Environment
Beautiful, fragile planet
Helen Tait West Launceston
IF ONE looks at a map of the original distribution of the world’s cool temperate rainforests one finds but a narrow strip in North America and southern South America, some dots in Ireland, UK and Norway and strip in Tasmania and New Zealand. Now the tiny bits remaining intact, as in the Tasmanian Tarkine, is all but all in the whole world. When we talk of protecting the Tarkine we speak not of simply having more trees freed from destruction in yet another reserve. We speak of valuing extraordinarily rich and beautiful forests of extreme and rare significance. The tripartite dismissal of Christine Milne’s motion in the Senate this week, asking for recognition of this crucial fact, belies that at last we are beginning to see the big picture and our role in the survival of this beautiful fragile planet.