| Speaker & TC | Voice over | Reference Link |
| Isaac Webb (0:52) | Iszaac Webb: (00:52) singing) We sing the Jangara, the spirit, and we ask for the Berna, the trees to come and bring the spirit back to the country, to be reborn so that we may be a tree or a Boya, a rock but we may become the country once again. | |
| Kelton Pell: (01:52) | Western Australia’s south west forests grow nowhere else on the planet. They are crucial to the climate, water balance and rich biodiversity of the region. Yet, they are being cut down at a rate of 10 football fields every single day. (1) | 1. https://wafa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/logging-and-clearing-statistics.pdf |
| Jess Beckerling: (02:25) | So many of us have such fast paced and often disconnected lives and these forests and places that have got this incredible beauty and sense of timelessness become so much more important to us as places where we can come and rest and be in nature. This is a Red Tingle a Eucalyptus Jacksonii. They only grow in this tiny part of the south west between Walpole and Nornalup. Lots of people in Western Australia, around Australia wouldn’t be aware that in WA we have such huge trees. Maybe they associate them more with Victoria and Tasmania but we’ve got these magnificent ancient forests that go back to Gondwana, they’re relics of Gondwana (2) growing down here in the south west of WA. Well, the Tingles don’t get as tall as the Karris. The special thing about them is that they’re growing in this really high rainfall isohyet, 1400 mm they’re used to per year (3) and it really highlights, I think, that we’re not just counting on the forests to prevent catastrophic climate change but they’re really counting on us to do the same thing because they have developed with this very high rainfall in this particular part of the world and it’s dropping really rapidly. (4) And, the thing that I find really sad when I walk through these forests now is that these might be the last cohort of Tingle trees that are able to get to this size because they’re just not getting the same amount of rainfall that they used to. The forests that grow here in the South West of Western Australia have profound values, values that we understand and can explain, like for water, for rainfall, wildlife and then also, obviously, for climate. Forests are a major ally in our efforts to avert catastrophic climate change (5). They grow within one of the earth’s 36 global biodiversity hotspots. (6) They’re incredibly diverse and precious, here, locally and also at an international level. But, by 1990 we had already cleared 90% (7) of all of the vegetation that exists in this global biodiversity hotspot. So, everything that we have left that’s in an intact mature condition is incredibly valuable and needs to be protected. | 2. https://library.dbca.wa.gov.au/static/FullTextFiles/017106.pdf 3. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/ 4. https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/images/documents/conservation-management/forests/FMP/preparing_FMP_2014-23/2response_and_final_report_-_vulnerability_of_forests_under_the_influence_of_climate_change.pdf 5. https://wafa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Forests-For-Climate-Fact-Sheet.pdf 6. https://www.cepf.net/our-work/biodiversity-hotspots/hotspots-defined 7. https://academic.oup.com/jpe/article/5/1/109/1294916 |
| Kelton Pell: (04:40) | Western Australia’s forests make up a tiny area of the vast state. These maps show the extent of clearing that has happened since 1829 in both the forest and woodland areas of the state. Since European settlement, more than one million hectares of Jarrah and more than 40,000 hectares of Karri have been lost forever (8). Nearly half of what does remain is still under threat from the native forest logging industry (9) | 8. https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/images/documents/conservation-management/forests/FMP/20130282_WEB_FOREST_MGT_PLAN_WEB.pdf 9. https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/images/documents/conservation-management/forests/FMP/20130282_WEB_FOREST_MGT_PLAN_WEB.pdf |
| Bill Hare: (05:16) | Mature forests have been underestimated as a store of carbon for many years and in principle, of course, when a forest is mature it will have a fairly stable amount of carbon that it’s storing at very high volumes, actually, compared to any other vegetation system but it’s also become clear, from research over the last decades, that, including Western Australia, that mature forests continue to store additional carbon at significant levels for a long time (10). Forests keep on accumulating carbon above ground and below ground (11) and that applies to the Jarrah forest, to the Karri forest and also to our woodlands, and it’s very important that we keep as much disturbance away from those forests as possible, otherwise that stored carbon can be converted back into atmospheric carbon in a matter of days (12). What the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, has shown about how to meet the Paris Agreement long term temperature goal is that we need to be making 45% reductions in emissions by 2030 from recent levels and reaching zero carbon dioxide emissions by around 2050 (13). Now, to do that, we have to decarbonize industry, decarbonize the power sector but we