MAX HODGE
The woodchip industry as we know it, is the greatest destroyer of jobs and the environment that has ever been foisted on a gullible public.
I was raised on a farm that had a small timber lot that supplied the needs of the farm.
The farm backed onto thousands of acres of State Forest that was a working forest, giving jobs to people supplying fire wood, saw logs, farm posts and wood for the Burnie Pulp Mill.
This was a selectively logged forest and was paradise for all of the local boys.
We roamed the area on horse back or just walking on the miles of bush roads.
The forest appeared untouched as only mature trees were removed.
The creeks and rivers ran clear,clean and drinkable and were full of fish and lobsters.
As I said, paradise for the locals or for that matter any one that knew of the area and wanted make use of it.
I left the area as I wanted to learn a trade.
Years went by, my farther sold the farm and retired, but I still missed the forest and when my children were old enough I took them back to see my little piece of paradise.
Never try to recapture your boyhood as what you remember may not stand the passage of time.
The old family house and farm were gone, turned into a plantation, the forest as far as the eye could see was gone and the creeks and rivers no longer ran clean and I couldn’t find any sign of lobsters.
If the area is left alone for 200 years it may return to its former glory but my children, my grandchildren or even their grandchildren will never see what this former working forest was like.
Tell me Woodworker is this progress?
I am not a so called greeny but I will not vote for a government that will destroy the environment along with the jobs of forest workers, for a woodchip industry.
