“Isn’t nature wonderful,” wrote award-winning author Richard Glover after observing trees on his property. A fire burned through the bush surrounding his house after the eucalyptuses survived a long drought. When the rains returned, foam oozed from the burnt trunks. It washed onto the soil and flowed to nearby creeks. Chemicals in the foam contain saponins—a type of steroid to help rainwater seep into the soil and aid new growth.
As wondrous as this may sound, nature awes not everyone. Former prime minister Tony Abbott made a “captain’s call” in 2015 while in office to delist 74,000 hectares of Tasmanian wilderness world heritage forest, despite caution from his advisors.
The Tasmanian wilderness largely comprises old-growth forests. Old-growth forests, or primeval forests, are unique places where the vegetation lay undisturbed for a great age. They typically have multi-layered canopies that provide a sanctuary for a diverse number of plants and animals.
Evidence from field-studies show old-growth forests are vast areas for storing carbon. As trees grow, they remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the trunks, stems and roots. Of the current forests on Earth, they estimate trees store as much as 45% of all land carbon. Old-growth forests do it better than young forests.
The island state of Tasmania has Australia’s largest old-growth forests around 1,239,000 hectares. Only 22% of the state’s original tall-eucalypts are preserved. Since 1996, ten thousand hectares of tall-eucalypt forests went to industrial logging.
Gunns Limited (the company closed in September 2012) was the biggest logging contractor in Tasmania. Australian opinion criticized the company for destroying old-growth forest to export as low-value wood chipping.
As for former prime minister Tony Abbott, he acted on an election promise to save thousands of jobs by delisting heritage forests. It would see tens of thousands of hectares open to logging companies. He enacted policy as do many democracies across the globe making short-term decisions with little regard for a future past the next ballot box.
*the Unesco World Heritage Committee rejected the Australian government’s bid to reopen forests in meeting in Doha.
Winston Churchill remarked in 1947, “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
It is highly likely forests and the subsequent degradation of them is a casualty of democracy.
Ms. Seagreen’s Deep Forest Mystery is a cozy series set in a small town surrounded by old-growth forests in Tasmania.
Find the book one at the link below.
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