DEAR News Of The Area,

THANK you for the article, ‘Kalang Catchment Concerns’ (News Of The Area, 9 September), exposing the dangers of erosion and water pollution likely to be the catastrophic consequences of Forestry Corporation’s planned inappropriate, industrial logging.

Logging and clear felling our native forest is disastrous.

Are readers aware that our taxes ($20 million in 2020/21) are squandered propping up this destructive industry?

We are paying to have our forests trashed, our special ecosystems annihilated, our unique native species, including the Koala, deprived of habitat and driven to extinction and our water catchments ruined.

It is costing us dearly to be deprived of the recreational and spiritual connection to Nature in state forests, deprived of the profits of nature tourism, deprived of the flood mitigation well-vegetated headwaters provide, deprived of the climate benefits of carbon sequestration that more bushfire-resilient forests can give.

Forestry Corporation repeatedly breaches the conditions, designed to protect key ecosystems and habitat, of its licence, thus costing the taxpayer even more in fines.

While the Government baulks at pay rises for nurses and teachers, or a just transition for timber workers, it throws away money on an industry wrecking our precious and irreplaceable natural heritage.

Let us join WA and Victoria in ending native forest destruction.

Yours faithfully,
Mary FORBES,
Eungai Creek.