted under false pretenses or on the basis that what is manifestly not the case, is. Is this the best a democracy can do?

Making the 'solutions' very abstract and removed to a global forum of international 'experts' is the best way to keep people from local action and critical thinking and to mire action in impenetrable jargon and unverifyable accounting of C02 tradeoffs, offsets, sinks etc.

So much more we can do for ourselves here

There is so much more we can do for ourselves, crucially by stopping removal of vegetation for population, infrastructure and economic expansion. For instance we have in Victoria a record of climate change related fires which can be linked at their worst to the thinned and managed forests here. See "Victorian Bush-fires: ABC 7.30 Report ignores facts, creates scapegoats". We have climate refugees now living in tents in the winter cold as a result of these fires. Yet, in this most cleared of states, Mr Brumby is about to send in the loggers to Brown Mountain, where 600 year old trees testify to the very low risk of out-of-control fires in old growth forests. Most recently scientists have tied forest to inland rainfall . Deforestation drys continents - new theory explains how and a huge environmental and political experiment in Borneo by Willie Smit demonstrated they are right , "Recreating Eden". Climate activism is a huge source of organised public action in the name of which small groups should be able to act. Instead we see a crowd hypnotised by Al Gore and captured and harnessed by various local political groups in their usual quest for power and dollars. It amazes me that the Al Gore Climate Change activists, for all their repetitive noise are apparently unaware of or incapable of stopping the destruction of forests in Australia. Why are they not converging in busloads to stop the loggers and the developers' bulldozers?

Home Grown solutions in NSF and Permaculture

We also have at least two homegrown major applied science theories and practice in the structural ecology of Peter Andrews' Natural Sequence Farming (NSF), and the social theory (as well as the farming theory) in Bill Mollison's Permaculture.

With this in mind, I hope I may now return your attention to the crucial local political action to save Brown Mountain Forest for tomorrow in Melbourne. This is a huge forest and logging it will make a HUGE difference to CO2 emissions and local and regional temperature and rainfall if allowed to proceed in this (it bears repeating) the most cleared of Australian states. Protest tomorrow (12 August) at 10.30am on the steps of Parliament House Victoria. Everyone who can come along - young and old. Contact 0413927044

Forestry Minister Tony Burke and Premier Bartlett may be rejoicing that Gunns has a joint venture partner, the Swedish company Sodra, for Tasmania's pulp mill. It would be "good" for jobs and for the Tasmanian economy!

Swedish company Södra stated that it would only be involved in a pulp mill in Australia if it was Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified, totally chlorine-free (TCF) and 100% plantation-based.

The Wilderness Society

So-called "sustainable" forestry has perpetuated the myth that primary and old growth forests can and should be harvested using "Sustainable Forest Management" (SFM) techniques.

However, forestry has transformed most of Sweden’s forests into plantations and young forests. Sweden's forestry corporations are quickly turning a once a beautiful land of old-growth forests full of life and diversity into clearcuts. Nearly all Sweden's virgin forests are gone. What is left is the old growth forests, and those are being erased now.

Over 1,800 animal and plant species in the Swedish forests are red-listed and many of them are dependent on old trees, dead wood and old-growth forests deciduous trees to survive. This is despite Sweden's example of "good" and "sustainable" forestry industries!

Gunns will still have to pass the final stage of an assessment by the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, before the mill can operate, but is allowed to begin construction of the project!

Could this be the price that Tasmanians, and Australians, are willing to pay for what is "good" for jobs and the economy?

Thousands of indigenous people have protested in Peru's Amazon for much of the past 40 days, hoping to pressure President Garcia to modify or strike down a series of laws he passed last year that encourage oil, mining and agricultural companies to invest billions of dollars in the mostly pristine region.

Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon are protesting investment laws passed under a free-trade pact with the United States and against concessions granted to foreign energy companies. Some 30,000 indigenous people have blockaded roads, rivers and railways to demand repeal of new laws that allow oil, mining and logging companies to enter indigenous territories without seeking consent or even any consultation. Indigenous communities complain that some 70% of Peruvian Amazon territory is now leased for oil and gas exploration, putting at risk their own lives and the biodiversity of the Amazon.

Peruvian state-run producer PetroPeru said earlier that protesters impeded work at pumping stations on the government-run North Peruvian oil pipeline, cutting shipments of crude oil.

The indigenous groups started the demonstrations in April, asking that Congress revoke a series of decrees they say will open their land to mining, logging and oil drilling without consent.

