Upper Florentine Valley photos - discussion.

[tasadam]

Discussion for Florentine Valley photos.
Photo link here.

So let's get started.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/20 ... 795945.htm

Forestry Tas defends Upper Florentine Valley operations
Forestry Tasmania has defended its operations in the Upper Florentine Valley in Tasmania's south-west.

The Wilderness Society has established a watchtower outside a previously proclaimed exclusion zone, 55 metres up in the forest canopy.

It will be occupied by activists around the clock, with the aim of monitoring road building and harvesting operations.

Forestry Tasmania says 90 per cent of the Upper Florentine is either formal reserve or unavailable for harvesting.

It says the area where road building started earlier this year is designated as 'production forest' under the Regional Forest Agreement and the Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement.

Forestry Tasmania says the road will provide access to coupes that will supply valuable eucalypt sawlogs and special species timbers.

Now, does that mean I photographed less than 10% of it?

Not much fun to climb to the top of Mt Field West, or any mountain for that matter, to be greeted by such a site.

[flyfisher]

That's a great lot of shots you've got there Tasadam,they really show how intensive this tree farming is.

If there is any good in what they show, it's only in the fact that Norske Skog and before them Boyer Paper Mill used the middle and lower Florentine to provide recource for the mill. They did at least confine their activities over a long period and used the consession area over and over

The argument now is the logging of the upper Florentine (which hasn't happened yet) to the extreme left of your photos.

Forestry are trying to build a new road into the pristine forest just west of the old Adamsfield and Gordonvale track.

This work is (was ?) being blocked by Still Wild Still Threatened ,by using multiple tree sits etc.

Many people never see what you have photographed, and would be horrified if they knew the FULL EXTENT of destruction in OUR forests.

A lot of people hardly get out of town to see all of this and many block their minds when told and start muttering about f%#@&&*^% greenies.

Easy to shoot the messenger----(I've always voted liborials etc)----rave rave---

Cheers FF

[slick41st]

My 2cents worth....

Yes it is disgraceful!

If the forest industry is such a sustainable industry, WHY do they need to touch anything that is old growth?

[OOPS - just read "don't discuss the pollies"....... so I'll rewrite it: ]
Too many redneck policies.

[Taurë-rana]

I just posted a photo taken from Mt Tor in the NW. This area is one incredibly vast clear fell/plantation area with very little original bush left. Nobody sees it, nobody says anything about it, but this is what happens when FT/logging companies are left to their own devices. There was a scary program on ABC a few years ago which showed just what the agenda is - they won't stop until it's all gone. They can't, they are corporations and while there's money in it they have to keep doing it as that is the mandate for a corporation - do whatever makes the most profit.

Good question slick41st, FT were saying in the 80's that they were replacing every tree they cut down, so by now they should not need old growth forest, but the rate of clear felling our forests has increased.

[tas-man]

I just posted a photo taken from Mt Tor in the NW. This area is one incredibly vast clear fell/plantation area with very little original bush left. Nobody sees it, nobody says anything about it, but this is what happens when FT/logging companies are left to their own devices. There was a scary program on ABC a few years ago which showed just what the agenda is - they won't stop until it's all gone. They can't, they are corporations and while there's money in it they have to keep doing it as that is the mandate for a corporation - do whatever makes the most profit.

Good question slick41st, FT were saying in the 80's that they were replacing every tree they cut down, so by now they should not need old growth forest, but the rate of clear felling our forests has increased.

Just read a stirring article in the Mercury by Richard Flanagan - (Warning - contains political comments relating to forestry in Tasmania)
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/20 ... inion.html

[Taurë-rana]

Thanks, tas-man, it's worth reading.

[photohiker]

I'm sure we are all aware of this but it's worth having it here as it represents a significant part of the background to that Mercury article.