also have to take a lot of action to protect forests and natural ecosystems (14) This is a very important part of the equation to safely control greenhouse gasses and to bring the climate change problem under some kind of control. Even limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is going to result in severe stress on our native ecosystems and forests (15). We can see the consequences in Western Australia already, of climate change notably the northern Jarrah forest, the south west botanical region has been suffering immensely from heat waves and drought the last decade or so (16). And, we know those pressures are going to increase and the more that we damage the forests, the more we open them up, the more we take them out of a mature state, the less resilient they’re going to be (17). | 10. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0181187 11. https://eprints.utas.edu.au/35002/ 12 (a). https://www.pnas.org/content/106/28/11635 12(b) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.13387 13. https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments/#:~:text=Global%20net%20human%2Dcaused%20emissions,removing%20CO2%20from%20the%20air. 14. https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/forests-and-climate-change 15. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-3/ 16. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Giles_Hardy/publication/257616986_Landscape-scale_assessment_of_tree_crown_dieback_following_extreme_drought_and_heat_in_a_Mediterranean_eucalypt_forest_ecosystem/links/02e7e525a9e73e6cfe000000/Landscape-scale-assessment-of-tree-crown-dieback-following-extreme-drought-and-heat-in-a-Mediterranean-eucalypt-forest-ecosystem.pdf 17. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Grant_Wardell-Johnson/publication/285952819_Climate_change_impacts_on_the_terrestrial_biodiversity_and_carbon_stocks_of_Oceania/links/57a7c0f908ae3f4529392120/Climate-change-impacts-on-the-terrestrial-biodiversity-and-carbon-stocks-of-Oceania.pdf |
| Mikey Cernotta: (07:20) | Walking into these forests now that they have started to be clearfelled, is absolutely gut-wrenching because we’ve been waiting for five or six years for this Karri forest to flower again. Traditionally, that’s how long it takes. Karri flowering is every five to six, maybe, even every seven years depending on climatic conditions (18). This was due to flower within about another six to seven months time. | 18. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/234612726.pdf |
| Kelton Pell: (07:57) | Pemberton honey producer and wedding venue operator, Mikey Cernotta, is witnessing firsthand the destruction of the forest on which his business depends. After waiting years for the Karri to reach full bud, he finds that the loggers have moved in to clear-fell the forest, just months before the precious flowers set. He is frustrated and angered by the waste and the lack of community consultation. | |
| Mikey Cernotta: (08:25) | That’s literally millions of dollars of honey that you won’t get. And that’s… I could bring all my hives here, my bees wouldn’t touch the surface of that. That’s a resource that you could have… You could have a 1000 hives in this forest or on around this perimeter working that resource and you wouldn’t know that there was another beekeeper there. That’s how much honey these trees produce when they’re given the opportunity to put bud out like that. But, when they’re faced with climate changes, when we’re constantly cutting them down before they can get to that maturity level, we don’t get to see that (19). And, this is the sort of stuff that beekeepers that have been doing it for five decades they tell me stories about this stuff. And, this is what we’re seeing right here in a forest that’s going to be clear-felled this year. It’s really devastating. It’s hard. It’s really hard. In the last five to 10 years, we’ve lost between 800 and a 1000 hectares of Karri forest within five kilometers of where I’m sitting right now (20). We’re due to lose another 300 hectares over the next two years (20b). So, essentially wiping out the last little pocket of Karri forest that’s left. The value of this forest for us and our honey business, given that it’ll take up to 40 years for this forest to reach a level that’ll start producing honey again (21), is conservatively looking at about a million dollars of lost honey production. And of course, for the cabin and the wedding venue, nobody wants to be driving through a clear-felled forest. They come here for the forest, that’s the main attraction for our venue and for our cabin guests. So, once that’s gone, it’s going to be really difficult to encourage the clientele to come and book with us. We had no clue that this forest adjacent to our property was due for clear-fell logging literally until a couple of weeks before the machines rolled in. As an industry, we pay over half a million dollars a year to have access to our state forest (22). Once the forest is cut down, we’re not compensated for the loss of that resource or the loss of income that we’ll incur because of logging. And, these are the world’s best honeys that we have here. These forests hold the world record for the greatest honey production over a one year period (23) but we’re clear-felling them for low value timber products when we’ve got a honey industry which is got an extremely valuable product, not just domestically, but globally. There’s huge demand for these honeys. The integral part that these forests play in agriculture and pollination and production of our food and our food security is really underestimated. (24) Frankly, I want to see the end of native forest logging. There’s no business case to make for cutting our forests down for low value timber products. | 19. