Forestry Tasmania has been forced by conservationists to abandon logging of Swift Parrot breeding forests in Tasmania’s Eastern Tiers. Bob Brown Foundation’s campaigners and citizens have found that all machines have left the Eastern Tiers this week.
“Discovering critically endangered Swift Parrots in a logging area means these forests should be immediately removed from Forestry Tasmania management and put in secure conservation reserves. Allowing Forestry Tasmania to keep custody of these breeding forests has to end, as they continue to destroy the parrots’ nesting and foraging trees. Over the past month, our foundation has reported multiple sightings of Swift Parrots in logging coupes to the Premier, Forestry Tasmania and Forest Practices Authority. During the last week, we have been monitoring the Eastern Tiers and the logging machines have left” said Bob Brown Foundation Campaigns Manager Jenny Weber.
“This logging breached federal environment law and I believe it was illegal,” Bob Brown said.
“The Rockliff government should be in the court, not the environmentalists who were arrested doing the government’s job. Karen and Kristy are due appear in court on 21st December. Their charges should be dismissed. I have not yet received a summons after my arrest in the same logging coupe. The forest I was arrested in has Swift parrots nesting right now,” Bob Brown said.
“The Eastern Tiers breeding forests, full of parrots, are at peace for now. However, Forestry Tasmania needs to stay out. Until all Swift Parrot habitat forest in Tasmania is granted immediate protection, we will continue to call on the government to cease pushing the critically endangered Swift Parrot to extinction,” Jenny Weber said.
“Photographers have been joining us in the threatened Eastern Tiers and capturing Swift parrots in the threatened logging coupes. Our efforts to defend and protect native forests and the critically endangered Swift parrots are to ensure that these photos are not all we are left with after the parrot is extinct,” Jenny Weber said.