This International Women’s Day, a group of activists with Bob Brown Foundation have walked into an active logging coupe to highlight the ongoing devastation of Swift Parrot habitat.
Bob Brown Foundation has been lobbying intensively for the protection of this forest, as well as pressuring the Forest Practices Authority calling for the forest to be spared.
“Swift Parrots use this very forest for breeding and feeding, inhabiting this area as recently as two weeks ago. The minute these birds leave for the year, Forestry Tasmania decides it’s time to eradicate any possibility of these birds having critical breeding habitat to return to,” said Jenny Weber, Campaign Manager for Bob Brown Foundation.
“Women around the world are among the most vulnerable to climate change, and deforestation and forest degradation are some of the biggest contributors to the climate crisis,” said Dr Lisa Searle, Native Forests Campaign Organiser for Bob Brown Foundation.
“It’s so simple really – we need to stop logging native forests. For the global community of vulnerable women, for the poorest and for the threatened and endangered species relying on these last vestiges. No excuse is good enough.”
“Tasmania’s Esperance forests, where the current logging is taking place, have been systematically destroyed over the past decades. Ending native forest logging and protecting remnants of old forests suitable for Swift Parrot breeding and foraging is urgently required. We have recorded so many Swift Parrots here in recent months, confirmation that this precious, critically endangered bird is relying on this area for nesting and foraging,” said Dr Searle.
“Ongoing logging is leaving Tasmania with denuded landscapes where the soil washes down into the river, our carbon stores collapse and no longer support the rare and endangered native species that once relied on these ecosystems.”
EP038E has a large section of old tall eucalypts and rainforest understory to the north. The old growth and ancient tall forests found inside the clearfell section of this forest are within 500m of the southwest National Park and just 50m from the beautiful banks of the Esperance River.