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11829-019-09686-z 20a and 20b. https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/management/forests/forest-produce/175-planning-for-timber-harvesting 21.Maturity time before flowering comes from observation of different coupe ages as well as expert advice from multi-generational beekeeping families, in particular Mike Spurge. 22. Currently some 4600 registered apiary permits, average fee is $110 per annum = $506,000. Fees are paid direct to DBCA. 23. https://badbeekeepingblog.com/2016/04/26/honey-times-in-oz/ 24. https://www.aussiepollination.com.au/pdf/Karasinski%20JM%202018%20The%20Economic%20Valuation%20of%20Aust%20Managed%20and%20Wild%20Honey%20Bee%20Pollinators%20in%202014-2015.pdf |
| Kelton Pell: (13:10) | Pemberton based ecotourism operator, Andy Russell, has been guiding tours into the majestic forests of the south west for decades. He has seen a shift in community attitudes away from the logging industry and towards more sustainable uses for the forest like nature play and passive recreation. | |
| Andy Russell: (13:28) | Pemberton’s tourist industry started way back in the 1930s with the original guest house. So, people were always coming down here, fishing in the rivers, a summer destination to get away from the heat of Perth. And, in more recent times, the big boom is families and nature play. So, everybody is coming back out “into the woods” as we call it and to the rivers and getting young people back out into the forest systems. Blooding their children out into the natural environments is a big movement now and it’s something that we’re all investing in. Nature tourism and ecotourism as they’re called has always been popular and in a place like Pemberton, even from the late ’80s, it’s employed 26 odd percent of the workforce is in recreation and tourism. In the heyday of the ’90s, which was the last of the big timber industry movement, they were on 15% and we were on 26,/27 in tourism and recreation. These days, of course, it’s a lot more in tourism and recreation. There’s no mill left in Pemberton and we’re now morphing or changing into a purely tourism town now. There’s a big change in our communities. The timber industry is out of the system. No one wants it anymore. It’s destructive and we’re all going into this passive use of our natural resources. Tourism is the way of the future of the town and if we go into town today, the new movement of the more hipster tourism is very evident. Providore shops, coffee shops and with all that everybody is coming out into the environment. No one comes here to look at forestry silviculture methods, axe men or chainsaws or trucks. They’ll be looking for a good latte and, “Where’s a nice bit of forest that we can go on and have a walk?” I always smile to myself when I think of Manjimup and the chainsaw shop that used to be the centre of the woodchip industry in Manjimup and it is now a Tapas Bar. And, everybody goes to it and no one has complained. And, when the mill closed down in Pemberton no one complained, three years ago. Everybody’s happy. | |
| Jess Beckerling: (15:54) | The Karri forests have always been much better at appealing to the public and have found their protections along the way a lot more rapidly than the Jarrah forests have. But, in fact, it’s the Jarrah forests that have a lot higher value for fauna and flora and are often a lot more biodiverse (25). And, they really need our attention and they really need to be protected. The Jarrah forests aren’t only threatened by logging, of course, but also by bauxite mining. | 25. https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/images/documents/about/science/projects/upper_warren/Landscope_the%20jewel%20in%20the%20crown.pdf 25(b). http://www.bgff.org.au/diversity.htm |
| Kelton Pell: (16:41) | The northern Jarrah forest east of Perth has been logged extensively. In the 1800s and early 1900s, logging the hardwood timber was the basis for a valuable export industry (27). Since the 1960s, 23,000 hectares of the remaining Jarrah forest have been cleared for bauxite mining for aluminium production (28). Now mining giant, Alcoa, plans to expand its forest bauxite operations and to bulldoze even more of what is left of the only Jarrah forest on Earth (29). | 27. https://www.jarrahdale.com/a-history-of-jarrahdale-western-australia/ 28. Hansard, Parliamentary Questions on Notice, Legislative Council, 11 August 2020, no.3028. 29. https://www.alcoa.com/australia/en/pdf/Alcoa-Referral-Supporting-Document.pdf |
