World Environment Day is a day to celebrate the wins, and recommit to fighting for the protection of the natural world.

Since the 1990’s, together with Friends of Gippsland Bush (FoGB) we campaigned for the protection of rainforest catchments in the Strzelecki Ranges in Agnes River, Franklin River, Dingo Creek, Albert River and College Creek which resulted in the creation of the Brataualung Forest Park in 2018.  Now, the Brataualung Forest Park in Gippsland is home to some of the most important koala habitat in Australia. 

These forests make up part of the habitat zones of the Strzelecki Koala, Victoria's only endemic koala population. With possibly only 1500 - 2000 Strzelecki Koalas remaining in the wild, every patch of forest matters.

And with no other native forest in Victoria being listed as Reserves over the past decade, places like Brataualung are of great importance.

Can you support us with a tax deductible donation this World Environment Day to ensure we can continue to advocate for this protection for Koalas and their habitat? 

At a recent meeting with Friends of the Earth, Taungurung Nira-Balluck Elder, Uncle Larry Walsh highlighted concerns over clearfelling of his traditional country by VicForests. Several coupes have already been cut in the Snobs Creek catchment with another 20 or so planned to be logged over the next few years.  "Its no good. The logging has to stop" Uncle Larry said.

The state government logging agency, VicForests, intends to log a total of 11 “coupes”, or sections, of mature forest, much of it dominated by Alpine Ash, in the headwaters of the Little Dargo River, an area of state forest that lies right next to the Alpine National Park. These coupes are located in a series of clusters, where separate sections of bush will be harvested, creating a large zone of cleared land over time.

One coupe has already been logged. The remaining coupes have not yet been scheduled for harvesting. There is still time to stop this ecological disaster – if we act now.

The Little Dargo is roughly 15 kilometres south of the Mt Hotham ski resort in the mountains of north eastern Victoria. Background on the logging can be found here.

What is happening in the Little Dargo catchment is emblematic of a much wider threat occurring across the mountain environments of south eastern Australia.

Please scroll down for most recent updates.

Dr. Lea Jellinek: ‘Why we need to Save the Rubicon Forest?’ at the Kathleen Syme Library, 251 Faraday St, Carlton for 7 - 9:30pm, Wed 14 April 2021.

You are invited to come with Lea on a journey into our precious forest on Dry Creek Hill, above Snobs Creek Waterfall. 

This area, just above the spectacular Snobs Creek Waterfall, has one of the most pristine and intact forests in Murrindindi Shire. Local campaigners want to see them removed from logging schedules and declared an extension of the existing "Snobs Creek Wildlife Reserve”. 

The Central Highlands, to the east and north east of Melbourne are an incredible biodiversity hotspot, with varied landscapes, beautiful rivers, and heavily treed mountains with forests of Mountain Ash and remnants of cool temperate rainforest. Sadly, it has been heavily logged for many decades and impacted by bushfires.

In response, local communities and environmental organisations have campaigned to see the region receive adequate protection. At present, the Snobs Creek valley, in the north end of the Central Highlands is a focus of local campaigning. Residents of the area are calling on the state government logging authority, VicForests, to protect an area with high conservation value forests that is due for logging.

The following information comes from Friends of the Snobs Creek Valley and the Rubicon (Snobs Creek Recreation Reserve).

The current VicForest Timber Release Plan shows logging of native forests in the Central Highlands is scheduled to occur in areas very close to recreational roads and tracks where people regularly enjoy hiking, horse riding, cycling and four-wheel driving.

These will impact on a large number of areas, including Kinglake, Narbethong, Warburton, The Acheron Way between Narbethong and Warburton, a section of The Bicentennial National Trail near Toolangi, Black Range Tourist Drive between Toolangi and Murrindindi, Snobs Creek Road in Rubicon, and Big Pats Creek.

The Central Highlands rely on nature based tourism for much of its economic activity and local employment. Visitors are not interested in walking or riding through a logging coupe.

We rely on healthy ecosystems for our survival. Victoria is the most cleared state in the country and natural ecosystems have faced centuries of land clearing, logging, invasion of invasive species and, now fire seasons that are being made worse by climate change. More than 120 Victorian animals, birds, plants, insects and fish are threatened with extinction. 

Last summer’s bushfires burnt more than 1 million hectares. As a result of the Black Summer fires:

- 31% of VIC's rainforests have burnt, as well as 24% of wet or damp forests, and 34% of lowland forests

- 100% of the potential habitat of East Gippsland galaxias (a small native fish) have burnt 

- 40% of sooty owl, long-footed potoroo, diamond python, brush-tailed rock-wallaby and long-nosed bandicoot habitat has burnt

Now the Victorian parliament has announced an Inquiry into Ecosystem Decline. This is an important opportunity to show that the community wants to see ecosystems restored and species protected from extinction.

Please check below for a draft submission that you could use or adapt and send to the Inquiry.

You might be forgiven for thinking that once an area of forest has been burnt, it is essentially a dead zone, a pile of charred remains, devoid of life or possibility. You’d be wrong.

Research performed by David Lindenmayer, a researcher at the Australian National University and one of the world’s most cited forest ecologists, and colleagues over the past three decades has mapped regeneration and growth in areas of forest up the east coast of Australia - areas that have been badly damaged in horrific bushfires.

This research has shown incredible rates of recovery in areas of forest that appeared decimated by fires - but only if that forest is left alone in the aftermath. The worst thing that we can do post-bushfire is allow the logging of these burned areas, known as salvage logging. 

This practice can set forest regeneration back by decades, and for about 40 years these areas of forest carry an increased risk of canopy burns (setting the regeneration back repeatedly). According to Lindenmayer, animals that miraculously escaped the fires, if they are not killed in the logging process, are unlikely to return to logged areas for up to 180 years, if ever.

Can you make a tax-deductible donation today?

Friends of the Earth podcast history series made in collaboration with 3CR 855 AM community radio show Acting Up!    Monday 2.00pm.  Ratbags, peaceniks and agents of change, resistance radio that explores the movements that made us.

45 years of Acting Up!  Friends of the Earth Barmah-Millewa Collective audio episode

Listen up mp3
Presenter: Megan Williams.
Guests: Aunty Monica Morgan (Yorta Yorta), Jono La Nauze, Indira Narayan.

River Red Gum forest and wetlands (photo: Environment Victoria)

Follow the mighty Murray River 200km north of Melbourne to where the Barmah-Millewa forest grows.  This ancient expanse of woodlands and vital wetlands is the largest River Red Gum forest in the world.  In 1998 Yorta Yorta leaders, the Indigenous custodians, asked Friends of the Earth to join them in a campaign to protect Barmah-Millewa and re-establish their right to manage their river country, forming the Barmah-Millewa Collective in 2000.  Listen and learn how 12 years of resistance, resilience and activist alliances led to the creation of Barmah-Millewa National Parks and Protected Areas in Victoria and NSW, to be returned and co-managed by Traditional Owners.  Read on to find out how you can help Friends of the Earth to protect rivers and forests in 2020 into the future.