Officials in Peru are quick to point out that this was one of the first Latin American countries to establish local government strategies to curb the loss of biological diversity. "We made it possible in 1999, even before Brazil," María Luisa del Río, the Environment Ministry’s director for biodiversity, told Tierramérica. (www.tierramerica.info)

But experts and critics assure that the biggest problem is implementing those plans in Peru, considered one of the world’s leaders in natural wealth of ecosystems, species, genetic resources and indigenous cultures.

Scientists estimate that Peru is home to some 25,000 plant species, that is, 10 percent of the world total, and to 1,816 bird species. But this great natural heritage has been threatened in recent decades by the extraction of natural resources, and hundreds of species are in danger of extinction.

Between 2002 and 2007, mining concessions grew more than 70 percent due to incentives for foreign investment and high international prices for metals. Meanwhile, protests by indigenous and peasant communities about mining-based pollution also increased.

Indigenous leaders saying President Garcia has disregarded a U.N. declaration that protects their rights to control land and natural resources.

The protests, which have already shut Peru's pipeline that carries oil from the Amazon to the Pacific Ocean, underscore the risks of investing in a country with a poverty rate of 40 percent and a history of discord between wealthy elites in Lima and poor indigenous groups in the countryside. Despite this reality, the President declared that:

"The lands of the Amazon belong ... to all Peruvians and not just a small group that lives there," Garcia said over the weekend. "The riches of Peru belong to all Peruvians."

Garcia decreed most of the laws in question last year using special powers Congress gave him to bring Peru's regulations into line with the requirements of its free-trade pact with the United States.

Garcia, a former leftist who now fervently supports foreign investment, has sold dozens of concessions to foreign energy and mining companies since taking office in 2006. More auctions are planned in a country where mineral exports drive economic growth and the government is working to become self-sufficient in oil production.

The Peruvian government has sent troops into its Amazon region to quell protesting indigenous people. (May 16)

(May 31) Truckers burned a weigh station and an official vehicle in northern Peru on Friday to demand government action against Amazon Indians who have been blocking highways in a protest against laws they say threaten their control of ancestral lands, CPN Radio reported.

Truckers Protest

The reality is that indigenous people will lose their natural heritage to the President, foreign investors, the business elite, but they will end up with nothing!
The Indians have refused to end their protests, despite the initiation of talks with the government on resolving the dispute.

Please add your voice in solidarity with the tens of thousands of indigenous people and their international supporters mobilizing to protect the Peruvian Amazon.
Click here to open rainforestportal to send automated letters of protest.

latest crisis
Environment Peru's biodiversity under threat
production reduced due to protests

Whilst many people have been aware (but have mostly been ignored) that vegetation, especially forests, creates rain, and whilst desertification has been linked to deforestation historically many times, there is a new and robust theory to explain how this may happen.
See also How logging causes forest fires

Original source of article:Rainforests may pump winds worldwide by Fred Pierce, New Scientist, 1st April 2009, issue no.2702.]


Whilst many thoughtful people have worked out (but have mostly been ignored) that vegetation, especially forests, create rain, and whilst desertification has been linked to deforestation historically many times, there is a new and robust theory to explain how this may happen.

The theory argues that forests generate winds that help pump water around the planet. This article says that the theory would explain how it rains as much in the interiors of forested continents as on the coasts.

"If correct, the theory would explain how the deep interiors of forested continents get as much rain as the coast, and how most of Australia turned from forest to desert. It suggests that much of North America could become desert - even without global warming."

The New Scientist article reports that "up to half the precipitation falling on a typical tropical rainforest evaporates or transpires from trees. ... Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva of the St Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute in Russia say that forests also create winds that pump moisture across continents."

How can forests create wind?

[Water vapour from coastal forests and oceans condenses into droplets and clouds. The gas takes up less space as it turns to liquid, lowering local air pressure.] Because evaporation is stronger over the forest than over the ocean, the pressure is lower over coastal forests, which suck in moist air from the ocean. This generates wind that drives moisture further inland. The process repeats itself as the moisture is recycled in stages, moving towards the continent's heart (see diagram). As a result, giant winds transport moisture thousands of kilometres into the interior of a continent.

Coastal forests create giant winds that push water thousands of kilometres inland

Huge volumes can be involved.

More moisture typically evaporates from rainforests than from the ocean. The Amazon rainforest, for example, releases 20 trillion litres of moisture every day.

New Scientist reports that Makarieva and Gorshkov told them that, "In conventional meteorology the only driver of atmospheric motion is the differential heating of the atmosphere. That is, warm air rises." "Nobody has looked at the pressure drop caused by water vapour turning to water." The scientists, [whose theory relies on the physics of air movement] have dubbed this the "biotic pump" and claim it could be "the major driver of atmospheric circulation on Earth".