| Jan Star: (17:18) | The Jarrah forest here is actually in pretty dire straits, matter of fact, very dire straits and we’re getting increasingly worried about it. We’ve realized there’s so many threats to the forest, it’s not just one thing anymore and it’s under assault. The major threat at present is Alcoa. The other threat is logging in itself. It’s been over logged to begin with and it’s continuing to be over logged. The forest is not regrowing as you’d expect a forest to be growing. It hasn’t got that sizeable amount of timber. We do have to stop the logging as it done at present and get some better management into the forest, but Alcoa is just so destructive because their best bauxite is where the best Jarrah grows. So, we are going to just lose the best Jarrah and those really big trees, or the potential to be really big trees not in my lifetime, not in your lifetime, 200 years maybe. I doubt very much whether it will grow in the rehabilitation that Alcoa have done because they’ve taken the bauxite away and the Jarrahs obviously like the bauxite, that’s where they grow. It’s the only hardwood forest in the Mediterranean climate. So, it’s very specifically adapted to these conditions here, to the climate and to the soil. That’s going to be a tragedy if Alcoa’s allowed to take all of that. We must try and retain some. | 30. “The Jarrah Forest: A Complex Mediterranean Ecosystem” Dell, B (et al) Springer Books 1989. Accessed from https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400931114 |
| Jeremy Perey: (19:03) | So this is a really good example of the lateritic cap rock that needs to be drilled and blasted for the bauxite miners to get at the mineral below but above it you can see the forest that exists. The northern Jarrah forest is a fantastic place to visit and a wonderful resource for the people of Perth and Western Australia. It’s biodiverse and offers a lot of nature experiences such as bushwalking and birdwatching and just being amongst nature. Bauxite mining is a major concern for people who love the forest and don’t want to see it completely dug up and destroyed. | |
| Kelton Pell: (20:34) | Our forests not only face the impacts of climate change and declining rainfall, logging, mining and fire, but also a devastating introduced disease, dieback. Forest pathologist, Doctor Joanna Young, has spent years studying the impact of dieback on our south west and is concerned that we are not acting quickly enough to preserve vulnerable ecosystems. | |
| Joanna Young: (21:04) | Well, dieback of vegetation and trees can be caused by lots of different pathogens and microorganisms. Phytophthora cinnamomi is the worst, in many respects, in that it has a very wide host range(31). It’s a microorganism that gets into the soil and affects the roots of plants. So, once their ability to take up water, especially in times of drought, you’ll suddenly see vegetation browning off and plant systems collapsing quite quickly if they’ve been recently invaded by this feral microbe. Phytophthora cinnamomi was introduced to the south west of Western Australia probably over a 100 years ago(32) and now at the point of the epidemic that it’s in fact invaded many of the ecosystems of the south west, not just the Jarrah forest, but many of our heaths, woodlands, swamps, riparian zones and in its wake it’s changed the structure of communities and taken out many, many species. It’s not just our wildflowers that are getting wiped out but it’s also the fauna that’s dependent on all those flowering plants. Many of the species that are so susceptible to dieback are the honey producers of the systems, with nectar, the things that birds, the honey possums and the animals are dependent on. Once these flowering species are lost from our systems, the whole ecosystems are disrupted. There are areas that are still protectable, and I think it is incredibly important that the community wakes up before it’s too late and puts resources and commitment into trying to protect these areas in the long term. | 31. https://www.cabi.org/isc/datasheet/40957Also: https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/nursery-cutflowers/phytophthora-diseases-cutflowers 32. https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr058/psw_gtr058_1b_shea.pdf |
| Jess Beckerling: (23:14) | A lot of people in Western Australia think that we’ve protected all of our old-growth forests and resolved the forest issue, we’ve got a lot further to go in WA before we’ve resolved the forest issue. But, in fact, we haven’t even gotten to the full old-growth protection stage yet. If you imagine that you’re walking through a magnificent old Karri forest with the huge Karri and Marri trees and nesting hollows in the canopy for black cockatoos and other fauna, and eventually you come across one stump, it might have been cut down by two blokes with a crosscut saw a 100 years ago, that one stump disqualifies two hectares of the forest that you have been walking through from old-growth status and it can now be clear felled (33). So, that just illustrates how problematic the definition is with old-growth in Western Australia. In the Jarrah it’s a similar story. Even if there’s a tiny bit of dieback in a Jarrah forest ecosystem, even if that dieback isn’t affecting the health of the Jarrah forest ecosystem, that presence of dieback automatically disqualifies that Jarrah forest from old-growth status and it can now be logged (34). So we haven’t even protected the old-growth in WA yet. | 33. https://wafa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Explaining-the-old-growth-definitions-brief.pdf 34. https://wafa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Explaining-the-old-growth-definitions-brief.pdf |
