Report backs Red Gum Decision

The Wilderness Society Sydney Inc.
Media Release
Monday 21 December 2009

Environment groups and Traditional Owners have welcomed recommendations from the Natural Resources Commission (NRC) that the NSW government create over 100,000 hectares of new National Parks and reserves across the internationally recognised Murray River Red Gum Forests. 

This backs up and expands upon the Red Gum National Park decision announced by the NSW Government in early December.

The groups have called upon the NSW Government to immediately implement the new protected areas recommended in the report, and to take steps to deliver increased environmental water flows.  However, the groups are concerned that key areas missed out on protection in the report, with over 35,000 hectares still open to industrial logging.

“The NRC report presents a clear choice for the new Keneally Government.  Let the Red Gum forests die or act now to honour the previous decision and create a sustainable future for the environment and the communities which depend on it” said Ms Carmel Flint, spokesperson for the National Parks Association of NSW.

“The report clearly finds that large new National Parks and an extra 1,200 GL of environmental flows are needed to make a transition from a declining, environmentally damaging logging industry to a thriving healthy forest and a new green economy” she said.

“The report recommends the full protection of the Millewa and Barooga group of forests on Yorta Yorta Country.  We fully support that outcome and would like to see it implemented as soon as possible” said Mr Neville Atkinson, chairperson of the Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation.

“We look forward to working with the Victorian and NSW Governments and the Federal Government to participate in the future management of these new reserves to deliver improved socio-economic opportunities for our people and the region abroad” Mr Atkinson said.

 “The report finds that the logging industry in the region has been based on unsustainable practices and is in serious decline, yet has left significant areas open to logging” said Peter Cooper, Campaigner for The Wilderness Society Sydney.

“The NSW Government should go further and commit to the protection of key areas that have been left out of the report, such as Campbells Island State Forest, and it should rule out any form of so-called ‘ecological thinning’ unless it is preceded by rigorous scientific research”.