Lindy Stacker, Binna Burra
In reply to Victor Eddy – for decades the unsustainable timber industry has been subsidised by taxpayers and most of our high conservation, old-growth forests are gone.
The remaining seven per cent of high-conservation ‘pristine’ native forests are in national parks.
Thank you, Susie Russell and Dailan Pugh, for working tirelessly with altruistic intentions for no pay. You are the real local heroes.
The Regional Forest Agreement isn’t ‘protecting’ koalas – these forests are fragmented, lack koala food tree variety and don’t offer connectivity.
Koalas don’t benefit from ‘productive’ forest management. In 1788 there were about 10 million koalas in Australia, today in NSW there are fewer than 10,000. One of the main reasons is because Forests NSW (that log our forests) are illegally destroying habitat.
A 100-metre buffer is supposed to be left around koala habitat trees in ‘managed’ areas; however, these rules are flouted as habitat trees are destroyed. Weak penalties fail to protect koalas from logging, it’s that tragically simple.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