To back up their hypothesis they show how regions without coastal forests, such as west Africa, become exponentially drier inland. Likewise, in northern Australia, rainfall drops from 1600 millimetres a year on the coast to 200 mm some 1500 kilometres inland. In contrast, on continents with large forests from the coast to interior, rainfall is as strong inland as on the coast, suggesting the trees help shuttle moisture inland (Ecological Complexity, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2008.11.004, in press). In the Congo, for instance, around 2000 mm of rain falls each year at the coast and the same amount falls inland. The same is true in the Amazon, the Siberian Arctic and the Mackenzie river basin in northern Canada. But the US, largely forested until recently, now seems be headed for desert. Makarieva and Gorshkov told New Scientist that without rapid reforestation "the degrading temperate forests of North America are on their way to desertification".

Read the full article here Consider reading, as well, two extraordinary books about deforestation and history. One is David Montgomery, Dirt, the erosion of civilisationsUC Press, 2008 and the other is John Perlin, A Forest Journey: The Role of Wood in the Development of Civilization, Harvard Univ Press, 2007. Dirt is the best written, but both are packed with information which will advance your state of knowledge way ahead of most environmentalists' and situate your understanding in a very wide context.

1) Much of the fire burnt most intensively through dry forest with euc species such as Euc radiata and Euc dives. These trees have no market value for the logging industry and usually no logging takes place in them. On the Modis fire satellite image, the fire appears to have burnt these forests most intensively, whereas the wetter forests are patchy. The towns of Marysville, Kinglake and St Andrews are surrounded by these drier forest types, so it is not surprising that we see the highest levels of devastation in these areas.

2) These fires burnt very aggressively in plantations. The Churchill fire mostly burnt through plantation areas managed by Hancock Victorian Plantations and its subsidiaries. These plantations are obviously intensively managed with wood production as their primary purpose, yet these burned very intensively.

3) Around Whittlesea, Wallan and East Kilmore, the much of these fires burnt through long grass on farmland. The argument of forest protection around these areas is irrelevant, given that these areas are cleared farmlands and had very little forest areas upwind on Saturday.

4) The fire on Mt Riddle is an interesting case. This fire was ignited by a lightning strike and has burnt the northern slope. At the beginning of last year, the DSE/Parks Victoria lit a large control burn on this slope, of which it even scorched the crowns of the eucs. This control burn has not prevented the ignition and spread of this fire into Healesville and surrounding forest.

5) Many of these fires have started on either private land or non-forest areas (ie the fire that burned over Mount Disappointment). The only fire at this stage to have started in National Park was the Mt Riddle Fire. The Mt Disappointment/Whittlesea fire raced over in a SE direction into the protected Wallaby Creek catchment.

6) Large fire breaks had been cut through Mt Disappointment bounding the Wallaby Creek water catchment. It could be argued that this is 'active management' by the logging industry, given that the breaks were cut by the contractors. Yet they were useless in preventing the fire from spreading from the state forest into the protected Wallaby Creek catchment.

7) It is suspected that the fires west of Mt Disappointment and Yarra Glen, along with Churchill, were deliberately lit. This is a case of managing 'people' rather than forests. Authorities need to clamp down on arsonists and when convicted, they are put on a police register for life, similar to sex offenders. When high fire danger days are predicted, these 'registered people' need to be directly monitored by the police.

8) These fires are being intensified by a rapidly changing climate. Scientific models developed by the CSIRO have predicted that high fire danger days are going to increase dramatically with increased greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. In addition, it should be noted that scientific studies around the world indicate that highly disturbed ecosystems will be more vulnerable to the climate crisis than less disturbed ones.

Source: Remarks from a correspondent

To burn-off or not to burn-off?

There's a pot-stirring poll in today's Australian - Is conservation policy to blame for the fires?
The truth is that logging is responsible for the fires. Logging or 'forestry management' historically, and probably actually, underpins the philosophy of the Department of Sustainability Victoria's approach to forests and is almost certainly responsible for increasing fire-risk in our forests and Victoria's climate change.

New cut at brown mountain lets in light, starts drying

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."

We can change local climate by changing forests.

Think of how much cooler it is in a thick forest on a hot day, if that forest is dark and well watered.
A healthy forest is a microclimate that recycles its own water and creates rain.
The forests that burned were not healthy forests. They have been thinned for centuries by logging. Prior to that, the dry forests were largely created through aboriginal fire-stick farming.

