Guarding breeding Swift Parrots, defenders returned last night to occupy forests threatened by imminent logging at Snow Hill in Tasmania’s Eastern Tiers.
“While these Swift Parrot breeding forests are still standing, there is an urgent need to ensure not one tree is logged here,” Bob Brown Foundation’s Campaigns Manager Jenny Weber said from the Eastern Tiers forests.
“We are surrounded by native forests that are crucial for climate and endangered wildlife. To ensure the survival of critically endangered Swift Parrots, these forests must be protected, including the old hollow-bearing trees that are nurseries for pairs of parrots. These nesting forests should not be destroyed now or at any time in the future,” Jenny Weber said.
“Tasmania’s Premier Rockliff is well aware that logging destruction is removing critically endangered Swift Parrot nesting habitat. The Premier has ignored our repeated reports to him that this species is rapidly declining on his watch,” Jenny Weber said.
Last week, Forestry Tasmania’s CEO Steve Whiteley admitted to state parliamentary estimates that “within the time the harvesting was going on there were sightings of Swift Parrots broadly in the Eastern Tiers. Now there’s specific evidence that we shouldn’t continue harvesting and we have stopped.”
Also last week, Forestry Tasmania moved logging machines out of another area full of breeding Swift Parrots after Bob Brown Foundation pressure. The machines have moved to the forests being defended today, but the destruction of nesting habitat has not yet commenced. There is still time to protect this forest and all Swift Parrot habitat across Tasmania.