Ripping off the goods of nature

Meander Valley Council recently voted 6-2 to not support heritage listing for the Great Western Tiers.

Whilst I was not privy to the thoughts of the erudite on this occasion I am aware that other Councils see a National Park as a benefit to their local tourist industry. Even Lennon and Howard recognized the value of the natural heritage by adding to the informal reserves on the Tiers.

It is fortunate that Meander Valley, often in spite of the Council’s endeavours, retains some items of heritage.

The cultural heritage items are often valued by the whole community, their references to the past evoking feelings in the simplest of souls, among those with the reddest of necks and even those whose only apparent driver is greed.

However, when it comes to natural heritage the red rises from their necks and covers their eyes and their brain goes into reverse at the mention of conservation. Nej, nyet, nien, non and no, no, no, we’ll have none of that something for the future stuff round here, bring back the good old days of untrammelled and unquestioned destruction, that’s where the easy money is, ripping off the ‘free’ goods of nature.

Their ‘philosophy’ sees natural watercourses reduced to dirty brown ditches in summer and then in winter used as drains for cow manure, many of them also open to cattle as drinking troughs, their banks trampled down, the vegetation filter along the edge crushed.

Happy they are to add to the air pollution of forestry burnoffs by wasting the organic matter they have wrung from the soil they fill with chemicals, reducing its humus content and thus its fertility.

Examples of Council’s inaction include approving:

*The logging of high conservation value forest on a property that had received heritage funding to maintain a building set in a landscape in an area that the councils own landscape study had identified as valuable. Oh yes go ahead cut it down, them words about conservation values are too big, I don’t understand.

Fortunately action by residents stopped that particular outrage.

Condemned to the death of a thousand cuts

*Or the forests in Reedy Marsh that the Council’s federally funded Natural Resource Management Strategy identified as important and should be conserved. Council has failed to act to its utmost to prevent that becoming a Private Timber Reserve, forever condemned to destruction at the owner’s whim.

An unfounded accusation I hear you say. A PTR must abide by the Forest Practices Code, administered by the Forest Practices Board. Condemned to the death of a thousand cuts a blind eye turned by this forest industry captive, local experience shows that is the result of FPB oversight.

Indeed, one must ask if the taking of the grant to manage natural resources has been fraudulent if its recommendations are to be ignored instead of implemented.

Not that oversight by Meander Valley Council has meant anything in relation to the conservation of vegetation in its area of responsibility, the landscape scarred by changes when it could have been managed to the benefit of the visual asset belonging to all.

Its rejection of a landscape overlay to its planning scheme showed the true antediluvian nature of the opponents of any measure that gives balance to community interests.

Here was a chance for Council to join with the Tasmanian Conservation Trust to recognize the value of an asset that is largely publicly owned by seeking heritage listing.

Following could be the opportunity to have the 70% of the forest in the Tiers that will never be logged, along with the high country above, that will never be grazed again, declared a National Park, enhancing Deloraine as a tourist gateway.

Instead all that is protected is prejudice, unable to find a way forward beyond the unsubstantiated belief that conservation costs jobs.

phill Parsons is resident in Meander Valley.