| Kelton Pell: (24:17) | Sections of Helms forest, east of Margaret River, are an example of areas disqualified from old-growth protection due to the presence of dieback. For years, Dee Patterson, has been releasing threatened and endangered black cockatoos and other wildlife into the Helms block from her rehabilitation centre abutting the forest. With logging recommencing in the forest, she feels powerless to protect the birds she has so carefully nursed back to health, and fears for the long term survival of the Forest Red-tailed, Baudins and Carnabys black cockatoos. | |
| Dee Patterson: (24:56) | I’ve been doing this for 34 years, rehabilitating Red-tails and the White-tail species of cockatoo. I back onto Helms forest, and eventually they will log right to my back boundary, which is only 70 metres from here. They’re in the process of relogging it again. Over the 34 years I’ve released near 300 birds into this area. This area is vital in habitat and food chain for the cockatoos (35). About five years ago I got arrested in Helms for protesting (36). Now that they’ve put up their signs, I’m not allowed in to stop them from logging the area and I think it should be left alone. These birds desperately need this area for food and habitat. The areas around here have been logged, Jacobs, McCorkhill block, they’ve all been severely logged. They’re just leaving young trees where there’s no food chain. And, Helms’s got a lot of food, different variety of food chain in there and the birds need it. I have released chuditch in there as well and phascogales. So, they all need these old trees. I’ve noticed over the last 20 years the change in the forest, the seasons are changing, the nuts, some years the nuts are not here and sometimes they are here. If Helms is not protected for these birds, we’re going to end up losing the species. | 35. http://datazone.birdlife.org/site/factsheet/jalbarragup-iba-australia 36. https://www.donnybrookmail.com.au/story/2938051/cockatoo-warriors-throw-down-gauntlet/ |
| Kelton Pell: (26:48) | Community protest has been a feature of native forest logging for decades, but as climate change continues to exert pressure on natural ecosystems, the protests are accelerating. In August 2020, another group of protesters sets up camp in the Helms logging coupe in an attempt to stop work at the site. By dawn, Mace Clarion is locked onto the jaws of a logging machine, and Dominique Chanovre is suspended 20 meters above the logging coupe on a wooden platform. | |
| Mace Clarion: (27:24) | I’m here locking on because everything else that I have tried until this point hasn’t helped, it hasn’t made a difference. And, there’s so few of our forests left standing that if we’re not acting in extreme ways to stop them from being destroyed then they’re not going to be left standing. And, in the face of an impending climate crisis, forests are really our only hope. | |
| Kelton Pell: (28:03) | When the police arrive and start threatening the protesters with fines of up to $10,000, a huge flock of black cockatoos fly in, lending their cries to the chorus of dissent. | |
| Police Officer: (28:14) | So we’re talking costs of anywhere up to $10,000. Are you happy to wear a $10,000 fine? | |
| Dominique Chanovre | No comment. | |
| Police Officer: (28:23) | Okay. You heard him. Okay, any way you guys can talk him down before have to get people in to cut him down. We’re talking about a reasonable amount of money here. I’m sure he hasn’t got 10 grand in his bank account. | |
| Speaker 14: (28:43) | That’s a pretty unfair assumption I would say. | |
| Police Officer: (28:43) | Yeah? All right. Cool. | |
| Speaker (Protestor) 15: (28:43) | We’re talking about some pretty beautiful bush as well. Yeah. | |
| Speaker (Protestor) 16: (28:45) | The Carnaby’s are coming in for us. | |
| Kelton Pell: (29:04) | Mace and Dominique are arrested and charged. | |
| Kelton Pell: (29:29) | The Nannas are the next group to take part in the ad-hoc rolling civil disobedience actions aimed at highlighting the value of native forests to climate. These clandestine actions are planned over highly encrypted social media messaging systems and around cups of tea on kitchen tables. It’s 2:30 a.m. when the Nannas arrive in the forest with their walking sticks, knitting projects and crocheted rugs to stop work at the Helms forest block. | |
| Speaker 18: (30:00) | Well done everyone for making it out here. Thank you. | |
| Chanting: (30:16) | Stop the chop! Stop the chop! Stop the chop! Yeah! | |
| Ruth Carlsson: (30:18) | I’m here today, at 90 years old. If the police held me up today, and wanted to arrest me, then they jolly well could because then might be in a position where I could say more. | |
| Peta Goodwin: (30:26) | There’s 53 women here today, and we’re all mothers, grandmothers or great grandmothers and we’re here because we want to stop native forest logging and we’re here, as well, because we have grandchildren and children and we’re really concerned about their future. | |
| Kelton Pell: (30:44) | The police arrive and begin issuing the Nannas with Move on Notices. When the grandmothers refuse to budge, the police threaten to tow their vehicles out of the logging area at a cost of $2000 per car. The more than 50 grandmothers retreat, but not before their action has made headlines across the state. | |
