The Melbourne Water Catchment Network is pressuring the State Government to ban logging.

ON THE eve of the 2008 council elections, a green group has declared war on five Greater Dandenong councillors seeking re-election.

The Melbourne Water Catchment Network has launched a campaign against councillors Roz Blades, Paul Donovan, Pinar Yesil, Jim Memeti and Youhorn Chea for opposing a motion to ban logging.

A sixth councillor, Alan Gordon, who also voted against the motion is not seeking re-election.

The network has taken out election advertisements asking readers, “Which Dandenong councillors voted to reduce your water supply?” and then naming the five councillors.

Greater Dandenong was the first of 16 councils to reject the environmental push. Councillors voiced concern at the ban’s potential impact on local jobs and industry.

Greater Dandenong rejects anti-logging bid

Dandenong South sawmill Dormit this week backed their claims.

But network spokesman Simon Birrell said his research showed outlawing logging in Melbourne’s water catchments would not affect Dandenong jobs.

He said Dormit annually used 140,000 cubic metres of E-grade logs, 30 per cent of which came from plantations.

“At most, only 8 per cent of the E-grade logs used by Dormit could possibly come from the Melbourne catchments,” Mr Birrell said.

“In the short term, VicForests has a contract with Dormit to supply logs until 2010.”

But Dormit resource manager John Cogley said a logging ban would have a drastic impact on the industry.

“We do get a lot of plantation timber,” Mr Cogley said.

“But if there was no logging we’d pretty much be dead in the water.”

Such a ban would also have a flow-on impact from sawmills to other local industries such as paper production, he said.

State Government research shows stopping harvesting by 2010 would increase Melbourne’s yearly water flow by 16 gigalitres by 2050.

“That is the same amount of water consumed by 96,000 people, almost the population of Greater Dandenong itself,” Mr Birrell said.

But the government report concedes the 2050 forecast does not consider timber supply commitments.

03 Nov 08 @ 09:00am by Rebecca David
Greater Dandenong blunts anti-logging bid

GREATER Dandenong has copped a spray for becoming the first council to reject a popular anti-logging bid.

Fifteen of the 16 councils approached by the Melbourne Water Catchment Network so far have backed a push for the State Government to ban the practice.

Network spokesman Simon Birrell slammed the six councillors - Paul Donovan, Jim Memeti, Pinar Yesil, Roz Blades, Alan Gordon and Youhorn Chea - who voted against the motion at last Monday ‘s council meeting.

With local elections coming up, Mr Birrell alleged they had been pressured by their ALP backers and Water Minister Tim Holding to oppose the vote.

“This is an issue that’s beyond politics … these councillors have essentially voted to reduce Dandenong’s water supply,” Mr Birrell said.

“I suspect the Water Minister has leaned on them.”

Mr Holding, also the local Lyndhurst MP, denied claims he may have influenced the vote, saying: “I have not discussed this issue with any councillor and neither has my office.”

At the meeting, only Cr Blades explained her opposing vote, saying she was concerned about logging-associated jobs.

“I have great respect for what they are trying to do,” Cr Blades said, “but I have an even greater respect for the families in Greater Dandenong who may be affected.”

Councillors Memeti and Gordon later told the Leader they were also worried about the flow-on effect on local industry and employment.

Cr Donovan said he supported the logging industry, adding it had a minimal impact on the water provisions.

Councillors Yesil and Chea could not be contacted for comment.

Councillors Maria Sampey, Peter Brown, Yvonne Herring and Sue Walton favoured the anti-logging motion at the meeting.

Mayor John Kelly was absent.

BY LIZ BELL
3/11/2008

GREATER Dandenong Council’s green credentials have been called into
question after it failed to support a ban on logging in water catchments.

Cr Maria Sampey accused the council of having “no courage” after six of
10 councillors voted to reject a no-logging motion similar to one
supported by the Municipal Association of Victoria and 15 other councils.

The MAV recently backed a Yarra Valley Council motion calling on the
State Government to outlaw logging in catchments, including those in the
Upper Yarra.

Cr Sampey said she was disappointed Greater Dandenong had not done the same.

“We are the only council without any courage.”

She rejected Cr Roz Blades’ concerns that banning logging in catchments
could lead to up to 200 job losses.

Cr Blades, a member of the Springvale Benevolent Society, said she had
visited many families in Greater Dandenong who were already suffering
due to unemployment and family distress, and feared the ban would deepen
problems.

“We don’t know what the flow-on effect of this [ban] will be.”

