What's Happening to your Forests?

In the Central Highlands this coming summer, thousands of hectares of native forest are scheduled to be clear-felled for wood-chipping, and the residue will be burnt. The creation of new access roads for enormous logging trucks will compound the problems caused by widespread clear-felling of our forests.

There are many detrimental effects of this type of wood harvesting. Some of these will last for centuries! In general, these effects fall into four main categories:

• ecological disturbance;
• reductions in quality and yield of water from catchments;
• destruction of opportunity to realise better economic outcomes; and
• loss of amenity for recreational use of our forests.