Media
Union chops link to forestry body
Date: September 13 2011
The Age
Ben Butler
GAPS have widened in the formerly close alliance between the CFMEU and the forestry industry with the resignation of a union official from a key industry body.
In a scathing letter to Australian Forestry Standard chairman Geoff Gorrie, Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union forestry and furnishings policy research officer Travis Wacey said he was resigning from the board of the environmental standards body because ''I do not want to be associated with a company which has such standards as I see it as detrimental to my professional reputation''.
The union's forestry and furnishings division has been a staunch friend to the forestry industry, even to the extent of supporting the timber policy of former prime minister John Howard during the 2004 election campaign.
But late last year the union signalled a move away from its support for logging in native forests, saying it would attempt to secure a plantation timber-based future for its members by talking to the green groups with which it had been locked in conflict.
Spot-tailed quoll in a battle for survival
Kelly Ryan
From: Herald Sun
September 07, 2011
THIS extra cute, unique Australian animal is facing the same sad fate as the Tasmania tiger.
Like the thylacine, the endangered spot-tailed quoll is a meat-eating marsupial. So plans to drop bait from planes over vast tracts of land in Victoria to wipe out wild dogs threaten the little creature's existence.
There are just a few hundred of the cat-sized creatures left.
Media Release - Greens call for an end to clearfell logging in the central highlands (Vic media only)
Dr. Richard Di Natale
Greens Senator for Victoria
12/9/11
Greens call for an end to clearfell logging in the central highlands
Victorian Greens Senator, Richard Di Natale, is calling for an immediate end to clearfell logging in the central highlands.
"The all-but-entire destruction of old-growth forest in the central highlands region is devastating," said Senator Di Natale.
Timber auditor axes operations
Ben Butler
The Age
September 12, 2011
THE ORGANISATION that gives a green tick to some of Australia's biggest timber and paper companies has voluntarily suspended most of its operations after a bruising stoush with environment groups over its approval of paper brand Reflex.
Just 1% of central highlands old growth survives
Adam Morton
The Age
September 12, 2011
BEFORE European settlement up to 80 per cent of the wet eucalyptus forest of Victoria's central highlands was old-growth mountain ash, with trees taller than 90 metres towering above the landscape.
According to research published in US journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the old-growth is nearly gone and on the verge of being unrecoverable.
The paper says decades of logging and frequent bushfire have reduced the area of old-growth to about 2000 hectares - 1.2 per cent of the forest area north-east of Healesville.
Halted: VicForests has been ordered to stop logging in the Sylvia Creek....for now.
Published with the story titled: Court halts logging
The Yea Chronicle, Aug 31, 2011
Court halts logging - The Yea Chronicle, Aug 31, 2011
Locals campaigning to protect forest legacy of Australian poet CJ Dennis
By Bel Tromp
abc.net.au
Wednesday, 31/08/2011
Born in South Australia, he spent the last 30 years of his life in Toolangi forest, north-east of Melbourne.
But that forest is being logged, prompting a community battle to save it.
Campaigners say Dennis's former property and the surrounding forest deserve the same recognition as writer May Gibbs' Sydney home, "Nutcote", which was saved from demolition in the late 1980s.
Audio
Listen to: Toolangi
In this report : Stephen Whiteside, poet, and founder member of the CJ Dennis Society; Steven Meacher, Toolangi resident, member of the Australian Greens.
Reflex loses environmental certification
Leslie White | September 1, 2011
The Weekly Times Now
UPDATE: RURAL jobs could be at stake after Australia's largest brand of copy paper no longer has an environmental certification.
Reflex copy paper, manufactured by Australia's biggest mill near Traralgon, is no longer certified by the Forest Stewardship Council .
The loss of the certification centres around Reflex's use of native forest woodchip.
Conservationists win injunction
Adam Morton
The Age
August 26, 2011
CONSERVATIONISTS have won a short-term injunction preventing logging in an area of native forest near Toolangi in Victoria's central highlands.
Healesville-based group My Environment lodged a writ in the Supreme Court claiming three logging coupes contain habitat of the endangered Leadbeater's possum and should be protected under state law.