| News reader: (31:04) | Grandmothers are trying to stop logging in the south west. The Nannas for Native Forest group, staged the rally to protest the clearing of Helms forest near Margaret River. | |
| Kelton Pell: (31:30) | Concerned at the waste and destruction of the native forest logging industry, a band of locals, including Ray Swarts, begin shadowing the loggers in forest coupes near Margaret River. The stakes are high in this dangerous game of cat and mouse. Dressed in camouflage gear and hidden from the loggers, these committed locals dodge massive mechanical claws and falling trees to bear witness to, and record the environmental destruction. | |
| Ray Swarts: (31:58) | When I saw what was going on, I thought, “If others knew what was going on, they’d step up and do something about it.” So, the reason I went out was basically to bear witness to the forest going down, to show others so that they, too, would, could join in a collective voice to tell our leaders, “You know, we really should stop logging.” It’s going to take a hell of a push from the community to stop the logging of the native forests, but I believe we can do it. I, actually, I know we can do it, but it just requires more people stepping up. The bottom line is there’s no need for this, there’s no need for this industry. A lot of this is going to be used for firewood. I think it’s just crazy to see, this store of carbon go back into the atmosphere especially now that we’re dealing with climate change. We’ve been keeping an eye on this section of Jarrah forest for about three weeks now. It was hard to believe that, how much destruction could’ve been caused in such a short space of time. The machines, they’re 20 ton machines, and drop a tree sometimes within five seconds, a tree that’s been standing for 200 years. It’s kind of crazy. Where they’re logging now is critical habitat for a whole host of threatened and endangered species and the cockatoo is one of them. I won’t be satisfied until we stop the logging of all of our native forests.I want others to be outraged. Yeah, this will just get heaped up and burned. The waste is staggering. Yeah. It’s…. | |
| Nathan Hammer: (35:25) | We see them the trees that are dead, or nearly dead, clear hollows, clear habitats. They just push them over, just push them over. | |
| Ray Swarts: (35:35) | The Red-tailed phascogale, they’re endangered (37) and I’m sure that that’s a habitat for one of those. Stuff like this, this sort of logging is only going to make it worse. | 37. https://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:lsid:biodiversity.org.au:afd.taxon:b6930f29-3f26-415e-a760-c12c320c2931 |
| Kelton Pell: (35:48) | After weeks of witnessing the destruction of the forest he loves, Ray decides to put community outrage to the test. He plans a rally in Margaret River. Using social media, he publishes a short video with a snapshot of the logging practices happening just minutes from the popular tourist town. The response is overwhelming. | |
| Jess Beckerling: (36:14) | Look at how many people are here. This is community power. This is where it’s at. And, we know whatever change you think about that’s happened in the last several decades is WA or around the world, it’s from gatherings like this, that we’ve seen that change happen. | |
| Ray Swarts: (36:30) | I don’t know anyone with a heartbeat who isn’t moved by a forest, let alone an old-growth forest. I was there recently, I watched them stand in all their intelligence and ancient beauty, demanding so little and giving so much and then, I watched them fall and it broke my heart. | |
| Kelton Pell: (36:52) | Internationally renowned writer and comedian, Ben Elton, adds his voice to the rally, calling for forests to be protected for climate. | |
| Ben Elton: (37:02) | Protecting forests is climate action, the future depends on us. Thank you very much indeed. | |
| Kelton Pell: (37:18) | Following the rally, Ray leads a convoy of vehicles out to a logging coupe 40 minutes from Margaret river. He is keen to let as many people as possible witness the damage done by the native forest logging industry. The boots of all those participating are removed or sprayed with methylated spirits to ensure that no dieback is spread by the protesters. It is an irony not lost on most. The logging industry, with its massive machines and heavy vehicles, is well known for its role for spreading the devastating disease. | |
| Jess Beckerling: (38:04) | So, these are Jarrah logs in McCorkhill forest. They’ve been cut down and they’re ready to be taken to Simcoa to be used as charcoal in the silicon manufacture process. We can see the CH there next to Camille on that log. Some of these trees would have been a 100, 200 years old and they’ve been cut down and taken directly to Simcoa outside of Bunbury for silicon manufacture. It’s astounding, I reckon, mind boggling that still in this day and age we’re cutting down Jarrah forests for charcoal and firewood and the majority going into those products and to mill waste (38). We’re not even getting valuable timber out of what we’re cutting down here in these forests. | 38. https://wafa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/where-the-wood-goes.jpg |