We have been brainwashed by the logging industry to believe this is normal.

The same thing is now happening to the Amazon.

Fires will cost more if we don't spend money on forest-rehab now

Think of all the money and water that the fires have so-far cost us.
That could have gone to hydrating them, nursing them back in to health.
We could recycle water through forests, plant in-between the trees - providing viable understory and denser trees.

Clean Ocean Foundation has been campaigning for just such a use for 'waste-water' for years.

It could pay off in terms of increased rainfall and pleasant climate nearby, quite quickly. As we rehabilitate and increase our forests, around sustainably built, fire-proof towns, climate has a chance of improving, Victoria-wide. We really don't have any other options.

God, we just throw money away on everything else and in Victoria we do send an enormous amount of water which would once have percolated slowly through the land, mostly through forests, out into the sea. Gunnamatta outfall, for instance, where 150 gigalitres of polluted water runs into the sea every year.

Loggers have normalised drying, dying forests to our cost

Note that this may seem more of a problem than it is because the forests have been managed by people who have normalised the idea of constantly thinning forests so that the public no longer question the idea that they catch fire more and more frequently.

Logging costs Victoria more than money; we can employ loggers to rehabilitate the forests and our climate

Yet there are loggers who know and love the forests, but have no other way of making a living. Let's provide jobs for the community rehabilitating the forests and our climate. It would be so much more interesting and positive than logging - which probably costs Victoria more money than it makes.

A healthy forest lets in little light (pic by Sheila Newman)

The key to potentiating a wetter forest must be
(a) in redensifying it; adding trees so that there is less light and less drying
(b) in the opposite order, growing a wet understory, and several layers of such
(c) reducing light and increasing moisture by increasing canopy, density and tree size, height and age

Ideas for transforming dry forests into wet forests in Oz, esp. Victoria.

Dry forests will use up water only as long as it takes to get them on their feet; then they will conserve their own water and positively affect rainfall.

#10;<small>Look at the role of the trees in creating rainfall. More trees, more rain. The best investment of time and energy in this time of growing unemployment. Write to Kevin Rudd and Mr Brumby</small></p>&#10;<h4>Where might the water come from?</h4>&#10;<p>Here are some ideas:<br />&#10;- Recycle drinking water or other water through them prior to reuse - <a href=" https:="" />Gunnamatta Outfall - 150 GL a year.
- Wet the dry 'fuel' and use it as mulch.
- Maybe use chemical agents which retain moisture initially among the mulch (such as are sold for people who don't wish often to water their plants.
- Use wetting agents
- Close down some of the new intensive irrigation farms, such as feedlots and divert the water back to a good cause
- Use water from desal plants - if we must have them; let us use their water well instead of on new developments.

-Tax water speculators (buyers and sellers) an amount per dollar for forest rehab.
- Get volunteers to contribute money from their taxes to buy water for forest moistening.

Once you had established some wet understory, it wouldn't take too long for a lot of the evaporation to stop.

- Fast-growing wet-forest trees which could be helped along.
- Use a variety of techniques to intensify the humidity of the forest climate; maybe possible to artificially increase the canopy for a while, for instance, to retard evaporation.
- You could start planting a section at a time.
- It might be an idea to replant for wet forest (irrigated) on the edges of the forests next to towns (obviously you would then have to plant a buffer-zone to diminish evaporation. However you need a large, consolidated area to enhance the forest micro-climate

- Build up the earth around the forests, using bulldozers, to create giant swales feeding into the forests, stopping run-off and allowing percolation.
- Prolong the swales (Peter Andrews style) back as far as you can in the catchment area.
- Un-dam, undivert rivers and creeks which once fed the forests.

- Stop growing the population of water consumers and take some back from dumb industries like paper (short fibres) recycling. Most industrial recycling is a waste of energy. The most useful recycling you can do is of organic waste in your garden. (Yes, a garden is a very good thing for the environment.)

Those are just some ideas.

Keep on doing the same thing and you will get the same results - lots of bushfires

The Murrindindi fire blasted over the Black Range and some of the most "managed" forest in Victoria on it's way to the Acheron Valley and Marysville. Logging regeneration and pine plantations mostly. Then it slowed down once it hit the O'Shannesy/Armstrong catchment. Unfortunately looks like some old growth remnants from 1939 may have gone in the Deep Creek area.

The logging industry and their political mouthpieces don't care about the truth or facts, they are only concerned with establishing their self interest position in the public mind, off the back of tragedy, and of course blaming "greenies" and "conservation" as the villains.

It is a replay of what they did after the 1993 bushfires, and they kept it up for over 6 months.