Other councils that were not significant employers in the logging
industry may have different perspectives, she said.

But Cr Sampey said many more jobs would be lost if there was no water.

Cr Peter Brown said an MAV briefing to council on October 17 highlighted
concerns about the ecological damage of logging in catchment areas.

He said councils could not change government policy but could have “a
strong influence”.

After the council meeting, spokesman for lobby group Melbourne Water
Catchment Network, Simon Birrell, accused Cr Blades of “scaremongering”.

Mr Birrell said that while a consultant’s report to government stated
that 200 jobs were associated with catchment logging, there was no
suggestion by anyone that those jobs would actually be lost.

http://thejournal.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/general/council-at-loggerheads-over-catchment-logging-policy/1350127.aspx

DAVID BRAITHWAITE
31/10/2008
THE Victorian Local Governance Association claims it has never had a
policy against logging in Melbourne’s water catchment areas, despite
Wellington Shire Council voting to cancel its membership over the issue.

Council voted to quit the association at its meeting last week on the
back of a notice of motion from councillor Malcolm Hole, who said the
VLGA’s apparent policy could wipe out about 350 jobs in Wellington shire
alone.

“I believe that, as a councillor, our duty is to protect jobs, not just
pour extra water into Melbourne,” he said.

Cr Hole told council a VLGA delegate at a meeting to discuss the timber
industry said that it had a policy to stop logging in Melbourne’s water
catchments, including the Thomson catchment.

Seventeen per cent of the Thomson catchment area is set aside for timber
harvesting.

“Thirty-five per cent of the timber which comes into Gippsland comes
from that area,” Cr Hole said.

“It takes around 80 to 120 years to grow, so it has to be grown on Crown
land because nobody can invest in a tree plantation where it will take
80 to 120 years before you start getting a return.”

Of further concern to council was the Municipal Association of Victoria
vote to pass a motion, 53 per cent to 47, to oppose logging in
Melbourne’s catchments at its recent state council meeting.

Cr Peter Garlick said the timber debate had been “snowed” by
metropolitan councils for selfish reasons.

“What most disappoints me … this is a real Melbourne grab for water,”
he said.

“They haven’t looked at the environmental aspects of logging in
catchments … one is to make sure you have staggered growth and also
allow other plants to come through.

“It’s time these organisation really started to look at the people in
rural areas.”

VLGA president Beth Davidson said the board had never considered this
issue, but said the association did facilitate a forum to explore the
implications of logging in Melbourne’s water catchments.

“Wellington Shire councillors were very aware of this information which
was clearly set out in correspondence sent to them on the morning before
the decision,” she said.

“Councillors who wish to close down debate, who knowingly peddle false
information and who make decisions based on information known to be
false do not serve their communities well.

“I call on Cr Hole to put to right the fallacious information contained
in his notice of motion, and to allow his fellow councillors to consider
the correct information afresh.”

Cr Jenny O’Neill said council would not be able to contribute to debate
if it withdrew from the VLGA.

“If we stand outside, then the voice is lost,” she said.

“What’s happened is that MAV now have a position on logging in water
catchments, that is the one that we should be afraid of, not the VLGA’s
non-existent position on it.”

Mayor Peter Cleary agreed it would be difficult for council to have
input into how the VLGA would advocate to government if it wasn’t a member.

“Whether in the VLGA or outside the VLGA, if the VLGA doesn’t support
logging in a water catchment area, then we, as a council, can make quite
clear that we think they’re wrong,” he said.

http://leader-news.whereilive.com.au/news/story/yarra-ranges-logging-concerns-catch-on/
YARRA Ranges Shire’s push to ban logging in water catchments has attracted support from Victoria’s peak council lobby group.

The Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) backed a motion, drafted by Yarra Ranges councillor Samantha Dunn, calling for the State Government to outlaw logging in catchments, including those in the Upper Yarra.

Cr Dunn, a member of the Australian Greens, said she was heartened by the support of other councils.

“It’s encouraging to know we have the support of the local government sector and that the MAV will be advocating this on behalf of councils across the state,” Cr Dunn said. “I think as time progresses, we understand more and more about the relationship between logging and water yields.”

The Yarra Ranges motion passed 53 per cent to 47 per cent at a state council meeting earlier this month. The shire’s last effort to put the motion, in April, failed.

Cr Dunn said she believed the councils changed their stance as concern over the water issue grew.

In November last year, the shire was the first council in the state to resolve to oppose logging in catchments, prompting a flurry of debate in the community.