| Kelton Pell: (40:32) | Environmentalist and farmer, Peter Lane, has been forensically examining the accounts of the statutory authority responsible for logging our native forests, the Forest Products Commission for the past two decades. His assessment of the Commission’s accounts (39) are alarming. | 39. http://forestsandclimate.org.au/cms/wp-content/uploads/WA-NativeForestry316b-Peter-Lane.pdf |
| Peter Lane: (40:48) | The Forest Products Commission was given our forests for nothing, and yet they can not cut down a tree and sell it for more than what it cost to cut it down (40) . Since the last Forest Management Plan in 2014, they have lost 14.5 million dollars (41). in cutting down our trees, and that money, that 14.5 million dollars is paid for by the taxpayer. It is funded by the profit made from plantation forestry and from Sandalwood. As well as the loss of cash, there’s lost opportunity for other industries, particularly beekeeping, ecotourism, mountain bike riding. The accounts tell us something else. They show that the price for logs received over the past 10 years, measured in real terms, has declined by about 25% (42). This is telling us that the quality of logs has declined over that period, and this, of course, is unsustainability. | 40. https://wafa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Copy-of-Swann-Browne-2016-Barking-Up-The-Wrong-Trees-1.pdf 40b. FPC annual report (AR) 2019, p.61. Operating loss $1.8million The FPC reports results under four divisions: Native Forests (NF), Plantations, Sandalwood and Policy and Industry Development. The cost of running this last division, in 2019- amounting to $4.5 million (FPC AR 2019, p.61), is wholly related to each of the other three divisions. Allowing one third of this cost to be attributable to NF would increase the operating loss for 2019 to $3.3 million. 41. FPC Annual Reports 2014 – 2019 42. In 2008 the FPC’s average price for logs was $68.23/tonne (FPC 2008, p.111 and 121). Applying inflation rates as published by ABS, this equates to $85.45/tonne in 2018 dollars. In 2018 prices averaged only $61.53/tonne (FPC AR, p.96, 120 and 121). In constant dollar terms, the price received for logs has therefore declined by 28 percent over this period. |
| Jess Beckerling: (41:58) | Since the beginning of the wood chipping industry in WA in the mid 1970s, we’ve had this really high volume low value business model operating in the forests and that means that huge volumes of wood are being turned into wood chips for pulp, for paper production, (43) which happens overseas in Japan and then in the Jarrah forests, huge volumes of Jarrah are going into firewood for the domestic market and then, also, the charcoal for silicon manufacture (44) . And, only a tiny proportion of the wood that’s actually sold out of the native forest logging operations is becoming usable timber (45), about 15%. | 43, 44. Forest Products Commissions Annual Reports. 45. https://wafa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/where-the-wood-goes.jpg |
| Kelton Pell: (42:36) | With the native forest logging industry continuing to haemorrhage taxpayers’ money in the name of job protection, conservationists devise a solution. | |
| Jess Beckerling: (42:47) | There is absolutely a future for the timber industry in Western Australia but it’s in farm forestry and plantations, not in the native forests. There’s already been very much of a transition away from native forest logging towards plantations. 82% of all of the timber that we use now in Australia comes from plantations, not from native forests, and the vast majority of the jobs in the timber industry are in plantations, not in native forests (46). But, we still absolutely need to complete that transition and that’s why we have come up with the Forests for Life plan. That plan would grow 40,000 hectares of high value timber trees in association with existing cropping and grazing, and it would create 860 to 940 new jobs in the timber industry. | 46. https://wafa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Copy-of-Swann-Browne-2016-Barking-Up-The-Wrong-Trees-1.pdf 47. http://forestsforlife.org.au |
| Kelton Pell: (43:38) | Pemberton grower, Julian Sharp, has a long term plan for his plantation forest. He started planting seedlings on the farm’s cleared land 45 years ago and today enjoy touring trees and high quality timber. | |
| Julian Sharp: (43:58) | We are in a planted forest. This is Eucalyptus Saligna. These trees are 18 years old. We’re growing these for high value sawlogs.Another pleasant place to be, I enjoy working in here. We use some of these smaller, what they call coppiced regrowth, which is this. This sort of thing grows from the stump of a tree that has been harvested. We use these poles to grow shiitake mushrooms on the timber. I’ve come through this plantation and marked the trees to be left for sawlogs, this is one tree that’s to be left for sawlogs, it’s 18 years old now, another 10 to 15 years this will be double in size and probably worth anything up to 2000, 2500 dollars in sawn timber. This tree would be about 45 meters tall. There’s a lot of resource out there in plantations already, and there’s room for much, much more as well. But, there just hasn’t been the support from government. Native forest logging has just been too easy and too subsidized which puts the plantation industry at a big disadvantage. But, there is, definitely, potential. If the native forest industry was gradually taken out, the plantation industry could easily fill those spaces. | |
