Letters to the Editor

Sus Timber Tas sees the writing on the wall

Finally Sus Timber Tas has seen sense and has begrudgingly permitted the Bob Brown Foundation to put on its annual takayna Trail event in public forest in the Tarkine. I wonder what changed their minds to allow runners to access public forests usually locked up by our short-sighted forestry industry. Maybe the government recognised that the forests are not exclusively for cutting down. Maybe it is also time to stop logging native forest.

– Felicity Holmes, Tinderbox

About Face

Has anyone else realised that it is virtually impossible to deactivate a Facebook account and hence the company retains all personal data at infinitum although in my case they have my year of birth as 1902.

– Dr Ian Broinowski, Battery Point

Have Some Guts Gutwein

The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the Royal Society of Tasmania have apologised and now you need to follow through Mr Gutwein and apologise to our community for the government policies that have oppressed and traumatised our people for generations since colonisation.
It’s your responsibility as Premier to address and apologise for these past actions.
The state government also need to follow through and fund a cultural centre and return our objects from these institutions to allow us to reconnect to them and tell our stories from our perspective.
You might then go down in history as the gutsy Gutwein government.

– Fiona Maher, truwana Rangers, truwana/Cape Barren Island

Moratorium

Thank you to the Tasmania Times for the comprehensive summary of Graeme Samuel’s final report on the EPBC Act. (https://www.tasmaniantimes.com/2021/01/epbc-act-review-final-report/, 29/1). I was left wondering how many Australians know that our Regional Forest Agreements currently have a special exemption from the national environmental law.
It was good to read that Graeme Samuel has now called for the removal of these exemptions. The exemptions explain the frequent breaches by the state forestry agencies. In Samuel’s own words, a separate “rigorous compliance and enforcement regime is needed” to uphold the law and national standards. Australia has a poor track record on species extinction and was notably absent in the list of more than 50 countries which pledged to protect 30 percent of the planet to halt species extinction and address climate change issues.
Given the recent devastating forest fires and this highly critical report, there should be at least a moratorium on the logging of all of Australia’s remaining native forests until national standards and an enforcement regime are in place.
– Ray Peck, Hawthorn

Overpasses a waste of time and money

The $millions on overpasses to link Rosny Hill Road to East Derwent Highway would be better spent on ramps linking the Eastlands commercial area to the Tasman Highway.
The state government has included the Rosny Hill Road to East Derwent Highway overpasses as a priority project in the Tasman Highway – Sorell to Hobart Corridor Plan that also includes extending the Flagstaff Gully Road to Geilston Bay. The Rosny Hill Rd proposal would provide an exit lane on the southern side of the Tasman Highway approaches to the Tasman Bridge at Montague Bay with an overpass and a connection to the existing narrow, steep and short underpass to the East Derwent Highway.
The objective is to reduce the need for Rosny Hill Road traffic to cross two lanes of Tasman Highway traffic to get to the East Derwent Highway, but Clarence Council’s own traffic study suggests that only 75 cars a day will be affected. The Council report also says ‘that existing crash history is low, the cost-benefit would be low and involves complex construction and traffic management’.
The Eastlands ramps are a Council road priority but do not appear in the state government Tasman Highway plan. The money would be better spent on ramps linking the Eastlands commercial area to the Tasman Highway because the proposed Flagstaff Gully Rd extension allows all Geilston Bay, Sorell and Lauderdale traffic to use the Tasman Highway and avoid the notoriously congested Cambridge Rd and its effect on the Mornington roundabout.

– Alderman Tony Mulder, Clarence City Council

Editor’s note: You can view the planning study here https://www.transport.tas.gov.au/projectsplanning/road_projects/south_road_projects/sorell_to_hobart_planning_study

Mutton Birding

Graeme Heald (Jan 5th) has got his history on Aborigines and mutton birding all wrong. Before white people invaded Lutrawita/Tasmania, my ancestors knew when the birds were coming back from Alaska by the flowering of the wattle. By December each year, around 60,000 eggs were taken by Aboriginal people to eat. They were cooked in the shell in hot ashes of the fire. Back in those days there were excessive eggs called the ‘glut’ which enabled Aborigines to simply gather eggs laid on the ground.
Eggs were often supplemented by many feeds of adult birds which were in plentiful supply. Visits to the rookeries by Aboriginal groups further inland were part of the ritual with corroborees, marriages and other ceremonies carried out. Then from January until May, upwards of 100,000 young chicks were feasted on. Heald’s view that Aborigines ignored this valuable food source until white people arrived hardly rates a response.
Today, Aboriginal people carry out the tradition of mutton birding in remote areas mostly simply because we no longer have control over our lands and rookeries on mainland Tasmania, and Parks and Wildlife patronisingly regulate Aboriginal mutton birding without asking Aboriginal people. Heald’s complaint shows that open hostility towards Aboriginal cultural practices is both historic and contemporary. But white people have tried before to assimilate us by destroying our cultural continuity, It has not worked entirely, so let us hope it does not happen now.

– Michael Mansell, cultural birder Babel Island, east coast of Flinders Island

Pest Control

Many thanks to Graeme Heald (Anderson) for his brave and perceptive piece For Shearwaters and Against Mutton Birding recently.
Cultures change. All around the world, cultures change in response to circumstance, technology, social values and so on, and they always have changed. The idea that bashing native wildlife to bits is somehow still appropriate in this day and age is mystifying.
Ironically, the Aboriginal community in Tasmania is mostly remarkably silent about foreign pest animals doing enormous damage to our landscapes and waterways: sheep, deer, cattle, cats, rabbits, dogs, salmon, trout, etc. This is ongoing settler colonialism, by the way: the intrinsic notion is that the foreign/European animals are better and more deserving of ecosystem space than the inferior native/Tasmanian ones.
How about the ‘mutton birders’ get rid of some of those rather than hacking into the populations of endemic species that actually belong here?

– James Christou, Launceston

Letters are welcome on any Tasmanian subject, up to 250 words. Letters should be concise, respectful of others and rely on evidence where necessary. No links please! Letter writers should provide a real name and town / suburb. Submit letters in the body of an email to letters@tasmaniantimes.com

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