However, the council’s latest push has been criticised by members of the area’s forestry industry.

Healesville-based Timber Communities state manager Scott Gentle said it was unfortunate that city-based councillors supported recommendations that were not scientifically based. “Many of these councillors don’t understand the effects this will have on our regional towns,” Mr Gentle said.

http://leader-news.whereilive.com.au/news/story/yarra-ranges-logging-concerns-catch-on/

Gary Tippet
May 25, 2008

TEN or 12 years ago, Roger Hardley wouldn’t have been sitting out on the verandah of the Forrest pub in the Otway Ranges. Wouldn’t have been game, he says: “They’d have lynched me.”

The ardent conservationist certainly wouldn’t have been sharing roll-yer-owns, coffee and yarns with John “Bluey” Andrew, a tree-faller who’d been cutting and hauling sawlogs in the area all his adult life and still has a passion for timber that he describes this way: “I just friggin’ love it.”

But today Roger is welcome at the pub and he and Bluey are firm, if unlikely, friends. “The relationship is a classic Australian mateship now,” he enthuses. “Bluey gives me a chop-out on different things, I help him with others. We’re just quintessential Aussie mates.”

Still, he admits, they are something of an anomaly in that neck of the woods. “I mean, I put him out of f—in’ business and now we’re the best of mates.”

Bluey hasn’t cut a tree this year and on Friday the last of the chainsaws, bulldozers and timber jinkers will fall silent as the final licence to log native forests in the Otways runs out. It is the end phase in a process started during the 2002 state election campaign when premier Steve Bracks did a U-turn on long-standing Labor forestry policy and announced he would end logging in the Otways and woodchipping in the Wombat Forest.

That, in turn, had followed years of bitter and often bloody confrontations between loggers and conservationists in the Otways, at places like Ciancio and Wild Dog Ridge, where Bluey and Roger first met ­ and opposed each other across blockades and police lines.

The pair are the personification of the massive changes in the area and in community attitudes towards logging.

Roger was a former union official with the Merchant Service Guild when he retired to a small farm in the Otways in 1984 “for the quiet life”. When he learned of plans to log the nearby Wild Dog Ridge he quit the quiet life and he has been a leading activist with the Otway Ranges Environment Network, or OREN, ever since.

The flame-haired, laconic Bluey has been working the Otways bush for more than 30 years, arriving as a 20-year-old to cut tree ferns in the gullies for the nursery trade, then moving into tree-falling. He’d watch the older, bearded bloke with the other greenies blockading logging coupes and sometimes getting arrested. And in the quiet times between confrontations they gradually began sharing cups of tea and views.

“From the beginning OREN never took an anti-worker attitude,” insists Roger. “These blokes were there to do a job and we were there to ensure they didn’t … We were in separate camps but over the years, at arms length, a respect developed. I could understand where he was coming from and he could see where I was coming from.”

Bluey says his attitude towards his industry was already beginning to change. He’d watch young women protesters use a length of seatbelt to climb mountain ashes to ensure they couldn’t be cut down, with a sort of admiration for their dedication.

“I’ve got an inquisitive mind. I like to look around and say ‘Where are they coming from, what’s their beef?’ and then give it a bit of thought. It was a sort of meeting of minds.

“It used to surprise me about these greenies, when you got to talk to them. They were lawyers and doctors and the like, they weren’t bloody wood-ducks.”

And he found a commonality with his growing opposition to industrial-scale woodchipping. “The whole industry has been bastardised. All this wood that’s going up the chipper now could be sawn into timber. In order to get 20,000 tonnes of sawlogs there’s probably 120,000 tonnes of woodchip. A lot is bona fide woodchip, but the vast majority is not and the whole industry knows it.

“There’s a stack of woodchip logs over at the Birregurra football ground now. If you took a bipartisan saw miller over there and said ‘What could you cut out of that’, they’d say, ‘Suburbs’.”

It’s greed, says Roger. “There’s a sign up on every Victorian forest that reads ‘Money For Nothing ­ Free Money Here’.”

There’s a last logging crew working a coupe up on Ridge Track, a few kilometres off the Forrest to Colac Road, having, as Roger’s colleague at OREN, Simon Birrell, says, “their last hurrah, getting out as much as they can before the deadline”.

Roger refers to such die-hards as “meatheads”, but says he regrets that jobs and even a way of life had to be lost. “In many respects it is a sad day, notwithstanding that the war’s been fought and won. To have an industry that’s non-sustainable is economic lunacy.”

