By KATH GANNAWAY
TOOLANGI resident Geoff Biggs says Victorian Environment Minister Lisa Neville is misreading the climate around logging in Toolangi.
A life-time resident of Toolangi whose father and grandfather worked in the timber industry, he says there is still strong opposition by those involved in the industry in and around the area to reduce, or stop, logging.
Ms Neville was reported in the Mail last week as saying the believed there was a new ‘climate’ in which the issues would be debated and which would put the onus on the key parties to find solutions.
“I think everyone sitting around the table is there not to be divisive, but to find solutions,” she said of the Industry Taskforce the government is undertaking and which will include the timber industry, government, union and environment groups.
“I have a lot to do with the mills and logging contractors and as a general rule they see the native forests as a sustainable way to provide the wood we need,” she said.
On the recent classification of Leadbeater’s Possum by the Threatened Species Scientific Committee as critically endangered, and their recommendation that ceasing timber harvesting in mountain ash forests was the most effective way to prevent further decline of the possum, Mr Biggs rejected the findings, claiming logging would ensure that the population of the possum would be maintained.
“They rely on new growth, wattles and any regrowth that comes up whether from coupes that are burned, or from other fire, and they find their way to it,” he said.
“The possums are around a lot of other areas in quite good numbers.
Mr Biggs said he was going by VicForests data that supported his claims.
In response to the previous government’s LPAG forum and it’s bottom line that measures to ensure the possum’s survival must be within the context of a sustainable timber industry, Mr Biggs said he believed the Liberal Coalition had a more balanced view of environmental issues, and the logging issue.
“I don’t believe it will come to us or them,” he said.
“The possum will survive without our interference and logging will provide the sustainable food source for it.”
Mr Biggs said there was a strong view among those involved in the industry that any further reduction in timber allocations, or the creation of a Great Forest National Park, would lead to the devastation of Toolangi as a viable community, and would also impact heavily on businesses in Healesville that service the timber industry.
“Plantation forestry is not enough to keep us going and if we don’t get our timber from native forests we’ll be getting it from Borneo and the Phillipines where graft and corruption are rife,” he said.
“Trees are the only sustainable thing we have on this earth,” he said branding opposition to native timber harvesting as a ‘NIMBY’ (not in my backyard) view of the issue.
On the science behind the TSSC’s decision and recommendation, Mr Biggs said in his view both the Federal and State ministers were being influenced by environment groups.
“She (Ms Neville) has this idea that the debate has moved on, but they are only listening to one side of the debate.”
