Letter: Fact Before Fiction

Surprise, surprise, there has been extensive private property logging in the upper Kalang over the last two decades and even today it is still taking place. But stepping back to the area in question, prior to the sixties and mid-seventies all Crown Land in the catchment of both the Kalang and Bellinger was virgin forest. The loggers moved in, a couple of D9 cats with their 16-foot blades and those Stihl chainsaws. There were no environmental controls. With those big blades if you could dig it, no matter the gradient you got that good log.

Almost the entire Horseshoe was a cobweb of snig tracks and roads and with no erosion control, the rivers and creeks did run red. Only the good mill logs were cut and anything below 400mm at the butt were in those days too small. All those big old hollow habitat trees were left standing. Brushbox, tallowood, turpentine and white mahogany which grew in the gullies and often in semi rainforest areas were also taken. Apart from the snig tracks much of the canopy remained.

But yet today a mere 50 years on, ecologists and environmentalists refer to the area to be logged by Forestry Corp as pristine or a fine example of a regrowth native forest. But how could this possibly be true, after the devastation having taken place?

But it is true, no longer a virgin forest but the proof of the regenerative ability of our forest to come back. Of the four compartments to be logged only an estimated 15 per cent of the total area, mainly the blackbutt ridge tops are to be cut, and only a thinning operation. Recruitment trees will be left to replace those big old hollow trees as they die or are burnt out.

No clear felling, which has not and will not take place outside of plantations. Short of some catastrophic event, thousands of tonnes of sediment will not reach the river due to strict erosion control measures. Our very own council would be wise to impose on their own rural roads the same set of conditions applying to Forestry Corp.

I do agree our rivers are our greatest asset and to see the lower reaches of both rivers compared to just 70 years ago brings a tear to a glass eye. Logging would be a small contributor but the clearing of those river flats and the subsequent huge floods taking the riparian zones and hundreds of acres of soil were the main contributors. Sadly as our river beds get wider and wider all those big holes will fill up, it's hard to see a solution.

Our local oldies with so much background knowledge and experience are never consulted for an input into the debate (too redneck). Our Point Piper uni degree infiltrators now set the agenda. The ideal future for these folk is never cut another tree, shut the farm gates, stop digging out our coal and minerals and become part of our two huge remaining growth industries the public service and Centrelink.

Darcey Browning

Thora