“It’s a bloody sad day,” says Bluey. “One thing I want to make absolutely clear here, and Roger would agree with me: the timber industry didn’t have to close down here. If it had kept its right proportion and logged for maximum value-adding in smaller coupes, it could have gone on forever.”

He admits that some of his former colleagues see him as a convert to the dark side. “I’m not a friggin’ greenie by any means, I’m a conservationist,” he says. “And I’m still a timber man through and through.”

MAROONDAH Council has backed calls to oppose the harvesting of timber from Melbourne’s water catchment areas.

Last month, Ringwood North resident Lydia Cousins called on the council to support conservation groups with concerns about the impact logging is having on water in catchment areas such as Armstrong Creek.

It followed a campaign by the Melbourne Water Catchment Network, with the support of other conservation groups.

They believe that the clearfell logging of native forest in Melbourne’s water supply catchments is reducing the water supply for 3.6 million residents.

Maroondah joins seven councils, including Yarra Ranges, Knox and Whitehorse, in taking a stand against continued logging in the catchments.

Ms Cousins said it was a step in the right direction. “Ultimately, it is another brick in the wall towards actual support councils are showing to support scientific research of why logging in these catchment areas should stop.”

She said continued logging would affect Maroondah residents now and in the future.

The council’s director of city development Phil Turner said it was scientifically proven that the disturbance of forests in the form of harvesting and fire reduced the yield of water from catchments.

A MAROONDAH resident has called on the council to “pick up its game” and follow neighbouring councils’ actions against logging in Melbourne’s water catchment areas.

Croydon resident Lydia Cousins wants Maroondah Council to support conservation groups’ concerns about the impact logging is having on water in catchment areas such as Armstrong Creek.

Last year, the Melbourne Water Catchment Network, with the support of other conservation groups, began lobbying councils on this issue.

They believe that the clearfell logging of native forest in Melbourne’s water supply catchments is reducing the water supply for 3.6 million residents.

In the past four months, seven councils, including Yarra Ranges, Knox and Whitehorse, have taken a stand against continued logging in the catchments.

Maroondah is yet to act.

Ms Cousins said logging in catchment areas would affect Maroondah residents both now and in the future.

“The forest is the most important natural water store. Logging in the catchment areas such as Armstrong Creek and Thompson Dam seriously affects the quality of our water.”

Cr Alex Makin said logging was a major issue and there was sufficient evidence to back up residents’ concerns.

“[Logging] erodes the ability of our water catchment to retain water. There should be a far more cost effective and environmentally effective solution.

“It is my intent to secure a motion whereby Maroondah would support a letter calling on the State Government to stop logging our catchment areas.”

Mayor Tony Dib said councillors agreed that a report on the issue would be considered at the May council meeting.

“As mayor I am in full support of stopping logging all around the state. It not only affects the water supply of Maroondah residents, but those across Victoria.”

Cr Dib said he expected all councillors to agree.

A MAROONDAH resident has called on the council to “pick up its
game” and follow neighbouring councils’ actions against logging in
Melbourne’s water catchment areas.

Croydon resident Lydia Cousins wants Maroondah Council to support
conservation groups’ concerns about the impact logging is having on water
in catchment areas such as Armstrong Creek.

Last year, the Melbourne Water Catchment Network, with the support of
other conservation groups, began lobbying councils on this issue.

They believe that the clearfell logging of native forest in Melbourne’s
water supply catchments is reducing the water supply for 3.6 million
residents.

In the past four months, seven councils, including Yarra Ranges, Knox and
Whitehorse, have taken a stand against continued logging in the
catchments.

Maroondah is yet to act.

Ms Cousins said logging in catchment areas would affect Maroondah
residents both now and in the future.

“The forest is the most important natural water store. Logging in
the catchment areas such as Armstrong Creek and Thompson Dam seriously
affects the quality of our water.”

Cr Alex Makin said logging was a major issue and there was sufficient
evidence to back up residents’ concerns.

“[Logging] erodes the ability of our water catchment to retain
water. There should be a far more cost effective and environmentally
effective solution.

“It is my intent to secure a motion whereby Maroondah would support
a letter calling on the State Government to stop logging our catchment
areas.”

Mayor Tony Dib said councillors agreed that a report on the issue would
be considered at the May council meeting.

“As mayor I am in full support of stopping logging all around the
state. It not only affects the water supply of Maroondah residents, but
those across Victoria.”

Cr Dib said he expected all councillors to agree.