Region Archives: International

Despite bushfire damage to half of NSW state forests, logging has returned at pace to unburnt areas, while so-called “salvage logging” has been approved in 11 burnt state forests, prompting fears that vulnerable species will be pushed further towards extinction. The salvage logging is being conducted under new rules specially drafted by the NSW Environmental Protection Agency. “Logging after the fire is the worst form of logging and now the NSW government is making the same ill-informed mistake that the Victorian government made in the past,” said Professor David Lindenmeyer from the Australian National University, who has written 25 scientific papers on the practice. He said the Victorian government had conducted salvage logging after fires in 1939, 1983 and 2009 and on each occasion had damaged forest floors, destroyed more wildlife habitat and left the forests more prone to bushfires.

Chris Schuringa

Logging will continue in bushfire ravaged areas of Victoria for another 10 years but conservation groups say the state government’s renewal of management plans for logging in native forests fails to protect the flora and fauna. On Wednesday the government released new plans for its five Regional Forestry Agreements that designate areas for logging across the state until 2030. Local conservation group the Goongerah Environment Centre estimates last summer’s fires burnt through two thirds of the area that had been protected from logging under the previous RFA in East Gippsland. However, the updated RFA for the region does not increase the area of forest protected from logging to include new, unburnt habitat. Chris Schuringa, spokeswoman for local conservation group Goongerah Environment Centre, said too much remnant habitat in East Gippsland would be available to logging under the new RFA.

Mark Graham

Nestled in the mountains of eastern Australia are fragments of an ancient world. Damp, dark and lush, they are some of the oldest ecosystems on Earth: temperate rainforests that have persisted since the days of supercontinents and dinosaurs.  The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia — and the hundreds of rare species that call them home — are the ultimate survivors, clinging to wet, wild patches of a continent that’s increasingly developed and dry.  But even these forests could not escape the country’s unprecedented fire season unscathed.  Standing barefoot in a shallow stream in Australia’s New England National Park, ecologist Mark Graham reaches down and grabs a charred piece of wood that’s washed up on a rocky bank. …”These are the deepest, wettest parts of the whole landscape, pure rainforest,” he says. “To see them burning… it was like this dissolution of the biosphere. It was like, ‘this is not supposed to happen.'”

Brazil’s government statistics agency IBGE published a study showing that the country lost 7.6 percent of its forest vegetation from 2000 to 2018. The area, 4.02 million km² (42.2 percent of the national territory) in 2000, shrank to 3.71 million km² (42.4%), as seen in the latest survey. In other Brazilian biomes—like the cerrado, the caatinga, and the pampas—losses were even more significant, totaling more than ten percent in the same time span. However, in the two last years of the survey—2016 through 2018—smaller losses were observed in both forested areas (-0.2%) and other biomes (-0.7%). The survey also found that the areas dedicated to farming grew 44.8 percent from 2000 to 2018, to 664.8 thousand km²—7.6 percent of the national territory.

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s trade ministry has scrapped a requirement for wood exporters to obtain licenses verifying their wood comes from legal and sustainably managed sources. The SVLK verification system took a decade to develop and implement and has been accepted by some of the most stringent market regulators for timber legality, including the EU. Scrapping the licensing requirement constitutes a major setback for Indonesia’s timber industry and could open the door to more illegal logging, experts warn. The forestry ministry, which oversees the logging industry and the SVLK system, was not consulted about the trade ministry’s decision, and says it will ask for the new rule to be revised.

The coronavirus pandemic could wipe out populations of chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, leading scientists have warned. Our closest living relatives, which share about 98% of human DNA, are known to be susceptible to catching respiratory diseases from people. Even pathogens producing mild symptoms in humans have been lethal to great apes in the past. The fact that Covid-19 is fatal for some humans leads experts to fear it could potentially prove devastating to great apes. No great apes have yet been reported to have contracted Covid-19, so the true impact is unknown. But many great apes are already at risk of extinction due to forest destruction and poaching, so the researchers say closing national parks, reserves and zoos must be seriously considered. National parks in Congo and Rwanda have already shut to tourists and researchers, but the decision is not an easy one. Without a human presence, the risk of poaching rises.

UK — People are being urged not to visit the nation’s woods and forests, as the lockdown to tackle the coronavirus pandemic takes hold. Forestry England… issued a statement urging people to heed the Government’s advice to stay at home to save lives. …Forestry and Land Scotland also urged people to make their walk or cycle a local one, saying; “Do not get into your car to travel to one of the woods we manage.” Director-General Hilary McGrady said: “Following the scenes we saw at the weekend, where visitors travelled to coast and countryside, it is really important that we do all we can to discourage travel, and ask people instead to stay local and observe social distancing as guided by the government.

New photos showing the devastating impact of bushfire in east Gippsland forests are sparking renewed calls for the Victorian government to rethink its approach to logging and bring forward the promised 2030 phase-out of the native timber industry.  A series of before-and-after pictures by the photographer Rob Blakers show the impact of last summer’s fires on the slopes of Mount Kuark, known as one of the few places in Australia where cool and warm temperate rainforests grow together.  All shots were taken within a 48,500-hectare area that the premier, Daniel Andrews, announced in November would be immediately exempt from logging to protect the greater glider and other threatened species.  The Goongerah Environment Centre, a local conservation group, said all of Mount Kuark and more than 90% of the newly protected area in Gippsland had been razed.

Parts of eastern Scotland are at an “extreme risk” of wildfire in the coming days, with a map illustrating the areas which could be worst hit. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has said that southern and eastern parts of the country face a “significant threat” of fire taking hold in dry grass and vegetation. The warning is in place from Saturday to Monday with sunshine and dry weather forecast for most of the country. A map courtesy of the European Forest Fire Information Service, which can be seen at the top of this article, shows that the north east of the country and western areas are likely to be worst affected. Edinburgh and the Lothians are also at some risk along with Fife and parts of central Scotland. The areas highlighted in red are worst at risk and the areas in green are least under threat.