Bob Brown Foundation will launch its NSW Election Campaign tonight, calling on candidates to make the protection of native forests and koalas a key issue in their election platform. The foundation will call on hundreds of volunteers across NSW, rallying support for the protection of native forests and ending native forest logging.
Native forest logging in New South Wales is a key culprit in the mounting extinction crisis, with many endangered species pushed to the brink due to the ceaseless destruction of their habitat by logging companies.
Logging is also reducing resilience to the effects of the climate crisis, with drought and bushfire risks escalating from the removal of mature habitat forests. Worse still, the loss of native forests is removing a critical tool in mitigating the impacts of the climate catastrophe, with hundreds of years’ worth of sequestered carbon stored in mature forests.
“Bob Brown Foundation will engage with communities all around NSW to share their vision of the future and how we can end native forest logging. We will be present at markets, leafletting neighbourhoods, and postering our messages in yards and windows. Ending native forest logging is at the core of this campaign and communities across NSW are ready to roll this out, as they are fed up with the current practice of endless destruction of vital wildlife habitat in their backyards,” said Bob Brown Foundation NSW Campaigner Doro Babeck.
“Over the past four years, this ecological crisis has cost NSW taxpayers $107.7m. Native forests right across NSW, and around Australia, must remain standing,” said Bob Brown Foundation’s National Community Campaigner Molly Coburn.
“We believe that support for ending native forest logging is strong in communities right around New South Wales, and our campaign intends to elevate this support. We plan to put candidates on notice, to let them know that to ignore the biodiversity and climate crisis is to ignore the wishes of their constituents,” said Molly Coburn.
“Logging native forests must be tossed into the dustbin of history for the sake of all life on Earth as climate breakdown accelerates. Forests are climate heroes – only they can remove carbon from the atmosphere at the rapid rate required if Australia wants to meet a net zero carbon target. They also clean our water, air and provide habitat for endless species, including the endangered koala. That’s why next year’s NSW election will be about forests,” said Doro Babeck.