Planting the future

Chris Owens, Lysterfield South
The Age (letter), 19 November 2010

TIM Cleary might like to deride those who care about the natural environment, but the forestry industry will never have ''certainty'' until it gets out of old-growth, high-conservation-value forests (Letters, 18/11).

Australia has the world's worst extinction record in the past 200 years. Environmentalists cannot accept the logging of these forests - habitat for rare and endangered species and a publicly owned asset - at a net loss to the taxpayer.Certainty for the industry means plantations.

As the Brown Mountain court case demonstrated, neither VicForests nor the Department for Sustainability and the Environment was undertaking fauna surveys before the chainsaws were sent in. It was left to volunteer organisations to find rare and endangered species then take legal action to protect them. If Mr Cleary had any regard for endangered wildlife, he would not try to ridicule volunteers doing the job of governments.