Youtube: Forests and Free Speech - the victory of the Gunns20

[Neil Grose]

It's called selective logging... they just select everything!
The north east is as bad or worse, as soon as you get off the main roads it is horrible.
Next time you drive through the north east try diverting through the Cascades / Star of Peace area between Branxholm and Weldborough. Hardly a stick of native timber left.
In some places the harvesting has been made right to the edge of permanent streams, such as the Minnie Jessop and Cascade River.
The hills are just bald granite pimples poking out from a bare-earth face.
Most of it has been cable-logged and then rainfall has washed what little topsoil is left down into the creeks and streams. Then they wonder why trees won't grow on steep slopes.
Have a look around Mt Horror too.
Sorry to divert the topic from the Florentine, but it is a statewide issue that should be highlighted at every opportunity.

[pazzar]

I was driving through on my way to Lake Rhona last week, all I remember was smoke and excavators. Unfortunately forestry ruined the shots I managed to take up at Lake Rhona due to all the haze from the burn offs. I know I only drove past a small part of FT's operations in the Florentine, but it upset me quite a bit that we are ruining such a beautiful place. 12 months ago I was pro forestry, but since moving south I have done a complete backflip. It is disgraceful!

[stepbystep]

12 months ago I was pro forestry, but since moving south I have done a complete backflip. It is disgraceful!

Enlightenment is both liberating and very, very scary

sbs

[Taurë-rana]

It's called selective logging... they just select everything!
The north east is as bad or worse, as soon as you get off the main roads it is horrible.

You're not kidding, it's like a war zone. I came down the Mathinna Plains Rd on Friday evening and was shocked - scorched earth policy? There are no coupes, just total destruction of everything. It was dusk, there should have been animals jumping out at the car everywhere, but I only saw two lost looking wallabies.

[GeoffR]

For many years from the mid '70s I regularly competed in navigational car trials, which then formed a State championship series. There was always much excitement when we found a new, and then unmapped, forestry area because it would give you an advantage when an event used the area and you were (hopefully) the only ones who had mapped it.
The list of areas where clearing & roading took place was fairly long even back then : Fingal Valley, Upper Esk/Roses Tier, Diddleum Plains, east coast from Fingal/St Marys to Little Swanport, southern forests, east and west Tamar (Retreat, Lisle, Branches Creek, Virginstow), Scottsdale(Kamona/Forester), Gog Range, Hampshire, west of the Murchison Hwy to the Arthur River and probably more that I can't recall (apologies if I have used F/T plantation names, that was how we identified them). There were several of the above areas that were behind locked gates also, M Road & Hampshire for example. Many of the above areas were replanted with radiata pines rather than the fast growing eucalypts that appear favoured now.
In later years we gained access to the Florentine Valley & Moogara/Uxbridge areas for a national championship event, and it was obvious that most of the Florentine Valley area that we used had been logged previously, but this only went as far as the foot of the Tiger Range.
Having revisted a lot of these areas over time the 'creep' in forestry operation boundaries is more than obvious. Areas that were inaccessible back then now have major roads cut straight though the middle, the Mt Albert Road is a good example.
Where once a new forestry road in virgin territory was a cause for excitement, now when I see one the only reaction is 'not another one!'.

[Taurë-rana]

A (rather long) comment on the state of play in Tasmania:
http://www.tapvision.info/node/661

[iandsmith]

Did I hear correctly around a month ago that Gunns won't be logging old growth in Tassie anymore?
Also, can't see that picture that's supposed to have been posted.
Interesting discussion.
I visited the place when the protest was in full swing about 18 months ago, but my moment had come years before when I curiously drove up a forestry road in the Tahune and came across a smoking clear felled section with poison baits all around.
Couple of pics from my Florentine experience can be found in THIS POST..

[Son of a Beach]

Did I hear correctly around a month ago that Gunns won't be logging old growth in Tassie anymore?

That's correct. However, I've not heard anything to suggest they won't be buying from contractors logging old growth forest.

[north-north-west]

Yeah, it's like their guarantee that they wouldn't use old-growth forests to supply that proposed pulp mill.
Sure they wouldn't - but any plantation timber that went there instead of to the woodchipper would have been replaced by old growth.