Hopefully the Royal Commission will sort out the propaganda and lies from the truth, but no doubt the loggers will provide a barrage of submissions and run a PR campaign in their favour too.

The irresponsible and inflammatory attitude of the mainstream media

Miranda Divine has already jumped on the forest-bashing bandwagon, but has she even looked deeply into the matter?
Wilson Tuckey sounds like a wise old parent, doesn't he, giving us all the bad news about growing up. But are we such children as to believe him?

Twice today on Radio National the opportunists were at it - first Phil Cheney in the morning and on The World Today, the ABC Radio National gave David Packham oxygen.

Let the mainstream media know that their coverage of this rubbish is in bad taste and shows shocking ignorance of the issue. We must not allowing different environment sectors to be used as a political tools by the mainstream media, which, going by its interests in property development, population growth, housing and big-business, would rather get rid of the forests and the native wildlife and just have wall to wall houses and crops - and the hell with our climate.

Now go and answer that poll in the Australian.

See also: "Greens, logging, forest fires and malaria" of 11 Feb 09 and "Brown Mountain Rape" of 26 Jan 09

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.

- President Obama now has chance to protect America's forest legacy, and allow Oregon and the nation's overworked forest biodiversity and carbon stores to recover ecologically.

December 10, 2008
By Earth's Newsdesk, a project of Ecological Internet
www.ecoearth.info/newsdesk

(Seattle, WA) -- Ecological Internet (EI) welcomes Oregon governor Ted Kulongoski's decision to block Bush administration plans to sharply increase logging on 2.2 million acres of BLM forests in Western Oregon. Kulongoski concluded that President Bush's hastily arrived at logging plan did not conform to federal environmental laws such as the Endangered Species Act, and failed to protect and restore mature forests to sequester carbon. It would have locked in Bush's anti-environment, industrial forestry model for decades.

By waiting until the deadline and calling for revisions and a 30-day extension for public comment, Kulongoski put off final approval until the administration of Democratic President- elect Barack Obama. This decision will ultimately be made by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and Congress. This forbearance was not a foregone conclusion, as Oregon has a long history of forest patronage and destroying terrestrial ecosystems for short term economic gain causing long term environmental pain.

This is a major victory for Ecological Internet and others that campaigned for this outcome, and portends greater ecological restoration of America's biodiversity and carbon stores once the "Toxic Texan" has left town, and the much anticipated era of ecological hope commences. EI's Earth Action Network's got just what we asked for, and this most recent victory once again demonstrates our global leadership in using the Internet to facilitate environmental conservation.

"It is just amazing what can be done when global citizens speak loudly with one voice, demanding accountability from environmental policy-making," explains Dr. Glen Barry, EI's President. "The Earth has surpassed its carrying capacity, yet ecosystems continue to be wantonly destroyed. Oregon's decision represents further success of a growing global protest movement demanding dramatic transformation to ecological sustainability."

EI's brand of Internet protest -- where citizen activists personally contact decision-makers -- is hard to ignore, as environmental ill-doers are bombarded with specific, scientifically credible protest emails from around the globe. This approach ensures accountability from frequently anonymous bureaucrats who are determining the Earth's fate.

"We are well past the time where petitions, banner drops and light-bulbs will save us. Ecological Internet's Earth Action Network intends to continue rapidly intensifying protests both on and off the Internet, working for a global mass mobilization, which amongst other things ends ancient forest logging and the use of coal. There are many working on these matters around the world, the movement is growing, and we must ensure we act with all haste before global ecosystem collapse becomes unavoidable."

Dr. Glen Barry is a spokesperson on behalf of global ecological sustainability. Ecological Internet provides the world's leading forests, climate and environment portals at forests.org www.climateark.org and www.ecoearth.info. Contact Dr. Barry for interviews on the latest global environmental policy developments and sufficient ecological solutions at: glenbarry [AT] ecologicalinternet.org.

What you can do: Give generously to forests.org and other Ecological Internet projects to help them achieve more such wins for the environment.

Discuss release:
forests.org/blog/2008/12/oregons-governor-stymies-bushs.asp

Current alerts:
www.ecoearth.info/shared/alerts

See original article: "Oregon's Governor Stymies Bush's 'Midnight' Forest Raid" on forests.org.
See also: Oregon governor objects to Bureau of Land Management logging plan in Capital Press of 11 Dec 08, "Editorial: Kulongoski takes WOPR, tries to have it his way" in News Review Today of 11 Dec 08 (This editorial is somewhat critical of Governor Ted Kulongoski, but makes little sense to me - JS).