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What forest is logged?
Old Growth Mountain Ash Forest
The photo above shows old growth Mountain Ash forest in Melbourne’s catchments. Most of the old growth ash forest within the Melbourne water supply catchments is located inside the Yarra Ranges National Park and is not subjected to logging.
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Old growth forest Maroondah catchment, Yarra Ranges National Park.
70 year old forest
Much of the Ash forests targeted for logging in the Melbourne catchments has regenerated from the 1939 bushfires. The photo on the left shows 70 year old regrowth in one of the Melbourne catchments.
If these forests were left to grow for another hundred years they would mature into old growth forest which provide the highest water yield.
Instead these forests are being systematically clearfell logged, dramatically decreasing the water available for the people of Melbourne.
1939 Ash forest to be logged in headwaters of Tarago catchment.
Foothill Forest
About two thirds of the State forest catchments are within low rainfall areas that only contribute a third of the water run off. These ‘foothill’ forests (shown above) are much more fire prone but have eucalypt species that are much more likely to survive fire.
Logging does not target these low sawlog and water yielding forests.
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Low rainfall foothill forest, Thomson catchment is not logged.
Clearfell logging
The high rainfall yielding forest is targeted for logging using a practice called "clearfell logging". An area, or ‘coupe’ that has been clearfell logged is shown in this photo with the Thomson Dam in the background.
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Logged 1939 Ash forest in high rainfall part of Thomson catchment(pictured in background).