What does ‘Ecological Thinning’ mean for your National Parks?

The Victorian and NSW State governments plan to run a trial of “ecological thinning” inside the Barmah-Millewa National
Park. The trial will use logging machinery to test weather cutting out trees from these River Red Gum forests will improve the health of the ecosystem. The project will have a range of impacts on this landscape of international significance.

Our lead campaigner, Jonathan La Nauze, has an opinion piece in the Canberra Times this week:

Craig Knowles has a plan for Australia's greatest river. It's a compromised plan, he admits, but trade-offs have to be made; river health balanced with the demands of irrigated agriculture. Problem is, no one has spelt out what the plan will actually do for the river. With Tony Burke poised to clinch the deal with $10 billion of public money, we deserve to know what we're paying for.

The Coorong, at the end of the Murray in South Australia, is etched in the collective memories of Australians thanks to the heart-felt story of Storm Boy and his pelican. The Coorong is also the largest Ramsar-listed wetland in the Southern Hemisphere, and is one of 16 Ramsar sites in the Murray Darling Basin, as many as half of which are at risk of losing their status if the draft Basin Plan is implemented as is.This week, parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands are meeting in Romania, and we've sent them our report highlighting just how damaging only 2750GL of water will be to these precious ecosystems.

Following summer surveys of Nyah Vinifera Park, in partnership with the Wadi Wadi community and ecologists at Australian Ecosystems, an indepth report of the flora of Nyah Vinifera Park has shown a large number of threatened or previously unrecorded native flora in this new Red Gum Park.  Read the recently completed full ecological report here or read more for report highlights.