Smoke is again rising from Tarkeeth and blowing through family homes in Fernmount and Bellingen, as Forestry Corporation's excessive use of fire continues unabated into the hot summer months. Residents have been informed that this sixth cycle of post-clearfelling fires will continue until the end of November.
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This is not a pre-summer hazard reduction burn, but a continuation of Forestry Corporation’s archaic and dangerous practice of clearfelling, burning and poisoning at Tarkeeth State Forest, so very close to our homes and our town. FC plans to do the same next year, and every year, for a decade or so.
Bellingen Shire prides itself as clean, green and sustainable. With the air once again noxious with fumes and fine smoke particles that make residents ill, perhaps now is the time for Council to make urgent representations to Forestry Corporation to abandon the use of fire as a means of post-logging waste disposal.
And what about climate change? Don’t Forestry Corporation’s people know that post-clearfelling fires release massive quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Surely reform of these doomsday practices must be central to in any serious climate change mitigation mechanisms.
