There must be a Moratorium placed on all logging in the Toolangi State Forest immediately.

Great swathes of this ancient forest are being bulldozed at the hands of Government sponsored logging company Vicforests every day. The forests of South-East Australia are the densest stores of carbon Earth, yet they are being destroyed at breakneck speed with up to 12 log trucks per day coming out of the Toolangi forest.

This irresponsible logging is endangering Melbourne's Water Supply, Native Wildlife Habitat & communities already at risk from more frequent and severe bushfires like the catastrophic 2009 Black Saturday Fires.

A logging coupe can be up to 40 hectares in size. The Process of clearfelling destroys all vegetation and wildlife in the area with chainsaws and bulldozers before it is fire-bombed from a helicopter, incinerating the remains in a high intensity burn.

Ending the logging of Toolangi Forest will Stop the deaths of Native Animals, Defend the Last Leadbeaters Possum Habitat, Protect Melbourne's water supply and reduce the risk of catastrophic bushfires.

Most of the timber harvested from Toolangi ends up as Reflex office paper, with most of the profit going overseas to the parent company Nippon Paper (a Japanese Company) while Victorian tax payers are subsidising the operations to the tune of $270 million every year.

There are already sustainable timber plantations in Victoria that have the capacity to supply the quota needed for woodchips for Vicforests main customer, Nippon Paper.

If the Victorian government were to shut down logging in Toolangi tomorrow then they would not only be able to save the state's native forests but they would also save a whole heap of tax payer dollars that could then be productively spent elsewhere.

We would like to know why the Government has failed to act to protect Melbourne's water supply and regional Victorians from devastating bush fires that threaten their lives and homes.

Why has Victoria not moved from the wholesale destruction of native forests into sustainable commercial timber plantations ?

We the People do mandate that it is our will that all Native Forest logging in the Toolangi Forest & Victoria's Central Highlands Region end immediately and for the timber industry to shift into sustainable plantations.

Toolangi

Toolangi Forest is remnant of Gondwana. This ancient ecosystem has evolved over 500 Million Years. In the 1840s Victorians discovered that Toolangi was home to the tallest trees on Earth. But even then it was too late to measure them as they had already been cut down by pioneer loggers. Mountain Ash used to be world's tallest tree, reaching heights of up to 154 metres (the Ferguson Tree). Today, nearly 99% of the old growth trees have been destroyed.

It will take thousands of years to recover from the savage industrial scale clearfell logging it is enduring today and even then, if they are left untouched for that time the forest which then exists will not be the same forest. It will be a different mature forest with different species and species interactions since in that time the climate and other environmental factors will have been irrevocably altered. To put it simply: Once a mature forest is logged and the coupe burned it cannot be replaced.

Threat to Melbourne's Water Supply

The Logging is endangering Mebourne's water supply. Farmers around the area are already feeling the impact with increasing water restrictions. This logging is taking place in Australia's highest water yielding forests but as a result of the logging they are no longer yielding this water into the Yarra & other rivers. The Mountain and Alpine Ash forests of Melbourne’s water catchments shoot up to 80 metres in approximately 70 years. Most of the growth of these forests occurs between the ages of 30-70 years. During this period, water that, if the mature forest was maintained, would end up in creeks and aquifers, is instead sucked up to grow the trees back after logging. During this period water runoff is reduced by up to 50%. The standard logging rotations used by VicForests are 50-80 years. This means the full bounty of water for surrounding communities which would is never received, because logging rotations reset forest development at a relatively thirsty, young age.

Coupe Burns and Global Warming

After a coupe (an area of forest designated to be logged) is clearfelled, the clearfelled coupe is then burned, ostensibly to to encourage regrowth. Victoria's Mountain Ash forests are the most carbon dense forest in the world and the topsoils can be up to 8 m deep. After a coupe burn the soil has been observed to be up to a metre lower because of the carbon burnt out of the soil. All this carbon is being released into the atmosphere at a time when nations around the world are finally acknowledging that we need to curb carbon emissions.

Fire Risk

Logging increases the frequency and severity of bush fires. A mature forest can act as a buffer against fire but a stand of uniform regrowth is little more than tinder in waiting. The forest floor biomass builds up rapidly to a point of peak fuel energy during the forest’s rapid early growth stage.

A review by Prof. David Lindenmayer at the Australian National University in 2009 examined historical data from a range of forest types around the world suggesting that while certain forms of strategic logging may reduce fire severity in dry forests the reverse is true in moist forests such as those being logged by VicForests in Toolangi and East Gippsland. Added to this, the 50 – 80 year logging rotations  maintain the forest in precisely the state where they not only consume the most water but, if they burn, the fire severity is greatest. More bushfires as severe or worse than Black Saturday are predicted because of current logging practices drying out the landscape.