Ryder is a forest activist. After the floods he spoke at a climate rally in Sydney in front of 5,000 people where he called for an end to fossil fuels. He is a forest protector who runs ‘tree listening’ tours in our local forests and was part of the citizen scientist group that found giant trees that had not been protected in Doubleduke State Forest. This led to the Forestry Corporation having to stop logging. Ryder is 10 years old.
How can we not be moved when a child leads the way? How do we hold our heads high when it is a child who must step forward, abandoning their toys and their innocence to know the truth about the world, and to call out the senseless greed and destruction? How can we sit idle when children take action?
Last Saturday around the country people gathered to end native forest logging. More than half of the forests and woodland in NSW that existed before European invasion are gone and over a third of what is left is degraded. Species that depend on the forest have been sucked into what has been called an extinction vortex, these include koalas, long-footed potoroos, long-nosed potoroos, southern brown bandicoots, and the south-eastern glossy black cockatoo. It is a shameful fact that Australia has one of the highest extinction rates in the world.
And don’t defend logging with ‘jobs’. Forest preservation and conservation creates more jobs and saves money. According to a report by ANU, ceasing native forest logging would return an economic benefit to NSW of around $60 million while also reducing net greenhouse emissions by almost 1 million tonnes per year. Native forest logging provides few jobs. It is a shrinking industry. In Victoria, each full-time equivalent job in native forest logging costs $5,041,000 in infrastructure investment.
It seems insane that at a time when the world is burning, when nearly 100 people have died in a wildfire right now in Maui, when our own country has burned and flooded at catastrophic levels, that government continues to fail to defend our forests. Our climate change defence force. Our frontline against global warming. Trees lock up carbon for decades, even centuries. When forests are cleared or burnt, stored carbon is released into the atmosphere. Deforestation contributes 12-20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Destroying forests is like shooting your own army at a time of an invasion by a conquering violent force. The conquering force is climate change and forests are our quiet protectors.
Logging native forest is clearly poor economic management. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald over one year ago, the state-owned Forestry Corporation suffered a $20 million loss with NSW taxpayers forced to pay $441 per hectare to log critical native forests. ‘The cost of destroying 13,500 hectares of red gum, ironbark and cypress trees – largely for woodchip exports and firewood – was $6 million, while one-off recovery costs following Black Summer bushfires soared to $14 million.’
It’s clear that it’s bad business. So why keep doing it when softwood plantations can deliver almost $4,000 profit for every hectare logged? Logging native forest is clearly not economically viable. It’s also not viable for the survival of many species, including humans. So why do it? It’s bad cultural practice. It’s what colonisers do. We have to stop colonising. We have to learn from and listen to Country. We have to listen to kids like Ryder.
We have to stop logging native forests. And we all have to step up. Lock on. Blockade. Protest. Apply pressure. This coming Saturday, 19 August there will be a rally and march for native forests in Brisbane at Musgrave Park in South Brisbane.
Thank you Mandy for this excellent article to highlight the insanity of our Governments continuing native Forest logging to our collective peril and the extraordinary efforts of citizen scientists like Ryder, aged 10.
Looking forward to seeing thousands of people and key community groups supporting the Bob Brown Foundation, Greens, Wilderness Society, etc rally to end Native Forest logging now, at Labor’s annual conference,Saturday 19.8.23 in Brisbane @ 9am.
Can hardly wait for your Greens success in the seat of Richmond.💚🌲🌴🦉🐨
Gail, 1000%!
Gail, if ever a rank inexperienced novice like Mandy Nolan were to do the almost impossible and win Richmond, you certainly would be waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for anything positive to happen locally, or in fact Nationally. In case you haven’t noticed the local area already has a Green MP in Tamara Smith, and we all have been waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for the invisible Tamara to deliver anything of substance. Fair dinkum you Greens certainly do worship incompetence with fervour. Good luck with Mandy.
Wood fuel consumption sourced directly from forests in the EU is soaring due to aggressive renewable energy targets, they burn millions of tonnes each year to keep warm as they can not afford the so called green renewable electricity. This will be Australia in the not too distant future, If you are worried about our forests being harvested now, wait until people become cold and can’t afford to switch on a heater. Fire box sales will explode, people will be forced to source heat from our trees. A troubling fact, condoned by our caring green lobbyist’s. Do they care?, not one iota. They will just keep grinding Australia to a halt.
The Victorian Government isn’t messing around anymore and is banning the logging of native forests from 1/1/2024.
Calling Premier Minns, time to get off the couch and act, stop the Forest SlaughterFest, NOW!
It’s great about Victoria. They’ve had a bit more time to plan for the move – they’ve been in government since 2014.
Joachim , what are they going to build your much spruiked millions for low cost housing with?. Tree wood?. You lot just do not have a clue about the real world. So Victoria will no longer build houses from 2024?. Imported timber will be cost prohibitive, steele more expensive and hard to get. Go figure Einstein.
How’s about you go away and let the adults deal with reality.
No. They can build out of bricks, fired in kilns that run on ga……never mind. Looks like they are back to huts of mud and straw.
Greg, you haven’t heard of plantation timber? Get onto your keyboard and learn yourself up.
Greg, you do worry too much about me.
If you are unhappy with Dan the Magnificent’s ban on native forest logging in Victoria, then go and question him about it.
Come back to us with a followup report.
Meanwhile the Greater Glider and friends, celebrating that they will have a home.
Don’t go Greg! Dictator Dan uses his militias against anyone that disagrees with him.
I don’t worry about you Joachim. I’d put you on a plantation in a heart beat.
Thank you Mandy, an excellent summary of such a shocking failure of public policy. Plantation timber is already proven as the way to go for so much of our timber needs and the economics of native forest logging are nonsensical! Labour take action!!
The Greens have the balance of power in NSW – why haven’t they fixed it?
Mr Lizardbreath, have the Greens ever fixed anything?
Don’t invest in a tree plantation. By the time they grow, the Greens will ban harvesting them cause cow farts and stuff.
The UN resently did a survey..10 million people
Were asked what were the main concerns for them.. Climate change was last …
The truth never has deterred the green alarmist’s. They just keep on lying and the unthinking go along for the ride.
We are screening a film “The Giants” – a film about the ancient forests and Bob Brown’s life at Coorabell Hall on 10th September. Please come support this fundraiser!!
(Search Facebook events)
This country did have giant forests full of giant trees, but that was back when the planet was hotter, wetter, with high CO2 levels that supported that level of plant growth. But that stopped 2.58 million years ago at the beginning of the Quaternary Glaciation period we are currently living through. There have been no real forests since long before humans existed.
Is Mandy putting these articles together as a columnist for for the Echo, a member of the Greens or the Greens candidate for Richmond at the next Federal election?, there never seems to be a clarification under any of her “articles”.
There should definitely be a clearly marked warning label, and also one on anything she writes.
Perhaps Mandy has a PhD in forestry management and is writing from this vantage?
Mr Lizardbreath, you might have a point, I never even considered that possibility, I must be getting slow.