Editor:
I read with interest that the Sunshine Coast Community Forest is resuming its "harvesting" of the forest in Wilson Creek. The word harvest is used here to suggest a reasoned and caring approach to the management of our forests. Its use is intended to deflect all of the negative images of the word it is replacing: logging. Using this word, however, does not change the reality on the ground. Trees are about to be cut down and the forest and its landscape irreversibly changed.
In the harvesting plan, the Wilson Creek cutblock is defined as second growth forest due to a fire that occurred over 100 years ago, inferring that it is less valuable than old growth and suitable for harvesting. This is manifestly not true.
By any logical measure this is a primary growth forest going through natural regeneration, representing a natural process in which all organic material is conserved on site and all the regeneration processes occurring as they should.
This forest is home to some of the most important biodiversity in our area, that which developed to support the healthy growth of the forest itself. This includes an unknown number of important biological entities including fungi and bacteria many of which are still undiscovered and may prove integral to the healthy regeneration of the forest, the dynamics of which we are still woefully ignorant.
Through fire, the forest is renewed; through the logging process the forest is eventually diminished.
If industry wants to continue logging its farmed areas, harvesting its diminishing capital on previously managed stands, I say fill your boots. But please do not destroy the last of our heritage environments touting concepts like harvesting, which are at best misleading and at worst deceitful. It is time we showed the forest the respect it deserves.
Andrew Sloss
Roberts Creek
