Jeremy Fitzpatrick, Heidelberg
Letter, The Age, 14/11/08
You'll need to excuse my mirth, Max Rheese (Letters, 12/11), in taking your approach to "wise use principles". Surely someone whose organisation lobbies for the logging of old-growth forests has a conflict of interest when lecturing about the "key to conservation".
I'm sure you feel that Australian forestry practice is among the best in the world; it seems we have a State Government that reneges on its 2006 promise and simply allows the logging industry to bulldoze through our state forests, destroying 400 years of Victoria's natural legacy.
Aside from the fact these forests are massive carbon storage banks, which release carbon into the atmosphere when clearfelled, old-growth forests are far more fire retardant than your proposed monoculture plantations; essentially a crop of pine trees.
As someone genuinely concerned for the environment, this view may seem a little over emotional, but I'd like to be able to show my kids, and your kids, just how magnificent Australia is.
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