The science of
World's Best Practice
is a science of convenience, a science which has been influenced
by a prescribed outcome i.e. business as usual.
Science ignores the amenity, physical and cultural needs of
individuals and communities in the place where they live.
Foresters and Silviculturists use
science as a
justification for the conquest of the natural world.
Upper Florentine Valley, the viewfield
largely comprises couped up forest.
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They do not understand what they are doing because they have
no conception of what they are undoing.
They use a utilitarian language of “production and multiple
use forestry” to justify the ruthless logic of their pernicious
assault on our biological capital, it reflects a culture ruled
by economics and the
market, a culture which substitutes
the relative stability and complexity of the natural world for
the instability of an ordered landscape of plantations and artificially
seeded mono-cultures and re-growth woodlots.
Communities and individuals have been rendered impotent in protecting
their quality of life, their livelihoods and nurturing the place
where they live, as a self regulating and indifferent forest
industry aided by a complicit political process carries on business
as usual.
Forest
management wants to defy nature, their
actions are underwritten by subterfuge where the lie has become
the truth, where the jargon of sustainability is used to describe
the destruction of the diversity of flora and fauna which exists
both competitively and co-operatively in unexploited or modified
natural forests.
Foresters use the ploy of
reduction management,
where the definition of forest types (i.e. old growth, re-growth
and native forest) together with the age classification of those
forests, change constantly so they can justify the continuing
exploitation of what is a disappearing resource being put under
ever increasing pressure. They categorise the complexity of
forest types and systems so as to simplify their reconstruction,
a reconstruction which only suits a particular economic agenda
and ignores all the
vital services and values
natural landscapes provide.
When we are constantly told our forests are being managed
sustainably
and in a way which
emulates nature, we are being
lied to. It simply is not possible to grow balanced eco-systems
back in five minutes while the fundamental rules of nature are
being changed forever.
Wet forest dominated by sassafras,
myrtle, tree- ferns and tall eucalyptus after logging
and subsequent regeneration burn, 2006. Headwaters of
the South Esk, water supply for Launceston.
ALSO SEE : BEFORE
& AFTER SLIDESHOW at TOMBSTONE CREEK
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Forestry Tasmania operates in an environment of “Commercial
in Confidence” while exploiting what is a Public Resource.
They are exempt from Freedom of Information Legislation and
are able to prevent a third party from objecting to or appealing
any aspect of the Forest Practices Plan.
Living off the interest without trashing the capital, respect
for the resource and associated systems, care and a regard for
quality are ideals modern foresters and the logging industry
don’t even begin to understand. The illusion of economic
progress, growth, the market and ever increasing urbanisation
masks the footprint of massive ecological destruction and deficit
of biological capital.
We are increasingly confronted with the dull monotony and uniformity
of an ordered landscape where a rapacious market driven culture
prevails and where non-economic and non-utilitarian principles
lack legitimacy.
Notwithstanding all the
science, technical ingenuity and
expert opinion, it is our children and grandchildren
who are being bequeathed the consequences of misappropriated,
plundered, denuded and impoverished landscapes, landscapes which
have been profoundly altered forever as our generation treats
this planet as though we are the last generation to inhabit
it.
Natural Capital is not Income
So few have pauperised so much for so little in such a
transitory period of time.