| Kelton Pell: (45:31) | Retired doctors, Doug and Trenna Bridge, have invested 30 years in growing quality plantation timber on their farm near Bridgetown, but they now find that government policy is squeezing them out of the market. They are having to compete with the heavily subsidized native forest timber industry, and have been left with no option but to sell their precious harvest for wood chips. | |
| Doug Bridge: (45:58) | The land is ideal for growing Tassie Bluegum, for wood chip. We’re just.. our hearts ache because we can’t seem to crack the market for timber. | |
| Trenna Bridge: (46:06) | We started growing these trees with a long term view of hardwood plantation timber and what we didn’t realize at the time was we were going to be in competition with the government. We’ve been to meetings where the Forestry Commission is encouraging farmers to put in trees. There’s no end market for those trees and we’re actually competing with the government, with the trees from the native forests. It’s actually the government policy that’s undermining our attempt to provide hardwood plantation timber. | |
| Kelton Pell: (46:52) | Western Australia’s forests are now facing yet another threat. Plans are underway for a new industrial scale logging business based on thinning out our native forests and turning the wood into pellets to be sold overseas as fuel. Local conservationists are outraged. | |
| Beth Schultz: (47:16) | There is a trial, already on foot to get thinnings from our Karri regrowth and grind them up as pellets and send them overseas (48) to markets in the European Union, in Ireland, in Korea, in Japan where those governments are thinking that wood is a renewable source of energy. What they’re doing to our Karri forests and Jarrah forests is not renewable, is not sustainable. These are unique trees in unique forests with all the flora and fauna that belong in those forests and to simply strip them down and sell them overseas as a source of, so called, renewable energy, it is a big, big mistake that threatens the survival of our forests. Well, the trees that they take are likely to be the ones that produce hollows, they’re the ones that will go. Then you get soil compaction, which affects the health of the forest for up to 80 years (49) doesn’t recover. The effect of compaction on water penetration, on the fungi in the soil, we just don’t know, but they’re prepared to do this just to find a market for their logs. | 48. Plantation Energy Supply Base Report, Sustainable Biomass Program Limited, 2020 49. Bowd, E.J., Banks, Sam C., Strong, Craig L. and Lindenmayer, David B. Long-term impacts of wildfire and logging on forest soils. Nature Geoscience (2019). |
| Wayne Webb: (48:35) | We’re not here to harm anything, we’re just here, just for the moment. On country. | |
| Iszaac Webb: (48:57) | So we say Demalar, Gomalarancestors, ancestors. We said we are Wanaji Warlitj speaker of the spirits and the white belly sea eagle, and the miyal djinang boodjera eyes have come to see the country, we come to see the country. | |
| Wayne Webb: (49:15) | We believe that everything within the forest, from the trees and everything like that, they’re actually related to us, they’re our family. The older trees… Let’s say our grandfather and grandmothers, they’re the holders of the old song lines and storylines to our country. And, most of them too, the bigger trees, we actually see them as our boundary lines within our country as well. Everything within a forest has got a meaning and a story to it, how it all belongs together, and you start disrupting that you actually start disrupting everything around you. Thing is with the old trees is that we need them there, and the forest to actually breathe, get water. Everything that sustains life, you’re actually destroying the life giver to the country. | |
| Bill Hare: (50:08) | When one reflects on the Western Australian environment and the forests here, it’s very hard to see any case for continued native forest logging. Logging is degrading our forests. We need to protect our forests so they have the best chance of surviving, the global warming that is coming, that we will not be able to avoid. And, if we don’t do that, if we continue logging forests, then we open these forests up to drought effects, to wildfire effects (50) and so on that will ultimately, critically endanger them, I feel. | 50a. https://naturaldisaster.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/submission/NND.001.00076.pdf 50b. https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/scientists-warn-logging-native-forests-makes-australian-bushfires-devastating.php 50c https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/forests-and-climate-change |
| Jess Beckerling: (50:40) | In this period of earth’s history, it’s absolutely critical that we are urgently protecting all of the native forests. We have to protect them for wildlife and water, that’s well understood, but we also need to protect them for climate. When we protect forests, we allow them to continue to draw down and store carbon from the atmosphere, and when we log and clear them, we release that stored carbon back into the atmosphere. So, what we need to do now is really have the courage to start triaging this situation as if lives depend on it, because they really do. |
