Architectural designer Aaron Crowe yesterday suspended himself from a bamboo bipod over a piece of logging equipment in Bulga State Forest.
When asked why he was doing this, with the likelihood of arrest, he replied, ‘I’m a father, and I think it’s the right thing to do. I think everybody knows that logging native forests is wrong. My grandfather was a timber cutter but times have changed.
‘As an architectural designer I think a lot about building processes and materials. 90 per cent of the timber in most modern houses comes from plantations,’ he said.
‘Native forestry functions on the myth it’s about building houses when in reality only a very small fraction of the wood goes into a luxury product like hardwood floorboards. The vast majority of the tree ends up as waste.’
Morally reprehensible
‘It’s morally reprehensible to risk extinction of native fauna so the well-to-do can have polished hardwood floorboards,’ said Aaron Crowe. ‘These days there are alternatives, such as solid, exquisitely engineered bamboo floorboards, that take six months not sixty years to grow.
‘I’m also a bushfire survivor. In 2019 I saw first-hand the impact of the fires. I lost my house.
‘The greater gliders in Bulga are survivors too, but now they are losing their homes to machines like the one I stopped today,’ said Mr Crowe.
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