Protesters last week demanded an end to logging in the native forests around Coffs Harbour, to protect the precious habitat of koalas, now classified as endangered and threatened with extinction in NSW.
Despite a decade-long fight for the park, and a promise to create one, the state Labor government has yet to declare its boundaries.
With the original plan for it to cover 176,000 hectares, a recent expose by the ABC revealed the timber industry is pushing for a vastly diminished 37,000 hectares of protection.
Looting not logging
‘I don’t call it logging, I call it looting,’ Mandy Nolan, Greens Candidate for Richmond told protesters last Wednesday at the Little Newry Forest, south of Coffs, where dozens of trucks have been filmed leaving the forest under police protection in recent weeks.
‘I only need a 1.8 per cent swing to win in Richmond. This will put me in a powerful position to fight not only for our region, but to end native forest logging.’
The Greens are pushing hard for a national ban on logging in native forests, which has already been introduced in Victoria, leading to an important drop in carbon emissions, and protecting habitat for threatened species.
Late last month, the Greens were close to securing a deal with federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, for a tough new national environment protection agency and an end to logging in native forests, before it was now infamously scuppered by the prime minister.
‘It’s more than 40 years ago that Bob Brown fought for what was seen at the time as an unachievable goal, to put the environment at the centre of political decision making. Thats how the Greens party and its values were formed.’
‘We’re facing an ecological disaster and an economic disaster,’ said Nolan, referring to the massive public subsidies supporting logging, and the thousands of jobs that could come from an eco-tourism industry build around the new Great Koala National Park.
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