Gary Opit, Brunswick Heads
I blame the NSW State Forestry Corporation operations for the devastating floods that have all but destroyed our community and our economy. Many editions of The Echo contain articles on the logging and clear-felling of the last of the forested headwaters that once slowed the movement of rainwater down to the lowlands. Protection of these essential catchment and water storage forests have been removed by the NSW Liberal National Government for their billionaire supporters. The width of the stream-side forested corridors have now been reduced to only five metres on either side, ensuring the last surviving trees will soon be washed away as the denuded slopes pour ever more water into our creeks. The NSW State Forestry Corporation has been given another five years to finish their operations – ensuring the death of the forest community that is vital for our protection against flooding and runaway climate change.
In the 1970s I worked as a Queensland National Parks ranger up at the O’Reilly’s Green Mountains section of Lamington National Park and have walked the trails of the adjacent national parks that protect the Border Ranges regularly ever since. The topography and vegetation is similar to the rest of the hilly landscapes at lower elevations. Those ranges receive the heaviest rainfalls, occasionally equivalent to the ‘rain bomb’ that has just destroyed us. Hydrologists measuring water flow within the undisturbed forests found that it took many months for each rain weather event to percolate down to the creeks. As rangers mainly involved in repairing the walking trails we noticed that there was relatively little increase in the headwater flows and no sign of mud or erosion. Even after a nine-month-long drought in the mid-1980s the creeks were still running as if it had been constantly raining.
The gigantic canopy trees, the dense middle strata of smaller trees, the ground cover of ferns and mosses and the combined roots of all the plants absorb all of the rainfall. Here in north-eastern NSW, we have a private power company that is transporting and burning the last of our forests for electricity generation. With the removal of the big trees that shade and create protection for the lower strata of vegetation the devastated forests dry and become a bushfire hazard.
The logging exterminates all of the nest hollows for sixty per cent of our birds and all of our possums, gliders and other arboreal animals that consume the invertebrates that feed on the vegetation until only weeds and sickly trees survive. The beautiful bellbirds are the only survivors as they feed on the exudates of tiny sap-sucking insects that rapidly increase with the extinction of all the other birds and possums that normally keep them under control. Forestry then blames the bellbirds for the death of the forests and calls for their extermination.
A few members of our community protest the devastation of our essential forests while the majority concern themselves with their own wellbeing and creativity, now washed away and destroyed by the removal of the protective forested headwaters. The city-centric community knows nothing of this, and if the Liberal National Party win the upcoming Federal election the devastation will be complete. As I said in my letter published in The Echo in July 2017, the future for north-eastern NSW will not be a kind one for humanity, the ever-increasing floods and heatwaves accompanied by a rapidly heating Coral Sea will be perfect for saltwater crocodiles enjoying the flooding.
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. 
